Harvard Professor: Why Nothing Feels Real Anymore - Arthur Brooks

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CChris Williamson

Mental HealthMarriageInternet Technology

Transcript

00:00:00why do so many people feel like modern life is simulated rather than real because it is we're

00:00:05living in the matrix that movie the matrix came out 27 years ago i hate to shock and sadden you

00:00:11it'll make anybody who was alive then feel old but the plot of that movie was that a great

00:00:16artificial intelligence was dominating the human race and kept the human race placid in a pleasant

00:00:22simulation so that it could feed off human kinetic energy it kept them in pods and ran a simulation

00:00:30and and the truth of the matter is that we are subjugated not by people necessarily but by

00:00:35algorithms that fundamentally are creating a simulated version of a real life that's pleasant

00:00:40enough keeps us from being bored and that feeds off our attention and energy and money we're living in

00:00:46the matrix and that's why people say i don't know it doesn't feel like real dating is it doesn't feel

00:00:53like real friends scroll scroll scroll it doesn't feel like real achievement game game game

00:00:59because we're living in a simulation what's happening neurologically so what's happening

00:01:07neurobiologically is that we're literally in the wrong half of our brains so this is the work of

00:01:12ian mcgill chris the great have you had him on the show into the show he's fantastic he's an oxford

00:01:17neuroscientist he's a you know a great genius and and he brought back the whole idea of hemispheric

00:01:22lateralization that's the concept that the two halves of your brain do different things i mean they do a lot

00:01:27of things the same too but the fact is that they have different core competencies now when i was a

00:01:33kid in the 70s this is long before you youngsters were born there was this belief that there were

00:01:39right-brained and left-brained people right-brained people were creative left-brained people were

00:01:42analytical my mom who was an artist was a right-brained person my father who's a mathematician

00:01:47was a left-brained person growing up i was a right-brained person like my mom because i was a musician i was a

00:01:51a classical musician and i painted and i wrote poetry and and then i got my phd and i became

00:01:57apparently a left-brained person because i'm kind of a scientist well the truth is that that theory

00:02:00didn't work what does work however is what ian mcgill chris brought back to show that we have we ask

00:02:07and answer different questions with the different hemispheres of our brain the right hemisphere is the

00:02:11complex why the mystery and meaning of life the things that set us out in the hunt for the things that matter in

00:02:17life the left brain is the how to and what it's how we execute it's the linear side it's the analysis

00:02:24it's the engineering it's the apps of life or the left brain side and what's happening is that we're

00:02:30running a simulation of life we're running a left brain simulation to meet our right brain questions

00:02:37of love and mystery and meaning and you can't simulate the meaning of life is it not a good

00:02:44thing for people to be more rational and analytical and objective is this not something that only a

00:02:49couple of decades ago we were trying to push more on people yeah i suppose except that we need both

00:02:54the truth is that we need both because life is full of both kinds of problems look if you if you don't

00:02:58know the why of the things in your life the how to and what mean nothing but if you only know the how

00:03:04to and what then the why and the why is elusive i mean you get the point that i'm trying to make i mean

00:03:09you can either be incompetent at executing anything in your life or you'll have no purpose in the life

00:03:14that you lead you actually need both you know i go to work every day i'm you know traveling around

00:03:18doing my job it's great i know how to do it i'm competent at it because my left brain is working

00:03:23properly i know how to get where i'm trying to go and do what i'm trying to do i can write my speeches

00:03:27and my columns and books etc but i gotta know why which is that i want to do something good for the world

00:03:32i want to support the people that i love i want to glorify god that's what i want that's the why

00:03:37side and that originates on the right side of our brains and furthermore all the things we really

00:03:41care about are not the analytical things the things that we care about are not the physical they're the

00:03:47metaphysical that's what we really care about so i'll give you an example a big left brain question

00:03:51is how does my car work i actually don't know i had a slightest idea right it's just i mean it's a car

00:03:59right and but i could know because i could actually get a book or i could you know get a guy and come

00:04:05teach me or i could watch a bunch of youtube videos and that's knowable because those are complicated

00:04:10left brain questions my marriage is a right brain problem it's completely unsolvable i have to live

00:04:18with it i can't figure it out i will never figure out my marriage dude i've been married 35 years

00:04:25before just you know an hour ago she texts me i love you good luck on the podcast i'm sure it's true she

00:04:34loves me tonight i could call and she might be completely pissed off at me i i don't know yeah

00:04:40but you did decide to date somebody with latina blood is it that that adds that adds a level of

00:04:47complexity i grant you correct it's like uh yeah it's a multiplier she's a big pulsing right hemisphere

00:04:56sure enough but but this is the thing the reason i love my marriage is because it's unsolvable

00:05:02right the reason people want to get a a real cat not a mechanical cat is because it's alive and things

00:05:08that are alive are right brain problems and things that are mechanical are left brain problems and so

00:05:14what we've done is we've we've solved life we've solved life i mean we have i mean everything we're

00:05:21trying to the the engineering the silicon valley set of solutions for everything that we're trying to

00:05:26do that actually pops through the screen at us that dominates our culture that increasingly can be

00:05:32simulated and understood through artificial intelligence all that's doing is it's a curve

00:05:37fit through the messy business of life using these left brain algorithms and that's not going to get

00:05:43done what we need to get done it is going to leave us lonelier and more depressed and more anxious

00:05:49here's the thing your brain knows so for example this is one of the reasons that the more pornography

00:05:55people look at largely young men because more than 85 of pornography is being consumed by men

00:05:59now you're thinking you're so i know you're thinking who are the 15 percent old men no so is it you

00:06:09thank you thank you very much

00:06:14so the the more pornography that men look at them the lonelier they get so in the moment they feel

00:06:21less lonely and the more satisfied they feel but the more unsatisfied and the lonelier they actually

00:06:26get because it's a simulation for the experience they're actually seeking and it's unsatisfactory

00:06:31as a result of that you want actual human connection with another person that's what you actually want

00:06:37and you're settling for a two-dimensional simulacrum for it what are some of the other

00:06:44counterfeit sources of meaning that people mistake for the real thing achievement is a counterfeit

00:06:50source is something that you actually get that doesn't build anything real of any real consequence in

00:06:54life so the idea is like you just score in a game gives you a real short-term sense of of

00:07:02achievement which is a source of purpose which is a component of meaning but it isn't real it's fake

00:07:09it's a it's a it's counterfeit it's uh it's simulated and that's one of the reasons that

00:07:13you'll find you got to do more and more and more and more and more to keep up with it you know you

00:07:17know they used to say if you want to if you really want to live a good life you know you need to do you

00:07:21need to have a son plant a tree and write a book i don't know i've done all those things i don't

00:07:27know if i planted a tree that's what you're missing i don't have a green thumb you know so this is my

00:07:32problem i mean you plant more trees but the whole point is that what those things have in common is

00:07:36that they're real they're in real life they're real achievements in real life they don't say

00:07:41plant a tree online you know pretend you're planting a tree you know get really good at doing it have a

00:07:47son online you know the whole idea of simulating these experiences is unsatisfactory and what it does

00:07:52it simulates the experience in the moment that's another example having friends is another way is no other

00:07:57way we think about it virtual friends they simply don't meet your needs and one of the ways that

00:08:02we know this is that the more virtual friends that you have the less that you're actually

00:08:06illuminating in the experience of interacting with them the right hemisphere of your brain

00:08:11you know one of the reasons that you don't like to do your show virtually is because you

00:08:16don't have the same experience and the reason is that you and i are connecting with our right

00:08:19brains right now our right you and our friends i mean we text and talk to each other even when

00:08:23we're not doing a show which is great because we're friends and we have that texting relationship

00:08:29because we've actually looked at each other in the eyes and had real no fooling conversations with

00:08:33each other and that's how you have to link with other human beings otherwise it's a simulated friendship

00:08:38it's one of the biggest realizations i had when i was trying to work out what i wanted to do with

00:08:44my life toward the end of my 20s i had all of these friends because shock horror in the nightlife

00:08:49industry in the northeast of the uk there weren't many people that were into the things i was getting

00:08:53into there weren't many people that you know maybe they'd heard about sam harris and they were

00:08:57thinking about doing meditation or they'd read a bit of robert green and then got stuck after a couple

00:09:01of pages and then were struggling with that and then felt real bad because they couldn't sit still

00:09:04like all of these things that i was going through it was i was finding it difficult on the front door

00:09:08of a nightclub to find people to resonate with so i made friends online that were into the same

00:09:12sort of things that i was and i found that these friends kind of distilled out into two strata of

00:09:18people even if all that i'd done was as i was going through a city on a train stopped off for a 30

00:09:24minute coffee with someone that person immediately went into a different bracket of i've actually met

00:09:29this person they're real in three dimensions they're real yeah and uh because your brain actually

00:09:34apprehended that person in a different way what you did was you had an imprint of that person in you

00:09:39know flesh and blood in real life which is by the way how the brain was evolved you know we are

00:09:44our brains are more or less the same size and shape slight physiological differences but trivial for

00:09:49what we're talking about here as they were 250 000 years ago in the mid in the middle pleistocene

00:09:53and during that period all human beings lived in bands of 30 to 50 individuals who are kin based

00:10:00and hierarchically related and that meant that the relationship they had with each other was

00:10:05absolutely paramount and our brains are wired for in-person relationships that's one of the reasons

00:10:10that you get oxytocin when you look at somebody in the eyes you and i have a better conversation when

00:10:14we have this bonding hormone that's actually going through our brains when we're looking at each

00:10:19other in real life you don't get it through zoom screens there's a lot of research on this at this

00:10:22point you get a different kind of experience when you have the in real life experience and so one of the

00:10:28things that i do when i'm talking to couples and my wife and i we do we do work you know we do we'll

00:10:33do these marriage retreats for example one of the things that we'll do with couples we'll say okay

00:10:37before you go to sleep you need to stare into each other's eyes before you go to sleep you're lying

00:10:40on the you know lying in the bed you know on your sides looking at each other stare each other in

00:10:44the eyes for fit for five minutes that's it that's the prescription because you want to establish

00:10:50this thing that probably they haven't had for a really really long time and that your brain actually

00:10:55needs so that your brain registers that's my person you can't get it any other way why is it that

00:11:01meaning can't be simulated meaning can't be simulated because meaning is this fundamentally complex right

00:11:07hemispheric experience and so when you're the simulation is always in the wrong side of the brain

00:11:12and so it'll look like it's meaningful but it isn't it's what it comes down to it'll feel like in

00:11:18the moment like love but it isn't it'll feel like friendship but it isn't so interesting with

00:11:23this conversation because a lot of people when when i think about how this lands on the internet

00:11:29there is a kind of cohort of people that will say something like this is good enough this is actually

00:11:38as good there's a disbelief that you actually do need to go into three dimensions uh there is a i'm

00:11:45happy to wait for the sex robots to come i'm happy to have the ai partner there's even a company that

00:11:50makes ai versions of your exes so if you don't ever want to leave the relationship with them you can

00:11:55just keep on texting um and i think that kind of when i read those comments it makes me sad it makes

00:12:01me sad because i think it sounds like somebody who's got hurt or is scared that the world isn't going to

00:12:06be able to give them something that they know that they can get compliantly online uh permissionlessly

00:12:11uh with lower risk of rejection or zero risk of rejection and um it makes me it makes me sad but

00:12:18yeah it's so much of what we're seeing in the modern world is people getting what they want but not what

00:12:24they need right and this is something that people need but don't realize that they want yeah well they

00:12:30do know that they want it they just don't know how to get it and is ordinarily what's actually happening

00:12:35i mean i i rarely meet somebody who would say i actually would prefer not to meet anybody in real life i

00:12:40mean there are people who are agoraphobic for example there are people that have particular

00:12:43pathologies along these lines but the truth is it's they feel like it's the best that they can

00:12:47actually get under the circumstances look when when 62 percent of couples are forming online

00:12:52then it's very hard to form it's increasingly hard to form a couple offline and and if you're an

00:12:59exceptionally online person or you're living in a remote location or you you know came of age during

00:13:05covid which means that you you don't have social skills that were wired into you at a tender age

00:13:11then then you're going to struggle is what it comes down to but here's the thing to keep in mind

00:13:16the biggest predictor of depression and anxiety is is to say i don't know the meaning of my life or my

00:13:22life feels meaningless that's the number one predictor why what that will it it all gets down to the fact

00:13:27that these pathologies that actually follow from this sense of emptiness you know so people often

00:13:33say so why has depression tripled why has anxiety doubled which they literally have clinically since

00:13:38about 2008 why and they'll say well because generational difficulties because you know boomers wrecked the

00:13:45economy and created income inequality and and and made houses expensive or something they have all these

00:13:50exogenous economic explanations for this stuff these are all wrong is what it comes down to since 2008

00:13:58when life has become increasingly online and we you know the average american is now checking

00:14:03her his phone 205 times a day what you've done is you shoved yourself into the wrong hemisphere

00:14:09of your brain and in so doing you haven't been able to naturally experience this meaning

00:14:14and that's what leads empirically that's what actually leads people to feel empty to feel depressed to feel

00:14:21anxious to actually feel lonely that's the big predictor is what it comes down to we have a meaning

00:14:26crisis most people have no idea where their testosterone levels sit but what if i told you there was a

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00:15:05normally this level of testing would usually cost thousands but with function it's 365 dollars a year

00:15:10that's one dollar a day to stop guessing with your health and start knowing and right now you can get

00:15:1525 off bringing it down to 340 bucks so get the exact same blood panels that i do and save 25

00:15:22dollars by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com

00:15:26slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom a checkout let's say that you're going to design a

00:15:31life for someone to have as little meaning in it as possible yeah yeah what would that consist of it

00:15:37would start by um waking up um when the sun is warm you know making sure you don't start your day

00:15:44like before dawn make sure you start your day when kind of when you get up make sure that if you have

00:15:49an alarm clock there's your phone um look at your phone before you roll out of bed right uh then make

00:15:55sure that the first thing that you do is eat a bunch of you know highly processed foods high in sugar make

00:16:01sure you get your coffee in the first five minutes so you get a big dose of caffeine and make sure that

00:16:05you're looking and scrolling on your phone while you're eating your first meal that's a really important

00:16:10thing to do make sure that your whole first hour is neural is is neurocognitively programmed to be on

00:16:16the screen then make sure that you have a remote job it's very important that you go to work back in

00:16:21your bedroom and and you look at a screen and you look at a screen all day long so that your colleagues

00:16:26are kind of squares on the zoom screen and you see them sometimes in the clients and etc etc and you

00:16:32don't actually know where anybody lives you don't have a relationship with anybody right

00:16:36it's actually better if you don't see anybody the whole day as a matter of fact now if you're going

00:16:39to date make sure that it's it's swipe right swipe left swipe left and so that you're only getting a

00:16:45two-dimensional understanding of the person that you might want to fall in love with as well

00:16:48like no multi-dimensional multi-sensory understanding of who the person is make sure you can't smell that

00:16:55person right i mean that's really important because you know the olfactory bulb does all kinds of

00:17:00meaning related things in the brain so make sure you rule that out right um and make sure that on

00:17:04your own dating profile you're lying a lot that's important too all right then uh let's make sure

00:17:10that that for fun that you're spending sort of the evening not doing anything of of real importance i

00:17:16mean you're not working on a big project you're not going out and seeing people that you're kind

00:17:20of staying in and scrolling uh and and watching youtube shorts and and if you're doing something

00:17:27that's kind of competitive and achievement oriented make sure this gaming make sure that you know it's

00:17:31really oriented toward that so it's kind of writing your life in disappearing ink um and and then go to

00:17:36bed make sure you didn't do any exercise important not to do any exercise at all right and um and then

00:17:44repeat times or n equals any number that you can conceive of so that that that you're never bored

00:17:53you're never bored but your life is grindingly boring see here's the key if you want your life

00:17:59to have no meaning make sure that there's no boredom moment to moment but that day to day

00:18:03and week to week and month to month life is boring that's what you're actually going for as opposed

00:18:09if you want your life to be really meaningful make sure you got plenty of boredom moment to moment

00:18:14and then then your life won't be boring at all not a strange paradox it is i mean my my great-grandfather

00:18:21um lee roy brooks he was born in olathe kansas he married the sheriff's daughter john james was the

00:18:29sheriff was strung up by quantrail's raiders during the civil war kid you not this americana in my family

00:18:35chris and and and and he married mary allen in olathe kansas and that's pretty much what i know

00:18:42about him but i'm going to make a prediction about good old leroy he never came home to mary allen and

00:18:48said honey i had a panic attack behind the mule today because his brain was working the way it was

00:18:55supposed to i promise you that his life behind the mule looking at a mule's butt was was pretty boring

00:19:02moment to moment but he was not bored his life wasn't boring because he was living a real life

00:19:09but a lot of people today who've figured out a way by checking the screen and living online and and

00:19:14living the hustle and grind culture that's been engineered out of silicon valley and various other

00:19:20places around the world hyderabad and wherever you want that not being bored from moment to moment

00:19:26gives them the most boring lives possible is it the case that ambitious people are particularly

00:19:32susceptible vulnerable to meaninglessness so asking for a friend right of course of course

00:19:41me too i'm i'm like a senior version of you man except you're not gonna be bald that's right i'm

00:19:49gonna have to lose a lot of hair to you're gonna have to lose a lot of hair i know if i had your hair

00:19:52i'd be president united states right now i think you would um yes and no so one of the the the problems

00:20:01that really ambitious people have is that they they they don't know how to live with themselves

00:20:07so ambition striving busyness um is is is really a way that people anesthetize themselves because

00:20:14they're very very uncomfortable so you know one time i'll give you an example one time i was talking

00:20:17to a great friend of mine um who traveled constantly for work constantly for work and and his wife was just

00:20:23in his grill it's just like he had kids and she says that i miss you and and you always you every year

00:20:30you tell me that this year is going to be different and and i realized getting to know this guy really

00:20:35really well the problem wasn't that his job made him travel too much the problem was he didn't want to be

00:20:41home he didn't want to be home he wanted to be distracted because his life stressed him out so

00:20:48much this is what it's like to be a striver is is like having this unbelievably chaotic life

00:20:55and and and you need to distract yourself all the time and so sometimes your ambition will be

00:20:59distracting you sometimes your success will be distracting you sometimes just your overriding

00:21:03need to be special or to be applauded by others is your way to distract yourself from all the things

00:21:09that are actually going on all the storms and things inside your head right and and and when you have a

00:21:15down moment then you panic and that's when the screen comes out or or for that matter that's when alcohol

00:21:20and drugs come out there's very interesting data from the oecd that show that above average

00:21:25busier than average people are above average risk in alcohol and alcohol abuse so you don't think you

00:21:32think of somebody who's an alcohol abuser as an alcoholic as somebody who's down and out you know you

00:21:36know a bum right no it's more likely to be an investment banker it's more likely to be a wealthy

00:21:42successful podcaster and and the reason is because successful strivers anesthetize themselves with

00:21:48drugs and alcohol with pornography with screens with anything that will actually make you look like

00:21:54don't leave me alone in here man i don't want to be alone in there which is why they're strivers in

00:21:59the first place how often do you think people are pursuing goals because they genuinely want them

00:22:04versus because they want approval so everybody pursues goals because human beings homo sapiens only get

00:22:13satisfaction in their life when they're making progress it's that satisfaction is the joy of an

00:22:18accomplishment of making progress toward an accomplishment with struggle that's what

00:22:23satisfaction is all about that's why that's why goals are incredibly important and struggle and pain

00:22:27are incredibly important that's what it comes down to these are the two things to teach your kids

00:22:32is have goals accomplish stuff and struggle and don't be afraid of pain those are the things that you teach

00:22:39your kids and they'll get a lot of satisfaction satisfaction is one of the macro nutrients of

00:22:42happiness to be sure the trouble with that is that if it's somebody like you highly intelligent super

00:22:48hard-working unbelievably energetic then you can actually start fooling yourself into thinking it's

00:22:54actually not about making the progress and the struggle and the hustle and grind of life itself it's actually

00:23:00about if i finally get that thing then it's going to be okay when i finally get that thing so you

00:23:06know i've i've i've worked with olympic athletes and and and it's funny because you'll often they think

00:23:13they're alone in their struggles and you'll say did you when you won that goal were you depressed

00:23:18afterwards they'll be like how'd you know like because it's always every other gold medalist it's

00:23:22literally called gold medalist syndrome yeah it's called gold medalist and and what it is it's all

00:23:26in in in my field in behavioral science is called the arrival fallacy and the arrival fallacy is just

00:23:30like i i i i gotta get there and when i get there i'm gonna feel that thing now what was the thing

00:23:35i'm gonna feel and this gets back to your question i'm gonna feel like i'm worthy i'm gonna feel like i'm

00:23:41something i'm gonna feel like i'm special i'm finally going to feel like i'm special and you don't

00:23:48and you don't and that's the problem that's what a big part of the striver's curse you know what's

00:23:53fascinating about the arrival fallacy no one's ever been able to make it popular so the concept

00:23:59yes yeah correct has tell me the most well-known book on the arrival fallacy that points it out

00:24:04exactly yeah i know so i was on my way out to australia texting mark manson about this and i was

00:24:11explaining one of the problems i was trying to navigate with the show this live show that i was

00:24:14doing i was putting together and one of them is that a good bit of it is kind of about the arrival

00:24:18fallacy it's a pg version because i'm aware that it's chronically the most unsexy topic to ever talk

00:24:23about yeah and his response was good luck i've tried to talk about this publicly and every single

00:24:28time it's fallen flat i know it's not just not mimetic that people don't want to talk about it

00:24:34it's not just mimetic neutral that people will accept it and maybe bring it up or maybe not

00:24:40it's actively anti-mimetic people don't want to hear it and won't tell their friends about it

00:24:46it is no i know i know it feels saying to people that are still climbing which everybody is the view

00:24:54from the top of the mountain is not as good as you think it's going to be feels like you're sucking

00:24:58the gas out of their fuel tank yeah while they're still on the way up it's like you as a fat person

00:25:03saying to someone who's starving well food's not that nice in any case and it's an unteachable

00:25:09lesson and the only way that you can learn it is by getting there and because the alternative to

00:25:14this with the arrival fallacy is that every successful person ever in history has been

00:25:19inducted into some kind of cult that pulls the ladder up after them where everybody gets the same

00:25:25memo which is so i know that you all of the problems that you had all of the internal voids your

00:25:30feeling of insufficiency the chip on your shoulder from when you were a child your desperate desire

00:25:34for validation from random humans on the internet i know that all of that was fixed when you got the

00:25:4030 000 square foot house but we need to tell the pause that that's not the case so you now are a

00:25:47part of this elite group of people that are trying to sigh up everybody else into not trying to strive

00:25:51for it yeah so that's the alternative which is or is it more likely that that's just the sense that

00:25:57the gold medalists got and that's not to say that it's everyone but it does seem to be a pretty big

00:26:01cohort way more than the people that are striving would think it is yeah yeah so there that there's a

00:26:07reason that is antimematic and that's because it goes against mother nature mother nature wants you to

00:26:14be fooled the reason that that the that the ancient williamson's right from some place some anglo-saxon

00:26:21tribe of something something right yeah the reason they passed on their genes is because they were

00:26:26fooled by mother nature that they were fooled that they actually that they chased the arrival fallacy

00:26:32again and again and again and again again now the reason that you're not going to be satisfied

00:26:37the reason that it can't be satisfied is because mother nature needs you in the hunt but the only way

00:26:41you're going to stay in the hunt is with a promise that you're finally going to get there now there's

00:26:45a side note to this there's a metaphysical side note to this by the way this is kind of a this is

00:26:50a little a little bit of a a a a side note that kind of takes us in the transcendent dimension we'll

00:26:56come back to the arrival fallacy in a second but you know there is a philosophical set of arguments for

00:27:01the existence of something which is that the the desire for something is actually proof of the existence of

00:27:08its object so for example proof that water exists is that i feel thirst proof or or evidence that food

00:27:15exists is that i feel hungry now i want unremitting happiness i want it and i feel like i can actually

00:27:24get it somehow but i i can't i can't but that philosophically is a proof that it does exist

00:27:32not here that's actually proof of a divine afterlife actually it's evidence of a divine afterlife that

00:27:39you have this hunger for unremitting happiness which suggests that it actually does exist but you can't

00:27:45get it in this life maybe you can get it someplace else that's what it comes down to and this is one

00:27:50of the great proofs in most of the both abrahamic and karmic religions for the existence of nirvana

00:27:57heaven whatever it happens to be anyway mother back to this the question at hand why would mother nature

00:28:04play this trick on us because because we got to stay hungry she wants us to stay hungry so she's wired in

00:28:11a mistake she's wired in a mistake she's wired in something that it is such a deep mistake that we make

00:28:17again and again and again that even when people speak a manifest truth that people deeply believe

00:28:22they still will reject it i remember when david brooks you know the author david brooks we and i

00:28:26have been our super old friends we're not related share a surname common surname it's a common surname

00:28:31right and so um my brooks is you know snuck out of lancashire and in 1630 to massachusetts one

00:28:38step ahead of the county sheriff but and his came later anyway david brooks he said i remember years

00:28:44and years and years and years ago he said you know being number one in the new york times bestseller

00:28:49list it's really not that great we're having lunch and i said let me try let me see how it feels

00:28:57right and and that was exactly the point that you made now now ryan holiday talks about that too the

00:29:02first time he had a book that was number one in the new york times bestseller list he's like

00:29:05this is great and the next week it was some yo-yo who had a stupid book as number one and he realized how

00:29:12how little it actually meant but he wanted the next one to be number one too actually it's more

00:29:18tyrannical than that because if your next one doesn't make number one now you used to be great

00:29:23and there's almost nothing worse than that yeah the only thing worse than never having made it is having

00:29:27fallen off yeah yeah yeah i i almost i wanted to do a show at one point where i talked to a producer

00:29:33about the idea of a tv show um called i used to be famous where you know as a behavioral scientist i'll go

00:29:39talk to people who are like living relatively ordinary lives and they used to be famous

00:29:44some are happy some are not some are addicts some are crazy some are like normally married fascinating

00:29:49show wildly unpopular you know like just it's just it didn't get made yeah but if you if you if you

00:29:56want to have that it's the underdog story yeah right it's from zero to hero not from hero to zero

00:30:01although it's pretty interesting when you when you hear about people who are living who are much much

00:30:05much happier than they were in the limelight you know when people are living ordinary lives um and and

00:30:11they're they used to be really famous and people go oh i remember he was so and so in the partridge

00:30:16family or something now he's got a happy marriage and four kids and you know he you know he works for a

00:30:22cardboard box company or something how can people work out the meaning that they've got in their life

00:30:27what are the big questions that you should ask yeah so um there are three big why questions that

00:30:34constitute meaning and this actually comes from the work of michael steger who's a really good um social

00:30:40psychologist at uh uh in colorado and he uh he has the three parts the three elements of meaning which

00:30:49are called coherence purpose and significance and there are three why questions number one is

00:30:55you have to have an answer to the question you know why are things happening the way they are in my life

00:30:58you know things are happening all around me all the time why part of meaning is having an answer to

00:31:03that maybe that's a maybe that's your religious answer like because of the mind of god maybe that's your

00:31:08scientific answer because these are the laws of the universe maybe you're a conspiracy theorist

00:31:12and say because powerful people are doing these things conspiracy theories are nothing more than

00:31:17crying out for an answer to the coherence question which is a meaning problem you know when so if you

00:31:22have a relative that's going down the rabbit hole on the craziest conspiracy theories don't you don't

00:31:27throw data in their face and say you moron that's the wrong way to approach it they're they're having

00:31:31a meaning crisis they're having a happiness crisis is the reason they're doing this in the first place

00:31:35so coherence number one you know why things happen the way they do second why am i doing what i'm

00:31:40doing that's purpose purpose and meaning are not the same purpose is goals and direction so you can

00:31:47make progress so why am i doing what i'm doing if the answer is i don't know then you can't make

00:31:51progress because we're just going in circles you're just a carnival cruise ship just kind of randomly

00:31:56going around and around and around and around it's the reason i find cruises unbelievably depressing

00:32:00they don't go someplace right i'm a teleological individual like you i want a goal right and that's

00:32:07purpose and so in the in the in the research you know sonja lua merski stuff have you had her on the

00:32:13show she's coming on next week or the week after super good yeah she's awesome and she's at uc riverside

00:32:18and she does these work on goals and you'll give students just random goals like you're getting a b minus

00:32:24in physics you know it's going to be plus this semester just that goal they get happier they get

00:32:30more directed life seems better because they have more meaning in life that's what it comes down to

00:32:34even arbitrary goals work better to have meaningful goals and last but at least is significance and

00:32:39that's my life matters you know my life matters to someone you know to my dog to my wife to to god to my

00:32:48kids and so that's the love question and all these things are completely missing in modern culture for

00:32:53so many people you know why do things happen the way that they do it's just random i don't know

00:32:58why am i doing what i'm doing i have no idea i get up and i scroll i get up and i surf i get up and i

00:33:04go on a zoom meeting for a company i don't really care about and and and you know what is the

00:33:09significance of my life why does my life matter i don't think it does and that's those are the three

00:33:15things to actually keep in mind before we continue most people in their 30s are still training hard

00:33:20their protein is dialed in they sleep better than they did in their 20s discipline is not the issue

00:33:25but recovery feels somewhat different strength gains take a little longer the margin for error

00:33:31starts to shrink and that is why i'm such a huge fan of timeline you see mitochondria are the energy

00:33:37producers inside of your muscle cells as they weaken with age your ability to generate power and recover

00:33:43effectively changes even if your habits stay strong mito pure from timeline contains the only clinically

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00:33:54process for clearing out damaged mitochondria and renewing healthy ones in studies this supported

00:34:00mitochondrial function and muscle strength in older adults it's not about pushing harder it's about

00:34:04actually supporting the cellular machinery underneath your training if you care about staying strong into your

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00:34:26modern wisdom at checkout that's timeline.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout

00:34:33what happens psychologically when life feels random when life feels random then it feels like anything

00:34:39could happen at any time and there is no control there are no levers that you can actually pull

00:34:44so you you're not an active player in your own life when there is no coherence when you don't see a

00:34:49pattern it's a big problem you know when you when you remember when you learn to drive how old do you have

00:34:54to be in in the uk 17 okay and and when you first you know you got a lot of confidence but when you're

00:35:01looking at the traffic and all like and it's like it's like chaos wildly intimidating i learned to drive

00:35:06in a mini which is a very british way to do it but it's fucking terrifying like half the height of

00:35:10everybody else yeah and you know any any system that you're in that doesn't seem to make sense

00:35:16that's that that that it tends to feel really really meaningless because you don't know what

00:35:21you can actually do to have some sense of agency there's no sense of agency when there is no coherence

00:35:26is what it comes down to so for example if you believe that things happen the way they do because

00:35:32that's what god wills then you're going to try to work that lever you're going to pray for example

00:35:36you don't have a relationship with god if you believe it's because of the laws of science you're

00:35:39going to learn more about science and you're going to actually enter into that particular dimension so

00:35:44for example i'm a behavioral scientist i really believe in science i really believe that it's just

00:35:48like it gives you incredible amounts of power my job is to explain the science and explain how people

00:35:53can interact with the science it's a pure coherence play is what it comes down to and if it's all about

00:35:59conspiracy theories then i'm going to get online and you know share them with my friends so that that's

00:36:04why coherence really matters so that you can have agency over your life and why are directionless

00:36:09people so psychologically fragile they're fragile because they don't know actually in which

00:36:13direction that they're going which means they can't make progress now remember this whole idea of

00:36:18happiness comes from making progress toward a goal and there's tons of really interesting

00:36:22examples of this the weight loss literature is super interesting in this so diets are all effective

00:36:29and they're all catastrophic failures is what it comes down to effective insofar as that almost

00:36:34any diet will make you lose weight but they have between an 80 and 95 failure rate after a year

00:36:40meaning you gain all the weight back and then some it's the weird industry it's like a 40 billion

00:36:45dollar industry in the united states that fails you know of nutritional advice it's craziness you know

00:36:51nine out of ten times that they fail um now now why are they successful because in in economically

00:36:58it's because temporarily they make you make progress but they ultimately fail because once you get to your

00:37:05goal your goal weight the reward is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your

00:37:10life congratulations that and then you get the arrival fallacy is what it comes down to so what you want

00:37:17in life is something where you can just make constant progress i want to be like i want to be a better

00:37:20dad i want to be a better person i want to create more value with my work and that's there's no end to

00:37:26that i can't be like yeah well i got to the best dad i can possibly be so that's all good no i'm i can

00:37:32always work to be a better husband i can always work to be a better friend i can always work to be a

00:37:35better citizen i can always work to love my country more i can always work to actually do something more

00:37:40important in my work and reach more people with the with the the moral objectives that i have and

00:37:46that's what i need i need goals i can't meet i don't i think that the confusing thing is if significance is

00:37:55about being valuable to others and not famous why is it the case that modern people confuse the two

00:38:01part of the reason is because um what strivers they get into there's actually a pathology that that

00:38:08that is in the middle of this um so what you find is that certain people let me back up a little bit

00:38:16um i work i'm sort of the striver whisperer in my work i specialize in people who do incredible things

00:38:22right and that's just because that's fun although it is but because that's the kind of books that i

00:38:27write you know people who do amazing things and still don't have perfect lives that's kind of my area

00:38:32of research as a matter of fact they have a common childhood and it kind of looks like this you know

00:38:39super strivers who are never satisfied and struggle they generally speaking um found that they only got

00:38:46attention and affection from their parents when they did something when they got good grades when they

00:38:52made pitcher on the baseball team when they made first chair in the orchestra when they right when

00:38:57they you know set up a lemonade stand and made more money than anybody thought possible whatever it was

00:39:01right and and their parents often their parents are immigrants or or came from poverty and they'll

00:39:06reward their kids when they do a thing thinking that they're actually wiring in success and happiness

00:39:12for their kids what they're telling their kids is that love is earned they're teaching their kids that

00:39:16love is earned and they kids will learn that and when your brain is synaptically plastic boy will you

00:39:21ever learn that lesson and then you will go through life trying to earn love over and over and over and

00:39:26over again you'll look for if you're a man you'll look for women who make you earn their love right and

00:39:33and that you'll spend your marriage trying to bring in more and more and more and more money for example

00:39:37women will try to stay young forever by trying to earn their husband's love you'll find that they

00:39:42will surround themselves with sycophants and yes men who are just like fake friends who make you make

00:39:48these people earn their love um with gifts and favors and fanciness and and you'll surround yourself with

00:39:55people because you believe that love is actually earned well the truth is that that's wrong

00:39:59real love isn't earned it's a free gift freely given it's a grace anybody who makes you earn their love

00:40:05doesn't love you that's what it comes down to but they don't learn that because that's actually what

00:40:10they've what they've what they've what they've they've um uh evolved over the course of their lives and

00:40:16they're they're they become success addicts winning addicts looking for the specialness and and in the

00:40:22modern economy when you can metastasize that from one to your family to your community to your church

00:40:29to your city to the whole world on the internet then you're going to be searching for the adoration

00:40:36of strangers because it's the best possible dopamine hit that you can get and life is going to feel

00:40:40gray if you don't get it so this is a pathology that actually people have and the more talented you

00:40:45are the more danger you're in one of my favorite ideas of yours is this difference between specialness

00:40:51and happiness like it's so good when you see it it's something that you kind of can't see anymore

00:40:56yeah and and it's it's a lot of people who are you know they're people watch and listen to modern

00:41:01wisdom because they want an edge you know it's good it's good entertainment i'm i'm i'm fan

00:41:07long for i met you yeah but it's it's actionable material for people well i'm act i'm i'm actively

00:41:13making less actionable material yeah which is an interesting pivot at the moment i think there's a

00:41:18a new term floating around which you might not have seen yet it's called grind slop and uh grind slop

00:41:23is kind of this your feelings just work harder achievement and progress and optimization at any

00:41:31cost yeah and i think that people are feeling a lot of fatigue i've felt that for a while

00:41:35and you know if i go back and look at what i was talking about two years ago 18 months ago a lot of

00:41:43that was i'm going to try and feel my feelings a little bit more i'm going to try and see if there's

00:41:46something a little bit deeper i'm going to have a little bit more fun i'm not going to optimize for

00:41:49outcomes at the expense of experience and that has really come to a head i think for a lot of

00:41:55people i think it's worsened by ai i think that if you can have a oracle in your pocket which you

00:42:00always had but now an oracle that speaks to you personally and knows exactly everything that you

00:42:04need and kind of gives you this very curated idiosyncratic customized version of what it is

00:42:09that you want in a chat format it's almost as if you're speaking to your best friend that happens to be

00:42:12god people have got information overload and what i don't think that they necessarily need more of

00:42:21is just getting like you have foie gras made yeah

00:42:25just force feeding that high velocity like high density stuff yeah um and i think that at least

00:42:32for me what i'm finding myself enjoying lots of is i took something away from that yeah and i had a

00:42:37good time yeah as opposed to optimizing for you know you think about short form or blinkist or spark

00:42:43notes or you know whatever your favorite book summary service of choice was like what is it that you're

00:42:51doing you're like trying to get to the outcome yeah no you're you're trying to get points on the board

00:42:55you're trying to get points on the board yeah no and and i can't remember we that that was a

00:43:00digression from something from the original that that we uh me saying if significance is about

00:43:05being valuable to others yeah and not about being famous how can people confuse those two oh yeah

00:43:10and so specialness and happiness correct yeah so specialness and happiness is really really

00:43:14interesting because the idea of i mean i will literally hear people say look any loser can have a family

00:43:21you know any loser can have an ordinary job and provide for his wife and kids but not everybody

00:43:28can start a company not everybody can be ceo not everybody can have a famous podcast not everybody

00:43:34can do those things and and in other words they're saying i know what would make me happy and i'm going

00:43:39to forego that happiness for what i think is a as a happiness beyond it which is specialness and that

00:43:47will always lead to ruin it always does i mean again and again and again i talk about my age

00:43:53i've talked about people who are older than me i mean it's like this classic thing it's a

00:43:58friend who is um 25 years older now um an icon in finance an absolute icon of finance and i said

00:44:08when i said how old were you when you figured out you were going to be rich he said 32 he knew when it

00:44:14was 32 years old he said it was like i you know i actually left this bank and i actually went and

00:44:19opened my own firm and and it was starting to make money and and we weren't rich yet but i realized i

00:44:24was going to be rich and i said he must have thought what's it going to be like to be rich what's it going

00:44:27to be like to be rich what's going to happen he said yeah he's not very materialistic guy doesn't have a

00:44:31boat he doesn't have 15 houses he doesn't have any of this stuff he's really really wealthy not scott

00:44:35galloway my doppelganger you know i should go i should i said i said i said to scott the other day

00:44:44because we were doing a thing together and i said you know we should go on tour together with stanley

00:44:48tucci and so no and put each of you under a big red cup that's right that's right it's like you know

00:44:56three card monty or something like that it's like which one do you get which one you got baldy

00:45:03and so i and he said and i said so what did you think when you're when you got rich how life was

00:45:08going to be better how did you really think life was going to be better because this is interesting

00:45:12for me as a behavioral scientist i mean this is this is deep and he thought about for a while he said

00:45:17i thought that when i got rich that my wife would love me really love me and i said so what happened

00:45:26and he said she didn't

00:45:31i just stared at me and it was this moment of pathos right it was this moment that's like this

00:45:38what's pathos this moment of deep understanding and feeling right that and it's almost as if when

00:45:45he he'd never said it before when he articulated it he understood it for the very first time

00:45:50do you think he'd selected a wife that was the sort of person whose love needed to be one of course

00:45:55well of course because you know if you believe that love is earned that you're going to surround

00:45:59yourself with people who make you earn their love yeah every single time you've got cause and effect

00:46:03going on of course i've got this line from an essay i wrote recently what you are praised for in public

00:46:08you will pay for in private nice give me an example uh your psychological resilience you know in the

00:46:15boardroom people call it strength they call it decisiveness assertiveness uh they call it uh

00:46:24anti-fragility yeah but around your kitchen table it makes you put up with a relationship that you

00:46:28should have left long but long ago um it makes you impenetrable to the actual psychological and

00:46:34emotional needs that your spouse needs i had a navy seal sat here uh andy stump and he said i you

00:46:39know i built myself up like my entire career was made out of being a person who doesn't quit

00:46:45all right and that caused me to stay in a marriage that was toxic for 10 years longer than i should have

00:46:49done your strengths or your weaknesses but your weaknesses are your strengths what's that mean

00:46:56you tell me i've fun you've uno reverse carded me on a a limerick that i don't understand but i

00:47:04mean think riddler sat opposite me here yeah i'm a batman villain correct the uh the bald man the baldy the

00:47:12um the um what is your greatest weakness uncertainty uh-huh how did you have you turned that into one

00:47:24of your greatest strengths and what you do paying attention to every different permutation of how

00:47:28things could go to ensure that the plan is in place hypervigilance uh galactically unreasonable

00:47:36attention to detail exactly right what's your next biggest weakness in the similar sort of circuit is

00:47:43that overthinking uh-huh you fear failure right fear you fear shame fear shame more than failure how

00:47:52does your fear of shame and like i'm not i'm not divulging anything to our friends no one's no one's

00:47:58surprised yeah no one's surprised here it's nothing that i haven't said on stage in front of thousands

00:48:03of people with tears in my eyes it's like the shame faced boy part of the program yeah exactly yeah um

00:48:09so so how does she has a fear of shame which by the way is very common for for working working hard

00:48:14enough so that you don't have to feel it yeah you know overachieving yeah outstripping what anybody

00:48:19thought yeah to this the point where nobody could ever think that it would be something shameful right

00:48:25but it does cause you again what you what you are praised for in public you pay for in private it means

00:48:29that you have um opening up about how you feel especially about weaknesses and vulnerabilities

00:48:35that's hard it's hard to do because you go well i'm supposed to have it all together the reason that

00:48:41the world gave me the love that it gave me is because of look at my competence and here it is on display

00:48:46and i'm and then you go i need to i and there's a there's a hole in this armor and i need to show it to

00:48:52somebody uh and i and the map that i have of reality from the real world gets ported across

00:49:02into the relational world yeah and that's very very difficult to that's a a tough thing to what it

00:49:08feels like being batman and robin for a lot of people sorry it feels like being batman and bruce

00:49:12wayne for a lot of people you know it feels like you have one life out there right and then when

00:49:19you come home you can either choose to keep the mask on but taking it off means that you have to start

00:49:25living this double life where you need to not feel the things that you do privately when you're in

00:49:30public and not use the tactics that you have publicly when you're in private right so right and that

00:49:36actually is can be really disconcerting and it can be highly damaging for personal relationships

00:49:39and this is one of the reasons that you find that when people start to get really famous that they're

00:49:43much more at ease in front of a thousand people than they are in front of one person

00:49:47because they actually have to use the different set of social skills they've got the theater ability

00:49:51in front of a thousand people but when they're actually talking to mom or you know an actual no

00:49:56fooling girlfriend life it gets real dicey real fast right is what it comes down to but but what

00:50:02you put your finger on is that look you will pay in private for what you're applauded for in public

00:50:09but you'll also you know what you're paying for in private is the source of your strength in public

00:50:14and that what that means is that you shouldn't just try to you shouldn't just be thankful for

00:50:19what they're applauding you for in public on the contrary you should be down on your knees thankful

00:50:23for the weaknesses that you have as well and that's that's the that's the pro move that's what it

00:50:30comes down to that's actually how we ultimately learn to manage ourselves is that we recognize that

00:50:35we have these frailties that we have these weaknesses that we have these you know feet of clay and we

00:50:41say thank you thank you thank you for that weakness because and indeed that is the source of my

00:50:45strength yeah most of the things that you're most ashamed of are just the dark side of something

00:50:50light that you're really proud of yeah and you know if you've got a sword most swords are double edged

00:50:55and sometimes it nicks you on the backswing yeah that doesn't mean that you throw the sword away

00:50:59yeah just means that you learn how to hold it properly yeah and then the the ace move is being

00:51:03grateful for the wound for the wound itself it's really interesting because actually what you find

00:51:07in a lot of eastern philosophy is that you know we have a tendency to be very stoic about the way we

00:51:11talk about problems and suffering and weakness in our life to say i will bear up under it i will i

00:51:17do accept it i do accept it but it's not enough to accept it you need to love it that's really that

00:51:22that that that ultimately is the is what makes you fully human is to actually love it and to accept

00:51:29it as the divine will this is the way it's going to be and because it's happening that's what i want

00:51:35i my will i want what i want is what is happening sort of axiomatically i realize it's sort of

00:51:41philosophical in its way but ultimately i think this is what we need to get where we need to get in our lives

00:51:46is is recognizing that there are both strengths and weaknesses that we actually have and we should

00:51:50be as grateful for our weaknesses as we are for our strengths you might not believe me but this

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00:52:54modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout i had this idea the parental attribution error like the

00:53:02fundamental attribution error that we are often prepared to especially in the modern world right um

00:53:07um blaming our parents for stuff is basically a rite of passage right in modern psychology and

00:53:12modern therapy culture yeah uh but if we're not prepared to lay our strengths at the feet of our

00:53:16parents then maybe we shouldn't be so quick to call them the villains for what's wrong with us so you

00:53:21know you say that your desire to work hard is because you were never freely given love at home but

00:53:27isn't that also the same thing that's made you so driven and ambitious right you say that your hyper

00:53:32vigilance was brought out because people didn't observe your needs ahead of their own

00:53:37isn't that also the same reason that you're so concerned to ensure that everybody else's welfare

00:53:41is put before yours all of these things are they're not even two sides of the same coin it's just a

00:53:47single piece of metal right this thing exists it's woven throughout it all right right and uh well

00:53:53you're what you're doing is right now you're being very subversive because what you're doing is

00:53:56subverting the culture of grievance and which we've actually you're pretty good at that at this point

00:54:01i've noticed that people got really angry when i when i talked about that yeah you didn't like it well the

00:54:05whole point is that you know the unhappiest people are people who are whose identity it revolves around

00:54:11grievance and victimization and this is by the way one of the ways that people in positions of relative

00:54:17cultural authority and power keep you subjugated the way that i think a baby boomer like me technically

00:54:23in the last year of the baby boom can conscript culture warriors who are gen z into my movement is by

00:54:29convincing their victims and they should be aggrieved about how the world treats them about how older people

00:54:34treat them about how the culture treats it was easier before you so there's no point in trying now yeah

00:54:39well or you should be really mad about it you should be angry about it you should be you know carrying a

00:54:44sign in the streets apply your efforts to complaining about the problem yeah yeah go trash at starbucks

00:54:49yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so it seems like a lot of what you're laying at the feet

00:54:55here the issue is largely technology that that is one of the biggest movers is that a fair

00:55:00that's the tip of the spear it's actually what it is it's a the technology is a manifestation of the way

00:55:04that the culture of engineering has given us this scientism this conceit that every problem is a

00:55:11complicated problem that can be solved as opposed to the most important problems which can't be solved

00:55:16they can only be lived with and understood that a more human approach to what we're talking about

00:55:21is that there are plenty of complicated problems that we can solve but the most important ones are the

00:55:24ones we can't solve and that's what uh properly it's interesting because that's what most of the you know

00:55:29buddhist teachers will say that the the wrong turn of the west was that was the scientism that said

00:55:35that everything is a solvable complicated problem whereas you what we need is a balance between complex

00:55:40and complicated the complex problems of the right hemisphere and the complicated problems of the

00:55:45left hemisphere and they exist in a system and there are many things that we shouldn't try to solve

00:55:50because we can't we should live with them we should understand them we should leave them as permanent

00:55:55mysteries that actually give our life flavor but the truth is that especially over the past 25 years

00:56:02in the era of hyper development of technology that is an expression of the idea that no no we're gonna

00:56:09hit the singularity man we're gonna live forever we're gonna be actually be able to figure out how

00:56:14to upload our brains we're going to be able to solve any problem with whatever app or doodad or or or

00:56:23supplement or whatever it happens to be that we will have the scientific acumen to solve everything

00:56:28that actually is uh is a problem in our lives and that's just axiomatically wrong and how do i know

00:56:35that because we're solving more and more of these problems and we're getting less and less and less

00:56:39happy it's the same kind of thing to say for example if we had enough therapists we wouldn't have any

00:56:44more depression well depression has tripled and the number of therapists has tripled so what's going

00:56:50on here obviously there's a cause and effect problem and a glitch in our logic i wonder if this is part of

00:56:59the reason why people are feeling exhausted they've got personal development fatigue yeah that permanently

00:57:04asking the why question permanently trying to optimize everything becomes exhausting uh the kind of

00:57:12cost that you pay of trying to optimize everything is worse than being under optimized yeah the process

00:57:20of trying to be perfect will kill you more quickly than the imperfections would and yeah all of this

00:57:25together is like dude i got enough on my plate yeah i got enough on my plate do i need more homework

00:57:30right right now as opposed to like oh i'm trying i'm trying i'm i'm trying and i'm trying hard and

00:57:38that's that's pretty good yeah and you know there's nothing wrong with these big why questions

00:57:42the problem is having these big quiet questions and believing that if you watch enough internet

00:57:45videos and take enough supplements that you'll be able to answer these things and this is one of

00:57:49the this is a big generational difference that we actually find so there every philosophical school

00:57:55um of note and of merit has something in the ancient greeks called aporia which is to sit in a state of

00:58:02puzzlement over questions that can't be answered so zen buddhism is based on cohen's cohen's are riddles

00:58:09you know what is the sound of one hand clapping and a strange unanswerable question you're supposed

00:58:14to ponder that and in the pondering you gain a certain kind of complex knowledge which we know

00:58:19is you know the the dominantly processed in the right hemisphere of the brain right a big generational

00:58:26difference is that what's very what's missing for a lot of those lives today is that at night with

00:58:31their friends they're not having these bs philosophical conversations about big questions that can't be

00:58:36answered that was what you did right at 11 30 after you came home from a party with your friends in

00:58:42college in 1985 is it like i don't know dude do you think god exists right it's like wow dude and and

00:58:51and now it's like so we've stopped doing that one thing there's nothing wrong with big why questions

00:58:58the problem is that we only ask either ask questions that can be addressed by google or chat gpt or we

00:59:05believe that if we have enough scientific knowledge that these questions can be answered both of those are

00:59:09a big big wrong turn they're big wrong turn philosophically but they're also in wrong

00:59:13turn neurobiologically weird isn't it because the promise of modern technology culture science being

00:59:21able to answer a lot of questions and fix a lot of the problems that previously were cute infant mortality

00:59:26and cuts on you you know how ignace sammelweis died no bro this is money tell me so guy that

00:59:35discovered discovered the germ theory of disease he finds that child bed fever is being transmitted from

00:59:40corpses to uh newborn babies because the doctors weren't washing their hands in between begs his

00:59:45colleagues to adopt hand washing he gets laughed out of every single institution he's trying to do it to

00:59:51he keeps on talking about it for so long that he drives himself insane everybody thinks that he's

00:59:55insane and his wife helps to commit him to an asylum while he's being removed from his own home by the

01:00:04nurses that are taking him away to the asylum he gets a cut on his leg the cut on his leg is treated by a

01:00:09doctor who doesn't wash his hands after touching a corpse and he dies due to an infection

01:00:16the most yeah like tragically ironic way to die uh but yeah we've got all of these promises that's

01:00:24great by by by the modern world and the problem is no one it's the first time that we've had the oracle

01:00:32right it's the first time that humanity's gone through the wow maybe we could answer everything

01:00:37maybe all of the problems as opposed to some of the problems yeah yeah and um and the all idea is that

01:00:43if we we we dig a little deeper we'll find it we dig a little deeper we'll find it but you're saying

01:00:48that there's a particular category of challenge which is simply unsolvable you're digging like when

01:00:54you're like saying what's the final or something yeah yeah now this is important because this is you

01:00:59know a classic mistake that people make there's a conceit that people have i talked to a guy one time

01:01:04who was a big part of the war on poverty in america which was this idea that we're going to be able to

01:01:09wipe out poverty with social programs with social welfare service and it did a lot i mean social welfare

01:01:14programs did a lot to lower caloric needs and and make sure there's more public access to education and

01:01:20all kinds of good stuff but the truth of the matter is that after a certain point it starts to wire in

01:01:25pathologies actually it makes it harder for people to actually become independent etc because they

01:01:30become reliant on the money that's the idea yeah that's that's the whole idea of of this and certainly

01:01:35not true for everybody but it's certainly true for other people and and i asked him who is one of the

01:01:41architects in this war on poverty what would have made it that would truly have won you really wiped out

01:01:46poverty once and for all and he said just a little more money but that's what a lot of people in the

01:01:53valley think today is that we're going to get it out for that that these are some of the world we just

01:01:58need to go deeper we need to go deeper i mean you saw the the test uh experiments with ubi from a

01:02:05couple of years ago they failed both of them failed they failed failed massively yeah why now tell

01:02:10me don't tell us let's say why what do they do you remember not fully i mean i know that people they

01:02:17looked at the discretionary spend they looked at where people were putting money away they looked

01:02:21at how much of it was being spent on things that people said they needed to prioritize stuff like

01:02:24healthcare it wasn't going on healthcare what the quality of the food wasn't increasing it wasn't

01:02:29going to education yes the whole point is that if it went toward human capital development if it went

01:02:34toward what my parents would have put it into right um it would have been great it would have been a

01:02:40fabulous thing and the whole thing is just based on this idea that everybody has the same values

01:02:45that everybody has the same priorities which they don't and it wasn't a question of money

01:02:49furthermore when you actually give people for nothing you strip away their sense of earned success and

01:02:54earned success is part of this idea of satisfaction it gets into this idea of progress it gets into the

01:02:59wiring of homo sapiens that's what it comes down to it it denies the primacy and respect due to human

01:03:06evolutionary biology which i know is something you love right me too right because it explains so much

01:03:11of the odd behavior that people have and so every time that we try to reorder the way that human

01:03:16beings are wired evolutionarily with some utopian idea that we've got this technology we've got this

01:03:23economic policy we've got i got i got i've got this new idea for how the how the genders are going to

01:03:28behave toward each other yeah no from now on we're no longer going to be like people were 50 000 years

01:03:34ago it's gonna fail it's gonna fail and we you need to you need to go with the street the current

01:03:41you need to actually swim with the current or you're ultimately going to fail is what it turns out

01:03:47getting back to the technology thing how do you interrupt this doom loop that everyone's on so the

01:03:52doom loop is that i'm you know i don't want to be bored um because i don't like boredom because it's boring

01:03:58right and so i distract myself and when i distract myself what i do is i become less tolerant of

01:04:03boredom my life feels less meaningful because i'm actually illuminating the parts of the brain that

01:04:09are necessary for that and so i'm more at loose ends and so i spend more time online more time

01:04:15scrolling more time you know doing what people do when they're when they're really bored and that makes

01:04:20the problem worse much the same way with drugs and alcohol you know and that's how escalation and

01:04:25dependence actually works um the two biggest predictors of alcoholism are anxiety and boredom

01:04:31and so when i'm anxious and bored i drink well that makes boredom and anxiety worse the next day and so

01:04:36i drink some more and then down and down and down and down it goes and so what you have to you're in a

01:04:40doom loop any addictive process is a doom loop the same thing is true with the way that we use technology

01:04:45the same way as true you know anything any which is totally hidden under the radar by the way completely

01:04:51you know and you most people despite the fact that alcohol is having a resurgence only after it was

01:04:55recently sort of stripped away uh um most people understand i i i i'm i'm doing this and i didn't

01:05:04used to do this and when i do this i keep it seems to be ratcheting up i'm drinking more than i used to

01:05:09i'm i'm that's probably not good well depends on how much you drink it might be good well i mean if

01:05:15you're getting to five six seven drinks a night i don't that's a big problem yeah but how many times

01:05:20does that entropy start to build yeah because your tolerance you're chasing you're not chasing having

01:05:25the drink you're chasing the sensation of the drink yeah and your tolerance i yeah exactly i'll drink

01:05:29that's a doom loop i'll drink 10 20 times a year maybe at most now and that means half a corona in

01:05:37i'm like it's nice yeah it's like being 14 again yeah you know that's cool uh but i can put away a

01:05:43half rack at 14 i don't know that's true yeah yeah uh the problem with using your phone in this way is

01:05:49it's a completely socially acceptable under the radar nobody is ever going to say no one's ever going to

01:05:54come over how many times like someone will make a joke about dude you're on your phone a lot tonight

01:05:58it's pretty different to dude you're pissed again and it's five nights in a row yeah like that's

01:06:03different yeah right it's much more obvious the gambling thing the porn thing these kinds of

01:06:09compulsions these kinds of habits are significantly more obviously destructive right than using your

01:06:14phone is and then while i'm doing it i can feel myself internally rolling my own eyes that yes okay

01:06:19too much time on the phone is too much you know what i mean i know and there are other by the way

01:06:23there's a whole spectrum of these things of these dependencies that are all involving the the you

01:06:27know the dopamine cycle in your brain some of which are not just sort of neutral and hidden

01:06:31like the phone some of which are are applauded you know if you're a workaholic nobody will say i mean

01:06:37if like if you're a pathetic alcoholic nobody will say it's like chris you were off you drank

01:06:43you know you drank 750 milliliters of gin last night i saw you put that congratulations you're

01:06:49excellent right they're going to say you got some problems i mean i think you got to get that looked at right

01:06:54but if you work 16 hours a day and neglect your family you're going to get a promotion and a raise

01:06:59you're going to get rewarded for that so there's some addictions that that you know people actually

01:07:03love because it works in their favor it enriches them and it actually leads to the world's rewards

01:07:08which people admire yep so the point is that we have a responsibility to look after ourselves look

01:07:15after the pathologies that are actually in inherent in our behavior and to see is it actually making my life

01:07:21better or is it making my life worse notwithstanding the reaction of the rest of the world what does

01:07:26fixing the doom loop look like what is fixing it means clipping it i mean it's cutting it in a

01:07:30particular place so um all addictions getting out of addictions they have sort of three steps in

01:07:36common it's it's really behaviorally they have three steps in common now i'm not talking medically

01:07:41i'm not talking about the medical interventions because that's different for different things with

01:07:44gambling and drinking and methamphetamine whatever but the three behavioral steps and getting out of an

01:07:49addiction or number one you got to get pissed you gotta get pissed that's like this is subjugating

01:07:55me this is i'm in a cage and i'm tired of it i'm tired of actually being a wholly owned subsidiary of

01:08:01that company or this behavior or this culture i'm tired of it i'm not going to put up with it you need

01:08:06to fight back by rebelling that's number one you need the spirit of rebellion if you're not ready to

01:08:10rebel you're not going to get out number two is you need to figure out how to stop you need to actually have

01:08:16an algorithm and that's dependent on what the substance or behavior actually is there are

01:08:21different ways to do it but there's tons of science in every area if you can get addicted to it there's

01:08:25science that tells you how to stop and then the third is you have to learn how to live with yourself

01:08:30again because you've been distracting yourself from yourself if you're addicted to something it means

01:08:35you didn't like being home in your head that's what it comes down to and you know if like i haven't

01:08:40having a drink since i was 38 years old right and i remember in my 30s i didn't like being home in my

01:08:45head didn't like it didn't want to be there right and so i left right i got a little relief a little

01:08:51vacation in the bottle and it just it was going nowhere good and it was really clear and then my dad

01:08:57died and and and you know a couple of people i cared about said this that's your future you just saw your

01:09:04future right and so i stopped but it was the hard part was step three the hard part was actually being

01:09:12alone with myself being awake with myself being alive with myself is what it comes down to and

01:09:16that's probably even more extreme for people who are very very online because you're trying to break

01:09:21the doom loop of that technology is breaking your brain not letting you find the meaning of your life

01:09:27making you angry and depressed and anxious and lonely you're addicted which is why you keep doing these

01:09:33self-terrible self-destructive things to yourself you first you get pissed and second you got to quit

01:09:37and look i got the algorithms to help you do that but then man you need new friends like you know you

01:09:43need you need to live in a society you need to live you know in people who are alive in real life

01:09:49and you have to be able to sit behind the wheel of your car at a red light with nothing to do in your

01:09:58thoughts right and being a supermarket checkout line without your phone and and walk before dawn

01:10:07without a device and hear the crunch of the gravel under your feet and say that's the sound of my feet

01:10:14on the path and that takes work how easy is it to recover from this i think a lot of people feel

01:10:22like they're lost and totally unrecoverable it's absolutely possible i've seen it again and again

01:10:28and again and again i mean look this is this this is not heroin that we're talking about here i mean

01:10:34the the process of detox for example isn't you don't even have to give up your phone you just have to

01:10:39put it in proper boundaries and have some rules in your life right and actually have some proper habits

01:10:44and you know where our life is if you have a fairly functional life you've got good habits already

01:10:48right i mean you get up at a certain time you work out every day you you eat something you don't eat

01:10:52like an 11 year old i mean you have good habits and then you just put protocols around it you know

01:10:58it's like huberman talks about protocols and which has kind of affected the culture it's a culture of

01:11:02protocols um and and i'm an absolute believer in that when it comes to your phone i mean you you wake

01:11:08up in the morning if you can don't look at it at all for the first hour for neurocognitive programming

01:11:12if you're a journalist or you know you have your job you got to look at it make sure nothing's on fire

01:11:16to put it down that's it for the hour right first hour of the day while you eat neurocognitive

01:11:22programming while you eat is critically important is best not to eat alone and never eat with your

01:11:27device why brain is actually your the the neuropeptides in your brain most notably oxytocin

01:11:33uh they flow very liberally when you're eating with somebody this is how you know homo sapiens would

01:11:38establish and foster kin bonds is by sitting around a campfire putting pieces of yak meat into their

01:11:44mouths discussing their day and looking into each other's eyes that's how we're wired if you have

01:11:49a phone on the table while you eat or god forbid if you're looking at it there's no none of this

01:11:54neurochemistry happens what if you're on your own then um you might read a book you might listen to music

01:12:01but don't look at your phone there's a meme online of uh guy starves to death even though he had food

01:12:07because he couldn't watch youtube yeah because his phone had run out or it's like or died of sepsis

01:12:12because he didn't go to the bathroom yeah yeah he couldn't take his phone in there so and last but

01:12:17at least at the last hour of the day now that part of that is sleep architecture and blue light etc

01:12:21etc the pineal gland melatonin yada yada we all know the physiology of that but part of that is just

01:12:27the way that you actually understand yourself at the end of your day and get ready to rest if you're

01:12:32living with your partner that's critically important to your relationship is not to be

01:12:36looking at your device in the last hour so you can be fully present as you drift off to sleep together

01:12:41that's super super important for your relationship but just those three things

01:12:45then there's phone free zones you shouldn't have your phone in the bedroom ever ever ever ever

01:12:50because i mean god forbid you get up to pee at three o'clock in the morning and look at

01:12:54your phone that's a big mistake well i mean it's it's your pineal gland shuts off right no more

01:13:00melatonin for you and and so which is problematic on its face but it's also you just you you spike your

01:13:07cortisol i mean it's bad stuff happens to you so the phone should be in a different floor in a closet

01:13:13plugged in someplace from an hour before you go to bed until you after an hour after you get up that's

01:13:19number one it's a phone free zone second is that i mean this is just you know basic public policy there

01:13:24shouldn't be a a phone in any classroom in any school in the world between kindergarten and phd

01:13:31it is complete insanity because it interrupts everything that we're actually trying to do and

01:13:36it's it's child abuse that there's phones in classrooms you know and and the most important

01:13:41hour they shouldn't have phones is during lunch by the way because they need to it's even worse it's

01:13:47even more it shouldn't be in a classroom it definitely shouldn't be in a cafeteria i mean

01:13:49most of what's going on in the classroom is not interesting to begin with i mean i don't think

01:13:53i ever learned anything in public school i think it was mostly babysitting but but you know at least

01:13:57i had friends and and and they don't have friends and then and then people need phone fasts they need

01:14:04technology fasts i recommend 96 hours a year is kind of where this is and there's a little bit of

01:14:09research on this that shows that this actually can break the relationship that you have so you prove to

01:14:14yourself that you actually don't need it and you're kind of in a state of bliss by the fourth day

01:14:18you know it's really i mean i go on a spiritual retreat every year for four days no phone oh

01:14:23it's great first day it's like children screaming in my head yeah second day i'm calming down for a

01:14:27third day i like it the fourth day i wish it were the whole year that's what it comes down to but just

01:14:32those things phone free times phone free zones phone fasts can rear can can can can do this part two

01:14:40this does not give you part one which is rebellion or part three which is you got to get comfortable

01:14:47back with yourself different processes how important is romantic love to meaning that's one of the best

01:14:54ways you can turn on the right hemisphere of your brain because that's something you will never solve

01:14:59how do i know that because if we could have solved algorithmically romantic love we wouldn't still have

01:15:07app developers that were trying to make the ultimate dating app the dating apps are fundamentally a left

01:15:13brain solution to a right brain problem right now they're getting better but the way that they're

01:15:18getting better is by figuring out ways to add more human friction into the algorithm as opposed to taking

01:15:24human friction out of the algorithm so for example you're finding early experiments which suggest

01:15:30that a good way for you to find your matches on an app is to have your matches some of your app

01:15:35matches go to your best friend and have your friend decide which ones you're going to go out with

01:15:41because you're adding a right brain into the mix yeah you're adding your friends right brain the mix

01:15:45for example or having a whole bunch of potential people in a group that will actually meet in a

01:15:51mixture you know that's a good way to do it yeah uh-huh and then pair up if it's meant to be

01:15:59or make friends if it's not and so that that's that those are ways that we actually do that but the

01:16:03point the point of the matter is that the human brain um is is highly attuned toward this incredibly

01:16:10complex indescribable experience of falling in love that's one of the reasons that all country and western

01:16:16songs are about romantic love that's the reason that the greatest poetry is about romantic love because

01:16:20it's not described scientifically it's described artistically because it's a right hemispheric

01:16:26experience so you want to you want to turn on the meaning in your life go get your heart broken

01:16:31i mean go take a risk i mean that's that's when you find the meaning of your life right i mean when

01:16:36you've had your heart broken that's horrible and that's hard but that's meaning rich that's when you

01:16:42ask all those big questions you're definitely alive you'll learn a lot about yourself you learn a lot

01:16:47about yourself right unless you stay drunk what's the ladder of love so dio team of mantinea was this

01:16:55prophetess that socrates sought out so socrates sought out the the dio team of mantinea um and and and

01:17:03she described to him that the way to find the meaning of life starts with this ladder and each rung of the

01:17:07ladder gets you closer to the meaning of life and the first rung of the ladder is falling in love

01:17:13the first rung of the ladder is actually attraction toward the beautiful other romantic attraction not

01:17:19just like you know chris is awesome he's so smart he's got such a great show it's such great conversation

01:17:23such a good friend thank you but it's it's like that spark that you can't quite understand no actually

01:17:30we do understand neurochemically what's happening when you're falling in love we know how the sex hormones

01:17:35start and then we get the the catecholamines actually involved along the way and then we get

01:17:39a really dramatic drop in serotonin and then we get the neuropeptides and in the sequence we know when

01:17:45the sequence is off between two people is why they don't that's why they don't actually succeed in a

01:17:49relationship there's all kinds of really fascinating neuroscience of falling in love but it's still a

01:17:55mystery i tell you that the neuroscientists who are doing this cutting edge research they can fall

01:18:00hard in love just like anybody else like i'm like i don't know what happened i don't know what happened

01:18:05yes you do you wrote that paper right but still i mean it's like i i i teach this stuff to my students

01:18:12at the harvard business school about the the neuroscience of falling in love but i don't

01:18:18understand this relationship with my wife i just love her you know i just it's like okay yeah a lot of

01:18:25oxytocin and vasopressin and you know and there's some amount of dopamine and and and norepinephrine

01:18:29involved and and there are drops of serotonin when you're fighting and you know that's not it it's

01:18:36because it's this deep metaphysical experience most religions believe as montanae of of of diotima

01:18:44socrates as prophetess suggested that romantic love is the beginning of an antenna to the divine

01:18:50that and and most religions believe that if you're in a serious marriage and you deny your spouse love

01:18:57you're denying your spouse god's love that's how right-brained and complex this actually is

01:19:03just because you can explain how gravity works doesn't mean that you're not going to hit the

01:19:09ground if you jump out of a skyscraper you can understand it plenty wall yeah yeah still at the

01:19:15mercy of these things there's that uh interview that sam did with daniel kahneman mr thinking fast

01:19:21and slow nobel prize winner after many many decades of studying the fallacies of the human mind and

01:19:29mental models and all of the different ways that our rationality goes awry has it made you any more

01:19:33rational yeah it's not really not really i know no it's interesting too you know and and sam and i

01:19:39i've had one conversation um more or less along these lines he's the most soulful atheist i've ever met

01:19:43yeah he really is he's a soulful guy i really have he'd be a great believer apart from the lack of

01:19:48belief but that's the point because his soulfulness would seem might seem on the outside to to

01:19:56contradict his his uber rationality as an atheist but it doesn't because these things coexist these

01:20:02things can reside next to each other and because sam's brain has two hemispheres to it so does mine

01:20:07so does all of ours most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance

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01:20:56drink lmnt.com modern wisdom that's drink lmnt.com slash modern wisdom do you think people think

01:21:04enough about transcendence no i don't and transcendence is important because it once again

01:21:11it contradicts mother nature's tyranny so mother nature wants you in the psychodrama of your utter

01:21:18stultifying christmas from moment to moment to moment my job my flights are late you know my

01:21:25podcast guest you know it might be good i got to prepare for that thing and my stomach is rumbling

01:21:30i forgot to eat lunch and uh oh yeah the payment didn't come in for that thing it's so boring but

01:21:36mother nature wants you to be the star of that psychodrama all day long in your head that's what

01:21:41william james called the me self the me self it's looking at yourself and thinking about yourself all

01:21:46day long and you need that for self-reference to make your way in the world if you don't understand

01:21:50what you're doing you're going to be a pretty bad driver you're going to be in a traffic accident

01:21:54pretty quickly but there's also the i self which is looking out of the world which is transcending

01:22:00yourself by looking at out at the world in which you're one player but you're only one player

01:22:06in it and it's interesting because transcendent experiences are those where the me self disappears

01:22:12and the i self becomes dominant there are times actually when when they become confused and that's

01:22:19kind of what a fugue state is psychologically where the where you become disassociated with yourself

01:22:25in this weird way and you all of us have experienced this i remember one time um i had a lot on my mind

01:22:31and i was putting gas in my car and i was just like really worried about something back when i was a

01:22:35ceo and my life was like a living like dystopian hellhole right and everything was a problem every

01:22:41single day and i was putting gas in my car and it was like eight o'clock at night and and i and i

01:22:44finished and and i got back in my car i was driving my daughter was with me in the car and she was a

01:22:50little girl then and there's this like weird clanking sound behind me like somebody had a muffler down

01:22:56right behind me like they were following me and i said honey what is that sound she said i don't know

01:23:01it's like clankity clankity clankity clank is they following me what's going on

01:23:04until people started pointing to me at my car and i realized that i had driven away with the hose

01:23:14in my gas tank and i pulled it out of the gas pump and i was dragging it behind me

01:23:19the whole mechanism behind me clankity clankity clank right and so i thought somebody else was

01:23:25doing a thing that i had actually done i'd confused the me self and the i self i was in this like weird

01:23:30fugue state it got real real fast when i took it back to the gas station these four iranian dudes

01:23:36were standing around the gas pump really mad like who destroyed our pump i also found out how much it

01:23:42cost to fix a gas pump it's expensive but the whole point is that that what we want is not to get into a

01:23:48fugue state we want to have these experiences where we can be in the i self where we can stand in awe we

01:23:53can get outside ourselves which is religious experiences and that's spiritual experiences and

01:24:00philosophical experiences and and experiences of service and love toward other people unbidden by any

01:24:07self-interest and that's where life gets really interesting and beautiful and when you do that

01:24:11when you truly are in a transcendent state that's when you're in the right hemisphere of your brain and

01:24:16you don't find meaning meaning finds you which is why i'll often recommend to people it's like i don't

01:24:22know how do i find the meaning of your life go volunteer go volunteer go pray i'm not religious i

01:24:27don't care it's not what i said go pray why because when you do that you will induce a state in your

01:24:33brain and you'll want to do it more what is it that people are missing what why is transcendence so rare

01:24:43without engineering it in that way at least in the modern world yeah it's it's especially true in

01:24:47the modern world that it's rare because the modern world is a big mirror it's a big me self that's

01:24:54especially true in online online you're looking in a mirror constantly because you're looking not in

01:25:00the at the the dialogue you're having with other people looking at them what you're doing is that

01:25:06you're it's think about it as the zoom problem the problem with zoom when you're in a zoom meeting is

01:25:11you're always looking at yourself in the zoom meeting it's really hard it's a really good idea

01:25:15to turn off your own camera um or at least your own view of your own camera so you can focus on the

01:25:21other people but one of the ways that zoom has has made communication a lot harder for people is

01:25:26because you're always in the me self even when you're trying to be in the i self and this is true

01:25:30certainly with social media as well you're looking at your likes and your mentions and how did people

01:25:34interact with what i was doing and it's this one big virtual mirror of everything that we're doing

01:25:39it's become very it's induced narcissism where it wouldn't have existed otherwise which is incredibly

01:25:45misery provoking because it it it kills meaning in the crib from the very beginning you can't get

01:25:51out of yourself you can't get out of your head and that is increasingly true now it's interesting

01:25:56because people who have experimented with trying to stay in the i self um in in in literature but also

01:26:03just in real life have had these incredible results i had this pt this guy worked on my back my back

01:26:08hurts and so you get to my age your back hurts right and um and he always worked on my back every week

01:26:15great guy unbelievable i mean just like talented full of love you know and uh and i said how did you

01:26:22get these skills i mean is this did you were you always a physical therapist acupuncture he said no no

01:26:27no i used to be a i used to be a fitness influencer i'm like dude tell me more i gotta know tell me more

01:26:33that yeah you know i basically took off my shirt on instagram it was kind of sold supplements and

01:26:37it was all about the abs and and and and i said how was that he said it was the worst it was the

01:26:43worst i didn't eat what i wanted for 10 years i was so miserable i didn't have any normal relationships

01:26:48at all i couldn't have any functional relationships with women because i'd be so jealous about the fact

01:26:53that i'm showing my body off for other people i'd be looking at my i'd be i got to get a photographer

01:26:57because this guy doesn't understand the shadows and he said it was horrible and i was miserable i was

01:27:02sad and i didn't know what to do and so he said i finally i gave up i deleted all my accounts i i

01:27:08enrolled in acupuncture school but here's the most important part he said i got rid of all of the

01:27:15mirrors in my apartment every single one of them and i showered in the dark for a year so i couldn't see

01:27:21my abs and then i finally was free and he's happy most people i think look to their work for something

01:27:32that's supposed to be transcendent yeah uh calling yeah what do you think people what do you think

01:27:39people think they're talking about when they talk about finding your calling yeah they think it's

01:27:44going to be the thing that well i mean there's kind of two versions of it the the two graduation speeches

01:27:49you know graduation speech number one is go find a job that that you love and that's fun and you'll

01:27:56never work a day in your life now that speech is being given by a cardboard box magnet who's so

01:28:03severely workaholic that he's had three heart attacks and two divorces by the age of 40.

01:28:07right so don't believe it right or the second speech is go save the world no pressure you know

01:28:14it's like i well my generation wrecked the world go save the world you know that's uh that's the

01:28:19second speech that's both of those are wrong fundamentally your calling generally speaking

01:28:25finds you as the thing that you can't stop thinking about is the most interesting thing right it's not

01:28:30the thing that you think i'm going to be the savior and be the great messiah and it's not the most fun

01:28:34thing necessarily the thing that's most interesting to you is often not that fun actually a lot of the

01:28:41time it's actually not that fun it's just something you can't get out of your head it's something you

01:28:45feel you really need to do second the goal is creating value with your life is earning your success

01:28:52is being rewarded for something that you do well where you create real value with your hard work and

01:28:57and and personal motivation and more importantly where you're serving somebody where somebody needs you

01:29:02that's what it comes down to are you earning your success not only really are you recognized and

01:29:07acknowledged for real value that you're creating not kissing up to the boss and not because

01:29:13somebody's trying to be nice to you no no no you're really creating value and does somebody actually

01:29:18need you that's what it comes down to that's your calling how do you know or how does somebody

01:29:22know when they're chasing status instead of their calling instead of meaning mostly people deep down

01:29:31know because what it comes down to is when you're creating true value and people need you then you

01:29:37can it i mean you can sort of imperfectly measure that with respect to status but you actually know

01:29:43when there's true value behind it most people have an innate sense of that a strong innate sense of that

01:29:49and i've interviewed a lot of people about this you know i talked to a guy um who builds homes home

01:29:55builder right he had a uh he got his master's degree in um and biochemistry from mit and he was going

01:30:03on to get his phd and his parents really really wanted him to be a scientist as the whole thing

01:30:08but he recognized that he he his he only felt truly alive he was only truly interested when he was

01:30:16building stuff that's what it came down to and he became a home builder as a result of that so it's

01:30:20really really important to listen to what your heart is telling you about this status is a very

01:30:26very bad barometer a lot of people are using status or using fame or power or money because they don't

01:30:32want to look at the truth they don't want it's like looking into the sun of something and a lot of

01:30:37people make big mistakes for a long time as a result of that like they're doing something they don't

01:30:43that's not their calling and that burns them out i don't like it but they should like it it's paying

01:30:49so much they should like it they got so many followers for pete's sake but they're unhappy

01:30:55that's what people need to be paying attention to look if you're doing something that's highly

01:30:59rewarding but you're unhappy it's not your calling

01:31:01i wonder how many people sit in that bucket what proportion i meet a lot i meet a lot look i teach

01:31:09at a big business school i meet a lot of people who honestly think that they go into business school

01:31:16thinking um i will i will find my calling because it's going to be something that's going to pay me

01:31:23so well which means i'm so good at this thing that it's got to be my calling no no no no no no on the

01:31:28contrary look i i walked away from a career in classical music when i was 31 years old um i could

01:31:34have done it for the rest of my life right it wasn't my calling i'd done it since i was eight

01:31:40i'd been doing it since i was a little boy right but it wasn't my calling and and i made a living and

01:31:47i made some records and i was so unhappy it wasn't my calling i'd spent many years on it i spent decades on

01:31:56it as a matter of fact but there was no choice but to walk away because it wasn't my calling

01:32:02what about the fear that comes up when someone is faced with that realization they've got the inertia

01:32:07the momentum the sunk cost fallacy yeah yeah no no it's no joke it actually requires an unbelievable

01:32:13personal entrepreneurship look entrepreneurship is not about building a business about building your life

01:32:19right great entrepreneurs they change all the time they make all kinds of changes you know what crummy

01:32:25entrepreneurs have in common they have a bad business idea and they chase it until they're broke

01:32:30that's what bad entrepreneurs have in common right good entrepreneurs they try this and it's not quite

01:32:35right and they change and they go from this thing to that thing and they sell when it's time and start

01:32:39a new venture that's what great entrepreneurs have in common if you want to be an entrepreneur in the

01:32:43business of your life you cannot afford the sunk cost fallacy with your own career or your own

01:32:48relationships or your own interests you have to change is what it comes down to now there's a very

01:32:54interesting theory about people who need to change the most the people and and these are called spirals

01:33:01this is the spiral career pattern there's there's four career patterns psychologically there's linears

01:33:06who just kind of go up and up and up and up and up and up and up in their careers and they only change

01:33:10when something is better there are transitories who kind of just skip around all over the place

01:33:15they don't live to work they work to live right that you know i'm going to be a barista that i'm

01:33:20going to run and you know drive a moving van and i fell in love with a girl in san diego so you know

01:33:26there are what's called expert which is like slow and steady yeah it's lifestyle right i have my dad

01:33:32had the same job for 42 years for example and the reason is because it was secure and because uh it

01:33:38was low stress right and that's what he wanted the post office is an expert career path but a lot of

01:33:45people probably disproportionately a lot of people who are watching this show are spirals for every seven

01:33:50to twelve years what they need is to take their career down to the studs and start again and take

01:33:56everything they learned in the last one and funge it into something that's meaningful in the next one

01:34:02but have a new adventure the first turn is hardest for me leaving the french horn and becoming a

01:34:07scientist that was brutal going back and getting a phd when i didn't know what i was doing it was

01:34:13really really really hard right second turn easier third turn easier i'm on my fourth turn right now

01:34:19who knows maybe in 10 years i'll be a circus clown or firefighter or something but the whole point is

01:34:25that that's what it means to live an entrepreneurial life where you're pursuing your calling because

01:34:30you have the agility and the courage to be an entrepreneur in the enterprise in the business of

01:34:34life what about the role of beauty physical beauty any kind of beauty beauty is a transcendent experience

01:34:42so one of the things that a lot of people have observed about the modern technocratic life is it's

01:34:47not beautiful it's bereft of beauty now why is that because stuff that goes on in the left hemisphere

01:34:53of the brain never prioritizes beauty beauty is a right hemispheric experience you know

01:35:00it's it's when people see a beautiful sunset sometimes they'll cry you know when people hear

01:35:06a work of music you know people listen to bach b minor mass and it's like they they weep

01:35:12why and and they can't experience as a matter of fact any time that you become emotional

01:35:17um and you can't quite explain it it means you're having a right hemispheric experience

01:35:21something that moves you weirdly right when some people when they talk about religion they get really

01:35:25choked up some people when they listen to music they get really choked up it's really interesting

01:35:30how this works but those are right hemispheric experiences and disproportionately that's when it comes

01:35:34to beauty so if we have a society that's entirely left hemispheric that's technocratic that's complicated

01:35:42and not complex is not going to be beautiful and that's exactly what we find i mean there's compelling

01:35:47evidence that music is less objectively beautiful than it was in the past newer music is less objectively

01:35:53beautiful than it was in the past i can't really judge that but you know this is what uh this is

01:36:00what we pay you know musicologists to do or something um that moral beauty is harder and harder to find

01:36:08moral beauty is just kindness toward others for no apparent reason you find very little of that on x

01:36:14you know you find very little of that online right um that that natural beauty is harder to find when

01:36:21you're when you're never in nature which is sort of axiomatic but a lot of people will say you

01:36:26know so i got this incredible screensaver of el capitan and yosemite it's like there's

01:36:30the real thing it's gonna blow your mind right and the reason is because it is an entirely different

01:36:36neurobiological uh experience for people when they're actually out in nature if you're behind

01:36:41the screen you're not getting beauty is what it comes down to and so artistic beauty is

01:36:47absent moral beauty is absent natural beauty is absent and the reason is because we're trying to

01:36:53filter everything through the left hemisphere the simulation isn't beautiful if you want to know

01:36:58if you're too much in the left hemisphere of your brain it's whether you ask yourself is there enough

01:37:03beauty in my life and if the answer is no it probably means that you're too far to the left

01:37:08what about if there's not enough suffering yeah that's the hard one i left actually i read about

01:37:14that in this in this book and and uh i left that to the last chapter because i was putting it off

01:37:19i was putting it off um suffering is the ultimate meaning making experience and we've talked about

01:37:25that you know we've talked about heartbreak talk about loss talk about grief um there's a little

01:37:31part of the limbic system called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex that that is really really active

01:37:37when you experience social exclusion when you experience loss it was evolved so that you would be

01:37:43averse to sadness sadness is supposed to be really really painful and you don't want it so people

01:37:50actually they don't suffer so much from sadness they suffer a lot from fear of sadness you know you're

01:37:56trying to avoid sadness which is what motivates a lot of our behaviors most of the things most of the

01:38:02reasons we do what we do is because we're afraid of bad we're afraid of negative emotions but at the

01:38:06same time most people will talk about the most meaningful periods of their lives where at times

01:38:11are the greatest negative emotion in their lives negative emotion brings meaning unless unless we try

01:38:17to eliminate it and this is another wrong turn that we've taken because once again in our our left

01:38:22hemispheric conceit of the complicated world the singularity is one of which we will have eliminated

01:38:28pain eliminated sadness eliminated negative emotionality eliminated negative experiences

01:38:34that's not only impossible it's actually suboptimal it's death for what it means to be fully alive

01:38:40we don't want to be we don't want to suffer but we must suffer

01:38:47strange the things that people want and what they need

01:38:49i know and the fact that those two don't cross over all that much and and mother nature is a

01:38:53wicked tyrant she's kept us alive for generation after generation but animal impulses are not the

01:38:59same thing as moral aspirations it seems like you're saying that enjoyment and satisfaction haven't

01:39:05collapsed no in the same way that meaning has no that's right that's right it's really interesting

01:39:10i mean i didn't know you know when i see a big happiness problem when i when i look at the

01:39:14the depression explosion the anxiety explosion i know that one of the channels of happiness is blocked

01:39:20this is as a diagnostic matter happiness is a combination of enjoyment satisfaction and meaning

01:39:26we've talked about it on the show a couple of times as a matter of fact these are the three

01:39:29macronutrients of happiness you want to be a happy person you need to enjoy your life which back

01:39:33to an early part of the conversation by the way one of the reasons that you're moving from a pure

01:39:40achievement orientation in the show toward one where you're having more fun is because you want to

01:39:44increase enjoyment which many strivers struggle with they don't enjoy their lives very much and

01:39:49they want to enjoy their lives more and they don't know how because they're always trying to put points

01:39:53on the board so that's a different subject i'm going to write a book about how to enjoy your life

01:39:57because i want to figure it out because i need to figure it out before i die so enjoyment which is

01:40:04not pleasure it's pleasure plus people plus memory it's a it's a conscious phenomenon is actually pretty

01:40:12high for most young people satisfaction which is the achievement of worthwhile goals with struggle

01:40:21that's pretty high especially for strivers i mean my mba students at harvard they're real high in

01:40:26satisfaction because they're accomplishing a lot and they're struggling a lot it's meaning that's

01:40:30collapsed and that's the reason that we have this unbelievable happiness crisis unhappiness crisis

01:40:36in our society today have i ever told you my idea about frankl's inverse law oh no tell me

01:40:42victor frankl yeah so there's that famous quote when a man can't find a deep sense of meaning they

01:40:46distract themselves with pleasure yeah right he's arguing lack of meaning causes people to seek

01:40:52temporary relief and superficial pursuits rather than addressing some and this is before scrolling

01:40:56you and existed yeah uh perhaps for many maybe even most people this is a big issue but there is

01:41:01another group who suffer with the opposite problem frankl's inverse law when a man can't find a deep

01:41:06sense of pleasure they distract themselves with meaning nice if ease grace joy and playfulness

01:41:12don't come easily to you one solution is to just ignore moment-to-moment happiness entirely

01:41:16and always pursue hard things you become a world champion at winning the marshmallow test you convince

01:41:20yourself that delayed gratification in perpetuity is noble because you struggle to ever feel grateful

01:41:25the tldr is you prioritize meaning over happiness because happiness doesn't come easily to you

01:41:31yeah i did but you know it's absolutely the encapsulation of the strivers lament

01:41:39you know it's like i can't i can't everybody else is having a great time and i can't feel it i don't

01:41:46you know they're out dancing and they're out of cl i mean think about it so you're a club promoter

01:41:49and your heart i'm a french horn player in my heart you're a club promoter in your heart right

01:41:53and everybody's having a great old time you're like no no this is my business go and enjoy yourself i'm

01:42:00gonna suffer over here i think in a real way and the meaning part is quite right but i think ordinarily

01:42:05strivers are addicts for satisfaction from achievement and so they will put points on the

01:42:11board and when they can't feel they can't feel enjoyment and so they put points on the board and

01:42:17and part of the reason is because they've actually never they've never learned how to do it they've

01:42:21actually never learned how to do that so enjoyment once again is is it takes has the at its root

01:42:28things that actually make you feel good but that's not the right you know feeling good just pleasure is

01:42:32a terrible goal i mean the the the the end of the road for pleasure is not happiness it's it's detox

01:42:38right because you that's just addiction is what it comes down to if it feels good do it was the hippie

01:42:42motto and it didn't end well right um so so that's so that's important that that you add people in

01:42:51memory to it so it's a conscious experience it's in the prefrontal cortex not just in the limbic system

01:42:56but it's not apparent for everybody how to do that especially if you're brought up in this way where

01:43:01i got to do more i got to do more i got to do more because what happens is that this idea that you're

01:43:05stopping and smelling the roses feels like a waste of time maybe you have parents who say that are you

01:43:11practicing i remember that they would yell through the door practice i was practicing five hours a day

01:43:16when i was in fifth grade and and and so then the whole idea of stopping and going and having fun

01:43:22feels like you feel kind of guilty about it and so you're you're frankly just bad at it and you don't

01:43:29like to do things you're bad at you don't learn how to i mean my wife is really good at enjoyment

01:43:33really she just really enjoys life she's spanish i mean that's like it's a it's a whole country of people

01:43:39who enjoy life right and in the states we're a little bit less good at it and i'm especially bad

01:43:45at it so part of that actually one of the one of the the protocols for helping people like you

01:43:54and me is understanding leisure and actually having a structured disciplined approach to leisure

01:44:00is actually take it if you don't know how to do it take it seriously you need to work hard at not

01:44:04working so hard but but it turns out there's a philosopher who specializes in understanding

01:44:09leisure and that's joseph peeper who wrote leisure the basis of culture have you read it oh it's great

01:44:14it's a little thin book that he wrote he's one of the greatest you know 20th century german

01:44:18philosophers untainted by nazism thank god and he wrote you know the four cardinal virtues he wrote

01:44:23these really beautiful books but his his probably his most influential book was leisure the basis of

01:44:28culture where he defined culture as a serious business it's not chilling on a beach which is called

01:44:33acedia also known as laziness or torpor you know it's like i can do that for like an hour and then you

01:44:39don't want to run away screaming it's the worst he says that leisure is something that you're not being

01:44:45compensated for by the outside world but that's creating value that's leisure and that's what will bring

01:44:51you enjoyment he talks about in terms of deepening your spiritual or philosophical life deepening

01:44:56your relationships and learning things you don't need to learn just learning things you don't need

01:45:01to learn so when you think about what you're doing podcast right you're deepening relationships you're

01:45:06talking about things you don't need to talk about right you're doing people would say yeah i'm not

01:45:12sure you know i'm not sure i would fit into this table but that's leisure because you want enjoyment

01:45:18i have a friend who was given a exercise by a coach he was told that he needed to start doing a hobby

01:45:27but he wasn't allowed to try and get better at it yeah and he decided to take up watercolor painting i

01:45:34think and did the first few classes or sessions or whatever and immediately found himself going to

01:45:40youtube to find out what exactly the best kind of paintbrush was to do the thing and i'm going to find

01:45:44actually what's the best class in austin that can do it because i can get better if i can do this

01:45:47and what's the cadence do i need to be doing it three times a week in order to maximize my way i am

01:45:51it's going to be struggling it's going to be difficult but three times a week because i got

01:45:53the name and uh turned into a job coach sure came in and said i i i i no you're not allowed to try

01:45:59and become better at this thing yeah doing it like telically yeah not exotally it should be atelically

01:46:08atelically so that that's that you know and and it's interesting because aristotle talks about

01:46:13that with people that real friendship is based or is a telic you know it's the same idea right

01:46:19so if you have your friends because it's a telic relationship it has a telos it has if they're

01:46:24useful it's not it's kind of deal friends but real friends are a telic they're actually useless it's

01:46:31the same thing with your activities the relationship that you have with uh with the activities in your

01:46:35life if it has a really really strong telos i'm going to get better at it because i don't know yeah you

01:46:40know what i bet i could sell that you'll strip that strip the love out of my my brother and i were both

01:46:46very talented classical musicians he's three years older than me he's a bass player string bass classical

01:46:50string bass i was french horn i had that i was super telic he was a telic he's and he still plays

01:46:56he still plays in community orchestras he's an extremely skilled amateur he loves playing the bass

01:47:02he loves music he loves it so much he doesn't earn a dime from it that's why he loves it

01:47:09let's say that someone feels completely empty right now yeah where should they start what are the most

01:47:14important habits in order to increase the meaning in your life yeah so the things to be the things

01:47:19to be thinking about are along the lines the the sustaining activities that will actually use your

01:47:25brain the way it's supposed to be used so number one is understanding that your emptiness is not some

01:47:30sort of psychological weakness that notwithstanding what anybody's going to tell you there's not

01:47:35something wrong with you on the contrary your brain is working the way your brain works and you're living

01:47:40in the world and it's the malfunctions are not your fault the malfunctions are you're going with

01:47:46kind of the slipstream of the culture the culture is being driven by the technology it's making you work

01:47:52in a way that's completely contrary to your ancestral habitat and that's what's making you feel like

01:47:56garbage that's what it comes down to it's kind of like you're eating meal after meal of twinkies and

01:48:02wondering why your digestion is wonky and weird that's why is what it comes down to what we need

01:48:08to understand then is you need to become aligned you need to have a brain that's properly uh hemispheric

01:48:14that's properly um balanced between the hemispheres of what you're doing which means you need to change

01:48:20your behavior so number one is getting right with technology that's the number one thing that almost

01:48:26everybody today needs to do almost everybody's addicted almost everybody has a dysfunctional relationship

01:48:31with it some more some less me less because i'm older i remember the before times right i mean i

01:48:36could you could throw instagram up in front of me i'm like okay you know good good this is really good

01:48:43for my business you know this is good i can wildly interesting for for you know sharing my ideas with

01:48:49other people right you know clips of you and me talking people really like them and that's great makes

01:48:55me feel great but i'm not going to get i'm not going to scroll for an hour like right but many and the

01:49:01younger you are the more prone you are because you don't remember them four times so actually changing

01:49:07your behavior with respect to it and there's ways to do it that's what i write about then you got to

01:49:12live in a new way you got to live in a new way the first thing i recommend to almost everybody is go get

01:49:17bored go get bored get good good at it right i don't mean like this whole thing where you stare at the

01:49:24front of the seat in front of you for a nine-hour flight of the way to greece raw talking raw talking

01:49:28a flight yeah it's a great expression isn't it yeah yeah it's disturbing but the whole i mean i'm not

01:49:34talking about that i'm talking about actually living moment to moment you know putting your hands in your

01:49:38lap when you're in the on the train looking out the window and saying huh it's a tree you know being

01:49:44fully alive and saying i'm fully alive right now so you know one of the ways to do that is to

01:49:50become more comfortable with you know repetitive prayer or meditative ideas that you would actually

01:49:55bring into your life so you can be more mindful just bring in some of those ideas so you can become

01:49:59more comfortable with your brain working the way it's supposed to which by the way ignites the default

01:50:03mode network in your brain which you know about the set of structures that that allow you to mind wander

01:50:09mind wandering leads to meaning it's just as as as as uh predictably as as night turns to day

01:50:16that's the second thing and then is actually having the experiences that that naturally open up the

01:50:21right hemisphere of your brain that means allowing yourself to actually fall in love and make friends

01:50:27and doing things in real life with other people in relation to other people and taking risks in your

01:50:32relationship it means actually entertaining the idea of something metaphysical beyond yourself the left

01:50:39hemisphere is profoundly physical the right hemisphere is metaphysical it says there is something more

01:50:46and again you don't have to do it my way i'm a catholic i got a mass every day you don't have to do

01:50:49it that way you can do it like sam harris he's super right hemispheric guy right because he has a sense of

01:50:57soulfulness he has a sense of things beyond what we can actually see and touch he believes there are

01:51:04things that we can't see and touch that exist he doesn't think it's god so you know you do transcendence

01:51:10your own way looking for calling how by serving other people and being needed by doing something you

01:51:16know by allowing yourself to be served and loved this is actually how you can find these things looking

01:51:22for beauty actually experiencing more beauty real beauty real beauty not behind the screen it's not

01:51:27there it ain't there man i don't care how long you look at it it's not going to be there that means

01:51:31going someplace in nature listening to music that really sends you i don't know read a poem go to a

01:51:37museum right witness somebody helping other people just for no reason and last but not least is uh lean

01:51:45into your suffering bring it on you know it's like i have this i make my students say my suffering is sacred

01:51:52right and there's a there's a you know do you remember norman vincent peel does that name ring a

01:51:57bell okay he had a very famous self-help book in the 60s called the power of positive thinking

01:52:04that that sound that rings a bell right he was a minister at a protestant church in new york city

01:52:10and he would say every single day when he started the day the psalm this is the day that the lord

01:52:15has made i will rejoice and be glad in it and he would have you you know he was like the gratitude list

01:52:20originator and the whole thing all these good things good things good things list all the good

01:52:24things that are happening in your life list the bad things and say i'm grateful for that too bring it

01:52:28on right say as you wake up in the morning it's like i'm really grateful for the beautiful things

01:52:33that are going to happen this day and i woke up today as i get to see chris it's gonna be great i'm

01:52:37really grateful for that but something's gonna happen today i'm gonna get a phone call or a text or

01:52:41an email that i'm not gonna like bring it on i'm grateful for that too because when i lean into that then i'm

01:52:48gonna be fully alive that's the moment i'm gonna be fully alive and that attitude of non-resistance

01:52:55to pain will actually lower the suffering paradoxically as it raises the meaning in life

01:53:02heck yeah arthur brooks ladies and gentlemen arthur you're awesome i appreciate the heck out of you

01:53:06man thank you where should people go new book what else is going on yeah uh so i'm all about you know

01:53:12looking for the sources of meaning in life and so my my my website arthurbrooks.com actually has all

01:53:18kinds of ways people can interact we have the meaning experience which is the uh a collaboration of

01:53:22people from all over the world on the internet that meet once a month and and and talk about different

01:53:27ways to find the meaning in life and i give a like a an academic lecture and then we have this great

01:53:31discussion so we have all kinds of stuff and many ways to survey and measure where we are in our meaning

01:53:36journey uh many ways to interact with each other it's all at all the website arthurworks.com heck yeah

01:53:42all righty see you next time everyone thank you thank you they're great i mean you're you're the best

01:53:52thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode another one that i know you love it's just here

Key Takeaway

Reclaiming a meaningful life requires balancing the left brain's analytical engineering with the right brain's complex mystery by rejecting digital 'grind slop,' embracing face-to-face human connection, and accepting that the most vital life problems are unsolvable.

Highlights

Modern life is increasingly simulated through algorithms, leading to a profound 'meaning crisis' where 62% of new couples form online rather than through in-person interaction.
Neurologically, excessive screen use shifts human focus from the right hemisphere (complex meaning, mystery) to the left hemisphere (linear execution, engineering, apps).
Clinical depression has tripled and anxiety has doubled since 2008, correlating with the rise of hyper-digital living and the average American checking their phone 205 times daily.
The 'arrival fallacy'—the belief that achieving a specific goal will finally provide lasting worthiness or happiness—is a primary cause of unhappiness for high-achievers.
Meaning relies on three core pillars: coherence (understanding why things happen), purpose (having goals and direction), and significance (feeling that life matters to others).
To counteract simulated life, individuals must establish 'phone-free zones' in bedrooms, adopt technology fasts (96 hours annually), and prioritize face-to-face eye contact to trigger oxytocin bonding.
Meaning cannot be simulated; real connections require three-dimensional, multi-sensory, and unsolvable life experiences rather than compliant, risk-free online interactions.

Timeline

The Simulation of Modern Life

Algorithms dominate human experience, creating a pleasant but hollow simulation that feeds off attention and energy.
Hemispheric lateralization reveals that while the left brain handles 'how-to' execution, the right brain manages 'why' and meaning.
Over-reliance on digital tools forces a left-brain dominance that leaves users lonelier, more anxious, and more depressed.

Modern humans are trapped in an artificial environment similar to 'The Matrix,' where algorithms replace real-world milestones like dating and friendship. By relying on digital simulations, individuals inadvertently starve their right brain, which is the seat of life's mystery and meaning. This leads to the paradox of feeling satisfied in the moment while becoming chronically unsatisfied and lonely over time.

Counterfeit Sources of Meaning

Achievement, virtual friendships, and digital consumption are counterfeit sources of meaning that fail to build lasting consequences.
The brain is biologically wired for in-person, kin-based relationships within small groups of 30 to 50 individuals.
The highest predictor of depression and anxiety is a perceived lack of life meaning.

True meaning stems from real-life achievements and physical interactions that our brains evolved to value over 250,000 years. Digital 'achievements' feel like progress but disappear without consequence, leading to a cycle of constant striving. Because the brain releases bonding hormones like oxytocin during face-to-face eye contact, virtual interactions cannot replicate the neurochemical necessity of human presence.

The Striver’s Curse and the Arrival Fallacy

Highly ambitious individuals often use work, busyness, and screens to anesthetize themselves against internal discomfort.
The arrival fallacy dictates that even after reaching major professional milestones, high-achievers rarely find the anticipated sense of specialness or worthiness.
Mother nature keeps humans in the 'hunt' for survival by hardwiring a false belief that the next goal will finally provide fulfillment.

Many high-achievers have childhoods where love was conditional, leading them to believe that self-worth must be constantly earned. This creates a cycle where they chase success, fame, or money to fill an emotional void. When they eventually reach these heights and fail to feel fundamentally different, the resulting emptiness often leads to addictive behaviors or depression.

Constructing a Meaningful Life

Meaning consists of coherence, purpose, and significance.
Real love is a free gift rather than an earned reward, and surrounding oneself with 'yes men' exacerbates the feeling of emptiness.
Fixing a 'doom loop' requires three steps: getting angry at the status quo, stopping the behavior, and learning to sit alone with oneself.

To cultivate meaning, one must address the 'Why' questions: coherence (why things happen), purpose (having directional goals), and significance (being valuable to others). Breaking free from digital addiction requires deliberate rebellion against the 'grind culture' that rewards self-neglect. Learning to exist without constant stimulation is the key to re-engaging with the right hemisphere's capacity for deep meaning.

Transcendence and Human Flourishing

Transcendence involves moving from the 'me self' (narcissistic reflection) to the 'i self' (outward-looking perspective).
Leisure is a serious, atelic endeavor where one creates value without external compensation, such as building relationships or learning for its own sake.
Suffering is an unavoidable, sacred part of the human experience that, when leaned into, increases meaning.

True meaning is not found but encountered through transcendent experiences—volunteering, prayer, nature, and appreciating beauty. Because the modern world acts as a digital mirror, people often remain stuck in the 'me self,' which induces narcissism and kills meaning. By accepting pain as part of the human condition and prioritizing non-utilitarian leisure, individuals can move beyond the 'doom loop' and live fully alive.

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