Hi Sleepy. Tonight we begin in the usual humble abode, that small studio in the backyard where the past still keeps some furniture, and we drift from sticky thoughts to electric shocks, from the mystery of knowledge forming in the brain to Flingan the tick-covered philosopher cat.
There is a warehouse dream in here somewhere. A studio inside a studio. A window with light outside it. There is also a midsummer doorstep, a cat who once knew exactly what to do, magpies, alarm clocks, denim men in dreams, the Tower of Babel (although I say Babylon in the episode, sorry about that), and God possibly needing better communication skills.
This is an episode about being trapped in a mind, but also gently accompanied inside it. By a voice. By a cat. By a strange thought that refuses to become useful.
For falling asleep, drifting off to sleep, or simply spending a peaceful night with your own sticky little brain.
Sleep Tight!
More about Henrik, click here: https://linktr.ee/Henrikstahl
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[00:00:00] Hi and welcome to Fall asleep with Henrik. I happen to be Henrik and you happen to be sleepy and it is what it is. What happens happens and right now there is nothing we can do. So let's begin.
[00:00:21] Hi sleepy. Hi and welcome back to my humble abode. That is my studio in the backyard of this house where I used to live in Stockholm, Sweden.
[00:00:52] My name is Henrik. I'm a 50 year old actor slash podcaster slash writer slash ex children's television host and right now I am nothing else but this voice in your ear prompting you to sleep slash relax slash think of something else.
[00:01:18] And I will do this by not doing anything in particular. I will just speak in my broken tongue and you're free to do whatever you want with this experience.
[00:01:34] You can just put me on in the background not paying any particular attention to what I'm saying or you can listen very actively and you can as most do drift in and out of it. As we do when we are left alone with our own thoughts.
[00:01:57] I read somewhere that this you've probably heard about this as well and I don't know if this is a true like research thing or if it's just a myth. But I read somewhere that some people when being asked in this experiment whether or not they want money.
[00:02:20] No, whether or not they want an electric shock or being left alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes or so. And most people chose the electric shock. Maybe that's where I come in. Maybe that's where I come in.
[00:03:07] So I'm not saying this to cause any unpleasant feelings. I'm stating a fact. And the fact doesn't go away just because we think that it should go away or just because we think that it's unpleasant. So if you're new here, you will have to come to terms with the fact that I speak of stuff that are non-pleasant from time to time.
[00:03:34] Because as soon as I try to be, you know, falsely lulling you into a state of calm, then the whole idea of this type of podcast just vanishes. It doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter anymore. Then it's better to listen to something that has the outspoken purpose of just lying to you like throughout your evening.
[00:04:03] I mean, it's nothing wrong with being lied to in a certain setting, I guess. So I could sit here and I could say, everything is fine, you know. Everything is calm and you're relaxed, although you're not, apparently. But that's not my method. If there's been such a thing as a method of mine.
[00:04:31] I'm not claiming to be the only one that has this method when providing you with sleep content. There's a bunch of us, actually. But that's my idea of relaxation and comfort in a way.
[00:04:52] If there's anything, if there's such a thing as a sense moral to this, as a moral to this story, I guess you could say that it's me wanting you to know that you're not alone in having sticky thoughts, you know. That clings to you like duct tape. And it is what it is, you know.
[00:05:21] So we're built this way and to find a way to keep disruptive thoughts at bay is a lifelong experience, a lifelong struggle, if you will. And so this is a shortcut. Because I'm not going to teach you any tricks. Because I don't have anything to teach you.
[00:05:50] I don't have anything to sell to you either. I'm just here, you know. So that is not to say that this podcast isn't a commercial product because of course it is. I have sponsors. So in that sense, I'm just like everyone else. But in every other sense that counts, I am nothing like other normal, quote unquote, normal podcasts.
[00:06:20] I don't have a particular message that I want to bring. I don't have... Well, maybe this is my message. My message is that there is no message. My purpose is that there is no purpose. My comfort is that we're all in this together. I don't know anything. Neither do you.
[00:06:49] Neither does presidents and company CEOs, gurus or experts. That's actually true in a very real sense. We tend to cling like duct tape again to the made up fact that there are people that know stuff. And there is no such thing really.
[00:07:19] If you boil it down to what it is, what it even is to know something, you know, to be the acquirer of knowledge. I mean, of course, there's such a thing as knowledge. But it's all, you know, if existence is an ocean, then knowledge is just on top of the ocean.
[00:07:43] Because we don't even know what it really is to be the one knowing a specific thing. So I could be an expert on, I don't know, the fluctuation of money, you know. So I could be an expert on that.
[00:08:08] But what I still don't know is what even constitutes the entity that I call Henrik that is an expert on such and such. And that's kind of a fundamental flaw, you know. I think of this from time to time when I, because a few years back I saw this.
[00:08:34] Very popular viral clip on some social media where this is how knowledge is acquired, you know. And then there was this microscopic video. Well, the video itself wasn't microscopic. It was normal sized on my screen. But it was from a microscope. And it was a time lapse of synapses in the brain connecting.
[00:09:04] Or maybe the connection itself is called a synapse. I don't really know. Nerve cells in the brain connecting to each other, forming new knowledge, forming new context. And I couldn't help being struck by this image because not only is it a cool thing to see.
[00:09:24] I mean, the very physical process of knowledge being formed, information being processed in like a very physical sense. But also because we can do this.
[00:09:48] We can, I mean, think of the levels of knowledge behind this video that you're watching on your phone. Think of all the different fields of knowledge that had to come together for this. All these years of research and technical refinement.
[00:10:10] And then all of a sudden you're just on the toilet scrolling and then you just happen to stumble upon this marvel, you know. And still, we can do all this, but still we don't even know what it's like. I mean, we know what it's like, but we don't even know what it really is. So we can film how thoughts are made.
[00:10:39] But we can't understand what it even is to be the one thinking. That cataclysm between knowledge and the lack of true knowledge is for me what it's really all about to be a human being. What even is it?
[00:11:03] Why is it that I can know stuff and I can do stuff that, I mean, it's like true miracles. I have a cat outside here. His name is Flingan. If you didn't know, I've been talking about him in several episodes. Flingan means like snowflake in a way.
[00:11:23] Although snow is implied here because he's not named Snöflingan, which is the correct term for snowflake in Swedish. He's just Flingan, which would roughly translate to just flake. But that's kind of a disgusting name for a cat. So, yeah, but he's kind of disgusting these days.
[00:11:50] I'm not saying this to hurt his feelings because he doesn't have really human emotion and he doesn't understand English or Swedish for that matter. And he doesn't listen to podcasts. So, even if I were trying to hurt him, he wouldn't be hurt. But I'm not saying it to hurt him. I'm saying it because it's a fact.
[00:12:14] The house where the studio is placed is in the woods, sort of. It's in a residence area with small houses, suburban Stockholm. Stockholm and right next to it, just a few meters, there's this nature reserve with a vast forest. And this time of year, the ticks, they are like everywhere.
[00:12:41] Stockholm is a very tick infested place. So he's just covered with them and that makes him disgusting. And also he don't care, you know, because he can't get Lyme disease or other stuff. So he's just there and he, because he's an outdoor cat, obviously, since we live in the, since the house is in the forest, I don't live here anymore. Have I pointed that out? My ex-girlfriend Nina lives here.
[00:13:11] So, and the studio is still here and everything is, yeah, everything is fine. Although it's weird to be here because I used to live here, you know, for 17 years. And now I'm just here recording. I actually have a problem that I keep pushing forward.
[00:13:40] Sooner or later, Nina will move away from here. And I don't really know what I'm going to do with the studio because it's a container and it's in the yard. And I live in an apartment now. I can't put it anywhere near the apartment because it's in the city. I don't have a place where I can put my studio.
[00:14:05] And I could, hand on heart, I could record this podcast anywhere, really. But it's, um, it's a painful thing to think about that I eventually in the future need to get rid of this studio and find a solution, you know, another solution. And so I'm thinking about all sorts of scenarios.
[00:14:34] One of my dream scenarios would actually be to buy a piece of property that could fit my studio within. Like this, I don't know what you call it. Oh God. Like a factory environment, so to speak. Not a factory, you know, but, oh God. What do you call it?
[00:15:03] Which could fit my studio. And then I could go there and record in bulk. And I could make it kind of cozy outside. Because now the container is just out in the weather. The wear and tear of the weather and the woods and, yeah. But then I could just, you know, polish it and I could paint it and I could make it pretty, you know.
[00:15:30] And I also have a window in my studio and the blinds are always shut because I don't really need light when recording. And at night I need to protect the window anyways. But if my studio were in this warehouse, I could just keep the window open, you know. And I could put lighting outside of it so that whenever I record, I could sit in this, yeah, cool light environment.
[00:16:00] And that would be an exciting thing. Although that doesn't have anything to do with me recording. This is just a habit thing, I guess. And of course the audio in here becomes good. Because there's no disturbance. It's just sound isolated. And anyway, I don't know why I started talking about my cat. And the studio and...
[00:16:30] I don't remember. Yeah, but he's disgusting. Flake. He's flaky and he's disgusting. Well, he's not flaky. I don't even really know what flaky means. But it's... I guess it has to do something... It has something to do with dry skin or something. He's not dry skinned. He's covered in fur. But the fur is like outdoor messy. 24-7.
[00:16:56] And he always goes and lays down in like bushes. So the ticks are all over him, of course. Because they live like in... Yeah, in the grass and the... And the bushes on the leaves and stuff. So he just goes out and he lays there. And he lays there for like eight hours. And then he comes and he wants to get, you know, food.
[00:17:24] Or he needs to, you know, rub himself against you for some reason. Because he's not a cozy cat. He's not a cat that wants to cozy up to you in the sofa, you know. Purring. Well, he purrs. I read somewhere that cats don't control their purr at will. It just comes. It just comes.
[00:17:52] When they feel peaceful. Or contempt. And that's actually kind of interesting because there's been times when I've been very frustrated with Flingan. I've been talking to him like, well, I imagine I'm not married.
[00:18:16] But I imagine that if you've been married for 50 years or so, maybe you tend to talk to each other in a very harsh way. So like me and Flinjan, when we're alone here, we're like an old married couple. Except one party of the couple doesn't really communicate at all. Which could be like as in a normal relationship where one of the spouses don't communicate.
[00:18:46] That's a well-known issue, I guess. In couples. One is communicable as hell. And the other just withdraws. So anyway, I talk and I talk and I talk and I say things like, why don't you eat food? I put the food. Yes, I put the food in the bowl right there. See?
[00:19:17] And he just meows and looks at me like, why don't you give me food? And I say, although knowingly I know that he doesn't understand me. But I say, look, there's food there. And I point and he doesn't even know what a finger is. I put the food in the bowl. It's right there. And then he goes up to it and he just looks at it like, what even is this? And I, well, I don't scream at him.
[00:19:46] I have some boundaries. But I, yeah, to be honest, I talk to him like I wouldn't really talk to a human. Like, I think sometimes that he's an idiot, you know? And he's not. And that's very unfair of me because, but then again, he doesn't care. And this was my point, you know? I could talk to him like either anyway, you know, and he doesn't care because he don't
[00:20:13] understand the subtle or unsubtle changes in the human voice. I guess if I were to yell at him, I guess he would be able to tell that, okay, so this is a loud noise coming out of this ape's mouth. So I guess that could mean something to him, but I don't yell, but I sound really irritated
[00:20:35] and sometimes kind of like I mock him, you know, in my voice because I get irritated if something is amiss in my life. I take it out on the fact that he doesn't understand that I have food. Just it's the same food that you have every day. And he just looks at it.
[00:21:00] And then I catch up with myself and I tell myself that this is meaningless. He doesn't understand. He doesn't, even if he, even if he understood, he wouldn't care because you live in different universes. And this could be proved, proven, proven, proved.
[00:21:21] This can be proven by the fact that he's purring throughout my irritated rants about how stupid he is that he doesn't understand that I put up food out. He says nothing, he just purrs because he's at peace, you know, and he don't care.
[00:21:46] And then I feel guilty and I sit down and I pet him and I get covered with ticks and I need to go and pick them out. No, that's not true. Sometimes I find them, but he has this medicine that removes the most of them. But it's kind of icky. It really is.
[00:22:11] I really think that my studio and Flingan Flake, Snowflake, Flingson as we call him, we really need to find a solution. He can't be an indoor cat. I mean, he's lived his whole life as an outside cat. Well, outside, inside cat as he comes and goes. And so he's lived his whole life like that. I can't just put him in the apartment.
[00:22:41] He would become mentally ill or something, I think. He's really very fragile in every other sense. He don't care if I'm annoyed with him. Again, I just want you to know that I really, I'm not, I'm not a menace to him. I take care of him. And so does Nina.
[00:23:06] I just want to say that out loud because thinking back of what I just said, it sounds like I'm a bad cat owner. I'm not. I take care of him, you know. I think the breaking point between us is mostly in me. I don't think he really at all even knows that I'm a different person. That sometimes I think he just sees humans as the same.
[00:23:37] He doesn't care if it's me or Nina or our daughter Harriet or anyone else. He doesn't really know what a human is, I think. So he doesn't get the changes in my voice. Well, sometimes he does though.
[00:23:59] Because since he normally has a few bugs on him, we don't want him in the bedrooms. So sometimes he wants to go upstairs and lay down on a bed. And then that is, of course, forbidden territory for him. And we've been doing this for years.
[00:24:23] So whenever he goes upstairs, he's kind of sneaking. And then I say no. And I say that in a very typical, I say that in a specific way. No, fling him. No. And then he just reacts to that and stops like mid-movement in the stairs with one paw lifted. Looks at me. What are you on?
[00:24:53] Are you on to me? Yeah, I'm on to you. And if that happens, I have a choice. Either I go up to him and I lift him and I put him down to the foot of the stairs again. Or I do nothing. And in that case, he will just stay there for a few seconds looking at me. And then he will just continue up into the bedrooms.
[00:25:21] He's not like a dog in that sense that a word means something like continuously. It's just, if I don't rush up and lift him down, he will just keep doing whatever it is he wants to do. I guess that's why I sometimes get annoyed with him. Because he's like a life companion in a way.
[00:25:51] But he lacks every quality that we would prefer a human life companion to have. Like empathy. The ability to listen. The ability to at least sometimes understand you. So he's not really good company.
[00:26:14] Because I can only think about one instance where I could really benefit from having him around like in an emotional sense. And that is if he were to be like cozy. You know, if he were at least a bit interested in just laying down next to me, purring, showing me that everything is fine.
[00:26:44] But he never does that. He's a very hands-on kind of cat. He wants to get stuff done. And when he wants to rest and have leisure time. Leisure. Leisure. I said, oh my god. There went my English out the window. Leisure or leisure. Leisure. Please. Indulge me. I can't hear you.
[00:27:16] Anyway. When he wants to relax. He wants to be on his own. He don't want to do it next to me. There was this one summer. A couple of years back. I went through. Yeah. A harsh period of my life. This was, I guess, in 2023. And... I couldn't talk to anyone. Really. That's... Yeah.
[00:27:45] I guess that's the worst thing for every human being. Going through hard times. And not being able to talk to anyone about it. So I had therapy. But that didn't really... I mean, that helped me in the long run. But during... Therapy isn't really a comforting thing. At least that's my experience of it. Therapy is more about solutions.
[00:28:15] Like coming to terms with whatever it is that hurts. Rather than going there and be comforted again and again and again. And that's the... That's how it's supposed to be, I guess. But... I've always been very keen on getting therapy when going through stuff. But... As comfort goes from one human being to another, That has become harder as I've grown up.
[00:28:44] As a grown... As a grown... As a grown-ass man. I always wanted to say that. I'm a grown-ass man. Yeah, well, I am, you know. But I don't feel that way. I will never feel that way. I'm a kid still. At heart. At heart. That's such a cliche. You can't be anything at heart, really. Your heart is whatever age you're at. It's a physical organ. When I think about myself,
[00:29:14] I feel like I am in my teens, I guess. Some... Somewhere around my teens. And I don't think that will ever pass. And now I forgot what I was going to say. It's... It's both a frustration and a bliss.
[00:29:44] This improvised structure that I'm sticking with throughout this episode. I just forget what I was talking about and I just dive into the next cloud of words and associations and images. Yeah. Okay. So I was going through a rough time and I didn't have anyone to talk to about it.
[00:30:11] Back then I was in a relationship and I couldn't really talk to her about it either. We have very different viewpoints on anguish. And I felt really alone. It's a very complicated thing to go through when your spouse or your partner or whomever is next to you in a real sense doesn't really understand.
[00:30:43] So I have this condition where I need to be feeling fulfilled, meaningful all the time. and that's... We could argue, Sleepy, that this is a child's way of looking at the world and you need to grow up. You know, you can't be fulfilled all the time. Believe me, I know because I am not fulfilled all the time.
[00:31:13] So I know that this is what is demand of a human being, a grown human being or any human being. You can't be like intellectually, spiritually, physically satisfied at every single second of your day. But I want that and I don't... I'm not contempt.
[00:31:42] So when I find myself in a situation where I feel like there's this huge chunk of life missing the dimensions that I don't even know what they are, I don't have a name for them. Then I start to look, you know. Then I start to aim my flashlight out into the void
[00:32:11] and sometimes that creates deep pockets of despair and it was in one of those pockets that I found myself back in 2023. And then I sat at the doorstep of the house and it was summer and my partner and our daughter was in another part of Sweden celebrating
[00:32:41] midsummer and I couldn't go because I felt too bad. and so I was alone and it was midsummer and in midsummer everyone gets together and goes out in the countryside and celebrate that like this is a huge holiday. Well it's not a holiday I guess in any real sense but it's a party you know people are yeah it's tradition and it's such a
[00:33:11] very it's such a happy tradition in its at its core because it has to do with summer and summer in Sweden is sort of sacred for the Swedes and I was alone except for Flingjan and I sat at the doorstep and I I couldn't cry because the pain was too deep crying is a bliss is a relief
[00:33:41] you're letting something go or and refilling yourself with something else when crying sometimes it takes a while you need to cry a lot but it gets you there in the end and I couldn't cry it was just this horrifying anonymous grey cloud and deep fear about what's to become of me
[00:34:12] and I sat there and then Flingjan came along and he looked at me for a brief second I guess he was trying to evaluate whether or not I was going to give him food or you know forbidding to go upstairs or whatever but as soon as he realized that I wasn't going to inform him or provide him with anything he just
[00:34:41] laid down next to me and this is actually the only time I can remember where he actually just laid down like an emotional support animal next to me and then I started to cry because he opened that door in a way and that was a very good feeling so I stroke him I had my hands my hand my left hand on his fluffy fur and he
[00:35:11] purred and I poured my ears no not my ears my eyes I guess there's a difference there eyes and ears they're two different organs aren't they so I cried I poured my eyes out can you say that that you pour your eyes out when you cry or is that just a very morbid way of saying that your eyes are leaving your the sockets in your head for
[00:35:41] some reason I don't know I will leave it to a later discussion or not and I remember thinking to myself like this is a good way of having a cat it's a good way of hanging out you know two different species enjoying each other's company in different ways but still there's enjoyment here you know comfort and
[00:36:12] company partnership even but that hasn't happened since and this is it's been three years and he's like he's becoming I guess he's he was born in 2018 I think so he's kind of old now but he doesn't so he doesn't show any signs of slowing down with age he's been the same
[00:36:42] ever since we got him I think that well maybe people say that as they grow old they will become calmer he's very calm he has never been a cat that you know yeah he used to climb on things now I don't see him climb so much it happens but not so much so he
[00:37:12] lays a lot he lays in the bushes he's very scared of oh my god I've been trying to say this word before okay so I need to google it because this is so embarrassing that I don't really know what it's called in English because I said okay first I'm going to look up the word
[00:37:42] yeah so the word for the bird the bird of the word the word is a bird is magpie yeah so that's a bird right so flingan is really scared of magpies he's not scared of anything really we have a fox out in the woods here and flingan whenever this fox it's a one-eyed fox I haven't actually seen him this year so maybe he's dead it wouldn't it wouldn't
[00:38:11] surprise me because this fox is a walking abomination in a way he's been through a lot you could see that he has scars all over him and he also lacks one eye and he's not afraid of humans so he becomes really close he's not interested in humans he just walks past us when we are in the forest but whenever he's there's a house further down the road and they have chickens
[00:38:40] like in a coop outside and the fox of course every night he goes there and then flingan he just steps out because this house is the first house when you come out of the forest then flingan just steps out and he just is in the way of the fox and the fox is really scared of flingan for some reason he's not afraid of humans
[00:39:10] but this cat maybe it's flingan who took his eye out I don't know that's an aggressive side I haven't seen him in him though so he's not he was he used to be this I don't I don't know what I was aiming at yeah magpie yeah he's really afraid of magpies sorry yeah when I talked about magpies
[00:39:39] previously I guess I have been talking about flingan's fear of magpies because I remember calling it the bird a mud pie like a pie made of mud and I remember thinking to myself why is there why is the English language referring to this bird this black and white bird
[00:40:09] as a mud pie that's really weird that sounds almost like a hallucination or a dream or something dreams and languages in dreams are truly enigmatic don't you think you I don't really remember a lot of stuff being said
[00:40:35] I mean like I don't have any verbal recollection I don't have any true recollection of verbal stuff being said in dreams I remember being on the subway back when I was an acting school student in Gothenburg in the 90s I remember being on the not the subway the tram and
[00:41:05] there was this I had this dream about this alcoholic guy all wearing denim I remember the denim very because he was sort of a rough dream translation of someone that I met who was wearing dirty denim he was a venomous man with dirty denim and he was a drunk and he
[00:41:35] came at me at one point so it was kind of him but not him you know but he was wearing this dirty denim garments and he came at me he he focused me like nailed me with his eyes and he walked up just very close to me and he said like um it's just it's just like
[00:42:04] taking a piss or something like that and he said it in this dialect which is used where I grew up in the county Dalarna I don't say it's a it's a region in Sweden called Dalarna the valleys and they talk in a very funny way there they talk in funny ways I mean every dialect
[00:42:34] could be a funny way in a way but he spoke that type of dialect and he said this is just like taking a piss in that dialect and in Swedish I will now say it in you will and you will have to just endure me det är precis som pissa that's exactly what he said in Swedish but in that dialect and I can't use dialects
[00:43:04] here because okay well maybe since this is a podcast aimed to the english speaking audience I guess you could benefit from hearing the difference in dialects just this once I promise I won't make a habit of it it's I promised myself in the Swedish version of this podcast never to act in a way you know never to yeah
[00:43:34] play any theater you know act but just this once I'm going to show you the difference between the Dalekalia dialect and this kind of straight out non dialectal Swedish thing so I will first say the words in Swedish in the very straight non dialectal way I know that wasn't english sorry okay
[00:44:04] it's just like taking a piss in Swedish straight way det är precis som att pissa okay so now I'm going to say it in Dalekalia dialect det är precis som att pissa did you hear the difference det är precis som att pissa det är precis som att pissa okay now you can do with that information whatever you want sleepy and I
[00:44:34] promise I won't make a habit out of creating small scenes anyway this guy in my dream he said this is just like taking a piss and then he made a noise like this gurgling low frequency voice just a noise from his voice dressed in denim and he
[00:45:03] approached me like really really close and I woke up like gasping for air and the noise was still there it was my alarm clock which had this awful really low frequency gurgling noise apparently to make me appalled enough or scared enough to wake up I can't find
[00:45:33] any other reason for that because this was before smartphones and you know alarm clocks and fancy alarm signals and stuff what you had at your disposal at the time if you weren't a tech you know savvy or tech interested guy and I weren't at the time so then you only had like alarm clocks with this very conventional alarm bell
[00:46:03] sound or you could you would have this yeah this yeah you could wake up to radio as well so this was an option I remember but I remember not being able to nail it you know because sometimes the radio just started and it was a peaceful song or something and then I would almost always oversleep
[00:46:33] oversleep so I guess I settled for this low frequency gurgling noise just in order to wake up I remember that being truly hard when I was at that age like my early 20s to get up in the morning although I had school and we started the same time every morning and I don't remember
[00:47:02] ever having like an easy morning I remember being awoken was this horror you know what is this what even is this and I don't experience that anymore unless I sleep like three hours or something one night then being awakened did I say awoken
[00:47:32] that was wrong wasn't it should I not have done that I'm I'm telling you I gotta plead ignorance on this one because if if you have if I've been told when starting this podcast that this sort of thing was frowned upon I would have acted very different I'm sorry sleepy I truly am for punishing the English language the way I do week after week after week
[00:48:02] but as I said I'm I'm gonna plead ignorance ignorance ignorance ignorance ignorance yeah so but then again you probably don't know any Swedish right so you know there there we have it and this is all because of the tower of Babylon right
[00:48:33] the the humanity this is this is a story in the Bible isn't it so there are a bunch of people coming together building a tower to reach God and God he becomes kind of stressed you know they're getting kind of close to me so he just bestows upon them the curse of
[00:49:02] talking different languages there I have so many questions I don't know which questions I'm going to talk about here I don't want to come off as a podcast that trash talks religion you know but for me this is a fairy tale you know and well some people see it as reality
[00:49:33] or symbolism of something real that's not necessarily the opposite of what I think I think stories fairy tales sagas are I mean any piece of artwork is not in opposition to anything real it depends on what you mean by the word real but if you ask me do you really think that there was a bunch of people trying to build a tower
[00:50:03] that were about to reach God and he therefore made it so that the humans building the tower didn't understand each other and therefore couldn't continue with the building no I don't believe that has ever happened and I don't think many people do so then you can you know have fun with it if it's just a symbol of something then you I don't
[00:50:33] see any malice in having fun with ideas and aspects of our own cultural history so he's so really very easy to offend the Old Testament God you know he he's so he's really cranky he gets mad of all sorts of things and he overreacts
[00:51:01] I have this personality trait that's well I keep it at bay nowadays but when I was younger this was more of a problem and I still have to fight with it sometimes so the quality is that whenever I get hurt by someone I have this overwhelming urge
[00:51:31] to just cut them out of my life forever you know and the amount of hurt can be kind of small someone being a bit unpleasant to me in the work environment and then this wave of just I'm going to punish this person by never letting him near me again I'm going to be polite but I'm
[00:52:01] going to be cold cold as ice you know and that's a problem for me it helps me deal with humiliation I think it's a defense mechanism towards me being humiliated but it also creates all sorts of problems because now I need to remember this person you know this might
[00:52:30] not even be an important person to me in any real sense but now I have to remember him you know I have to remember when he meets me and he says hi I need to say hello you know so that's God in the Old Testament he overreacts like he drenches he puts the whole world underwater just because people you know he doesn't even give them chances really
[00:53:00] he's dissatisfied with the moral of humanity like people are cheating and stealing and lying and are being greedy and he doesn't seem to take into account that he was the one created them he created them this way and at that time he hasn't correct me if I'm wrong here I don't have I don't have a very polished know-how on the Old Testament and the chronology of it
[00:53:29] but I don't remember him correcting you know Adam and Eve you know that's that and he banishes them from paradise and he doesn't really have like a sit-down with some representation of humanity saying I want you to be like good in this very specific
[00:53:59] way I've given you all these other traits the longing for conquering land and people and other fields of you know whatever existence means but I don't want you to go on that I want you to denounce those sides of you which I've given you I want you to be good in this very
[00:54:29] specific way don't curse don't eat whatever you know and don't don't look at someone whom you've not been married to with desire you know all these things you can't look at someone you're not married to and think wow what a hottie I want her I want him you can't
[00:54:59] say that because then God becomes yeah cranky so at this point there was enough of this happening for God to just say oh freaking hell I'm just gonna drench it all I'm gonna say one man I like him and yeah for for the sake of it his family and also the animals because they haven't done anything
[00:55:29] but yeah and that opens up a whole can of worms regarding the logistics of it I mean how did it how did he even do it I mean how do you collect a pair of each animal and how do you keep them on the boat without them eating each other I mean you come into the room where there's zebras and there's just one zebra and the other zebra is just traumatized and shaking and says
[00:55:58] the lion did it the lion did it and you come up to the lion and the lion says no I didn't do it and then you have to like have this detective investigation and also these are animals that don't really communicate as with flingan they don't communicate they just look at you so Noah he's so frustrated he just walks around on the ark looking for the the
[00:56:29] pulpit the culprit the pulpit or the culprit the culprit I'm gonna go with the culprit and he tries to interrogate the animals but there's no such thing as interrogating an animal because the animal is just going to look at you sometimes not even understand that you are a different creature or a piece of the environment and all a mute object
[00:57:01] and yeah but it's also fun to watch God sit up there in the sky which this story about the tower of Babylon implies it implies that God is up in the sky Christians today say that of course God is not in the sky God is like this the sky is just an image that we use
[00:57:31] but he's within us or around us or yeah but the tower of Babylon story is really it's a it's really it's a very clear indication of where God is so he's up there you know some at some altitude there's this platform or something and up there
[00:58:00] sits this God this deity and the human beings are building like there's either God is really close to ground because back then you couldn't really build ultra tall buildings you still to this day can't really do that I mean you can build tall but you can't build something 10,000 meters up so God must have been placed like a few hundred meters up you know and why didn't people
[00:58:30] even see him up there that's beneath the clouds and if God was visible up there why would they build couldn't they just couldn't God just yell down to them like stop whatever it is you're doing I don't want you to get hurt I don't want you to come up here it's fine up here I need my space please stay down why didn't he just do that
[00:59:00] maybe it was because God spoke in a different language and he felt kind of envy towards the humans that had the same language but why didn't he just make it so that everyone could understand his language as well then everything would be laddy daddy fandy dandy randy blandy to use a correct English word for everything is fine
[00:59:29] and yeah and but then I guess he must have felt like yeah the moral of the story is that they are about to acquire the same knowledge a view from up above a view from up above like the one God has you know the view
[00:59:58] the power I guess the moral of the story is don't seek power that is not meant for you and I guess that's what flingan says every time he watches me trying to instruct him on certain things like for instance I put food in your bowl why do you just stare at it like you don't know what it is why don't you just eat it are you
[01:00:28] stupid and flingan thinks to himself no I'm not stupid I'm just looking at the same food that you provide me with every day and I think there must be a higher meaning there must be a point to all this and he just stays there with his stupid monkey mouth saying stuff for instance he's now about to say that if episode is over and I don't even
[01:00:58] know what that means means