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March 6, 2018 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
01:01:23
20180306_Tue__c-laOh5rbY
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dave rubin
15:20
k
kelly carlin
44:37
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
dave rubin
All right. We are live on the YouTube and joining me today is an author, a public speaker,
a digital detoxer, and the daughter of the greatest standup comic of all time, Kelly
Welcome back to The Rubin Report.
kelly carlin
In the real home of The Rubin Report today.
dave rubin
Yes, I don't know where we were last time we did this.
We were in another studio.
kelly carlin
Somewhere far away in a long car ride from my house is all I remember.
dave rubin
Yes, this is a little closer to your house.
kelly carlin
It's freeway adjacent.
As I am, too, at my house, so.
dave rubin
I should also note that we are good friends.
I think people are gonna see that over the course of the next hour.
First off, how annoyed are you at me that I even referenced your father, the great George Carlin, in the intro?
Because I know this is sort of, it's like the most wonderful thing that someone could have, or at least from the outside, someone that does comedy, and also something that you've tried to escape in a certain way and create your own thing, and we talked about it last time, and this is what your book is about, and all that.
You want to smack me right before we start?
unidentified
No, I don't want to smack you.
kelly carlin
No, because I've, you know, I've been doing a lot of work on this lately and what it's come down to is This is who I am.
This is a part of who I am.
This is how the world will always on some level see me and see the filter of me.
And yet my job is to unhook from that and really understand that that's just a thing that happens.
And if I'm chasing after it or fighting against it, then I'm in some sort of exhausting relationship with it.
And really what I've been doing lately is like, what am I about?
What's the big conversation I want to have with the world now?
And it's been funny because I've been circling around back to where I was ten years ago before my dad died, actually, and picking up those pieces of myself that was ready to have a big conversation with the world, but I didn't have all the things that I have now, which were actually I could only have received by fully embracing my father's legacy and walking through the shadow of all of that by doing the solo show and doing the memoir and kind of trust falling into the arms of fans and his peers, you know, but I had to do all of that to really then say, all right,
Am I ready as an adult and as a daughter to put that down and really be in perspective with it in a healthy way?
And so I am now.
dave rubin
It's funny because I don't want to spend too much time talking about that, but I think there's something particularly unique with your situation because it's not like you could take any big celebrity and take their child.
and okay, they're an actor, they're a musician, whatever, but your dad, it was so directly related to truth,
unidentified
Yeah.
dave rubin
like telling the truth, and that's why he holds a special place
pretty much for every standup comic, but really, culturally and all that,
and especially in a time now, and I think this will relate to a lot of things
we're gonna talk about, where we're sort of post-truth,
everyone makes up their truth, where standup is kinda weird right now and so much,
it's like, I think that probably makes your situation and why you wrote the book,
which I know it was such a deeply personal experience for you and all that,
it just makes it particularly unique, I think, and then I'm only gonna ask you one other thing about you.
kelly carlin
Yeah, and I think the thing that I'm, I have claimed for myself around this, is that being a Karlin, when I walk into a room, I have permission to speak big truth.
dave rubin
That's a nice card to have these days.
kelly carlin
It's an amazing card to have, and it's one I'm learning to physically embody and mentally embody.
Sometimes the big truth is nothing about the truth that my father would have been talking about, but it's the truth that I want to hand people.
And one of the things that I handed people by doing my solo show and writing my story as a book is the big truth that even though my father was the truth teller on stage, as a family, we had a really dysfunctional relationship with truth because we were a family of addicts, you know?
And so when you're a family of addicts and dysfunction, truth is a whole other thing, you know?
And that was like the scariest but most empowering thing for me to do with my story was to say to his fans, yes, okay, he's the truth teller, you've got him on the pedestal, and now here's the father and the husband and the artist who, like the rest of us, You mean these people that we don't really know that are performers aren't always perfect human beings?
dave rubin
Is that what you're trying to tell me?
kelly carlin
I have some bad news for you today.
Yes, and that's been sort of my... I mean it's really interesting because I went to
grad school in the early aughts, as we like to call them.
And when I came out of grad school, I got my master's in Jungian psychology.
dave rubin
We're going to go into that.
kelly carlin
We're going to go into that a little bit.
But studying the power of archetypes and the gods and the goddesses and mythology and all of that, and seeing that celebrity in our culture.
has kind of taken over the part of our brain that we used to use to worship
gods. You know, those of us in the secular world who don't believe in the big guy
with the beard in the sky thing.
And so I've always been fascinated by how we dehumanize these people.
We put them up on this pedestal, and then what we love to do in our culture is to bring them down to remind them that they're human and to say like, hey, I'm human too, fuck you, we're equal, you know?
So this is a whole little game we play with this, but yeah, and it was kind of scary for me the first few years after my dad died when I knew that I wanted to speak some possibly unpopular truths about my dad.
I mean, luckily I'm not like Mackenzie Phillips, God bless you.
Nothing weird like that happened in my life, but it was scary for me to come up against people who I thought, well, I'm going to be disappointing these people in some way.
dave rubin
And that's why I think this case, even though I know you the best, I have a couple of friends in similar situations like you, but this one where his relationship was so close to truth that it's like people would want to protect him like a religious figure, which the irony related to everything he thought about religion.
kelly carlin
Well, and when I started encountering the atheist community, I mean, that's what I saw.
He was on t-shirts, and there was this worshipping of him, and I kept reminding them, you do find it a little strange that you're worshipping the person.
Do you see the mental gymnastics you're doing here in order to do that?
dave rubin
Which, you know, we've done some atheist events together, and I want to talk a little bit about that for you too.
So one other quick thing on him.
So I've told you this story, but I think it'll relate to everything else we're going to talk about.
Of all the things that I saw your dad on, and all the specials and all that stuff, I saw him on The View once, and I think it was probably maybe his one and only appearance on The View, but he was talking about the pain.
that a comic has to have, but I think he was really describing it
unidentified
Yeah.
dave rubin
as the pain that anyone would have, that you have to have that pain for a while.
And then if you don't learn to own that pain, it will destroy you.
And this is why we see so many comics that either become drug addicts or alcoholics
or self-destruct in a zillion other ways.
And for me, it really helped change me.
I was like, oh, this is the guy I idolize, and I was closeted, I was doing drugs, I was just a mess, and it did sort of register something for me.
So I think I've told you that publicly before, but I just wanted to put it out there right to you.
kelly carlin
Yeah, and that thing about owning our pain, I think is something we're not trained for here in America.
dave rubin
Hide it, blame someone else, push it aside.
kelly carlin
Yeah, and chase after the next hit of something.
Whether it's progress, or the next million dollars, or whatever version your American dream comes in.
You know, or it's the next swipe on the app, or the next tweet, or did I get it now?
Do I get a like?
Do I get a heart?
Do I thing?
All that fucking crap.
But we are not trained as little people and not as adults and there's no incoming communication about that it's okay to fail, to feel pain, to death.
We don't talk about death in this culture.
We don't talk about sickness.
I mean, we do more now.
You know, who, like, go through cancer.
You can talk about cancer now, where even, like, 20 years ago, it was still, like, the C word, you know?
dave rubin
Now it's a different C word.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly carlin
Conservatives!
Oh yeah, there's one of those, seven ones I believe.
There's one other.
Yeah, there's a bunch.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's one of those, seven ones, I believe.
Yeah, right, right.
But, and you know, when my mom died 20 years ago, and that was the first time in my adult life
that I faced some big, like, loss in my life.
in my life.
And it changed me because I'd always, because we push away loss so much in our culture, we don't know how to metabolize it and move through it.
And when my mom died, instead of me like falling apart and like ending up in a padded cell at UCLA psych ward, which I'd always imagined for sure was gonna happen.
dave rubin
Pretty great place to end up.
unidentified
Well, yeah.
kelly carlin
If you're gonna go there.
unidentified
If you're gonna go there.
kelly carlin
UCLA's very nice.
But instead, it showed me a strength I have, and that in my brokenness and in my grief, I did not fall down an endless pit.
I mean, it was painful.
I mean, as grief is physically painful, and I was kind of dysfunctional for a few years, but I I felt like I'd been tempered in some way, like I'd gone through a fire and come out the other side of it stronger.
And I think about kids these days, kids these days, but you think about how everyone gets a blue ribbon and all that kind of stuff and nobody's learning to metabolize failure or disappointment or Anything like that.
And we're just... And you need those things.
Well, they're part of the human experience.
You know, we can't...
You know, it's this whole idea like the American economy and how it's like every year it has to like grow, grow,
grow, grow, grow.
Well, the only thing that grows all the time is like a cancer.
And so we have this false notion that only up is good.
One of the things I do when I've been teaching lately, when we talk about that, is that I have a section where I talk about sitting with difficult emotions.
Or I have a death and dying week, we talk about that.
And it's funny, a few less people show up live that week to sit with me because it's like,
unidentified
oh really, death and dying?
kelly carlin
Maybe I'll listen to that on my own time, or maybe I'll skip that week.
But the ability to sit with uncomfortableness, I think, would do, not all of us,
even all of us personally, a lot of good, but just as a country, a hell of a lot of good too.
dave rubin
Right, and probably people of all time probably never dealt with those uncomfortable things that well, but now we can distract ourselves so easily on the phone that it makes that much easier.
Okay, so here's the one question about your dad, and then we're not gonna talk him.
What do you think he would make of the madness right now?
Just the general state.
The politics.
kelly carlin
You know that's the worst question in the world.
dave rubin
I know it's the worst question.
I know it's the worst question in a way.
So I'll rephrase it slightly.
Do you think he would be, creatively, do you think he'd be thriving?
kelly carlin
Yeah, I think he was always of two minds anyway.
He was of one essential being and one mind in general.
Like when he would say, you know, oh, you think I'm kidding?
I'm a comedian.
You think I'm kidding?
No, I really believe this shit.
He really did.
I mean, he really did believe the species was going to hit a cul-de-sac and we were in a cul-de-sac and we're circling the drain.
He didn't know how long that would take.
But he believed that because of greed, basically, and not having empathy for your fellow man.
So, I think he, in some ways, probably saw this coming.
I mean, I tell people all the time when they ask me this, I say, look, I don't know.
I mean, I think he would hate Trump.
I mean, Trump represents everything my father stood against.
You know?
White, male, rich, businessman, narcissistic, just the whole, and the part of New York that my dad just, You know, my dad came from the Upper West Side streets of New York.
109th?
121st.
unidentified
Which is now George Carlin Way.
kelly carlin
Which is now George Carlin Way.
So he, I mean, everything about Trump he would have hated.
And his, and especially his racism.
My father was a man who from day one on earth for me was all about, you know, everything this country has ever done is oppressed people.
of a different skin color.
You know, we massacred the Indians and then we shipped in black people,
you know, all of that.
So he had a huge soft, soft heart for minorities and the underdog.
But the chaos of it, he would have, I'm sure, you know, and he didn't like to do politics
in the sense of like everyone else making it.
I don't know if he, you know, every once in a while he'd bring up,
dave rubin
Right, he did kind of high level, he did sort of philosophic politics.
kelly carlin
Yeah, and big picture, you know, and if he brought up Bush and Dick Cheney, you know, it was because he talked about the Bush and the Dick and all that kind of stuff, you know, it was a great, You know, the rockets and penises and the Gulf War or whatever it was, yeah.
But you know, his thing was, he said, when you're born, you're born with a ticket to the freak show.
And when you're born in America, you get a front row seat.
And that thing, that has sustained me these last two years.
unidentified
Because you were literally born into it.
kelly carlin
Yeah, and just being able to see it as a freak show, to have my own personal politics and my own desires for the country and the direction.
and the panic of that not happening, and then, but also seeing that this is,
if we survive it, and I know we will, is a really good thing for the country.
And that we're having, it's all out on the table now.
Like, if you want to know about what this country's been doing for 200 years, well, we're in it now.
And everyone's talking about it because it's racism and misogyny and greed and corruption in politics and money.
You know, I mean, I hope that's the next big conversation, you know, that we can all have.
The big messy one is, you know, money and corruption.
Let's go there, you know?
So we'll see.
Because money is everything in this country.
dave rubin
We'll save the money in corruption for our next sit-down, but if anyone wants anything else on your dad, it is all in this book right here.
kelly carlin
Yes, please, read my book.
dave rubin
Which we will post to the link down below, and now let's talk about some other stuff.
unidentified
Yeah!
dave rubin
Okay, so I thought, the reason I wanted to, I've wanted, first off, we did this two and a half years ago.
kelly carlin
Okay, that's just, that's impossible.
unidentified
Insane, we're both getting very old.
dave rubin
But putting aside those two and a half years, the things that we've talked about privately for the last two and a half years are the things that I've slowly been trying to incorporate into the show, things that I've been trying to incorporate in my life, things that respect the conversations that I'm having here.
So first off, you're big on the unplugging movement, which I think at this point is a movement, just getting Offline sometimes, doing the digital detox.
You're teaching some webinars on this.
kelly carlin
Ironically, I'm teaching webinars about unplugging.
dave rubin
I mean, and here we are doing it on the internet.
kelly carlin
And yet, this is the technology we have, and this is how you reach people.
dave rubin
Yeah, what does this make us?
kelly carlin
Right.
dave rubin
Hypocrites of the highest order.
I don't know what it makes us.
kelly carlin
It makes us complicated human beings.
dave rubin
Okay, there you go.
Exactly.
Yeah.
All right.
My audience knows I did August completely off the grid with no electronics and no nothing, and I came back feeling like a million bucks.
I've been trying to do it on the weekends, but I'm failing, I'd say, at least 50% of the time, but basically trying to.
What was it that spurred this in you that was like, man, there's something really wrong here with the way we react to this stuff?
kelly carlin
I think it was two things, one of which was, You know, ten years ago, smartphones came into existence, and all of these social media apps came into existence.
And we, at the beginning, all of us were like, oh my god!
This thing takes a picture, and you can look up the works of Shakespeare on it!
This is a fucking baby Jesus miracle right here, you know?
Amazing, and like, oh, social media, oh my God, I'm talking to strangers, and look at this, and I'm like, I found my voice on social media.
I mean, that was the first place I went and had a platform and a stage to say, hey, this is my opinion about something outside of my house and my friends, you know?
dave rubin
So it was a- Same here, and that's what brought us together.
Twitter brought us together.
kelly carlin
Exactly.
dave rubin
We met through Twitter, yeah.
kelly carlin
Exactly, and I think that was all amazing, and then about five years into it, about five years ago, I felt the sudden like, And part of that was the 24-7 of the technology, but also how I was engaging with it, which is I was completely George Carlin's daughter online.
And I had a podcast and I had my own voice there, but 99% of the time I was getting, every day I was getting pictures of my dead father or videos of my dead father or his name being put in front of me.
And I I didn't know what to do about that
because I was like, well, I can't say no to this because I signed up for this.
I'm writing a book about this.
I have a solo show.
I mean, this is my own fucking fault.
How dare I?
And yet in the summer of 2016, I was in yoga.
I was having a very LA moment.
I was in yoga in corpse pose, literally laying there.
And it was like May.
And I thought, what do I really need in my life right now?
And I thought I need to get away for the summer.
I'd done my book.
I'd done publicizing it.
I didn't have to be promoting myself online, which is just and I thought I'm going to do this for three months.
I'm going to unplug from the social media tether and And thus this device, because that was, you know, the main reason.
I mean, talk on the phone with this thing?
What are you talking about?
Are you kidding?
dave rubin
You're basically the only person.
I called you the other day.
kelly carlin
Yeah, yeah.
dave rubin
We talked on the phone.
And so that summer... It was 1974.
kelly carlin
I made phone calls that summer.
I would randomly call people and say, hey, hi, what are you doing?
And people were like, excuse me, wait, we didn't text first that we were going to plan to talk?
dave rubin
Yeah, you called me.
I was like, what's wrong?
And you were just talking.
I was like, maybe she went crazy.
I don't know.
kelly carlin
And I have to say, the first two weeks of that unplugging...
I would find myself with my phone in my hand randomly and I'd be like, why is my phone in my hand?
Because I had, I mean, the habituation of this thing is, and that's when I really started realizing, oh, we're in deep shit.
I've already rewired my brain to need this thing however often, you know, and it was about two weeks until I finally then would like lose my phone all day in my house.
unidentified
Yeah.
dave rubin
I mean, I literally, I know you know this, but I literally locked my phone in a safe in August.
unidentified
Wow.
dave rubin
Because I didn't want to be going to it.
unidentified
Wow.
dave rubin
And I did not know the code.
unidentified
Yep.
Wow.
dave rubin
And I was just like, that's how we're going to do this.
kelly carlin
Yeah.
dave rubin
And I avoided screens of all kinds.
Yeah.
And news.
I mean, the whole thing.
And what I realized was that my, I felt truly that my brain was resetting.
kelly carlin
Yeah.
And so what was like the first few weeks for you like?
dave rubin
The first couple days, there's a level of anxiety there, for sure.
Like my hand kept going to my pocket, the way you were describing with the table.
My hand would just, just by default.
You know what it reminded me of?
It's like in the olden days of 15 years ago, if you were gonna meet a friend at a bar, you call them, you say, all right, I'll meet you on the corner of 6th and 14th.
Okay, well now if you go to 6th and 14th, if they're not there that second, you would meet.
What are you doing?
You're liking Instagrams, you're where are you, you're looking, you're shopping, all these things.
You never just stop and smell the roses.
You never just stop and stand there.
So what I realized was, the more that I got off there, the more I found, even though I'm a pretty patient person in general, and I like talking to people, obviously, I found I was nicer to cashiers at the supermarket.
Little interactions like that, I found, it wasn't the big one.
I'm pretty good at the big ones, but I found that the little day-to-day ones, just being present more, every time you get out of your car to go to buy a sandwich, you stare at your phone.
And just that ability to be present.
And then the other thing was that when you stop doing it, you start looking at everyone else like they're crazy.
When you see these people and their necks, I mean, we're gonna have an epidemic of our necks.
kelly carlin
And whole families at dinners together, no one's looking at each other anymore.
And you walk into a restaurant and, Nobody just sits and just does this anymore, like taking in people in the world.
No one people watches in airports anymore.
dave rubin
Yeah.
kelly carlin
No one people watches in airports anymore.
So if we're not people watching anymore, and I believe people watching is this beautiful way of naturally finding a way to be in each other's shoes, you know, like, oh, look at that guy.
Oh, look, he's wearing that.
Oh, that Raiders t-shirt.
Oh, I'm a Raiders fan.
Oh, look at that.
You're having this internal dialogue with these people.
And yes, sometimes you're like projecting, you know, shit onto them and bias.
unidentified
Oh, look at that big hair lady or whatever, you know.
kelly carlin
But you're having a human encounter on some level.
And we're social beings.
You know, this is ancient hard wiring.
This is not...
Hard wiring that even has caught up to, like, 10,000 years ago.
Like, this is ancient fucking wiring here, and we need certain social cues and certain things.
I tweeted this morning about this, that someone was defending social media, which people do when I always start to talk about this, and I say, oh, but what if I can talk to this person here in connection?
I said, yes, yes, yes, yes.
I've met great friends through social media.
And we are not hardwired for the quantity of interactions and the amount of information coming into our brains.
So what happens is, and I've been studying a lot about this, is that we get into this dopamine loop with it.
it's like heroin. It just is. The brain doesn't know any better. The brain just says,
I need that thing again. I need that thing again. I need that thing again.
And if you don't teach yourself to slow that down or to be able to at least witness it from afar and
go, oh, look, there's my hand grabbing for the phone again.
Or why am I feeling so anxious? Oh, because I haven't checked my email in three hours or
whatever it is. And you learn to watch yourself and you learn to see the cues of it. And then you go, and
then you learn to sit with it and notice that.
I I don't know, you know, you'd get the urge to pick up the
phone and then you'd watch it and then five minutes later, you're on to something else.
Yeah.
You know, you didn't really need the phone in your hand the whole time.
And so it's, it's really important because when we're in that stimulated state, we're kind of in this drive state
all the time.
And our bodies, in order to be healthy, and our minds in order to be healthy, have to learn how to be in a resting
state, like a physiological resting state.
That's why we sleep.
dave rubin
Yeah.
kelly carlin
You know?
And we're, I mean there's just one side effect, but we're overloading our poor bodies and our poor minds 24-7 with
this stuff. And then with the news cycle, which I'm now calling the news cycle, it's
not 24-7, it's 60-24 because every 60 minutes there's a breaking news and there's
24 hours of breaking news.
dave rubin
But by breaking news usually they mean they're just breaking news.
They're actually breaking the way news is reported.
kelly carlin
They're taking a big thing and they're just hitting it.
And they're just saying the same thing they've been saying for the last 24 hours and they're calling it breaking news.
But it's the same thing.
Oh, it's new.
Because, you know, media relies on eyeballs.
And media relies on, you're missing something.
You better come look at us.
Same thing with Twitter.
So it's all the same.
dave rubin
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there.
Even just, I mean, you're right about the sleep part of it because they've done studies about if you look at your phone right before bed, you're gonna sleep worse.
My other policy is now no phone in the bedroom because it shouldn't be the last thing you look at.
kelly carlin
Or the first thing.
dave rubin
It's hard.
The last thing I look at, a Twitter avatar, go fuck yourself, Ruben!
Then I wake up in the morning, Ruben, you fucking idiot!
That's not a good way to end or start the day.
The interesting thing is it's also how we relate, I think, to positivity and negativity.
So, for example, by and large, most of my interactions online, actually, I would say a huge percentage for all the trolls that are out there, are way positive.
And people saying nice things and I enjoy what you do and blah, blah, blah, and I'm on the ride with you
and all that good stuff.
But it's the bad ones that you're like, oh, that somehow stick with you,
which that shows you something about how we relate to positivity and negativity.
kelly carlin
Yeah, yeah, because we're basically little survivor beings.
And in order to survive, you have to be alert for danger.
And so when a negative event happens or something negative comes towards you, the brain processes that and puts it in a memory bank different than positive things.
That's why everyone's had a shitty childhood.
dave rubin
We're all good childhood people.
kelly carlin
But it is, it's banked differently inside of your brain and it sticks with you differently.
And, yeah, it's...I started...one of the things I preach these days is a gratitude practice.
It's something I teach in my classes.
I'm reading this amazing book right now showing that gratitude and compassion and a certain aspect of pride are three emotions that will help you stick to long-term goals way more efficiently than willpower or your rational executive mind and decision-making.
And they have found that gratitude creates a different wiring in your brain that allows you to be more present in your body and it's more It creates more empathy for yourself and for your future self, and you actually are, like I said, more efficient when you have more gratitude in your life.
And it's such a hippie, woo-woo thing, and yet it's really not.
dave rubin
What do you think the relationship is with that to empathy?
Because it seems to me that we're getting the dopamine hit.
On any given morning, you can open up Twitter, find someone halfway across the world that you've never heard of who said something you mildly disagree with, and now you can destroy their life.
You can join the Twitter mob and destroy them.
unidentified
Yes.
dave rubin
And now, obviously, I try not to do that sort of thing.
But it shows a certain, it's not just you're getting the dopamine,
oh, I got five retweets because I attacked this idiot
that I've never heard of before.
It also shows just this disconnect between what humans are,
because you know, and in 99.9% of the interactions people have online,
they would not do this to the person's face.
And that's one of the things I really try to do.
I really try, and I'm sure I fail at it, and I'm sure I used to fail at it more, but that I will not tweet something that I would not say to someone's face if they were right in front of me.
kelly carlin
Yeah, and it's something I rarely, when I get a troll, I rarely do, but when I do I will say, Would you say that to my face?
And they disappear very quickly.
Yes, compassion and empathy are things that we have to work at.
And having a metal object in your hand with just words on it, I think your brain is, and I don't know the science behind this and I'd be fascinated to find out more about it, but I think your brain is engaging with it in a way because it's an object and it's words on a page, so it's language.
It's going through a certain part of your brain, whereas empathy and connection with humans is a felt experience.
It's a different thing, you know?
One of the things we do with Buddhist practice, you know, there's two major things with Buddhist practice, one of which is, or just meditation or mindfulness in general, you can take the Buddhism out of it, is learning to witness and watch things, your thoughts, your feelings, you know, Whatever, but it's learning to take a witness stance and watch this ever-changing parade inside of you go by.
Urges, sensations, all that kind of stuff.
So that's one thing that mindfulness meditation will help you rewire your brain to do that.
And when you get some distance from things, you get to be in choice more about them because you're not just reacting, you're actually responding to them.
The other thing that happens organically with this practice is an increased sense of compassion.
There's some sort of human connection that happens where the circle of who you care about naturally widens.
Mm-hmm.
And labels drop off because it becomes sentient beings or living beings, you know.
We all know how to do this in like lover, family, tribe, neighborhood, city, football team, you know, like,
we have these like groups that we can do this with.
Political party in this country right now is a big thing.
That kind of stuff. But there's something about the practice of
including all sentient beings in this.
And one of the practices you do in Loving Kindness, which I always loved when I first learned it, was in the early aughts during the Bush-Cheney years.
Not a fan of the Bush-Cheney team.
But they would ask you to first you'd meditate on someone that is kind of someone you love automatically.
The easiest thing is your pet.
Like the thing that like greets you at the door and goes, I love you!
And like you think about this person in your mind and this big warm heart thing happens.
As we're humans, that's what happens to us.
All the oxytocin and all that stuff.
And then you like think about someone neutral.
Oh, the person at Vons who checks the thing and I see her every week,
and oh, I'm just gonna have happy thoughts about her.
And then they say, now bring someone in who you don't like.
And you can do whatever scale you need to do.
Maybe Dick Cheney's not the person to start with.
dave rubin
Right, pick the bully in high school, whoever.
kelly carlin
Pick the bully in high school, right, or the guy at work who just irritates you a little bit.
And let this person be in your circle of loving-kindness and let yourself see that this person wakes up every single day.
Looking for happiness, just like you are.
Looking to have some sense of success, some human connection, you know, unless they're a sociopath, I guess, or a narcissist.
dave rubin
Those are both on the rise.
kelly carlin
Yeah, I guess so.
dave rubin
That's just conjecture.
kelly carlin
I think we're seeing it more. It's more apparent.
But to really see that this person, A, puts their pants on one leg at a time,
and that they really care for their children, and that they are in their own way doing what they feel is
best for the world, especially people in power.
They really wake up thinking, I've met some people who really don't give a shit about the world and are just very greedy and just want to make as much money as possible.
There are people like that on every scope.
But most people are waking up hoping the world will be a better place and that they'll make some human connection with it.
And when at least you can, I don't know, entertain that thought, then it's easier to I don't know, not take a mallet to people instantly.
I mean, for me, during the campaign, and you and I talked about this a lot, we talked about the pain of the traditional white male in America and how for 50 years, because of the progress of culture, feminism and the civil rights movement and all this kind of things, A lot of people who've been silenced for a long time and oppressed for a long time had gotten their voice.
And now, after 40 or 50 years, there's a part of the population, more traditional white male, who feel that the world is leaving them behind.
And when they look out in the media, they don't see themselves represented much.
They don't see their voice.
And their politicians, because of money and corruption, aren't seeing them also.
And what I have been thinking about lately is, wouldn't it be amazing if all of us women, myself, who I'm thrilled about this, I mean, you know, people can call me a social justice warrior.
I don't know if I fit in that category.
But yes, I'm a woman who's looking to have my voice bigger in the world.
Thank God they're fucking talking about sexual harassment now and all that shit.
Black people, people of color, Latino, gays, bis, trans, all of us who are getting a voice now and have had a voice to empathically turn our hearts towards those who feel invisible and silenced and to say, we see you and we hear you and let's have a conversation because we know what it's like.
Oh my God.
dave rubin
And that would be the heart of this thing that it seems to be missing, because I always try not to impugn people's intentions.
I agree with what you said earlier, that to me, most people, even when they're doing bad things, wake up, they don't think, I'm out there, I'm gonna start doing bad things today.
You know what I mean?
Like Hitler probably thought he was a good guy.
I mean, I think there's a lot of evidence to believe that he did.
So I try not to impugn people's motives, but the hard part's interesting here, because there's a lot of, look, you should have equal, I think most sane thinking people, we should have equal opportunity for everybody.
We can't rig the outcomes.
kelly carlin
At least in this country.
That's what we're fighting for, right?
Opportunity, equal opportunity, equal voice.
These things are kind of written into the Constitution.
dave rubin
Right, but you can't, then the results of that may not always be the same, but that's then partly on you, and partly on luck, and all the other things, and work ethic, and all that.
But the heart part is interesting here, because if this movement that I spend so much time talking about, that I think is so toxic, that I think is destroying so much of the fabric of the country, if it had a little bit of what you're talking about, I think it would do a world of good.
And unfortunately, I don't see any sign of it.
unidentified
Well, I think that, I think it's... Because it wants it so bad or something, or something like that.
kelly carlin
Yeah, you know, and being, you know, being a progressive lefty myself, and I can certainly step into the shoes of someone who wants to put their fist up and say, you know, fuck the man and fuck all that, you know, like, I get that energy.
I grew up on that in the 60s and 70s.
I was fed on that stuff.
You know, my dad was, An anti-authoritarian guy, you know, and who railed against the white male in this country my entire life, so.
dave rubin
But it's interesting, even if we were to watch all of your dad's specials after this and watch his stuff about the white man, it didn't have the tone that the stuff has now, I don't think.
kelly carlin
I think some of it did.
dave rubin
No, some of it maybe did.
I guess this is maybe just about time changing.
kelly carlin
I mean, certainly, and in his personal life, too.
I mean, he would sit in first class and he would just be disgusted by the average white male businessman sitting next to him in first class.
Like he had a real chip on his shoulder.
But I think that was his personal chip also because of where he came from.
But I think also, and you and I have talked a little bit about this, because I kind of like to look at this movement this progressive movement through the eyes of of kind of integral philosophy also which is that there is this movement that has that is the leading edge of the culture and the leading edge of a culture is always about widening widening voices widening opportunities taking people you know widening the uh... the empathy game but the problem is is that
This progressive culture sees people in what they call the modern culture in integral thinking, which is capitalism and, you know, rational thinking, secularism.
And then there's the traditional people, one church, one God, don't take my guns, all that kind of stuff.
And so it's blue, orange and green.
Those are the three kind of memes.
And the problem is, is that these three people refuse to see each other as humans.
dave rubin
Yeah.
kelly carlin
And I think there are those of us who are stepping outside of all of this and say, hey, guess what?
We're all humans and you're kind of, you know, pointing at each other saying you're not humans and you are.
And I think it is the ultimate blind spot of this progressivism is that they instantly see anyone who's not like them as evil, which is ironic because They are themselves owning their difference in the world.
And so it is a strange kind of little Jedi mind trick on people with this thing.
But I do think that, the funny thing is though, when I talk to people off of social media and people day-to-day and friends and everything, and I mention this to people, they all agree with me.
They say like, yeah, you know, people are really Uh, you know, they hold, like when we talk about political correctness, that's how they really get it.
I say, you know, they're talking about tolerance, but they're actually using intolerance.
You know, with a shield of tolerance in front of them, and they don't see the own trick they're doing to themselves.
But people really are getting that more and more.
I think your message is getting out, David.
dave rubin
Yeah, I hope so.
kelly carlin
I think it is, because I think people are fed up with, and I think that's the exciting time that we're in right now, is that it's really messy.
dave rubin
So in a weird way, I've asked this of many guests, I know what you feel about Trump, not a fan, to put it mildly, but in a weird way, we have to thank him for this.
Completely, because A. Unless the world blows up tomorrow.
kelly carlin
Right, that would not be good.
And there's some policy things I'm not happy with.
A hundred percent and I've been saying that to people lately and and some of the progressives they do get a little scared when I say this.
dave rubin
I've said it to a bunch of people at your parties over some years.
kelly carlin
But it's really becoming clear to me now because it's like we would have not had this talk about racism in our country the way we've had it.
Messy, loud, it's on the fucking table.
Women would not have taken this to the streets and I really believe the Me Too movement would have not gotten the Traction it has right now without this person to push up against and this thing to push up against you know and this is the way culture works it swings one way and then a force comes in to push up against it and it swings the other way and at some point we start to work this shit out and the other thing too that we can thank him for is even though
It's scary out there in conversation land.
And it's a lot of yelling.
And I mean, that's part of the reason I know you and I get off this social media thing is because it's just, it's panic on both sides.
It's pure fucking panic all the time.
dave rubin
And it's not just It's not just average people.
No!
Or, well, that sounds so whatever, but it's not just the average person that's tweeting that doesn't really know about things.
I'm talking about people that are really bright authors and professors that are hysterical right now.
kelly carlin
Panicked, yeah, panicked about things.
And so, you know, yeah, I get it.
It's scary.
But the fact that Trump doesn't play by the rules rhetorically, Certainly the political establishment thing is interesting to watch him fumble his way into policy, but the fact that he's kind of breaking all the rules is
I think in the end, like you said, if nothing really bad happens, it's going to make this democracy more resilient in the end, because we're learning to speak truth to each other again, instead of that politician speak, which is really refreshing these days when you go on, whoever you're watching, if you're watching media, cable news, right, left, I don't know what CNN is anymore.
But anyway, when politicians come on, no matter what, there's a lot less of that speechy McSpeech speech happening, where they really say like 200 words, but they've said absolutely nothing.
There's a lot less of that going on.
I think that's a good thing for the culture in the end.
And it's teaching us also, I mean me, I, you know, people can read my book, I grew up being the diplomat, you know, mom and dad are trying to kill each other.
And I'm like, let's everyone I'll hold hands, a little kumbaya please.
But I am learning to tolerate that in change comes chaos and when we're going to re... you know systems theory, this is systems theory, in order for a system to change there needs to be some dissonance happening.
And so we're getting that and it's not fun to be in.
dave rubin
It's not fun to be in, but there's a richness there, and whether it's fun or not, there's a necessity there.
kelly carlin
There is, there is.
And I'm not a burn-it-all-down person.
For the right or the left, I'm sorry, I want food on the market shelves.
I do like my TV and my internet, you know.
dave rubin
You think the burn it down crowd, I think part of it's just bravado and especially it's online bravado.
kelly carlin
It's idealism on some level.
It's an idea.
dave rubin
It's a fantasy.
Okay, so some idealism I suppose, some just online whatever.
But for some of them it's also just like, in a way it's like the easiest thing to say, right?
kelly carlin
Yeah.
dave rubin
Like to just be like burn it all down, it's like where do you wanna go?
Nobody, like nobody.
Still nobody leaves.
You know, that's the thing, nobody leaves.
The same people who want open borders here are the same people who are screaming
how horrible it is here.
And yet we can't have open borders and they don't leave.
Lena Dunham's still here.
I started to go from here to get her out of here.
kelly carlin
And she's got another HBO show.
dave rubin
So she's staying.
Does she really?
Oh, see, so I don't know what that, right, exactly.
So she ain't going anywhere.
kelly carlin
Yeah, we're all here.
We're all, we all gotta figure this out together.
And everyone.
Both sides have legitimate beefs about institutions, 100%, and how business is done in the world, 100%.
But yeah, the burn it all down, it is.
It's like, you know, instead of having the big talk with your boyfriend, it's the leaving the note and just ghosting out of a relationship.
And yet, that you're just going to replicate again.
dave rubin
You're going to do it again and again.
kelly carlin
Because you haven't had this part yet.
You haven't had the uneasy part, where all of us have to own our own shit as grown-ups, and we have to tell the world what we need also at the same time.
Both of those things need to happen.
dave rubin
What do you make of the crew of people that I think mostly are online now?
You know, Eric Weinstein, who's been on here a bunch of times, calls it the intellectual dark web, but just this group of people who are trying to do this, who come from all over the place.
So you've got lefties, atheist lefties like Sam Harris, who are now allies with right-wing conservatives that are believers like Ben Shapiro, you know what I mean?
And yet they're allies.
kelly carlin
It's a beautiful thing.
dave rubin
It's incredible, isn't it?
kelly carlin
It is.
dave rubin
Yeah.
kelly carlin
It is.
Watching establishment, I mean just from watching the campaign, you know, watching establishment Republicans who worked for establishment candidates for years getting their own show on MSNBC.
Yeah, it's like and so it's so it's Alice in Wonderland It really is up is down down is up You know, you just follow Trump's Twitter account and you get that like just see what he tweeted six years ago And now he'll do the opposite thing.
dave rubin
Well, that's why I keep saying for all the people that are so frazzled by him I just he's they're all liars.
He's just doing it a different way but most of the things even the things on immigration are You can literally, I mean, to people that don't believe me, check it on YouTube right now.
You can find video of Bill Clinton and Obama saying almost the exact same things on immigration and protecting borders and all that.
Trump says it in a much less articulate way, and he uses obviously rough language, but it's like, you're all liars.
kelly carlin
Yes, and I think that one of the things That may or may not be true.
I don't know these people personally, but...
I think there's, like my dad used to say, he always voted people over property.
So that's why he would always lean left.
Because he always would choose people over property.
And I think in general, that's what the left does, is they choose people over property, and whereas the right generally chooses the right to be in control of your own property, versus taking care of people, like that's a secondary need.
dave rubin
Yeah, I think that's fair.
kelly carlin
And the reality is we do both all day long.
Those are the two kind of things we function on, right?
So I think on some level, yes, if you pay attention to the words and see the policies and stuff like that, there are ways in which Obama and Clinton and Trump kind of sit in a kind of a pool somewhere.
But there's a I think the Trump thing for me is that there's a level of pathology in him that frightens me because I really don't know except for his close people around him.
I don't think he knows how to have empathy for anyone who doesn't go to Mar-a-Lago.
unidentified
Which ain't cheap, I think, is part of what you're saying.
kelly carlin
Yeah, and he just doesn't... I mean, if you know anything about his childhood, he was tortured by his father.
I mean, mentally tortured by this child, you know?
And so he's a person who's been shaped by His experiences, and he's got a, you know, I mean, I've studied psychology.
He's got a form of narcissism that's scary.
Now, you have to be a narcissist to run for president.
I mean, my dad was a narcissist.
You have to be a narcissist to be a stand-up comedian.
But there's a healthy level of narcissism, and then there's this- Right, like there's the level that just sort of makes the world work.
dave rubin
You know what I mean?
kelly carlin
Industrialists wouldn't wanna- I have a vision, I believe in it, maybe no one else does, I'm going out and I'm going to do it.
And oh look, it's working kind of a thing.
But you see in his thin skinnedness and stuff like that, that's what worries me is that kind of stuff.
Basing policy on a person with that kind of personality makeup, say what Bill Clinton is or Obama, I think they're pretty empathic human beings.
dave rubin
Yeah, it's interesting.
A lot of my audience that's watching this will probably go, they'll go, well, wait a minute, Scott Adams, who was on here, said that it's all a sideshow while he's actually getting things done.
And I think there's a lot of truth to that too.
And that's part of the problem right now.
kelly carlin
I don't think so.
dave rubin
It's kind of hard to figure out what's real.
kelly carlin
I don't think he's that organized.
I really don't.
I think he is getting things done, because he's got people doing things, but I don't think his personality's that organized.
I mean, look at his businesses, they've all failed.
He's a bankrupt businessman, so.
dave rubin
That's Trump water you're drinking, you know, FYI.
kelly carlin
I have stayed at Trump hotels.
dave rubin
All right, I wanna finish up with, this was a quick 55 some odd minutes.
kelly carlin
It always is!
dave rubin
It's always quick, but I promise it will not be two and a half years till we do this.
But I thought it would be an interesting thing to finish up on.
You studied Jungian archetypes.
kelly carlin
Yes.
dave rubin
And Jordan Peterson, who has basically caught fire like nobody else in the last year.
He talks about archetypes constantly.
So I thought it would be interesting to kind of unpack a little bit of that with you, because so much of my audience is into it.
I think it's helped frame some things in my own mind.
First off, what possessed you to say, I'm going to study Jungian archetypes?
kelly carlin
Yeah, well, Joseph Campbell was a great mythologist, a great storyteller, and I saw him on PBS with Bill Moyer and fell in love with this idea that we are all kind of pre-wired for story.
And then we all are, we're pre-wired to understand what a mother is, and a father, and a child.
And because of humanity's long ancientness, you know, we've kind of lived these things out.
dave rubin
So it sort of births, the whole human experience sort of births these ideas that then are sort of built into us.
kelly carlin
A hundred percent, yeah.
It's kind of like shortcuts inside of us in some ways.
And then Jung and Joseph Campbell studied some Jung and learned that and about the collective unconscious and the personal unconscious and all of that, which Freud talked about.
But Jung was the collective unconscious.
And so I was fascinated, A, with the storytelling aspect of Jung.
So Jung is a man who He talks about archetypes and how they run us and how they shape our narrative and how they shape our culture.
But he also talked about how one of the archetypes we have is this relationship to the sacred and relationship to the numinous, which is the archetype called the self with a big S, he would write it.
And it is this hard wiring we have to that sense of like, you know, People get when you go out in nature and you feel at one with everything or people feel about Jesus or feel about Allah or if you're a more traditional religion.
It manifests in very different ways and I was really fascinated by that.
I wanted to understand the human condition personally.
I wanted to work on my own stuff psychologically, but I wanted to understand what makes humans tick.
How come it all unfolds like this, you know?
And what's the storyline behind the storyline the culture hands us all day?
That's my fascination.
That's why I look at all of this right, left, all this kind of stuff more from an archetypal perspective or more of a philosophical perspective because it helps me not get caught up in the churning of it all also.
dave rubin
Yeah, so I thought we'd just knock out a couple of the archetypes
because it's just an interesting way of looking at things.
So the persona, I mean, that basically, the sort of, it's really just the face
that we put on publicly that can't always show every bit of ourselves,
even though some of us are better at it than others and some are horrible at it.
kelly carlin
It's the one you're trained day one.
So day one, you're born, and the minute you can walk and talk,
at some point your parents says, don't do that, Dave.
And you take that little part of you that maybe is like, wants to like dance like a wild woman,
and you put it in a bag behind you.
And you start taking these parts.
And the teacher says, you just sit down and, oh, and look, I got A's.
Oh, I know how to do that now.
And you start, Only putting forward the parts that get approval and love or get some sort of energy for you that make you feel like who you are.
So yeah, your persona becomes this identity.
Now the thing about the persona is though, you've got all this stuff in the bag that you're dragging around behind you.
Robert Bly wrote a great essay about this, the long bag we drag behind us.
And those are your shadow elements, another archetype.
So those are the parts that we go, That one's not okay, and most of the time it's our culture, our religion, our institutions, our families telling us the parts to put away.
dave rubin
So your persona is almost built on running from your shadow.
kelly carlin
A hundred percent.
Yes, exactly.
And where we all get into trouble is we start to believe that this is who we are, and yet there's all of these voices and narratives and urges inside of us that Need a voice also.
dave rubin
Yeah.
kelly carlin
And then they pop out in unexpected, horrible, weird, strange ways.
Addictions, depression, anxiety, obsessions, fetishes, whatever it is.
And the more we can pull these shadow parts out and sit with them and say, oh, like for me, rage is one of my shadow parts.
My parents raged at each other.
I said, I will never be a rager the rest of my life.
Well, not getting angry is not a healthy thing.
Murderous rage.
Okay, I get it.
Probably shouldn't go there.
dave rubin
Yeah, generally.
kelly carlin
But dammit, I have the right to fucking be pissed off about things and to say no to the world and feel that natural emotion.
I've had to learn to pick that out of my bag and say, all right, I get to be angry, you know, so yeah.
dave rubin
It's interesting because people see me the way I conduct an interview, and I'm obviously pretty even-keeled and pleasant-natured and all that, and then sometimes when we do a live stream when it's just me to the camera, I'm a little more animated, I'll curse a little bit more, I'll be a little bit maybe more the way a friend would know me, and then sometimes people will meet me in real life, if somebody comes up to me at a bar, and I'm completely different, and it's like those are still all pieces of me, none of them are fake pieces, they're all just different pieces.
kelly carlin
Yeah, because we know roles, too.
By day, I'm a teacher.
By night, I'm a wife.
When you're a stand-up comedian, when you go up into your comedy, that's a different day than sitting here right now.
It doesn't mean exactly that you're fake or anything like that, but the more you can, I think, Be more of yourself in different situations, you know, I mean, obviously skills aside, the more whole you feel in general.
dave rubin
So another one of these is the anima animus, which is basically the male and female or the... Right, so that's the shadow within each of us.
kelly carlin
So for me, it's my inner masculine, and for you, it's your inner feminine.
and basically we're taught by culture and everything to be just one thing.
But the word masculine and feminine is really unfortunate.
That's why I think Jung used anima and animus, because it's more about oppositional energies.
about oppositional energies.
One is more about doing, one is more about being.
One is more about doing, one is more about being.
One is more about charging into the world, the other is about more receiving the world.
One is more about charging into the world, the other is about more receiving the world.
So it's about different ways of learning to be in the world.
And so it's about different ways of learning to be in the world.
And the feminine in general has an aspect to it, an archetypal aspect to it, mother, sister, goddess,
you know, you think about all that, the masculine, warrior.
It doesn't mean a woman can't be a warrior, but she's tapping into her inner masculine
when she does that.
dave rubin
Yeah, so it's interesting that you said those words are unfortunate,
because you can see it right now, where everyone wants us to think we're all the same.
Like we have no biological differences, we have no chemical differences.
kelly carlin
Which is crazy.
dave rubin
Which is absolutely insane.
It's insane biologically and it's insane evolutionarily.
kelly carlin
And it doesn't mean that we don't have equal access, equal rights and stuff, but I mean, each of us bring something different.
And one of the things that I love about being a woman and being a feminist right now, and you know, when I talk about the patriarchy, I talk about it in such a way, it's like there's one way of
looking at the world that doesn't always work, that holds the world in a certain
way, and women have a different way of looking at the world. You get a
room full of women together, they organize very differently than men do.
And this natural way, maybe the world needs a little more of that
feminine way, and that that's why we women want more power in the world.
Not the way the power structure is now, but a way that we can change the way power is in the world, you know?
And it's messy and complicated, but yeah, it can be confusing.
dave rubin
I feel that's the right way to end this.
kelly carlin
That it can be confusing?
dave rubin
That it can be confusing, that felt right.
But really, more than anything else, I just wanted to say that the reason
I wanted to have you on for this was just because I was off last week and we pre-taped some stuff
and I was sitting on a beach and I was trying to figure out like how do I evolve now past what I'm doing
and how do I figure out other ways?
And you're one of the people that I consistently can talk to about this stuff and that will admit
that you don't have all the answers while everyone else is screaming constantly all the answers.
And I find that usually those are the people who actually have the least insight.
Not the most.
So we will do this.
It will not be two and a half years.
unidentified
Oh, good.
kelly carlin
I would love to.
dave rubin
I promise you that.
And, you know, you're funny.
You mentioned the love of the dog that you had before.
Your dog Stella has a little bananas.
unidentified
Yes.
dave rubin
But you have great love for her and that shows that you are... She reflects my inner bananas.
All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed the live stream.
For more on Kelly, well, first off, she's teaching these webinars and all sorts of stuff.
Your site is kellycarlin.com, right?
kelly carlin
Yes, and I'm actually gonna- I was gonna send them to your Twitter, but after all, everything we just talked about here- No, go to my website, and I'm actually starting another class April 1st if people are interested in signing up, so come join me.
dave rubin
There you go, kellycarlin.com, new class on April 1st.
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