Takeaways:

1. In a world where news travels at lightning speed, taking a moment to reflect is crucial to avoid missing out on important discussions.
2. James A. Brown dives into how our clothing choices, especially in public spaces, reflect our societal values and personal pride.
3. The rise of the pajama resistance highlights a fascinating cultural response to a call for more dignity in public dress and behavior.
4. The concept of enclosed cognition suggests that what we wear can significantly influence our behavior and interactions with others in public spaces.
5. Public space should be treated with respect, as it is shared among individuals, and how we present ourselves matters more than ever.
6. The ongoing debate about dress codes in public spaces reveals deeper societal issues regarding individual expression and collective responsibility.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. jamesabrown.net

News moves pretty fast, and if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you'll miss it.

That's why James A.

Brown slows down the news, to ask better questions about America.

No bumper stickers, no teams, no masters.

It's the Weekly Note with James A.

Brown.

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, boys and girls, hello and welcome to the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

You could be anywhere in the world, but you're here with me right now, and that means so much to me.

Got a great show for you today, and it's all about pajamas.

Yes, pajamas.

And how it became a major discussion online.

We'll have more on that and so much more.

It's the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

Hello and welcome back to the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

Thanks for joining me.

You can check out my work@jamesabrown.net that's jamesabrown.net you can also call or text me.

So, you know, culturally, different societies, different periods in history, they battle over the important things of their time, whether it's, you know, how society should be arranged.

You know, in America, we battled over civil rights.

We battled over who should vote, how you determine that.

But no, no, we are so comfortable in our society that when a little bit of common sense is sprinkled on us, we decide that we're gonna turn up en masse online to fight it.

So what am I talking about?

I'm talking about the pajama resistance.

While the pajama resistance emerged after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said this.

I think, again, I call this just maybe dressing with some respect.

You know, whether it's a pair of jeans and a decent shirt, I would encourage people to maybe dress a little better, which encourages.

Encourages us to maybe behave a little better.

Let's try not to wear slippers and pajamas as we come to the airport.

This was part of his program that he's launching this campaign that the golden age of travel starts with you asking us to dress up a little bit better and present ourselves in public with some dignity.

If we can help someone as we're getting on the aircraft that might need some help putting their bag in the overhead bin and you're a little stronger, a little buffer you've been lifting, you know, stand up and, you know, offer to grab that bag and put it up.

For someone who's having a more difficult time, Common courtesy and civility, I think is going to work.

Well, what followed was the hashtag pajamaresistance and people putting on formal grounds and shooting themselves on social media, ironically, in piles and piles of political tribalism, of course, because how else would we handle, you know, a critique, a basic critique, not even like something crazy and controversial, at least from my perspective, because this sounds like something that my mother would say, that if you're going in public, at least have some dignity and have some pride and pull up your pants, put on a belt.

You don't have to look perfect, but you shouldn't look like you just rolled out of bed either.

So I, being me and doing what I do, I write a daily column called the Daily Note that airs across this nation from Sea, the Shining Sea.

And I shared my perspective.

Boy, Duffy was right on this one.

That how we present ourselves in public is important.

That we shouldn't treat the public space like it's our living room, that slippers and bonnets and pajamas aren't something that we should wear in public.

And in fact, there's a science that backs this.

Psychologists call this enclosed cognition, or what you wear affects how you act.

So if you wear slovenly clothes, if you are.

If you're.

If your pants are hanging off of you, if you are.

If you are wearing pajamas and slippers in public, you're going to treat the public space that you are in those clothes like it's a private space.

When public and private spaces are not the same, your brain starts thinking about these public spaces like it is a private space.

And to me, this speaks to something even larger than that.

It's about the gradual erosion of the idea that public space matters, that we should share space and we should take pride in our neighborhoods, take pride in space that we share with others.

We should take care of each other, that we aren't a cohort of individuals and just a series of individual feelings.

And my feelings matter than everybody else.

No, no, no, no, no.

That we are sharing this larger space with others, and how we purport ourselves in that space matters.

Now, I'm not sure that's what Sean Duffy was getting at.

I think he was more on the nose.

And I think there was.

The reaction to this really caught me off guard.

I didn't expect so many people to want to talk.

I've heard from literally, literally thousands of people in the comments on newsbreak.com especially, I think that there was roughly 300 comments the last I saw, where people going back and forth, this got, this went to, these ideas, went to a Space that I did not expect, a space that we didn't need them to go to, which I'll get to in just a few minutes.

And I think this conversation truly speaks to how we go about dealing with big ideas today.

We can't just encounter the idea and talk about how the idea affects society, how the idea affects our relationships, how it affects each other, our neighborhoods, things that are larger than ourselves and our own political opinions.

No, we immediately go to red team, blue team, and we're gonna charge at each other on that level when I believe we should be discussing these concepts in macro.

And some of you got, some of you went there, and I can't wait to share with you some of that.

But before we get there, I just want to make clear that I'm not saying we need a dress code, or at least not a strict one.

What I'm saying is that we need a little bit more self pride, that if we are dressing, as my mama would say, like a damn fool, that we should notice it and adapt ourselves.

And the fact that we aren't doing that truly concerns me.

It truly worries me that we don't notice what's going on in terms of our dress.

It concerns me that it takes Transportation Secretary speaking up about how people are dressing at airports to start a conversation like this.

It's the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

We'll be back in just a bit.

Slowing down the news.

Oh, it's the weekly note.

I'm james a.

Brown.

Thanks for joining me.

You can check out my work@jamesabrown.net, that's jamesabrown.net I want to hear from you on this one.

And boy, I've heard from you on this one.

So I said that transportation.

Sean Duffy made a great point when he decided, when he decided to say that we all should consider dressing up a little bit better in public.

And I shared this in my column, the Daily Note, and I got so much response to that column that I wanted to share some of it with you.

And many of you took it in ways that I hadn't, I hadn't considered.

And I think it's well worth further discussion.

So John Greenbaum on Substack said that a broken clock is right twice a day now.

How about Sean Duffy actually do something about our messed up air traffic system?

I think you could also argue that people are responding to corporations tearing up the social contract.

Like we're acting out at an unconscious level after realizing that these predatory businesses have been conspiring to make our lives more difficult in order to maximize profit.

Wow.

We see skyrocketing inequality, billionaires with unimaginable riches while we try to figure out how to deal with health insurance and utility increases.

They told us that they don't care about us.

They rigged the system.

This is how we respond.

Admittedly, it isn't the best response.

I agree with you on that one.

But I think you, you can't make sense of pajamas without trying to see the context.

What a response.

Now I, on one level, I totally understand what John is getting at.

Look, we are all seeing crushing, crushing inequality in our system.

And, and that inequality is manifesting in our lives in a lot of different ways.

And I'm not just talking about at the grocery store.

I'm not just talking about in our paychecks.

I'm talking about in how we interact with each other.

And I can certainly see how we dress being affected on this.

I see this in terms of Crocs.

Now.

I hate Crocs.

I think Crocs are awful and I think they're uncomfortable.

But beyond that, these are cheap plastic shoes and I prefer to have some leather on my feet instead of cheap plastic on my feet.

And what we're seeing is these Crocs are now in public, they're everywhere, they're all the time.

And I think that folks are in part resorting to this because of the desperation of the cost of a pair of shoes being much, much more and because this increasingly lack of care and this increasingly feeling, all of us increasingly feeling helpless, feeling that we're shoveling or shoving a boulder uphill just by going through day to day lives.

And I think that manufacture, and I think that manifests itself in various ways in how we dress.

And I think in that way it happens with Crocs.

I think that's definitely true about what's happening on airplanes.

On the other hand, John, I love you, but man, it's asking you to put on some pants on an airplane.

It's not asking too much, man.

That's not, that's not asking you to, to, to completely tackle inequality.

We don't need to completely restructure our system before we dress a little bit better.

It would be nice if you could do both.

But we don't need to do, we don't need to do one in order to do the other.

We can dress with dignity and pride without the system rewarding us for it.

If you get where I'm going with my, my drift there.

Now.

Rajesh.

Another, another response from substack he argues that no one is giving up that Wimbledon had a dress code until the Williams sisters challenged it.

Now we should put on airs for the bourgeoisie aesthetics.

Why should we wear corporate uniform?

You have it precisely backwards.

The rich have already enclosed and privatized nearly all aspects of the commons.

This pajama thing is just a quiet protest against all the pomp and circumstance.

It is the public taking back over the public.

You think Jesus would put on fancy shoes just to enter the church?

Nah, man.

He should go barefoot and wear sandals.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't wear sandals.

I. I don't like sandals, by the way.

I never wear sandals.

They are uncomfortable for me.

But that's not my argument.

My argument isn't whether we should wear sandals or not.

My argument is that we should not, and I mean we absolutely should not take our sleeping clothes into public.

I don't think that's asking too much.

And I found it fascinating that it immediately becomes a political argument.

Whether it is.

A true fight of that nature or not.

It truly speaks to the culture war aesthetic of now that we are in a place where, whether we want to or not, we're going to have a fight that's political.

Any discussion of the public space and the public commons instantly becomes political, whether whether it's meant to or not.

Does anyone else find that troubling?

I certainly do.

I mean, there's no need to get into this sort of class warfare fight when we are simply talking about dressing with a little bit of pride.

At least that's my perspective.

Am I wrong here?

Let me know.

You can join me@jamesabrown.net tell me I'm an idiot.

That's why I'm here.

Let's bring it up.

This is the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown slowing down the news.

And welcome back to the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

Thanks for joining me.

So we've been chatting about Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's cry that we all just dress a little bit better.

Just a little bit better.

I shared this in a column of mine in my daily radio segment and I got a bunch of really interesting responses and it went places that I didn't suspect it would.

Among them was this one.

This was listener Andrew.

He said, I'm tremendously uncomfortable putting judgment into what others wear in non professional settings.

It, of course, is different if you're at a workplace that requires standardization for safety, like food, manufacturing, client services, the military and other scenarios.

Look for other people.

We don't have A full picture of what's going on in their lives.

Society chalks it up to where's your pride, where's your respect?

How do we know that that person can even afford nicer clothes?

How do we know that that person isn't dealing with depression?

On a deeper level, could they perhaps be highly anxious like yours truly and dress in a certain way to gain an ounce of control?

That's where I am on this issue.

Thanks for the opportunity to weigh in.

And Andrew, I, I, I thank you for weighing in on this one.

And I, my perspective on this is pretty, pretty simple.

It is possible that, that these folks are in fact I would bet that they are dressing the way they are to have a sense of control.

I think that's why we all dress the way we do.

We try to wear things that represent you, that are a totem of you and your perspective on yourself and your place in society.

That's why certain people dress up all the time.

That's why certain people wear certain brands.

It's a mix of comfort, style in projecting themselves on the wider world.

That's one hand of it all.

And I agree with you, that's, that's definitely some of what we're seeing.

But a lot of it is not that a lot of that.

This is, honestly, I think it's laziness.

It's not necessarily mental health in all cases.

I think those are edge cases.

That should not be the rule of how we look at how we dress and how we approach things and how we go about handling the world.

I think that these things are, I think this speaks to a larger thing with mental health.

In the discourse around mental health there is this instant reflex that we should, should be accommodating and I do think we should be accommodating but that everything is about our mental health.

And I don't think everything's about our mental health.

I think some things are and we have overcorrected our approach societally from going to little care about the mental health of the day to day person to overemphasizing mental health on the other hand.

So I wouldn't totally dismiss your comment there.

I think it's true that we don't have a full picture of what's going on in the lives of people who are walking through an airport or, or wearing a bonnet in public.

But I do think that we over focus on their inner turmoil and under focus on the fact that we are sharing the public, excuse me, we are sharing the public with others and that we should respect those people and their needs and their perspective in their space as well.

Because it's not just about you and how you feel.

We should.

That space should be shared.

It's about.

It's about the we.

It's about the wider we.

It's about more than you.

And everything today is about you.

You.

It's overkill, people.

This is the Weekly Note.

I'm James A.

Brown.

Thanks for joining me.

Slowing down the news.