Host: So there are sick people and healthy people?
Dr. Rush: Yeah.
Host: And we are dealing just with the healthy people?
Dr. Rush: We are dealing just with the healthy people.
Host: Okay.
Dr. Rush: And the healthy people on the other hand are divided into the good people and the bad people.
Host: Okay.
Dr. Rush: Now we are talking about the healthy people and trying to help them to be good.
Host: Right, right.
Dr. Rush: Okay. Now when you get to the bad people, you've got two kinds. You've get evil people who are -- I don't know how to say this, sadist maybe, you know?
Host: Okay.
Dr. Rush: I mean, what kind of person makes a lifestyle out of hurting people into a concentration camp and stuffing them into a gas chamber?
Host: Okay.
Dr. Rush: You've got to be pretty evil.
Host: So.
Dr. Rush: Yeah. Those people weren't crazy.
Host: You don't think they was sick?
Dr. Rush: No, no.
Host: Culpable evilness.
Dr. Rush: Culpable evilness. There is a new book out which I haven't read yet. I don't know how new it is, but it's recent, and it's called 'Hitler's Willing Executioners.'
Host: Okay.
Dr. Rush: And they talked about the kind of consent that not just the SS and the people who can ran the camps, but even the general population turned a blind eye to it, because they didn't want to get in trouble, and people don't seem to --
Host: Pretended ignorance.
Dr. Rush: Pretended ignorance, yeah yeah. But there is some really evil people out there. They are not legend.
Host: No.
Dr. Rush: They are not legend. There are not many people sitting on the Bell Tower in Texas killing as many people as they can shoot.
Host: Okay.
Dr. Rush: And that's a limit to freedom. I mean, if people going to abuse freedom that way then you got the right to get roll out to blow the Bell Tower away.
Host: Okay.
Dr. Rush: So if freedom is -- I taught the sixth grade one time. I taught almost everything at one time, and I taught the sixth grade and I said --because I like to do this to little kids to make them think. I said what is it to be free? And a little girl raised her hand, and she is -- I said, what is it, Nancy? Oh, to be free is to be able to do anything you want, you know? I could just see her envisioning herself, standing with the $20 bill at the Dairy Queen, eating herself green, because he was already free and she could get as many Dairy Queens if she wanted. And there was nobody going to tell her not to. And so being the over that I am, I said, no, I said, that's not why freedom is. Freedom is to potentiality to be reasonable. To the extent that you are unreasonable, you abused your freedom, and the range of choices, irrationality, cruelty and inhuman behavior is not one of the things you are free to choose. Your freedom so to speak, to make a mess of your life is fine, as long as it ends at the tip of your nose. But if you are going to make a mess of your life by impinging on other people, then you are going to really make a big mess of everybody's life, and that you can't do. That's a real abuse for freedom.
Host: Okay.
Dr. Rush: Freedom is -- you know it's the most glorious concept in the world, but it is not something that you are free to exercise in anyway whatsoever.
Host: So the evil people will exercise freedom in a bad way.
Dr. Rush: Yes.
Host: And you said the bad people were divided into evil and the --
Dr. Rush: I didn't mention the other one.
Host: No, not yet.
Dr. Rush: And the other ones, the other ones I think again are kind of legend.
Host: Oh dear, yeah.
Dr. Rush: My name is legend. O man, I tell you, it's weakness. It's weakness. I see this in so many ways. I see this in parents who don't have money, but who want their kids to like them, even though they spoil the kids rotten, and the kids are off doing awful things. I know one kid who drives for drug holdups, and the mother still showers the kid with presents, and treats him like he uses the best thing and since Nickel Bear.
Host: And she is aware of what he is up to?
Dr. Rush: Yeah yeah. But she hasn't got the strength to tell him what how bad that is, and as a result what happens is, she encourages him. She supports him. In case she wants to be like, she wants to be like. Now if you have something else like that running you, you need to be like human respect.
Host: Right right.
Dr. Rush: We referred to that once before. Or if you have some other kind of drive, now there is a really great film that it came out I think in maybe the `60s or maybe even the `50s, and it's called, Shop on Main Street. It's a Czech film. And this is story of a guy who was a butcher, and he has got a little shop, and he is off to the side. He is on the side street. He could do a lot better if he were on main street.
Host: Oh.
Dr. Rush: And there is an open shop on main street he would really like to get. The Nazis occupy the town. and he wants to ingratiate himself with the Nazis, in order he get the shop on main street. So guess what he does?
Host: Oh, I didn't think of it.
Dr. Rush: He turns in his mother-in-law as having as some Jewish ancestry.
Host: Oh, boy!
Dr. Rush: To get the shop on main street.
Host: O, man!
Dr. Rush: Yeah. Another good film like that, and I saw it first as a play, is Dürrenmatt's play, The Visit, and that might appeal to more people, because first of all you might have subtitles and secondly it's ANTHONY QUINN and SOPHIA LOREN.
Host: Viola! oh good.
Dr. Rush: ANTHONY QUINN, the universal person, he is Mexican, he is Alaskan, he is everything, he is Greek, and here he is Italian.
Host: Okay.
Dr. Rush: And but it's a great story about what people will do with weakness. It's amazing, and people continually give into that kind of thing, once they fall into the habit of it. So you've habituated in this very easily, because it's a avoidance of pain.
Host: Oh, I see.
Dr. Rush: You are getting what you want, and you are not putting up with something you don't want. And so you would easily slip into these kind of thing.
Host: So it's a methodology as well.
Dr. Rush: It's, yeah it is. Yeah, yeah.
Host: And.
Dr. Rush: It's a form of consequentialism.
Host: Really. So the binge drinker that wants to be respected by his friends is suffering from weakness.
Dr. Rush: Yes. That's a form of weakness. The need, the accolades of someone else. Aristotle says, your happiness has to be something within your control, otherwise nature would be frustrated. If your happiness depended on the accolades of other people, honors, or election to office power, or the chance that you happened to have enough money, or whatever, then nature would be in vain, because it couldn't achieve its own end unless something else intervened, and he said everything in nature should be able to achieve its own end.
Host: Oh it's true.
Dr. Rush: Oh, it is. Yeah. He is a -- and see, he also observed, and I think it's probably relevant here. He also observed that if you have behavior, let's say you have ideals, let's say I am not going to behave for human respect, and you start behaving for human respect, and you start getting your jollies out of behaving for human respect. Aristotle says, if your behavior and your values are at variance, you won't live that way. It's impossible. You'll either change your behavior to meet your values, or you'll have change your values to conform to your behavior.
Host: Really?
Dr. Rush: Yeah.
Host: So there is no psychological correction?
Dr. Rush: No. See and that's the real problem with a psychological, when you make a psychological mess of your life. If you do something to yourself physically, you can find it out in time to change it. But if you do something for yourself psychologically and make a mess of your life, frequently you are so far down the line, then always you get some kind of professional object of criticism, and it's telling you what a mess you are making of it. You don't change, and then you just ruin your whole life.
Host: So it just patterns behavior and it becomes ingrained in your neuro pathway?
Dr. Rush: Exactly.
Host: Oh, boy!
Dr. Rush: And you start to think that's the way things should be, and then you do all these things that ar
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