Last night on the Glenn Beck program, Stu Burguiere filled in for Glenn. Andrew W.K., our favorite rocker with a "philosophy of partying" joined Stu to weigh in on atheists and loving your neighbor. During their conversation, Stu brought up a video of a "prayer" that occured at a city council meeting that left many outraged. Stu took the opportunity to ask Andrew W.K. his thoughts on the video asking, if Andrew was in in the city council meeting would he have acted the same as the "prayer leader"?
In true Andrew W.K. fashion, he took the opportunity to respond to the question in a loving, enlightened and meaningful way:
Well, for me personally, I wouldn’t probably go to a meeting like that. I think there’s other ways to accomplish probably very similar ends that don’t involve as much fighting, I guess, or just battling. I think that certain people are drawn to that kind of environment, that kind of atmosphere where they like debate. You know, debate is a great thing. They teach it. People can become world-class debaters, and again, it stirs up emotions that are very satisfying.
It’s fun to feel like you beat someone in a debate. It’s fun to, you know, to lose sometimes and to sort of have that humiliation. It’s all, I guess, you know, sort of a game in itself there, but these are real things on the line, and I would imagine that, again, if you hold onto these beliefs very passionately and personally, no one can really strip you of what you think. You know what I mean? At least so far, technology has not allowed us to infiltrate someone’s brain completely, so hold onto that, you know, in the midst of all these battles.
As the conversation continued, it turned towards messages of love and hope; beliefs that have played a strong part in Glenn's life and his shows. After all, Glenn does have a song entitled "Love" as his radio theme song. In response to some critics, saying that Andrew W.K. now preaches "hippie-dippey nonsense," he took the opportunity to discuss the complexities, yet beauty of love. And in true Stu fashion, it somehow turned onto a conversation about cute pugs, but it is still worth a watch.
Stu: Joining me now to talk more about this is Andrew W.K. Andrew, first off, what is your opinion on drunken horse chasing? Is that part of the party hard philosophy?
Andrew: Well, drunken riding is never a good idea, even if you’re the horse. You know, it’s dangerous for everybody, so try to avoid drunken really anything with a vehicle, and a horse does count.
Stu: Okay, that’s good. We have that cleared up. And again, this is how we come together, and we can all live a happy life. I’m interested in your take on this, because, you know, there are a lot of different viewpoints out there, and I really do think that is what makes this country great. We’re allowed to express them without fear of, you know, any reprisal from the government, but it seems like people get so antagonistic against each other and just try to basically ruin everybody else’s fun. And you see the story, I think there’s a good part of that in the story from Florida where the atheist tried to basically needle all the people who have faith in the committee. How did you see that?
Andrew: Well, I think that largely what people want in these situations is attention. They want us to be doing what we are doing right now, which is talking about it, but hopefully even more than that that we’re thinking about it. And I think any situation that brings us into personal thought and reflection, ultimately that’s good, so if we give them credit for inspiring thought to see inside of ourselves what we think about these things, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Stu: See, you have too positive a viewpoint. I strive to get to the point where I could handle things the way you do, because, you know, I can’t help to get annoyed sometimes when people needle me or needle something that I care about, and I think that’s the average person. You know, at the end of the day, does it make a difference in your life what someone else thinks about your viewpoint? No, but it’s still something you feel like you need to defend your turf. Maybe you feel like they need to, you know, it’s like sports, you feel like your team is being violated, and you want to defend it. How do you get to that point where you can kind of just sit back and say…? Yeah, go ahead.
Andrew: I think sports are actually a very good comparison, because if we think of sports as a game, we engage in that because it’s fun. We are not defending truly our life in a game like a sport like football, for example. We’re allowed to explore those feelings in a playful way for the sake of competition, the excitement of standing with the team, but at the end of the day, we also do realize that it is kind of just for fun, even very passionate fun, very emotional fun, but for fun.
So when someone needles at me, if I’m not so sure of my point of view, it might threaten me a little bit more, but again, I just have to think about it, and ultimately, like you said, I don’t care that much about what someone else thinks, especially if that person was just trying to get under my skin, you know?
Stu: So put yourself in a position, you’re someone who, you know, you believe strongly in whatever, you know, atheism or whatever, and you’re sitting at a council meeting like that, and you don’t like the prayer thing. You think it’s silly. It’s not your belief structure, but you do recognize that there are good people who are with you who do. Do you take that opportunity to go in there and try to essentially insult them to win them over? Does that work? Or what do you do with that time?
Andrew: Well, for me personally, I wouldn’t probably go to a meeting like that. I think there’s other ways to accomplish probably very similar ends that don’t involve as much fighting, I guess, or just battling. I think that certain people are drawn to that kind of environment, that kind of atmosphere where they like debate. You know, debate is a great thing. They teach it. People can become world-class debaters, and again, it stirs up emotions that are very satisfying.
It’s fun to feel like you beat someone in a debate. It’s fun to, you know, to lose sometimes and to sort of have that humiliation. It’s all, I guess, you know, sort of a game in itself there, but these are real things on the line, and I would imagine that, again, if you hold onto these beliefs very passionately and personally, no one can really strip you of what you think. You know what I mean? At least so far, technology has not allowed us to infiltrate someone’s brain completely, so hold onto that, you know, in the midst of all these battles.
Stu: That would be pretty fun though, because you could get people to do like anything you want. It would be awesome.
Andrew: I’m sure they’re working on it. Yeah, they’re getting along with that technology, but so far, so good, we can still think what we want to think ourselves.
Stu: It’s right around the corner. You had someone kind of take you to task or attempt to take you to task in one of your recent columns where they said basically like Andrew, I love you, I love your music, you’re great, but you’re constantly preaching this hippie-dippy nonsense, and everyone needs to find love and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was interesting to read that, because I could produce 12 letters a day that we get from our listeners that say the same thing—Glenn’s constantly talking about, you know, trying to work together and understand other people, and it’s a different vibe for maybe talk radio or politics.
Andrew: Yes.
Stu: And so it’s tough. I struggle with it, to be honest. You know, I struggle with it. You sit there, and a lot of times I think, you know, love…and you made this point in the column, love can conquer all. Why can’t it? You know, stop doubting it. But there’s a human feeling that it just feels like it’s sort of this, I don’t know, Enya sort of thing that’s just sort of like flowing up there. It’s all feel good and everything, but it doesn’t actually get results. If you don’t go out there and fight for your positions or fight for what you believe in, then you wind up just getting rolled over.
Andrew: The elusive qualities of that approach, loving everybody, it seems…it’s like this, it’s too good to be true combined with too easy combined with unrealistic combined with all these efforts that we make. We’re so used to striving, like it’s an outward push, this, you know, forcing ourselves, forcing our will.
We can judge success more clearly in this material world where we see results that we made happen, and this love approach which is, you know, even the word love, it rubs people the wrong way, which is so strange, but this approach is all the opposite. It’s all about not doing as much, about going inward instead of outward, about getting results in a less tangible way, and for that reason, it is challenging. It isn’t easy, but at the same time it’s like the easiest thing of all.
You know, to love a baby, for example, that’s not…takes a lot of hard work that you have to put all that effort into loving that baby. You just look at its round face and its plushy eyes and its dewy complexion, and you just feel good. So why can’t we, you know, have that same kind of ease in all these other situations? I mean, not everything is as cute as a baby. That’s probably part of the reason.
Stu: That would be a solution. You know, Glenn once said a long time ago, because I have two pugs, and I was arguing that my dog was cute, and he said it was actually incredibly ugly. You look at a pug, you know, it’s got a smashed face. It’s got the giant bulging eyeballs, but it’s still cute, and his point was anything that’s small is cute, and maybe that’s the problem, we’re just too large. If we just were all cute little babies, we’d all be able to love each other a lot more easily. I don’t know if that’s going to be solved anytime soon, but…
Andrew: Well, yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, like is a mountain, a mountain, you wouldn’t call a cute mountain or a cute galaxy.
Stu: It’s grand. It’s beautiful. It’s just you have this little adorable thing that’s just there, and when you see something small and adorable, you can’t help but love it. It’s when they get big, and then they’re ugly dogs.
Andrew: You know, our ability to be bigger than other things is where we can, you know, exhibit mercy and acts of, you know, benevolent kindness because we do have a larger presence to that thing. I mean, we’re bigger than an ant, and we can choose not to step on an ant, for example. And the mountain is bigger than us, you know, or God could be bigger than us and thinks of us like the way we think of a baby. So can we look at least at each other as brothers? I mean, my brother is pretty cute, and he is younger than me, but he’s actually an inch taller than me, and I still feel that kind of affection for him.
Stu: Wow, you actually brought that back to something rational. That was pretty impressive. I have to give you some credit on that.
Andrew: I did lose it for a second there.
Stu: Let me give you this, is it part of the equation here to try to love someone and solve problems that way? Is part of it just being comfortable in your own skin, being comfortable that you can’t convince everyone to agree with you, being comfortable that other people are going to think you’re an idiot sometimes? If you can get to that place, all of this becomes a lot easier.
Andrew: I completely agree. I think maybe that’s the best way to put it actually is that it’s a mindset. You actually can’t ask that much of it to work all the time. It’s sort of like an ideal, and why not have the highest ideal we could possibly conceive of at the forefront of all our behavior in our mind, even if we don’t always get there, even if we never get there? You don’t settle for less. We push for more, you know?
Stu: Yeah, that’s a great point. Andrew W.K., thanks so much for coming on, and we’ll talk. Maybe next time you come on, we can just expand the conversation on the drunken horse riding. I think that was really important.
Andrew: Okay, I like that. That sounds good.
