PEL Presents PvI#125: Mrs. Nussbaum's Credit Card

Welcoming Jenny as co-host

0:00This is Philosophy vs. Improv, where two sages try to teach each other a thing or two, and maybe you, the audience, get something out of it as well. Starting off a new season, it's Mark Lintenweier, the originator, the founder of the feast. The founder of the feast, indeed. My name is Mary Hines, and I'm thrilled to be back with you again, bringing the improvisational prowess. And we are joined by... Hi, Jenny Hansen, and so excited to be here with real equipment. I am also a philosopher,

0:37but I am excited to become more than that by participating in this podcast and learning a lot about improv. So thank you for having me part of this. Yes, greater than the sum of our parts because of all of our pieces. Now, Jenny, you've been on this before, but always as a guest. Now you're officially a co-host. So now that you sort of have moved in, we're not going to use the fancy china. We're not necessarily even going to bathe. The things when someone is no longer a guest, when they just live around and you just allow yourself to fart on air. I don't know. Whatever the things are that no longer make

1:12you a special one-time guest. I'm ready for it. Still special, though. I hope that I don't fart on air. We edit the audio, as people might know. The video, it's a little hard to edit. If there's a, you know, a phone call or things stopped, then I do, you know, there's a sharp cut. I don't like watching those videos where there's these cuts like this because they've tried to... I guess if you are dedicated to the art of video blogging and people just get used to that. You looking like some kind of self-disassociated freak. Is that...

1:45I love that band. I went to go see Self-Disassociated Freak the other day and they were wild. Their show was like really wild. Vaporizing.

1:57Did they also move like this? Yeah, they did. It was really cool. It was giving like talking heads kind of situation. Also, I'm glad that you said that because I am currently at a pet sitting client's home and there was a plumbing issue and I was informed that someone would be by like right now. That's fun, isn't it? So there might be a moment where I need to mute and let someone in. Well, and now we have three people. But I'll do it like this. I will make sure.

2:29If we had a guest, then you would be like, no, I won't answer the door. I won't. But you know, it's just somebody. It's not the roommate. You don't take special... It's just Jenny. It's just Jenny. I think that's your new... I might fart. It's possible. Are you comfortable instead of Jennifer L. Hansen of St. Lawrence College? Is it college or university? University, yeah. Because that matters. There is one in Canada. So if you put that, they'll think I live in Canada called college. Okay. To be just Jenny. Just Jenny. I am just Jack.

3:00Just Jenny. Yeah. Just Jack. Yeah, just Jenny. Just Jenny. Sitcom.

Introducing Martha Nussbaum's work

3:06Yeah.

Introducing Martha Nussbaum's work

3:07We had officially like an assignment this time, which is crazy. I don't know the whole year. I mean, we're just trying it out. But anyway, as I mentioned last episode and probably the episode before, we have this book by Martha Nussbaum, who, when I bring that up to my sister, it's like, oh, you got Mrs. Nussbaum's credit card. Do you know that reference? No, I'm embarrassed. I don't. It's from The Jerk. Oh my God. We're at the gas station. The guy is trying to pay with a bogus-

3:37Such the greatest movie. And I'm going to rewatch it just for that line. Oh, you must be Mr. Nussbaum. Anyway, just for the- Yes. Actually, people that have not had The Jerk in their lives. I mean, it's okay if you don't know it line for line like I do, but if you haven't had it at all, I don't know that you deserve- I think you should stop this and go watch The Jerk instead. Do some homework? Yeah. Often when I make comedic references for my students and they give me blank stares, there's two reactions. One of them is like, what? You haven't seen it? And I sit on that one. I don't

4:08let that one happen. Instead, I compose myself and I say, you have homework. That's the way to go. So our homework was to look at the introduction to Mrs. Nussbaum's The Therapy of Desire, which is about ancient self-help strategies. And we just kind of, you know, this is the introduction. It was only, what, 12 pages or less than that, you know, because there's always filler at the beginning. So eight pages, nine pages. Mary was very attracted to self-help topics sort of naturally throughout

4:39this last year. So I thought like, let's, let's kind of try to make it philosophically respectable. Bring in something, some actual historical stuff. So she's talking about the ancient Stoics and the skeptics and Epicurus and other things that I think people who are not into philosophy might, like that's their entryway drug is, is hearing that, oh, there's these mind techniques that I can use on myself to make me feel better in a situation or cope with my trauma or whatever. I love the idea of philosophy as an act of service, as a tool to serve the people. I think

5:13that's really fascinating. I agree with that. She wrote this book many years ago, but the growth and popularity in the manosphere around Stoicism is, if you read Nussbaum, even just this introduction, you realize it's a misrepresentation of what are the resources of this kind of Hellenistic practical philosophy. And I'm excited that we're doing this, you know? It's 1994. Yeah. Which to me seems just yesterday, but that's when I was in grad school. I was too. That's when I entered

5:43grad school. It was great. What were you doing in 1994, Mary? In 1994, I was nine years old. Don't do any math. You don't need to know how old I am, but know that in 1994, I was nine. Well, all right. I was watching Care Bears. Powerpuff Girls? Yes. Powerpuff Girls fan. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this is another reason why I felt like Jenny was a good match to add to this because of course, you know, these are all dudes that Martha, if I may call her Martha, is writing about. I've,

6:17I've interviewed her so I can call her Martha, is writing about, but you know, she's a very important contemporary, you know, world famous philosopher right now. A lady, of course. And Jenny, you have a lot of, as we've discussed before, deep knowledge of the feminist philosophy tradition. I've even written a paper where I use Nussbaum, one of my first published papers. So I'm a big fan of her work. So come on, Martha. Has she written anything specifically like about feminism or, or? That's complicated though. Yes, she has. And I would say just in general,

6:50and you get a sense of this from the intro, is that she's very much devoted to like actually making the world better for the most miserable, poorest, most ignored people. She has, she's written on feminism. I love that. Sex and social justice. Yeah. I think it's so important to use your powers and your gifts for the betterment of yourself and everyone in your orbit. I think it's really fascinating that thought of like, is self-improvement selfish? And I can see that

7:23argument. In my opinion, self-improvement is vital in order to make yourself as strong of an asset and a gift as you can with your gifts and abilities. It's like surrendering control of what you don't have and embracing and really nourishing and enhancing the variables that you do have, which is really only you. That reminds me of something I was thinking about when I was reading this. And I'm sure that each of you have seen variations of this, or maybe not you Mark, because you kind of are

7:55self-employed to some extent, but, or maybe not you either. Okay. Enough of my, uh, that it is very typical in today's workplace to get all sorts of messages about self-care, right? And, or about making sure you have a white work-life balance from your HR and, you know, maybe resources for telehealth. But one of the most impactful things about this reading to me is how she kind of calls bullshit on that. What good is it to tell people to manage their inner lives and manage their emotions or whatever, if they're hungry, you know, not everybody has the ability to have a life of leisure and try to

8:28master their emotions. And, and, you know, like, uh, so I think she has given us resources to think about self-improvement and self-care in structural ways and in ways that also include making the world better so that everybody can flourish in it, not just people who already have wealth and money and security and safety. Okay. Martha. I love her. Mary. She's amazing. Can I ask you as an improv

Improvisation scene about the puddle

8:52expert? I want, I wanted to initiate a scene, but it seems like I have a lot of scenes where like, we're a club of people who are trying to improve ourselves. I'm calling the minister. I don't want to do that. I want to do something else. Like a group scene. So what's, what's another, I mean, I guess Jenny just brought up the workplace so we could go back to Bill Arnett's favorite technique of we're having an HR meeting. I know. I was like, it's perfect for an HR meeting. Is there some angle besides the social club or the HR meeting that you can think of immediately,

9:23Mary, to get us into this? The group scene is a nice, easy way to get people into a scene who are, who don't have a lot of familiarity with improvisation. Another option is to say some kind of opening line of dialogue that is full of gifts of information that will get us launched. Another add on to that for the advanced, advanced level is to not be yourself or be a variation of yourself. In other words, character. So to do it with some kind of a voice or some kind of a change

9:59in your timber of like where your vocal instrument is placed. So making some kind of character choice and the way that I break down character, the easiest accents point, accent points are voice. voice would be like an accent or just a different way of like changing your resonator physicality. And then the third one is emotion. So you can pick one of those three things to like launch you into a character and say a juicy gift of initiating dialogue. I just don't believe that we have the power to improve ourselves given that we just live in a puddle. I think the puddle is the best place

10:37to be. It's the best kind of thing to be a unicellular organism. You know, I just don't see the point in trying to strive further than that. Well, this is why I created the comfort room and the weighted blankets and the balls for you to play with, you know, when you're having these despairing thoughts, you know, I'd love you to come. How could one have despairing thoughts when we're in this kind of paradisical state? Okay. I can see the emotion getting a little high.

11:07Maybe bring it down. Right. Ricky, I know in our puddle, we used to be all water. And I know recently there's been some runoff in here lately and some different like flavors and smells. And I, you know, the blankets that Sheila gave us are all soggy. I'm worried that the puddle is poisoning you. Yeah. Well, I feel like you're, you're not taking a positive attitude on this, right? I'm a single-celled organism. I'm at my full capacity of positivity. I'm sorry. I didn't,

11:40I didn't mean that came off a little harsh. Sorry. The sun's really hot today and there's a lot of other bacteria growing in the puddle and I'm feeling really crowded. I'm grateful you've brought these concerns to my office. Yes. Single-celled organism. There is, yes, some terrible parasitic other things going on in there runoff. I mean, you're only above us with three cells. So, I mean, it's not your job to help us evolve, but maybe if we're all able to evolve together, we can be

12:11greater than our single cells. I'm still thinking about the poison here. I'm not sure I even understand. Because you're being poisoned. As a single-celled organism, do I even have the ability to be poisoned? Is that something, it seems like, you know, you got to be a little more complex for there to be, I guess I'm wondering about the mechanics of the poison and maybe I should just lie under the weighted blanket. I'm having trouble. I think it's time for a snuggle. Here, let me tuck you in. I know, hold on. I don't have hands. So let me just roll. Let me just glorp. Let me glorp on you.

12:43And I believe that will hide whatever extrusions come out of your singular cell body as you excrete the poison. It's just sometimes I feel like even though I am a cell that like I'm in a cell. Do you get it? It's just, you know, that's why I just, I like to look on the positive side and I like to just look where I am with the puddle. And, and what, you know, these other, they're, they're kind of entertaining these parasite kind of things floating out there. We have entertainment built

13:19into the environment, but you know, there's only so far that positive thinking seems to be able to take you. Well, I think what we need to do is take a moment to celebrate what we already have. And that's the fact that you have eyes. Now I don't even know how I have eyes. How does a single cell organism, do we even understand what we are? Do we understand what a cell even amounts to? I mean, you have three of them. So we, I guess we were just taking your word for it, doctor. I just don't want you to see me as superior to you with my two extra cells. I'm trying to

13:53use whatever resources I have from those two extra cells and maybe some other sense that I've gotten through that to help you navigate and bring some positivity. So, you know, she has eyes, you know, the two extra cells are sort of mounted on the front and they're kind of googly. And I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty funny the way they kind of shake around, uh, but yet somehow I can say, somehow I can sense that. And I don't, I don't know how. So I, I, yeah, you've really brought me into some self-questioning both of you here today.

14:27What's the best we can do for our fellow puddle mates. Do you need anything Doris? You want to appreciate what we have here, but you know, I, I just, I feel like yesterday when you were, uh, uh, sloshing around and, you know, you seem to really have an issue with those, those parasites as you call them. And, uh, there seemed to be a lot of like corpses out there. And I just, I wonder if how, how that lines up with you appreciating what you have and where you are. I can only do things about the things that I can do and I can't do what I can't do because it can't

15:00be done. So, you know, when I was sloshing around the other day and it was extra hot, you know, and so it was really more active than normal. And, you know, the, the, the other parasites and the poison, I was looking at them like, you're not supposed to be in our puddle. And then I had a thought. It was the first one I've ever had. It was kind of tickly and itchy. And, uh, I realized maybe they're our friends and they're not outsiders and we have more available to us in our little microcosm than ever before. Wow. That was a lot. That was hard for me. I need to take a break.

15:34That was a lot of thinking. I'm actually thinking now that my two other cells have deprived me of being in the cuddle mud zone. And so I'd like to lose a couple cells because that was, let's just, let's just, yeah. Pop them right off. Yeah. Oh wait, no dope. Oh, I got two. I was going to say you're, you're perfect as you are. Oh, Doris. It's okay to be a work in evolutionary progress and you have permission to be, no one ever said that to me before. Yeah. I've never, I've never said it here.

16:07Only one of them came all the way. Let's just try to screw that back on there. Wait, I don't, I have hands. I don't. Hold on. I found a capacity to bring it back. Okay. I'm back to three, three cells. It's a radioactive puddle. Absolutely. We're definitely in the Simpsons and it's definitely like radioactive runoff, like the fish with three eyes and that's fine. Perhaps that's why I have three cells. We have to go there to get there because you can't have what you didn't know

Stoicism and tools for personal growth

16:40until you know. Let's convert that as we wrap up that scene to, yeah. Do you know when you're trying to self-improve, it seems like, you know, you need some direction and that's why a lot of self-improvement is culty and suspect because people who are hurting, they want some direction and they hear someone who's very confident. You're Jordan Peterson's, you're whatnot. And they want to latch onto that. Like as if, you know, the 12 steps, the, instead of going to God, you go to

17:11whatever the guru is or the, you know, the book that seems like it might be cool. Maybe it's stoicism itself. And you're like, let's use the wisdom of the ancients, the wisdom of centuries to tell me what to do next. I feel like it requires life experience of dealing with traumatic instances that require you to seek out the help and a bit of like failing forward through it, through the lessons that then become the stories that we then use to help other people that like a thing or a person or a job is not

17:46the, Oh my God, this is the answer. This is the solution. It's a tool. And actually the power is in you. So I feel like it's a series of challenging life experiences that show you like, for example, in my sobriety journey, you know, I've said a couple of times, like AA saved my life. AA didn't save my life. I saved my life. And AA was the tool that helped me strengthen the muscles to get through challenging life moments without the escape of alcohol. And then you get to mark those moments

18:23of progress. Like for example, had a, some difficult news yesterday and the environment where I'm currently staying, there is alcohol everywhere. Like right now I'm looking at a stocked glass liquor cabinet and I put a blanket over it so that I couldn't see it to make the triggers less triggery, which is something I learned along the way. Like, okay, well then don't, you could put a blanket over it. You don't need to see it. You can like, I moved alcohol from different places and like concealed it in there. So I didn't have the temptation around a me in the past would have

18:56gone straight to whiskey. The me yesterday cried a lot, called friends, went on a walk, made a smoothie, took an Epsom salt. So put on classical music and attempted to get to bed early. And now the me today gets to look back and go, wow, that is amazing progress. So it's, I feel like it's like stacking tools and skills and then taking a moment to celebrate how you've grown and updated your

19:28operating system. So much truth there. And well also, I think the popularization of stoicism and the fact that it's mostly appealed to a way of being a man in the world, you know, I'm not, it's nothing to do with men per se, but a certain image of how men are trained to be, to not have emotions and to sort of be controlled is part of the misunderstanding of what's so great about these resources, right? I mean, what you're describing is finding self-improvement, finding tools, but that

20:01also fundamentally at the bottom are spaces that allow you to have emotions and to let them out. And then spaces where you're befriending people with wisdom who have been there and gotten through it. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that reading this today was what I needed to have had some of my own challenges. I think we all have them. And, and to just kind of read a line, like these were compassionate physicians. This is what philosophy was at this time. And even the worst variance of philosophers, like the manosphere stoic view, which is like, she addresses this a little

20:36bit, like not directly, but there's, you know, quotations from Epictetus or whatever, that'll say things like, don't mourn the death of your child that never belonged to you. You know, like don't care, you know, you can't control things that are external to you. Just focus on you. That's really problematic, right? I mean, like people need to mourn. They need to have emotions. They need to have tools. They need to have back in the puddle. I need to be cuddling with you instead of, come on people, get your joy on. So do we even need philosophy at all? I guess it's one question for practical,

21:06because it seems a lot of the things, Mary, that you were listing are like, why do you know that an Epsom salt bath is helpful? Because you've tried it. You just try stuff. We all have stresses. Clearly you tried alcohol at one point as a way of dealing with these things and found with great pain that this was not the solution. It was not the solution. You know, maybe one can generalize from that. I don't have to try heroin, for instance, because I've kind of heard that that doesn't work out in general, even though it's probably

21:40great the first time. You know, so if you're about to die, maybe that's an okay thing to try, but other circumstances. So we're always going on testimony. It's not just trying stuff, but that's still a little different than do we have to have a whole model of the mind or a model of what human health and flourishing amounts to, to just pick out things that are right for you specifically to get through the day. In fact, maybe you are unique enough that somebody else's general philosophy is

22:10not going to apply to you in detail.

Challenging academic philosophy stereotypes

22:11I feel like philosophy is, it's a great question. I feel like it's absolutely vital from the perspective of everyone learns differently, has different access points, different experiences, different likes and dislikes. So different tools will resonate differently with different people. Yeah. I mean, Mary, like I thought a lot about you when I was reading this and I was thinking about people that haven't kind of subjected themselves to studying philosophy. And this is beautiful to read

22:43compared to the stuff, some of the stuff that I've had to read. I found this was much more, I was like, oh, this isn't so crunchy. It's not so like chunky. It went down a little more smooth. But I've always wanted to kind of ask you, there are a lot of views about philosophers and how useless they are. Now, some of them are because people think of some of the stereotypes that she's describing a philosophy that it's just cerebral and it's about thinking through your problems and managing your emotions and all that kind of stuff. Not necessarily to this country, but then there's people that dislike philosophers because they challenge power structures and they ask questions

23:16of things. She's sort of talking about both. But I think it's very radical, even in 94, but now even today, to say that philosophy actually can directly help individual people with their own individual problems, right? I mean, she doesn't sort of prescribe the treatment, but she's saying that the philosophy doesn't have to be understood as just this cerebral self-management. And I wondered how that, I don't know if you've had some of those thoughts. I mean, you probably didn't, but I'm always asking non-philosophers, what was your kind of picture of philosophy before you kind of jumped

23:46into all this stuff? I love that question. My picture of philosophy was a bunch of smart people sitting in a room, patting each other on the back at their brilliance and puffing up their feathers and trying to outsmart each other with their verbosity and eloquence. And I would say that I've heard that a lot. Not my most honest answer. I'm glad you gave it. I'm glad you gave it because I don't think you're wrong that that exists. I'm under, Mark, you could probably speak to that, right? I mean, y'all left philosophy in PEL.

24:20I don't go to professional philosophy conferences, right? You can't explain someone's dedication to an interest that they have by saying, you just want to feel good about yourself knowing so much about that interest, right? There's some of that in everything, right? There are music snobs, and I'm sure there are improv snobs or comedy snobs that are like, oh, you are not familiar with this thing. Superior and lofty. Yes. And that just really think that they've achieved a really great level of taste. And so

24:54in philosophy, yeah, we do have a certain snootiness about critical thinking, the model of Socrates that we have of, oh, I don't know anything. I'm just asking questions. We're all together on this crazy world, and we all basically know nothing. And so if anything, it's not convincing my peers or that I know more than you. It is that I am so much more honest in what I don't know that we're all... And there's so many different things to know in philosophy. It's not a coherent

25:27discipline. Even somebody that supposedly studies the same things you do, you sort of try to re-explain from scratch in a way that anybody could understand. That's like built into at least the American philosophic method. Maybe if you're in France, there's a whole new level of snootiness. I'm happy for that. And that initial impression from hanging out in college, I had a couple of friends who were philosophy majors, and we're all sitting around and talking. So that was really my first taste of that. And I was like, everyone is so high on their own supply. And I just stopped

26:06asking questions and stopped engaging in conversation because anytime I did, they went out of their way to make me feel stupid. And I was like, I don't like how this feels. So I'm not going to play in the sandbox anymore, and I'll take my toys elsewhere. And I feel like it requires a lot of strength and maturity to do what you're saying, Mark, to be like, yeah, I know some things. And there's a lot of things I don't know. I'm looking forward to learning more. Even the things that I think that I know, I know that I need to be periodically reminded or I'm just like, which text did that actually come from? Can we just go spend a half an hour

26:43rereading that thing that I thought that I knew very well? Or just this basic concept that I'm finding that I thought I understood and I've been taking for granted all this time. It's you're building a little house to sit on, but you're constantly reevaluating like, does that brick down there look right to you? I'm not sure. So I don't know if that's ultimately a healthy way to live because you do want to pick a lane for your life, right? The characterization of philosopher as, I can't remember if this is in Plato or something, like a dog, there's

27:15a bone over here and there's a bone over here. And well, you know, if I, let me make a list, the first bone and then the dog dies of starvation because you never actually pick the lane so that thinking too much can just be analysis paralysis. Yes, exactly. I'm glad that we surfaced this because I think so many people get turned off from philosophy because of a particular style of philosophy or particular individuals that you experienced. And it's nice to have a book. And I mean, I still like love that she opens with some comments

27:49from Marks and then part of a poem from Wallace Stevens, you know, like you already know you're reading a different book and she's chosen those, you know, I think, I don't know if you were referencing it very earlier, the Wallace Stevens, you said something almost identical to the Wallace Stevens piece. I wasn't, I guess it was just in my brain pan. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I was thinking, I was looking at it again because I wasn't expressly, but I might have been indirectly through digestion of data. Do you want to just read the quote? Yeah. So this is from, this is from Wallace Stevens, who's a very hard poet to read by the way, but one that I,

28:22when I thought I just went a little preference when I thought that I had to be like super hot shit, own the seminars, read everything. So no one could find me wrong. I read wall Stevens. I don't read it anymore. It's hard to read, but anyways, what he said, it's called the philosopher desires and not to have is the beginning of desire to have. What is not is it's ancient cycle. It knows that what it has is what is not and throws it away like a thing of another time as morning throws off stale moonlight and shabby sleep. We've all kind of talked a little bit on

28:57these things. I mean, you were talking about Mark, you know, knowing that there's a lot you don't know and you have more to know, but you know, something you kind of said early on, Mary about like, I can't remember even the line reminding me of this, you know, it knows that what it has is what it's not. I mean, just, I think that's interesting. Something in there that highlights out to me is I'm looping it back to my first real, like formal philosophy experience. And that may be the reason people are like, listen to me. I know what I'm doing is because of a vulnerability

29:31of not wanting to be found wrong. Imposter syndrome. Yes. So they like puffed up and like, I'm really big. I'm really big and smart because of a lack of intimacy and vulnerability of personal intimacy and vulnerability. Yeah. And what I appreciated on that line, because I've been thinking about friendship a lot is that she makes this point and you, and you kind of like intuitively went there with the way that you did that scene, even though there's this kind of overarching misrepresentation of these philosophers as the cowboy and, you know, the Reagan era, you

30:06know, like they don't need anyone. They're on their own. They can manage themselves. She points out that these same thinkers still had a lot to say about friendship, right. Or about community or, or, you know, those kinds of things. And so one can't really benefit from studying philosophy without a community, you know, without caring, without intimacy, without spaces where you can have a bad day. And get it out. And that doesn't all of a sudden make you like, oh, she's going to be, oh, she's a bad philosopher. Look at that emotion. Right. Like that, you know, that, you know, cause even the Marx quotations kind of like philosophy does not stand outside of

30:41the world anymore than man's brain is outside of them because it's not in his stomach. It's like philosophy shouldn't be this disembodied rational activity that people master by becoming more logical and therefore show their superiority. It should be embodied. It should be about real people and it should involve a community. And it's the community, like the three cell organism that maybe can learn or help something to the one cell organism. You know what I mean? It's got blind spots and it needs all of that. Thanks so much, Mrs. Nussbaum, for your presentation at the

31:14Poetry Open Mic. Before we introduce the next act, I just, I, I just want to thank everybody for coming out because, you know, having a community for this kind of thing, it's like people don't respect poetry and they don't see it as the kind of elevating life affirming thing that I, I, I, I couldn't live without. With that in mind, Mrs. Nussbaum, next time, if you maybe could swear about 50% less, just, you know, it shocks some of the sensibilities here. Maybe, you know, we'll try to fit a few more non-swear words among the curse words. But looking at the list here,

31:49next up, Deidre Morrison, can you step up and read what you're going to read?

Poetry open mic improv scene

31:59Yeah, I'm totally happy to. I do want to thank everyone for this opportunity. I get a little shy using my outside voice instead of just writing things in words. And I'd like to express a moment of honor, I'd like to express a moment of vulnerability that the majority of my poem are swear words. Okay. We love swear words. Welcome to the fucking shit show. It's so bad, don't you know? Sometimes you don't fucking

32:33know where to go. And it's the ho, ho, ho of the North Poe, poe, poe that lets the man know, know, know that the pigs are on the block. Bullshit. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, I don't even think we need anybody else to go up. I think you've sort of just said what we're all thinking. And, you know, you uncovered the... Miss Nussbaum, did you have

33:07a response to that? Did you want to... I mean, it seems like... I'd be honored. Miss, if you had any notes, may I call you Martha? Of course. Of course. Please do. Martha, do you have any constructive criticism for my... Not to be confused with the famous philosopher, we're not just, you know, for copyright reasons. This is Martha H. Nussbaum. Okay, go ahead. Of course. Obviously, everyone knows that. Yeah. Well, I don't feel like I have to control my swearing anymore. Thank you.

33:38That's fucking great. I mean, does Wallace Stevens have a lot of swears in there? I don't know. I've never read Wallace Stevens. Okay. I need to put an improv moment in here. That was a beautiful example of feeling when the scene has ended. And a scene is never technically over. It ascends to a moment of transformation where

34:08one character or all characters change and change forever. And so, that hierarchical figure of authority then giving in and having that... Jenny, your character had that transformation moment. And then we all allowed the space of the beat. And I think we all felt it was over. That's one of the most challenging elements of improvisation is physicalizing and acting on a feeling. Like, how do you teach a feeling? Will you highlight how it feels or take this moment to be

34:41like, ah, ah, ah, ah, that was the thing? It's a great work, y'all. I love watching SNL skits, which seem to me very improv-y kind of skits. Like, it seems like they commit themselves, like, to the bit. And I mean, maybe they rehearse them. I don't know. Some of it ends up being improvised, but they do rehearse it. Okay. Okay. But they're written quickly and sloppily as if they were written by improvisers. Yeah. And so that part... They have such a tight deadline. These are not... Because they hire improvisers. Yeah. Who are also writers. Yeah. So that's a part that really came across recently when I was trying to kind of more

35:15intently think about what I should do when I do this, you know, because it's new for me. And what I admire that I hope that I can build up is how much people commit to these things. You know, like how, even if it was pre-discussed or whatever, like, I mean, I'm still going to have to work on not laughing. But just how they'll just go all in and it's like, it's just going in a crazy town place, but they're like, we're in, you know? And that kind of release or that kind of, like, trust of

35:47the group, it's awesome. You know, like, it's much more fallible and humble than philosophers. So it's... We all agree on the shared reality and no other reality exists than the one that we are creating together brick by brick. So there's a complete surrender to the boundaries of whatever world the scene is in. So within that, it's then your character. What is my point of view? And then you continue to double down on that point of view and think, if this is true, then what else is true?

36:22How would someone act or react who has this point of view and has this thought? So it's like a, it's a vibrational commitment and everyone else is doing that too. So it's, it just creates such a dynamic energy when everyone surrenders to the given variables. And in this moment of this improvisation, it's about seeing and acting on what feels fun. And so once we set up the poetry and the swearing, I knew that I had to be someone who swore a lot. So I laughed to myself because I was like,

36:57you know, there's that thought of the Mary being like, oh shit, I'm about to like do some like swear slam improvised poetry. And so laughing at that, like, oh shit, here we go. This is the reality while my character is very much, this is what I do. And this is what I care about. So it's about following the fun and just continuing to surrender to the shared reality. It's a really good thing for humans to do because it requires you to let go of control. And in a certain sense, maybe what's one of the healing messages that she's trying to find from these

37:33Hellenistic philosophers is that a lot of our miseries, and certainly not all of them, she's aware of poverty and racism and totalitarian politics. And, but some of our misery is not being a little more playful, like not, not kind of like totally making yourself vulnerable and committing to something where you're going to just see where it goes. We've been using the word self-improvement, but the word that I love that she uses that I think also gets misunderstood, especially in corporate environments is flourishing, right? What does it take for humans to flourish?

38:04And some of it is getting outside of yourself and playing a little bit and being vulnerable. Well, that is a direct link to the work of Viola Spolin, who is the grandmother, the source of improvisation in modern comedy. There are quite a few exercises that the intention of them is to physically shake up or otherwise like redirect something, shake someone up through the act of play. And so it's purposeful play.

Emotions as moving and communal

38:31Right. We're just in the intro here, but Nussbaum warms us about issues that Jenny referred to with Epictetus, right? He's the sort of the first big stoic that we know about that we have writings from and two possible criticisms. One of the, it, by focusing on yourself, you sort of rule out political engagement. So I'm sure that'll be something we discuss on and off here, but the more pressing one here is right. The whole idea of stoic right in the manosphere sounds like it is overriding your emotions. It is that you can't trust your emotions, be more logical, be, you know,

39:08act reasonably when you are, uh, you know, saying no to that drink. It's because you are bringing in your reason and you are, you know, from past experience and testimony and other things that this is a bad idea. And so put aside those animal urges and be more Mr. Spock. And we've already demonstrated that it should not be a matter of denying your emotions. It should be a matter of, I don't even want to say mastering, but learning to play with them, doing therapy upon them is what,

39:41you know, the way and therapy should not be, you know, the doctor, the authority figure saying, you know, that, that what is destructive, move that over there, do this. No, it is dealing with yourself and the resources that are at your disposal, some of which are communal resources. And the way that we engage with each other is not as being one in the eternal faculty of reason, where we all do math together and we all get the same right answer. If we, you know, that's, that's one model of solidarity, but that's not one that's a human model. So clearly something else

40:16has to be done. That is more playful in changing our relationship to our emotions and our reactions. I love that. There's something I've learned along the way in how I treat emotions, emotions, and I will say feeling emotions and feelings. They are guests that arrive at your home. You welcome them in, you see what they have to say, you have a visit together, and then you show them the door when it's time for them to leave. Not with any blame or shame, but just like you are here to give me a

40:48gift and I'm going to receive that gift. And then I'm going to let it go. So you just reminded me of something that really changed me when I started teaching African philosophy for a while. And I had been reading a philosopher that actually like Jean-Paul Sartre got interested in, and I wish I could remember the name right now. And I will regret that I didn't, but it's okay. Just feel your feelings. Yeah. But he, he made this distinction between emotions and he put an E. He, so he's sort of

41:19representing what is sort of like the disinherited African voice that is completely trampled over by philosophy. And he wanted to highlight emotion, emotions as moving, emotion, right? Like it's something that's moving. Oh no, I love that. Not emotion. Yeah. And contrast it from what the sort of Western tradition used to call emotions, which was passions and, and interesting passions comes from the word passive. So there was this sort of sense that these, there's these sort of things that happen to you. And what you need to do is regulate, you know, have control over those passive things.

41:54Whereas this other thinker is sort of saying, no, no, no, emotions are part of wisdom. They're part of everything, you know, this wasn't Franz Fanon. It's not Fanon. I love how you said his name. That was so sexy, Mark. Say it again. Fanon. Yeah. Fanon. Fanon's fantastic. And it's who I was thinking of, but no, it's, I think that this person was somebody who might've written a book that Sartre wrote the introduction to maybe Black Ophelia. I'm going to have to look it up.

42:25Maybe from Ghana. I think, yes. It's a, so it's a poet. It's not a philosopher. That's why you're having trouble. That's so funny. It's not really a poet. It's a philosopher, but it's like, there we are, right? Like poetry and philosophy. I just, I just feel like I actually had a partial exam life episode on this bit of Sartre, but I don't remember either what the, yes, I think you're right. I am very excited and delighted with this new dynamic. I'm loving the energy and the atmosphere and the enhancement of Jenny on our team of superheroes. I'm excited

43:01listeners to have you on this journey with us. So listeners, your assignment for next time is chapter one, which is a good 35 pages. So we'll see how much of it we actually want to talk about. Maybe we'll break it up. There's no clock. We don't have to, but it's about therapeutic arguments. So before we even get into a specific thinkers, we're going to talk about sort of what, what it is. I'm just looking at these words. I haven't read it yet, so I don't really know, but what,

43:32what it is to make an argument about emotions and their management. Isn't looking at words reading sometimes.

43:44Sorry, Mark. I just had, I just, I just love that. I had the experience yesterday of writing a very, I put my knives down or my, my guns down, which most philosophers come in hot with those. And I, I wrote a very vulnerable email to a person who has a lot of power over me. And that person heard what I said because my emotions were in my words. Fuck yes. And it was a red, it wasn't a face to face. It was a reading conversation, but before I forget, you were probably right, Mark. It's, um, Leopold Sengar. Okay. He was part of what were they called the, don't cancel me people. This is really what it's called.

44:17La Negritude Movement. The book he wrote was Black Orpheus and Sartre wrote the introduction. Yep. Yep. Yes. That is Parsley Exam of Life, episode 211, part three, Sartre on racism and authenticity. Check it out. People want more of the original. And I think that, you know, as we go through these things, we do want to still have, we're going to do the next few without guests, but then we want to start bringing on people and we can either pick returning improvers who maybe want to read this with us, or we just take a break from the reading or we pick philosophers who,

44:50who their work, maybe if they're pushing a book or something might fit in well here, right? There's no Buddhism in what we're going to read here, but it still would be nice. You know, it would be very relevant or, you know, more contemporary existentialism, stuff about race, ancient. I had a guy who came on Parsley Exam of Life and talked about ancient Egyptian as part of African philosophy. So he would probably, you know, we're talking about the ancients, let's throw in more ancients to fit into the gaps. Yeah, it would be so cool to get like what you said, like if the, you know, the Buddhist

45:22philosophy isn't present in this philosophy, bring someone who has that point of view in so we can be like, oh, where do they connect? Where do they conflict? And I think they definitely do. So we should, yeah, because I think they all kind of fed off each other and that fertile crescent, I don't know, Mediterranean area. And so it's all there. When Jesus went to India and he learned all the Indian stuff, that's at least. Or was it Socrates that went to India? You got to have fire to light a match. You got a lot of fire. But you know, they probably didn't go there, but there was Zoroastrians or something like that,

45:55or there was Confucianism. So they got it through trade. So it's all there. It's mixed in, right? But I'm excited. Let's go, man. Let's go, team. Delicious. All right. Welcome to the new season. Thanks, Jenny. Thanks, Mary. Bye, everybody. Bye. Woo-hoo. Stay curious.

Episode wrap-up and Patreon details

46:16Well, well, well, you've made it to the end of the first leg of the new journey of the epic adventure of a band of intellectual slash emotional travelers speaking to you from their various desks scattered across this wide land of ours from New York to the golden hills of Hollywood. Philosophy vs. Improv is a partially examined life podcast. Perhaps you'd like to subscribe to the other partially examined life podcasts, such as the one where I interview musicians or the one where I talk with a different group of people about pop culture,

46:51or the one where I and another person just read a text in real time to discuss it for you. All these options will be revealed at partially examined life.com. To improve your philosophy versus improv experience, I recommend that you be getting your episodes through patreon.com slash philosophy improv. You need not pay us a dime, yet all the advertisements will be removed from your episodes. And those many episodes that have an after talk built in a post game segment

47:21that will be revealed to you again for no money. Yet you will have been lured step by step into a place where it is convenient to give us a small recurring donation to ensure that this podcast continues to occur. And whether you're looking at the Patreon posts or the posts on philosophy improv.com or the posts on partially examined life.com or just straight at YouTube, you will see the link to the unedited video for this.

47:51Many, many, many other episodes. If you want to experience this as a face-to-face sort of project with all the awkward silences, people talking over each other, the few comments that I thought were too lame to leave in the audio version of the episode, all those can connect to your eyes. Finally, we would love any kind of feedback you have in the show. You can email me mark at philosophyimprov.com or if you have only good things to say, perhaps write a review at Apple

48:22Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this. Every little five-star rating you leave makes it more likely to land in the hands of some unsuspecting new listener whose life will be transformed through your action. Thanks. See you later.