Harvard Professor: Why Nothing Feels Real Anymore - Arthur Brooks
CChris Williamson
정신 건강결혼/가정생활AI/미래기술
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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00:15:26slash 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
00:33:49validated form of urithulin a used in human trials it promotes mitophagy which is your body's natural
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
01:20:12which is why for the last five years i've started pretty much every morning with element element
01:20:17is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't this
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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
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