Three speakers argue that deep conversations about human behavior have become rare, while society increasingly avoids acknowledging visible differences in people with disabilities. They trace this to rising therapy use, declining authentic connection, and more artificial interactions among younger generations.
Yeah, I crave deep conversations. I don't like small talk. Oh, so I like conversations about real substance and really understanding. Yeah, I think I've kind of always been that way because sometimes people will be like, oh, nobody's ever asked me that. Like, really? I'm like, how has nobody ever asked you that? I don't know. I'm sure you guys feel that way. Like, I ask you questions that surprise you, but to me it seems totally intuitive.
Um, well, you, you, uh, I want to understand. Most, most people aren't, um, like your fascination with human behavior and psychology and all of those things. Um, yeah, I think you, uh, people are used to— you're so fascinated with that, you've— you're so well studied in that, that, uh, you can, um, you can ask questions, uh, that get to an answer that most people, if they got to that point, it was a long way around. It wasn't such a straight line. I still think about that if I hear you interview someone. Just like the amount of time you're there, you know, talking at a deeper level. Yeah, that doesn't come natural to most people. But also, I think it's a learned I think it was a learned thing for you too.
Yeah. And I would also say though, like, people aren't used to, in my opinion, in like, for a while— I wouldn't want to say like today's society— but they're not used to people having a genuine curiosity of other people.
Yeah, that's true too. It is.
Yeah, there's this weird— there's this weird thing where you'll say, you know, I'm an actor or whatever, and then you're like, well, what's acting like? Well, that's off limits. You're like Yeah, you just said you're an actor. Like, what do you mean that's off limit? It doesn't make sense. And that, you know, that's just an analogy for what it, what it seems like to me is, you know, you can tell somebody's had a hard time, you can tell that they're struggling with something, and then it seems like the most human thing would be to ask them what that is. It's like, you know, people that are handicapped, right, is like the thing that they hate more than anything is you pretending they're not handicapped.
Yeah, yeah.
And it feels like that to me is it's like, I see you're in a wheelchair, why are we pretending like you're not in a wheelchair? Like, they're usually the— they'll, they'll usually make fun of themselves.
Yeah.
And everybody else is like— and the thing that they don't want is to— they don't want people to treat them differently. They want to be treated like everyone— what it is, you know? And they're living that reality every day.
Yeah.
And so it always surprises me when people are like Well, I don't want to talk about that. And it's like, well, you clearly should. Yeah. The amount of people in therapy too is crazy.
Oh, and it's just getting worse.
So like, the less human connection we have, the more people are in therapy and the more artificial the conversations are. Yeah.
If you go down in, in, in younger ages, like the, the, yeah, the artificial thing is, uh, like it's, it's just crazy to listen to them.
It's virtual. Yeah, it's like a virtual world.
Yeah.
