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Feb. 1, 2024 - Dennis Prager Show
07:49
Tattoos, False Attributes & Judgement
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One of the things people have to understand is how unique every human being is.
The big macro, I always look for a big macro lesson.
I'll give you an interesting serious example.
So I've loved classical music since high school.
I mean love.
We're talking about if there is such a thing as love, I love classical music.
It frequently tears me up.
I love it.
I remember my dear, dear friend Joseph since high school to this day.
He was an extremely bright man.
I co-authored two books with him.
My first two books are co-authored with him.
And when I would put on classical music, when he would visit my apartment in Manhattan, we both lived in New York at the time.
And, well, he still lives in New York, but he came out to LA for years.
And I would play classical music.
And I would look at him, and I'd realize he wasn't hearing a thing.
It registered zero on his 1 to 100 passion scale.
It had no effect.
So I had to draw one of two conclusions.
Either he's not as deep as I think he is, because if he was really deep, he would at least respond.
Or it has nothing to do with it.
It's its own world.
Any more than everyone who does respond to classical music is deep, which is not true either.
So that was, see, by the way, this is just an insight into my own life.
My instinct has always been draw a conclusion from what just happened.
And so watching Joseph not have any reaction as I am sitting there almost shaking from passion.
Made me realize, well, this is not an indicator of a person's depth.
And then I realized, and of course, a lot of quite superficial people love classical music.
By the way, it's depressing to me.
I wish there was a one-to-one correlation.
You're deep.
You are really deep.
And you know I know that.
That's why we do a podcast together.
But, you know, classical music's not a passion of yours.
Now, it might be.
I don't know.
Maybe I could develop it in you.
But I don't even care.
It's not on my agenda vis-a-vis you.
But that's a great example.
Whereas, you know, it was very...
You know what depressed me?
I mean, boy, talk about serious.
Here's a super serious.
You know, that leading Nazis loved classical music.
And I thought, oh, it was like, you know when you're a kid you have idealistic visions of life and then one after another sort of shatter with reality?
Yes.
I really believed for some period that Schubert and Mozart and Bach and Beethoven ultimately made you a better person.
And then I realized...
It doesn't really work that way.
It's like tattoos.
Wow.
It's sort of like tattoos.
Yes, it's a great example.
It is.
Because I've always associated it with, I don't know, loser may be too strong a term, but, you know.
Impulsive, perhaps.
Well, that's a sweet way.
Somewhere between loser and impulsive.
And then over time.
Well, not just because of Aaron.
I've always, I'm objective.
Aaron's sleeve.
Yes, I'm.
I'm not a fan of tattoos.
But I no longer associate it with any other trait in the person.
I do if it's on the neck or face.
I do.
But otherwise...
And I'll tell you one of the...
Forgetting my son, who's remarkably wonderful, as you know.
I don't say this because he's my son.
It's true.
And everybody knows that.
I'm not big on that.
But my point is about tattoos, not about him specifically as my son.
But forgetting him.
The number of people who walk over to me for a selfie at airports who have tattoos and who, you know, I love your work.
You know, I watched you and Jordan Peterson on Exodus or I watched your fireside chat and, you know, we've got to save this country.
I, looking at a person, With some obvious exceptions, like neck tattoos or face tattoos or the gangbanger garb, I now assume nothing.
And so all of this comes from your idiosyncratic behavior with pistachio nuts.
But it really is worth...
One of the nice things to do in life is ask yourself, what can I learn from what I just observed?
Yes.
So that is an example to me.
It makes life so interesting, too.
Oh, yes.
And don't you want to understand it?
Totally.
Oh, gosh.
Okay, so you know what's so funny about Dennis and Julie?
We never rehearse.
We never even talk about what we're going to bring up on the air.
At most, what we'll say is what happened today.
You said, I don't have an idea.
And I said, okay, well, I do.
Or, you know, the opposite.
You'll go, I have something I want to bring up.
But what's so funny is this could not have been a more perfect segue into what I wanted to talk about.
Oh, how interesting.
Where I feel like I am...
In a just thrilling part of my life right now.
I'm happy to hear that.
And of course, it's in large part because I love this show.
I love my show.
There are parts of it that are really challenging.
Being a single, trying-to-make-it-in-media woman in Los Angeles with not that many friends.
A lot of my friends are in New York.
It's not easy all the time.
And I talk about that with you a lot.
The word is thrilling.
I feel like my life is thrilling.
And it's not even so much because of my job.
It's because of all of the interests and hobbies that I've accumulated outside of my job, but of course are also related to this job because I'm lucky enough to talk them through with you, to talk about them on the show.
But I just feel like what you just said about wanting to understand life, it is so thrilling.
To go out and understand and talk to people.
Talking with your son the other day about addiction was eye-opening.
I was on a plane recently flying back from Tahoe and there was someone next to me with a tattoo.
This is why I said you could not have teed it up better.
And they were talking to me all about why they got their tattoos and I was developing these kind of theories.
And I just want to scream out to people, like, life has endless opportunities It to be interesting if you just open your eyes and see it.
And I used to think life was boring.
I used to think that the kind of range of things that you could explore were narrow.
Or I thought, oh, I would never be the type of person who would listen to classical music.
I'm just not interested in that.
I hope I'm making sense, but I've kind of pushed myself to become interested in these things or to try them out.
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