Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil

00:00:00.000 | Narcissism is not arrogance.

00:00:01.800 | Narcissism is the opposite of arrogance.

00:00:04.220 | There is such a deep sense of inadequacy

00:00:08.260 | and incompetence in the self

00:00:10.780 | that the defensive structure around that

00:00:14.060 | becomes dominated by rocket-fueled envy.

00:00:18.420 | The following is a conversation with Paul Conti,

00:00:24.580 | a psychiatrist and a brilliant scholar of human nature.

00:00:28.100 | My friend, Andrew Huberman, told me that Paul and I

00:00:31.500 | absolutely must meet and talk,

00:00:33.620 | not just about the topic of trauma,

00:00:35.540 | which Paul wrote an amazing book about,

00:00:38.300 | but broadly about human nature,

00:00:40.060 | about narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy,

00:00:42.920 | good and evil, hate and love, happiness and envy.

00:00:47.320 | As usual, Andrew was right.

00:00:49.320 | This was a fascinating conversation.

00:00:51.460 | As the old meme goes,

00:00:52.860 | one does not simply doubt the advice of Andrew Huberman.

00:00:56.820 | Allow me to also quickly mention

00:00:58.780 | that I disagree with Paul a bunch in this episode,

00:01:02.220 | as I do in other episodes, even with experts,

00:01:05.220 | in part for fun and in part because I think

00:01:07.940 | the tension of ideas in conversation

00:01:10.060 | is what creates insights and wisdom.

00:01:12.400 | My goal is to always empathize, understand,

00:01:14.400 | and explore ideas of the person sitting across from me.

00:01:17.780 | Disagreement is just one of the ways

00:01:19.640 | I think it's fun to do just that,

00:01:21.740 | as long as I do so from a place of curiosity and compassion.

00:01:27.340 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:01:29.220 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:01:31.040 | in the description.

00:01:32.340 | And now, dear friends, here's Paul Conte.

00:01:35.820 | Do you see psychiatry as fundamentally

00:01:38.900 | a study of the human mind and not just a set of tools

00:01:42.180 | for treating psychological maladies?

00:01:43.860 | Absolutely.

00:01:44.680 | I think psychiatry is our best way

00:01:46.860 | to understand who we are as people.

00:01:49.260 | I mean, it looks at our biology.

00:01:51.140 | How does our brain work?

00:01:52.260 | How does it connect the parts with one another?

00:01:54.680 | How does the chemistry in it work?

00:01:56.400 | It's the very foundational aspects of who we are,

00:01:59.280 | and then it manifests as psychology.

00:02:01.460 | What do we think?

00:02:02.300 | What do we feel?

00:02:03.120 | What are our strivings?

00:02:03.960 | What are our fears?

00:02:05.200 | So, yeah, I think psychiatry provides tools

00:02:08.340 | that we can use to help each other,

00:02:10.700 | but those tools come through it

00:02:12.020 | being a discipline of understanding.

00:02:14.300 | So with every patient you see,

00:02:17.020 | with every mind you explore,

00:02:18.900 | are you picking up a deeper understanding

00:02:20.660 | of the human mind?

00:02:21.560 | I think I'm trying to.

00:02:23.740 | I think we should learn,

00:02:25.200 | should be able to take something away

00:02:27.080 | from everything we do,

00:02:29.000 | every interaction to some small degree.

00:02:31.340 | Every conversation,

00:02:32.560 | it doesn't have to be a patient,

00:02:33.780 | just anywhere, at Starbucks, getting a coffee,

00:02:36.720 | you can learn something from that little experience.

00:02:38.800 | Yeah, even if you just reinforce

00:02:40.420 | sort of gentle kindness and gratitude

00:02:42.960 | and decent human interaction,

00:02:45.680 | there's a reinforcement of that,

00:02:46.900 | that even if we don't take away memories

00:02:48.620 | or lessons, so to speak,

00:02:50.140 | we can reinforce who we choose to be.

00:02:53.300 | So understanding ourselves from those interactions,

00:02:55.620 | not just the general sort of philosophical human mind,

00:02:58.180 | but understanding our own mind,

00:03:01.340 | introspect on how our own mind works.

00:03:05.660 | - Yeah, 'cause everything we understand

00:03:06.900 | about anyone or anything else

00:03:08.940 | is coming through here, right?

00:03:10.300 | So, yeah, we're understanding others,

00:03:13.580 | we're also understanding ourselves.

00:03:15.140 | It's all feeding through us.

00:03:18.180 | - Yeah, but it's a tricky thing

00:03:19.060 | to step away and look at your own mind

00:03:22.240 | and understand that it's just a machine.

00:03:24.680 | You can kind of control the way the machine processes

00:03:27.480 | the external environment

00:03:29.020 | and the way that machine converts

00:03:32.040 | the things it perceives into actual emotions,

00:03:35.040 | like how it interprets the things it perceives.

00:03:38.040 | You just sort of step away and analyze it in that way

00:03:41.180 | and then you can control it.

00:03:42.480 | You can oil the machine,

00:03:44.620 | you can control how it actually interprets the perceptions

00:03:47.400 | in order to generate positive emotions

00:03:49.680 | and be like a, what is it,

00:03:51.040 | like a mechanic for the gears in the machine.

00:03:55.680 | - I mean, I think to some degree, to some degree,

00:03:57.600 | but the difference, I think,

00:03:59.680 | at least as I understand,

00:04:01.700 | I think of machines as not being inscrutable, right?

00:04:05.140 | That if there's enough study,

00:04:07.800 | there's enough acumen applied

00:04:09.980 | that we can understand whatever it is

00:04:12.480 | we're trying to figure out,

00:04:13.800 | whereas part of understanding ourselves

00:04:16.480 | is understanding that there are things we can't understand.

00:04:19.640 | And I think that's indispensably important

00:04:24.400 | to health and happiness

00:04:25.480 | and also to having enough humility

00:04:28.540 | to see how people can be different from us,

00:04:31.240 | how we can be different from ourselves at times.

00:04:34.240 | So knowing that we don't know a lot

00:04:37.760 | and having some idea of what that might be,

00:04:40.120 | I think is an indispensable part of the process,

00:04:43.120 | which I think is different from machines, I think.

00:04:46.040 | - Yeah, the machines, you're basically saying

00:04:48.000 | machines generally, because they're engineered

00:04:51.200 | from a design, they're usually going to be simpler,

00:04:53.640 | therefore understandable.

00:04:55.360 | And you're saying the complexity of the human mind is,

00:04:58.020 | at least from our perspective, nearly infinite.

00:05:01.960 | - Is there a meta-phenomenon,

00:05:03.240 | what sometimes gets described

00:05:04.720 | as sort of levels of emergence,

00:05:06.060 | where at increasing levels of complexity,

00:05:09.280 | you have novelty evolve that you can't predict

00:05:12.960 | from lower levels of complexity.

00:05:15.820 | Like, for example, atoms to molecules,

00:05:18.720 | it's just one example.

00:05:20.360 | I think neurons to consciousness,

00:05:23.800 | consciousness to culture,

00:05:26.120 | that there are meta-phenomenon that separate

00:05:28.440 | from the phenomenon underneath of them,

00:05:31.680 | and thereby add an entire aspect of novelty.

00:05:35.840 | So I think we are, I mean, I really think this is true,

00:05:39.440 | that we are all infinitely fascinating

00:05:41.400 | because of these levels of emergence, of novelty,

00:05:44.240 | that are inscrutable because you can't predict

00:05:46.180 | from one level to the next, or understand fully,

00:05:49.620 | are what make us, and not just us,

00:05:51.940 | but I think sentient creatures, right?

00:05:53.860 | Human beings, right?

00:05:55.300 | But sentient creatures, inestimably more interesting

00:05:59.160 | than creatures that aren't sentient.

00:06:00.940 | And I don't know, I think when we think

00:06:03.660 | about machine learning and artificial intelligence,

00:06:05.720 | I think it's that that we're trying to create,

00:06:08.260 | levels of emergence that now

00:06:10.720 | we don't fully understand anymore,

00:06:13.060 | which I guess is both exciting and maybe scary too.

00:06:15.660 | - Yeah, so you start at the physics of atoms,

00:06:20.060 | quantum mechanics, go into chemistry, go into biology.

00:06:24.320 | From the biology, you have the functional phenomena,

00:06:27.460 | especially as manifested in the human brain,

00:06:30.180 | and then multiple brains connecting together

00:06:32.780 | through consciousness and intelligence

00:06:34.180 | creates civilizations.

00:06:36.140 | It's pretty interesting.

00:06:37.020 | Where do you think the magic is?

00:06:38.660 | At which layer of the cake?

00:06:40.380 | - Every layer.

00:06:41.380 | Because every time you emerge from one thing to another,

00:06:44.660 | I see it as an analog, the concept of the dialectic,

00:06:48.020 | where I think it was Hegel who realized,

00:06:51.900 | hey, when you have thing A and thing B,

00:06:54.940 | and they're complicated and they come together,

00:06:57.300 | you don't get a hybrid of A and B.

00:07:00.180 | You end up getting something that's new, that's novel.

00:07:03.380 | And I think that describes to some degree

00:07:07.500 | what emergence is, except there's,

00:07:11.400 | there's a whole new, it's a universe of novelty

00:07:14.240 | that comes at each layer of emergence

00:07:17.920 | that allows infinite possibilities

00:07:19.660 | that weren't possible before.

00:07:21.560 | And I think that's why we're so complicated,

00:07:23.120 | that we're, our functional neuroscience,

00:07:26.000 | which I think is psychology,

00:07:27.200 | our ability to think about ourselves,

00:07:28.960 | about others, to be reflective,

00:07:30.800 | is sitting on top of so many layers of emergence.

00:07:35.080 | Like the idea of standing on the shoulders of giants,

00:07:37.160 | that we're, each of us, our consciousness

00:07:39.760 | is standing on the shoulder of a giant

00:07:42.640 | of many, many, many levels of emergence, of novelty,

00:07:47.480 | so many of which we don't understand.

00:07:49.040 | I mean, that's subatomic particles,

00:07:50.480 | everything that quantum physics means.

00:07:52.880 | You know, when does time become important, right?

00:07:56.120 | As opposed to things happening outside of time

00:07:58.760 | and outside of space,

00:08:00.160 | when do we slot into one temporal perspective,

00:08:03.140 | and then the complexity just, I think,

00:08:04.640 | grows and grows and grows.

00:08:06.760 | - Yeah, the interesting word you use is novelty.

00:08:10.160 | If true, this really blows my mind.

00:08:12.560 | In some either shallow or deep sense, it is true.

00:08:16.600 | I'm trying to figure that out.

00:08:18.240 | I don't know if you know something about cellular automata,

00:08:20.400 | is this very simple mathematical objects

00:08:23.460 | where you have rules that govern

00:08:25.000 | each individual little cell,

00:08:26.120 | and they interact locally,

00:08:27.800 | and that, you know, you understand

00:08:29.360 | the very simple operation of those individual cells,

00:08:31.320 | but add another layer of abstraction

00:08:33.920 | when you just kind of zoom out with blurry vision,

00:08:36.720 | these meta objects starts appearing that function.

00:08:41.040 | You could build a Turing machine with it.

00:08:43.080 | You can build an arbitrary complexity

00:08:44.920 | of computation on top of this kind of very simple object.

00:08:50.400 | - Yes.

00:08:51.240 | - It's an interesting question whether that was always there.

00:08:55.480 | The atoms somehow know about love, right?

00:09:01.460 | Like about consciousness,

00:09:04.440 | about war and violence and evil and hate and all that.

00:09:07.920 | That's already laden in the possibility of that,

00:09:10.520 | the capacity for that, it's already in the atoms.

00:09:12.920 | It's already in the physics, it's already in the,

00:09:15.800 | in all the different chemistry that builds up.

00:09:18.240 | And it's like even the origin of life, still a mystery.

00:09:22.460 | That's known, that's in the physics.

00:09:26.080 | That's known to the universe,

00:09:28.080 | the basic background physics in the universe.

00:09:32.280 | 'Cause if that's not the case,

00:09:34.560 | it's like where does that come from?

00:09:35.680 | Where's that magic?

00:09:37.400 | And how many layers can the cake possibly have?

00:09:40.000 | How many are we gonna keep building?

00:09:41.600 | If it's all, if there's,

00:09:42.760 | if we're constantly through this process of abstraction,

00:09:46.640 | of adding a layer to the cake, adding novel things,

00:09:50.280 | like where's the ceiling?

00:09:51.520 | As we expand out into the cosmos,

00:09:54.920 | if we successfully can do that,

00:09:56.400 | are we gonna keep building like

00:09:58.200 | more miraculous complex objects?

00:10:01.160 | And then the brain is just like a middle layer thing.

00:10:05.520 | We tend to think of ourselves as truly, truly special

00:10:08.560 | manifestations of what's possible in the universe.

00:10:10.800 | But maybe we're just like the basic,

00:10:12.600 | tiny building block of something much, much, much bigger.

00:10:16.880 | We're in the early days of being a brick

00:10:19.840 | in a very large building.

00:10:21.600 | - Sure.

00:10:22.640 | I think that's entirely possible.

00:10:24.600 | I mean, I think the only emergent thing, so to speak,

00:10:29.040 | that we build is culture, the aggregation of us.

00:10:33.040 | So you have individual human minds,

00:10:35.800 | which are entirely unique.

00:10:39.000 | I mean, even the fact that time is different

00:10:40.640 | for you and me, it may be by picoseconds.

00:10:43.840 | But we can engage because our perceptions of time

00:10:48.840 | are parallel enough, they're close enough,

00:10:52.000 | that we can share a reality.

00:10:54.000 | But we're all living in a different dimension of time.

00:10:58.160 | We know that.

00:10:59.080 | So we're unique in that way.

00:11:01.680 | And then the unique individuals that we are,

00:11:04.120 | just like the cells, start to create not just one thing,

00:11:08.480 | not just a culture, but culture on top of our individuality.

00:11:13.480 | Our uniqueness, our even dimensional uniqueness

00:11:16.880 | of time and experience and consciousness.

00:11:20.560 | So we create cultures on top of us.

00:11:23.000 | But what could be beyond culture,

00:11:25.560 | and what is different from us,

00:11:28.960 | either on underlying levels, like quantum physics

00:11:31.760 | or chemistry or biology,

00:11:33.320 | or entirely different and unconceived,

00:11:36.200 | I think it's an immense question.

00:11:39.440 | I think it's one that should create humility in us.

00:11:42.960 | Look how much we don't know,

00:11:44.760 | and then how reckless we are with ourselves,

00:11:47.380 | with our resources, with human life.

00:11:50.600 | And I think there it's important to say,

00:11:53.800 | I mean, think about how entropy rules

00:11:56.760 | the universe around us.

00:11:58.040 | How over selected are we?

00:12:00.800 | How many, not just hundreds or thousands of times,

00:12:05.000 | but how many millions of times does there have to be

00:12:08.120 | a selection branch point before we get into a sort of

00:12:11.640 | eddy pool of counter entropy,

00:12:13.640 | where you can begin to create?

00:12:16.920 | Which I think is why you say,

00:12:18.520 | okay, do the atoms know about love?

00:12:21.740 | The fact that anything is being created, right,

00:12:23.900 | means there's this over selection for counter entropy,

00:12:26.860 | where there can be a building of greater complexity,

00:12:30.700 | of ultimately of novelty.

00:12:32.900 | And we don't often think about that,

00:12:34.940 | of how far removed we are,

00:12:37.460 | maybe light years, so to speak,

00:12:39.380 | from any other location,

00:12:44.220 | temporally, physically in the universe,

00:12:47.180 | where this could happen.

00:12:48.760 | We don't think about what does that mean?

00:12:52.120 | - Everything that you said, love, everything,

00:12:55.040 | is counter entropy.

00:12:57.000 | Goes against the way, the basic physics of the universe.

00:13:00.480 | So maybe actually the atoms really don't like

00:13:02.280 | what we're doing.

00:13:03.120 | They want us to stop.

00:13:05.200 | They've been trying really hard to stop.

00:13:07.120 | And despite that, we somehow started this whole

00:13:10.200 | bacteria thing for like a billion years,

00:13:12.200 | and now we're here.

00:13:13.400 | - I actually think of it kind of the other way.

00:13:15.600 | I don't think there's any purpose to purposelessness.

00:13:18.920 | So why would anything be here

00:13:21.840 | if the drive weren't towards creativity?

00:13:25.840 | If the drive weren't towards those subatomic particles,

00:13:30.920 | not being nothingness that blips in and out of existence,

00:13:34.000 | like we think is going on in empty space

00:13:36.440 | for light years upon light years.

00:13:38.440 | But is there a design, either natural or intentional,

00:13:44.800 | for a schema, a scenario that allows for the incredibly rare

00:13:49.800 | but not non-existent eddy pool of counter entropy

00:13:54.480 | where good can happen, where creativity can happen,

00:13:58.160 | where ultimately something can grow,

00:14:00.640 | something novel can happen.

00:14:02.560 | There's no novelty in the vastness of space,

00:14:04.740 | even though there's not nothing there.

00:14:07.280 | There's novelty here because I think the layers

00:14:11.000 | of emergence start stacking very, very, very high

00:14:15.400 | when we're in a place of counter entropy,

00:14:18.540 | which then could provide even thoughts

00:14:21.440 | about good and evil, the idea that creating,

00:14:24.680 | that preserving is good.

00:14:26.700 | It's what we build upon.

00:14:27.680 | It's how we get to the eddy pool of counter entropy.

00:14:30.460 | So then destruction is not good.

00:14:33.320 | What good comes of aggression and destruction?

00:14:36.840 | Unless we're protecting,

00:14:39.280 | or even you can think of outline cases,

00:14:41.600 | but just think in general concepts.

00:14:43.520 | Destruction destroys.

00:14:45.520 | It brings us towards a state of entropy,

00:14:47.800 | towards a state of nothingness,

00:14:49.200 | whereas goodness, commonality, collaboration, nurturing,

00:14:54.200 | brings novelty, it brings new existence into the universe.

00:15:01.000 | And I think we don't think about that.

00:15:03.400 | We're in the middle of something so vast

00:15:05.400 | and built on top of so many layers,

00:15:07.160 | and I think it leads us to be cavalier

00:15:10.240 | with human life, including often our own.

00:15:14.000 | - So you think there's an underlying creative force

00:15:16.680 | to the universe that might even have

00:15:20.560 | a kind of built-in morality to it,

00:15:24.120 | where creating is better than destroying,

00:15:27.840 | and then that somehow maps on to our society,

00:15:31.360 | where we kind of try to figure out

00:15:32.400 | what that actually means in terms of good and evil.

00:15:35.760 | So something is there like that.

00:15:38.760 | But it has to be, it's so nice, it's so perfect,

00:15:43.560 | 'cause it's rare, it's sufficiently rare

00:15:46.240 | where we have our own space,

00:15:47.320 | like you can close the door and it's like,

00:15:49.120 | I need to be alone right now,

00:15:50.560 | as our human civilization, to work on my thing.

00:15:53.520 | So it's sufficiently rare

00:15:54.520 | that there's not other alien civilizations

00:15:56.200 | that are just constantly knocking on our door,

00:15:57.960 | destroying us, but it still exists.

00:16:01.280 | That's weird.

00:16:02.400 | - Right, right.

00:16:03.360 | It's so fantastically improbable

00:16:06.080 | that I think we should be very respectful of it.

00:16:09.120 | And I think you said there's a creative force

00:16:11.280 | that values creativity.

00:16:13.320 | Things would be, well sure, it's a creative force.

00:16:16.200 | Its existence, its ability to exist and to create

00:16:19.840 | comes from something other than entropy,

00:16:23.280 | something other than so much dispersion

00:16:25.040 | that there's nothingness.

00:16:26.360 | So the creative force will value the sanctity of things,

00:16:32.000 | keeping things together, not destroying things, right?

00:16:34.680 | Building novelty, including novelty of knowledge,

00:16:37.840 | novelty of sentience.

00:16:38.880 | I mean, it fits with the idea that we're not nothing,

00:16:42.980 | that that's incredibly improbable,

00:16:45.240 | and that there are these many, many layers of emergence

00:16:48.140 | that we're standing upon.

00:16:49.960 | And I think it tells us something

00:16:51.800 | that we're not doing ourselves a service to ignore, right?

00:16:56.160 | It's not just a jump to saying,

00:16:58.200 | oh, there's a religious answer to everything.

00:16:59.880 | It's just, no, it's saying science isn't a god either, right?

00:17:03.760 | So if we think of science as a tool

00:17:07.000 | and not as an endpoint in and of itself,

00:17:08.940 | what is the science telling us?

00:17:10.960 | I remember showing up at medical school,

00:17:13.160 | and it really is true.

00:17:14.120 | I mean, I knew so little about the human body.

00:17:17.400 | I'd only been in hospitals to visit people.

00:17:19.360 | I'd taken pre-med classes,

00:17:20.600 | but sort of intensely at once

00:17:22.400 | after I didn't take any and I was working in business.

00:17:24.680 | I knew next to nothing.

00:17:26.560 | And I had this idea that was so naive in retrospect

00:17:29.920 | that I was gonna learn so much, right?

00:17:31.840 | I was gonna answer these questions

00:17:33.120 | 'cause I was gonna learn what's going on in the body.

00:17:34.460 | What are these organs doing?

00:17:35.440 | What are these cells?

00:17:36.640 | And what I learned was there was so much more

00:17:41.640 | that was amazing and mysterious and seemingly impossible,

00:17:45.640 | like even how a cell functions, right?

00:17:48.000 | Like what is going on inside of a cell,

00:17:49.840 | the transport mechanisms and energy functions

00:17:52.760 | and diffusion functions.

00:17:54.080 | And then you can go down to smaller levels than that.

00:17:57.320 | But when you come back out and you say,

00:17:58.800 | how will those cells make a kidney?

00:18:00.980 | It's not explanatory.

00:18:03.960 | I remember asking the OB who had delivered my first child.

00:18:07.560 | I was so amazed, and I asked him,

00:18:10.280 | what do you think?

00:18:11.400 | What do you know?

00:18:12.240 | You do this, right?

00:18:13.160 | You're seeing this life created.

00:18:15.320 | And his thought was, nothing.

00:18:18.120 | I just marvel.

00:18:19.400 | I mean, I get to do this, but I just marvel at it.

00:18:22.160 | And I think the more we know about us,

00:18:26.000 | the more we respectfully marvel.

00:18:29.040 | - And we should do that.

00:18:30.040 | We should proactively marvel at every aspect,

00:18:33.160 | at every layer that where the novelty emerges.

00:18:38.160 | - Yes, we'd be a lot less likely to say,

00:18:41.520 | hey, I don't like you because of something,

00:18:43.420 | whatever it is, race, religion, culture,

00:18:46.200 | sexuality, gender identity, whatever it is.

00:18:48.760 | Or I wanna say, I want rights that you don't have, right?

00:18:51.200 | Or I want what you have, right?

00:18:53.280 | I mean, there's so much of this.

00:18:54.760 | And I understand it's driven by scarcity

00:18:56.820 | and by human insecurity and envy

00:18:59.480 | and all of these things that I think

00:19:00.840 | drive us towards destruction.

00:19:02.760 | But all of that recklessness comes from

00:19:05.920 | not having this initial appreciation and respect

00:19:10.360 | that you're referring to and just marveling at.

00:19:12.520 | Like, wow, okay, we're here.

00:19:14.420 | That's amazing.

00:19:15.260 | Let's start with that.

00:19:16.960 | - But if we marvel at this whole thing,

00:19:20.300 | the human project, the human condition,

00:19:22.280 | all the different kinds of human beings that are possible,

00:19:25.440 | what do you then make of that

00:19:27.280 | some humans do evil onto the world?

00:19:31.540 | First of all, are all human beings capable of evil?

00:19:34.480 | If we're in the process,

00:19:35.960 | now we've got a little bit of momentum

00:19:37.560 | in terms of marveling the layers of the cake.

00:19:40.920 | Should we also marvel at the capacity for evil in all of us?

00:19:44.000 | - Yes. - Is that capacity there?

00:19:45.320 | - I believe that it is, yes.

00:19:47.360 | - So what do we understand about the psychology of evil?

00:19:49.680 | Where does that originate in the human mind?

00:19:52.260 | Is it there in the neurobiology?

00:19:54.260 | Is it there in the environment, in the upbringing?

00:19:56.840 | - Can I clarify first?

00:19:57.720 | I think the capacity for evil, I do believe, is in all of us.

00:20:01.060 | There's a difference between enacting evil

00:20:04.120 | and a sort of preset, followed, developed plan of evil.

00:20:09.120 | I don't believe that all of us are capable of doing

00:20:13.920 | what the people who perpetrate the most evil do.

00:20:17.860 | But I do believe that we're capable of perpetrating evil.

00:20:22.860 | And the thought, one thought, would be

00:20:25.240 | that there are drives in us.

00:20:27.740 | I mean, there certainly seem to be drives in us

00:20:30.400 | towards survival, towards gratification,

00:20:34.740 | in some ways towards pleasure.

00:20:36.760 | And that can get very complicated,

00:20:38.200 | 'cause pleasure inside can be relief of distress.

00:20:41.220 | So if I feel very badly about myself

00:20:44.520 | and I can feel a little better about myself

00:20:46.680 | by making you feel worse about yourself,

00:20:49.000 | which that plays out in a lot of human beings,

00:20:51.600 | is that an indirect way of bringing pleasure?

00:20:54.240 | So it gets very complicated what's going on inside of us.

00:20:57.960 | And sometimes the perpetration of evil things

00:21:00.960 | can be through misunderstandings, anger, impulsivity.

00:21:03.960 | I mean, there are things that we can have in us.

00:21:07.160 | And other times there can be other things going on

00:21:10.920 | which are through the lens of unhealthy human psychology.

00:21:14.320 | So for example, the psychology of envy,

00:21:16.760 | which I think drives the lion's share

00:21:19.960 | of the orchestrated evil, right?

00:21:21.800 | There's a difference between impulsive, reflexive evil

00:21:25.800 | and highly orchestrated evil,

00:21:29.640 | which I think is driven by envy.

00:21:33.440 | - Highly orchestrated evil,

00:21:35.520 | are we talking about a scale of societies

00:21:37.200 | like totalitarianism?

00:21:38.680 | So if we're thinking about somebody like Hitler?

00:21:42.960 | So at scale, orchestration of evil, envy driving that.

00:21:47.960 | So I mean, that's really interesting to think about.

00:21:51.360 | I'd love to hear more about it.

00:21:52.440 | So some of it, there might be some psychological forces

00:21:55.800 | that are in tension with each other.

00:21:58.580 | So one is, if you look at somebody like Hitler,

00:22:02.380 | it's difficult to know what was going on in his mind,

00:22:07.960 | but it's possible to imagine

00:22:09.160 | if you just look at dictators throughout history,

00:22:12.240 | that he thought he was doing good,

00:22:14.800 | not just for himself,

00:22:15.920 | but for the people he believed have value.

00:22:20.600 | So one way you can achieve what we consider as evil

00:22:25.200 | is by devaluing some group of people.

00:22:29.960 | And that could be all group of people.

00:22:31.960 | So it could have sort of a narcissistic type of idea

00:22:35.480 | that you basically don't care about other human beings.

00:22:38.640 | That's one.

00:22:39.480 | Envy is different.

00:22:41.520 | I mean, maybe they can collaborate together,

00:22:44.400 | or even like you mentioned,

00:22:46.120 | you can actually enjoy doing bad to others.

00:22:49.920 | That's almost like different,

00:22:51.100 | because if all it is is like narcissism,

00:22:54.800 | you disregard, you don't care how others feel,

00:22:58.320 | then you can just make cold, calculated,

00:23:00.800 | military, almost economic decisions.

00:23:04.200 | And you don't care if a million people die here or there.

00:23:07.640 | But if you actually enjoy some aspect of that,

00:23:10.500 | or there is like a resentment that fuels it,

00:23:12.920 | it's not just cold calculation.

00:23:15.200 | It's like fueled by some kind of personal

00:23:17.640 | or cultural resentment.

00:23:20.040 | - I think it's all fueled by that.

00:23:21.680 | - You think so?

00:23:22.520 | - I think it's all fueled by that.

00:23:23.340 | I think the idea that say Hitler thought he was doing good,

00:23:26.320 | right, is like, that is such a thin facade

00:23:31.320 | that it flies away like a handkerchief in a hurricane, right?

00:23:36.120 | - Okay, yeah, thank you.

00:23:39.400 | That's wow, that's beautiful, yeah.

00:23:41.160 | - It's built upon, it says, I'll explain, logical lies,

00:23:47.000 | right, because people can build lies

00:23:49.680 | upon specious logic, right?

00:23:52.080 | So the idea that, okay, I am doing good

00:23:54.580 | because I believe that this ethnicity of people is good

00:23:59.580 | and this is bad, and now I'm going to do this

00:24:02.120 | and I'm gonna make the world different

00:24:03.400 | and it's gonna bring better to the world,

00:24:05.280 | and now I'm raising armies

00:24:06.840 | and I'm building concentration camps.

00:24:08.320 | And I think this is all in the service of good,

00:24:10.080 | is I don't think anyone ever thinks that, right?

00:24:14.000 | Or they think that, but with,

00:24:15.880 | because they're living in the surface patina, right?

00:24:18.960 | Like they're not allowing the hurricane in

00:24:20.920 | that blows away the handkerchief

00:24:22.340 | and says, this is all evil, right?

00:24:25.600 | I mean, how do you decide that some group of people is good

00:24:29.200 | and some is bad, and what is it that you take upon yourself

00:24:32.720 | to play God or make decisions about the world?

00:24:36.560 | And I think what really is going on

00:24:38.120 | is that people are not doing that, right?

00:24:40.040 | There's something cobbled together to say,

00:24:42.360 | like, why this is right and this is okay, right?

00:24:44.480 | And this is even good, right?

00:24:46.000 | But it is all a lie, right?

00:24:49.600 | It's a lie that's adorning,

00:24:51.880 | that what I believe is the fact, I believe,

00:24:55.260 | that what's going on is the gratification of envy

00:24:59.000 | inside of the person.

00:25:00.040 | And whether someone says, oh, I think this is good

00:25:01.880 | and it's okay if a million people die,

00:25:03.440 | or I'm gonna enjoy that a million people die,

00:25:06.280 | I think is the same.

00:25:07.440 | I think the enjoyment, the gratification

00:25:10.200 | of the orchestrated evil is there,

00:25:13.000 | and that it all comes from vulnerability and insecurity.

00:25:17.080 | It all comes from deficits in the sense of self.

00:25:20.580 | - I'm gonna have to process that.

00:25:23.680 | My slow penny and PC is processing that,

00:25:28.720 | so envy underlies all of it.

00:25:30.840 | The psychological concept of envy, what is that?

00:25:35.120 | I keep putting myself in the mind of Hitler, I guess.

00:25:37.840 | That has nothing to do,

00:25:39.560 | it doesn't have to do with Jews or Slavic people.

00:25:43.560 | Does it have to do with specific amorphous other

00:25:48.080 | in his mind that he's envious of?

00:25:51.600 | - I think it has all to do with him, all to do with him.

00:25:55.840 | There's not a love of the people with whom he allied,

00:25:58.720 | or even a sense of the people who he persecuted

00:26:01.400 | were worse than him.

00:26:02.600 | It's all projections out of what was going on inside of him,

00:26:06.280 | which was an intense sense of inadequacy,

00:26:10.160 | a rage at being someone he perceived as lesser than.

00:26:15.160 | That's the difference.

00:26:17.240 | We can define words in different ways,

00:26:18.760 | even within psychology, but let's say we take

00:26:20.600 | the definition here of jealousy as being benign.

00:26:24.760 | The idea that, oh, I might see something

00:26:26.320 | that you have that I don't, and I might think,

00:26:28.360 | I like that, maybe I'll work harder to get it.

00:26:30.880 | Or maybe I can't get it,

00:26:32.080 | maybe it's that you're younger than I am.

00:26:33.760 | I say, okay, you have that and I don't.

00:26:36.720 | I mean, I have other things too, I'm okay anyway.

00:26:39.240 | But I might want those things.

00:26:41.040 | But it's very benign, the jealousy.

00:26:42.640 | I'd like to be younger, I'd like to be richer,

00:26:44.240 | whatever it is that we people think.

00:26:46.040 | But it's just a thought, and it's a thought

00:26:49.240 | that can result in strivings or acceptance.

00:26:53.240 | It's very, very different.

00:26:54.600 | It's completely different than envy, which is destructive.

00:26:58.960 | It's a thought of, I see something that you have

00:27:02.040 | that I don't have, and instead of me working for it

00:27:05.520 | or accepting that I don't have it,

00:27:07.320 | what I'd like to do then is bring you down,

00:27:10.380 | take you down to where I am, and then I'll feel better,

00:27:13.280 | because from the perspective of envy, it is all relative.

00:27:18.280 | - So is jealousy a kind of, 'cause you said

00:27:21.920 | completely different, but is jealousy potentially

00:27:24.200 | like a gateway drug to envy?

00:27:26.000 | Is it a slippery slope?

00:27:28.920 | - I think, no, I think that jealousy is a natural,

00:27:31.800 | just part of the human phenomenon that we go through life,

00:27:34.160 | and we see, oh, I'd like to have that.

00:27:35.640 | I think it's part of our incentives.

00:27:37.480 | I'm farming, and I have one row of crops,

00:27:42.680 | and I look over, and I see that you're working harder,

00:27:44.440 | and you have two, and I'd like to have two.

00:27:46.600 | That can make me work harder to have two.

00:27:48.360 | - You don't think it's a slippery slope

00:27:49.600 | from one to the other, to at first you're like,

00:27:52.000 | I'd like to work harder, but then you keep failing,

00:27:53.840 | and the weather sucks, and you keep failing,

00:27:55.480 | and the other person becomes more successful.

00:27:57.400 | Plus, he's got a new hot wife now.

00:27:59.640 | There's a nice tractor.

00:28:00.980 | Does it feel it's all working?

00:28:02.960 | And then you get this idea that, you know what?

00:28:04.800 | I'm gonna steal all his stuff, and I'm gonna murder him,

00:28:08.920 | and that, don't you think that's just like a leap

00:28:11.880 | of the same phenomenon? - No, I actually think,

00:28:12.720 | no, no, because I think there are things

00:28:15.920 | that are in us as humans, right?

00:28:17.680 | So the things that just by being human,

00:28:20.480 | like we can, for example, feel,

00:28:22.120 | we can feel compassion, right?

00:28:23.580 | We can feel interest, right?

00:28:25.280 | We can feel jealousy in that benign sense.

00:28:27.920 | It's all part of just being human.

00:28:30.000 | If we start going from, hey, you have more crops

00:28:33.800 | than I have, and now it seems like I actually

00:28:35.960 | have a better life in a lot of ways than I have,

00:28:37.740 | I'm gonna kill you, that is not a progression

00:28:41.440 | of something benign, right?

00:28:43.080 | That is-- - But wait a minute,

00:28:44.680 | but that is a human leap of the same thing, isn't it?

00:28:47.560 | 'Cause you're drawing a line, stuff,

00:28:51.200 | you're saying like, this human stuff,

00:28:53.360 | this regular life is benign, but it feels

00:28:56.480 | like this benign thing is just a low magnitude thing,

00:29:00.000 | version of the thing that's not benign.

00:29:02.640 | Like there's probably a gray area

00:29:04.520 | where it stops being benign.

00:29:05.800 | Like jealousy, you can have like healthy jealousy,

00:29:08.480 | you can have a little bit slightly unhealthy.

00:29:10.640 | There's a, I think, Jealous Guy,

00:29:12.880 | this John Lennon song that I love, it's just beautiful.

00:29:15.200 | I mean, there's like, this jealousy inside relationships

00:29:18.440 | can make you feel like, you know,

00:29:21.240 | take your minds in all kinds of silly directions.

00:29:24.520 | And it's crazy, but like it feels like that's

00:29:27.440 | a next door neighbor to like being really crazy and toxic

00:29:30.840 | and all that kind of stuff inside relationships.

00:29:32.640 | And then that feels like a next door neighbor,

00:29:34.400 | it's like an apartment building,

00:29:35.440 | that feels like a next door neighbor

00:29:37.800 | that eventually gets to Hitler

00:29:39.280 | with envy and resentment of an entire population of people.

00:29:43.200 | - You're right in that there's a causal,

00:29:45.260 | there can be a causal chain, right?

00:29:47.000 | Like if I'm not feeling jealous,

00:29:48.840 | maybe I won't ever feel envious, right?

00:29:51.140 | So you can see, okay, so it can kind of lead,

00:29:53.720 | it can open gates to, huh, like how much do I dislike

00:29:56.560 | that you have things that I don't have, right?

00:29:58.360 | So yes, in that sense, but, and I think,

00:30:01.400 | this is the part that I think is so important,

00:30:03.080 | that I think there is a disjunction, right?

00:30:06.320 | There's an asymptotic shift, right,

00:30:08.560 | from one thing to another because it is very--

00:30:10.560 | - Now you're speaking my language, mathematically.

00:30:12.600 | - Yeah. - Asymptotic leap, yep.

00:30:14.040 | - Yes, that's, it's a way to convey, right,

00:30:16.580 | something that's entirely different

00:30:18.240 | because if I start thinking, you know,

00:30:21.500 | I'm not gonna try and make things better, right,

00:30:23.660 | I'd like instead to harm you, that's qualitatively different.

00:30:27.900 | - Oh, it's almost like, you know what it is?

00:30:29.740 | It could be, I don't know what you think about this,

00:30:31.820 | but it's in which direction your motivation is pointing.

00:30:36.820 | So if in the response to the feeling of jealousy,

00:30:42.660 | your sort of, the motivation says,

00:30:45.940 | okay, I understand this feeling,

00:30:47.500 | I wanna do less of it.

00:30:49.400 | I think there must be a threshold

00:30:51.640 | to which you actually wanna do more of it,

00:30:53.140 | like it becomes a vicious downward cycle.

00:30:55.440 | So that's what envy becomes.

00:30:57.040 | Like the first feeling, this idea

00:30:59.240 | that I'm gonna kill the farmer,

00:31:02.640 | turns into like more and more and more

00:31:04.600 | and you can't sleep and you're visualizing the farmer

00:31:06.760 | and he becomes the devil and like you have this very,

00:31:10.280 | you know, it's basically a thing that builds

00:31:12.600 | into the negative direction

00:31:13.600 | versus returns to the stable center.

00:31:16.560 | - Now a person is cultivating evil.

00:31:18.380 | - Yeah. - Right?

00:31:19.220 | They're saying, hey, there can be seeds of evil in all of us.

00:31:21.980 | Let me take that seed out, dust it off,

00:31:24.000 | plant it, nurture it, right?

00:31:26.240 | And then grow that seed of evil,

00:31:27.900 | which will affect all other parts of the person's life.

00:31:30.820 | Right, they won't behave the same

00:31:32.300 | towards others in their life.

00:31:34.460 | They'll become different as they nurture fantasies of evil,

00:31:39.220 | as they begin to create inside of themselves

00:31:43.700 | the motivation and the will to enact evil.

00:31:48.040 | The Hitler analogy would say,

00:31:49.600 | look, you take someone who had a bad childhood, right?

00:31:51.920 | Who was not loved, who was taught

00:31:55.680 | and told that he was less than.

00:31:57.400 | Okay, like that, we know that happens.

00:31:59.560 | I mean, that's why child abuse is so evil, right?

00:32:02.440 | It's telling children the worst possible wrong lessons.

00:32:06.600 | Right, they're not good enough.

00:32:07.560 | They'll always be hurt.

00:32:08.680 | You know, they can't keep themselves safe.

00:32:10.120 | They don't deserve safety, right?

00:32:11.880 | So then you take someone who then nurtures

00:32:15.380 | that seed of evil, which is a choice.

00:32:18.060 | And it's why I can't paint well enough,

00:32:19.580 | and no one appreciates me, and I don't like how I look,

00:32:21.460 | and I don't fit in with the people I wanna fit in with,

00:32:23.940 | and then, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

00:32:27.100 | And there's a hatred of self through that lens of misery,

00:32:32.100 | of just being repulsed by the self.

00:32:35.540 | But that's unacceptable to the self.

00:32:38.420 | So, oh, it has to be someone else's fault, right?

00:32:42.020 | It's not my fault.

00:32:42.860 | Whose fault is it, right?

00:32:44.340 | And then you see en masse the inaction of evil

00:32:47.520 | towards groups of people who somehow,

00:32:51.120 | in this person's mind, right,

00:32:52.680 | are responsible for his misery.

00:32:55.240 | And there's the justification of evil,

00:32:57.360 | and then all the, you know, whether it's,

00:33:00.040 | this will be better for the economy,

00:33:01.360 | this will be good, this will be that.

00:33:02.480 | Like, that's all lies built to justify the evil.

00:33:06.080 | - Those are surface-level narratives.

00:33:07.640 | - Yes.

00:33:08.900 | - And the envy is the deep-down mechanism that enables--

00:33:13.600 | - And that's the end point that's being served.

00:33:15.340 | What's being served is destruction, right?

00:33:17.760 | Which is why it always brings more destruction, right?

00:33:21.040 | I mean, how many times do wars that were started

00:33:24.360 | for purposes that we would look and say,

00:33:25.980 | like, those were evil purposes.

00:33:27.460 | Like, how many times does good come of that?

00:33:30.400 | Even if we look at the modern world,

00:33:31.960 | what comes of it is more evil, is more destruction.

00:33:35.960 | You know, Hitler's outward destruction

00:33:38.080 | eventually came inward, and you know,

00:33:40.200 | you see pictures of what Berlin looked like

00:33:42.400 | after the Second World War, right?

00:33:43.800 | It wasn't just destruction perpetrated outward,

00:33:46.600 | as awful as that is, it's catchy, right?

00:33:50.760 | Like, people used to worry if you, you know,

00:33:52.360 | before the, during the time of the Manhattan Project,

00:33:54.400 | right, if you start this chain reaction,

00:33:56.240 | you know, will you blow the whole world up, right?

00:33:58.480 | Or will it stop within this bomb or not?

00:34:00.880 | And we see, okay, the chain reaction of evil

00:34:04.040 | hasn't yet blown the whole world up,

00:34:06.120 | but look at the, look at how the catastrophe spreads.

00:34:10.040 | You think 50 to 60 million people dead

00:34:12.200 | in the Second World War, which truly was a world war.

00:34:15.920 | What destruction was spread around the globe?

00:34:19.480 | - And this is something that can't be stopped

00:34:22.160 | once the chain reaction starts.

00:34:24.160 | Like, if Hitler was successful,

00:34:26.640 | like, it would just keep going.

00:34:27.840 | - If he had been, think about it, if he just--

00:34:29.600 | - On his personal, psychological level, I mean.

00:34:31.360 | - Right, 'cause if we think from the perspective

00:34:32.720 | of destruction, success would have needed,

00:34:35.400 | led to the need to conquer more,

00:34:36.960 | then there's factions and infighting,

00:34:38.600 | and then eventually you get the same mass destruction, right?

00:34:41.280 | And never does the inaction of evil

00:34:44.600 | satisfy what the person is initially seeking.

00:34:46.960 | Like, people wanna feel better about themselves, right?

00:34:49.040 | We, you know, like, Winnicott,

00:34:50.680 | who was a British pediatrician

00:34:54.960 | who wrote about children and adults

00:34:57.560 | from very deep perspectives,

00:34:59.000 | he wrote about the idea of good enough, right?

00:35:01.200 | And then you can sort of extrapolate that

00:35:03.160 | to like, we all wanna feel good enough.

00:35:05.000 | Like, not just limp over the line good enough,

00:35:07.080 | but I wanna feel good enough

00:35:08.600 | that I'm a decent person in the world,

00:35:10.160 | and like, what I do matters,

00:35:11.440 | and, you know, I can have an impact on people,

00:35:13.960 | and, you know, people can like me and care about me.

00:35:17.280 | There's a simplicity there that people want

00:35:20.160 | that when people don't have,

00:35:21.840 | and there's certain other factors,

00:35:23.280 | maybe there are temperamental factors

00:35:24.600 | or historical factors,

00:35:26.120 | can lead to trying to soothe that deficit, right?

00:35:30.960 | Through envy, and I think it starts with that,

00:35:35.640 | and it often starts in childhood, not always,

00:35:38.560 | but it often starts in childhood

00:35:40.120 | when the child's brain and psychology are so vulnerable,

00:35:44.360 | and, you know, you see salient child abuse.

00:35:47.320 | If you look at what was Hitler's background

00:35:49.240 | and what was Stalin's background,

00:35:50.640 | and, I mean, you could look at almost anyone

00:35:53.360 | who's perpetrated evil,

00:35:54.400 | whether they're serial killers, whatever it may be,

00:35:57.720 | the majority, not everyone,

00:35:59.720 | but the majority had these lessons in childhood

00:36:02.920 | that said you're not good enough,

00:36:04.520 | you can't keep yourself safe, no one cares about you,

00:36:06.800 | and in a subset of people, that's gonna generate envy,

00:36:11.000 | and, you know, that seed of evil

00:36:12.720 | then gets planted and nurtured.

00:36:14.320 | As a fighter jet roars above us.

00:36:18.840 | - The sound of a fighter jet above us.

00:36:21.280 | - It'd been good if I had orchestrated that.

00:36:23.200 | - You forget, you quickly forget

00:36:25.640 | the comfort of being in a peaceful place.

00:36:27.440 | That's one thing I saw in Ukraine.

00:36:29.320 | Is, hey, you quickly get comfortable here.

00:36:34.440 | The whole trip back, I was thinking,

00:36:38.480 | it's so damn good to be in America.

00:36:41.680 | The whole, just the whole, like,

00:36:43.000 | it's like a three-day trip back.

00:36:44.600 | It's so good to be American.

00:36:47.040 | We might take that for granted as a population,

00:36:52.480 | but I do agree.

00:36:54.600 | - So the destruction never alleviates the envy.

00:36:57.200 | Are all humans capable of envy?

00:37:03.120 | - I believe the answer is yes.

00:37:06.360 | If you think, do we all have the possibility of evil in us?

00:37:09.400 | I think the answer to that is yes,

00:37:11.840 | but we have free will, we have choice,

00:37:14.960 | we can choose what we do with that,

00:37:17.880 | which is why just because someone is a sociopath,

00:37:21.600 | you know, for example,

00:37:22.920 | doesn't mean that they're not responsible.

00:37:24.640 | I mean, our medical legal jurisprudence

00:37:28.720 | has absolutely borne that out,

00:37:31.800 | that legally, medically, we think,

00:37:34.040 | okay, we're responsible,

00:37:36.680 | presuming we're healthy,

00:37:37.760 | we're not unhealthy in other ways

00:37:39.280 | that eliminates our ability to be circumspect,

00:37:42.680 | but that we're responsible for what we do

00:37:45.280 | and don't nurture inside of us.

00:37:47.760 | I mean, there are plenty of things

00:37:48.600 | we could decide to nurture anger and hatred about.

00:37:51.840 | You know, I could think of slights, difficulties,

00:37:54.000 | whether it's something someone else has done to me,

00:37:55.760 | or I could blame fate,

00:37:56.760 | or I could be mad at God or the world.

00:37:58.640 | We can all make those choices,

00:38:01.080 | and we're responsible for them,

00:38:03.080 | or for recognizing things in us that are like,

00:38:04.800 | oh, I too have that in me,

00:38:07.160 | but I don't wanna nurture that,

00:38:09.200 | I don't wanna foster that,

00:38:10.720 | or do I choose to nurture and foster that?

00:38:13.120 | And I think ultimately,

00:38:14.440 | you know, our subject of Hitler as evil,

00:38:16.880 | if Hitler had kept winning and winning, right,

00:38:19.480 | I think ultimately he would have been

00:38:21.040 | the only person on earth, right?

00:38:23.000 | And I really do believe that ultimately,

00:38:24.440 | everyone, everything else would be killed

00:38:27.040 | because it's such destruction, right?

00:38:28.400 | Destroy everything, right?

00:38:30.120 | And probably when that didn't work,

00:38:32.520 | then there's the destruction of the self, right?

00:38:34.400 | Because nothing soothes envy

00:38:37.400 | that is stoked by the sort of flames of evil.

00:38:44.480 | And what you see is more and more anger

00:38:46.600 | and more and more frustration,

00:38:47.760 | which is why I really do believe someone like that,

00:38:50.520 | who nurtured evil in themselves that way,

00:38:52.920 | ultimately would destroy.

00:38:54.400 | They'd be like him and one other person,

00:38:55.960 | then he'd kill the other person.

00:38:57.320 | - I think that's really powerfully said.

00:38:59.880 | But even just to return to the jealousy versus envy,

00:39:03.360 | I still think that it's the same flame.

00:39:07.120 | And envy is just the bigger version of it.

00:39:11.000 | So I think, I just, in my own personal life,

00:39:15.160 | I've felt jealousy towards others, like you said,

00:39:19.160 | like, oh, this person has a, I don't know,

00:39:23.040 | cooler thing, trinket, whatever trinket I cared about.

00:39:26.200 | And usually it's when somebody is really close

00:39:28.240 | to the trinket you're building.

00:39:30.160 | And I, early on, like in my teens,

00:39:36.720 | I realized that just empirically speaking,

00:39:42.280 | that jealousy over a period of a week

00:39:44.680 | just doesn't feel good.

00:39:47.440 | And it's not productive,

00:39:48.840 | it doesn't help me build a better trinket.

00:39:51.000 | Or it does if I turn it, not into jealousy

00:39:57.680 | towards another person,

00:39:59.320 | but into a love for building a better trinket.

00:40:02.800 | It's like, oh, cool.

00:40:03.960 | Almost, you know what, like proactively speaking,

00:40:07.160 | in later in life, people like Joe Rogan

00:40:09.160 | actually have been really powerful in this for me,

00:40:11.840 | just as a fan of his, to celebrate other people.

00:40:15.240 | So it's almost as opposed to ignoring that other person

00:40:18.720 | with a cool trinket,

00:40:19.800 | it's like celebrating their awesomeness, in my mind.

00:40:23.120 | Just saying how awesome that humans are able to do that,

00:40:26.440 | and actually just how awesome is that exact person

00:40:29.800 | at being able to do that.

00:40:31.120 | And that somehow made me more capable

00:40:33.200 | to build my own trinket better.

00:40:35.160 | And it feels good also, like it makes me feel happy.

00:40:38.200 | - And now you're not jealous anymore.

00:40:39.800 | - You're not jealous anymore.

00:40:40.720 | - Right, so that's why I think jealousy is different,

00:40:42.760 | right, 'cause you're saying there's a week of jealousy,

00:40:44.720 | like I don't like this, right, I don't like,

00:40:46.440 | but if you take that in a way that says,

00:40:48.480 | wait a second, actually this is awesome,

00:40:50.040 | this is fabulous, and this person did this,

00:40:52.000 | that person's awesome, right,

00:40:53.680 | then you're not raining on anyone's parade, right,

00:40:58.280 | and in not doing that, even inside your own mind,

00:41:01.040 | you gain a greater cognizance of your own capability, right?

00:41:04.640 | Well, if he can do that or she can do that, why can't I too?

00:41:07.920 | Like I wanna make the better trinket too, right?

00:41:10.520 | Now you're thinking creatively,

00:41:12.400 | nowhere in there was the emergence of evil.

00:41:17.400 | I just disagree with that.

00:41:19.220 | I think there was a choice made,

00:41:21.440 | where I looked at my, if my life was darker,

00:41:25.960 | more difficult, I think it has nothing to do

00:41:28.880 | with the actual little flame of jealousy I felt.

00:41:32.040 | I think it has to do a lot more with the other context.

00:41:34.800 | If my life were more difficult, there was more abuse,

00:41:41.360 | there was more challenges, I think that decision,

00:41:44.600 | I could have made that decision a different direction.

00:41:46.520 | - Yes. - Maybe, I don't know,

00:41:48.320 | yeah, you've written brilliantly about trauma.

00:41:51.760 | If there's a bit more trauma as the background noise

00:41:55.280 | of my decision-making, I'll be more likely

00:41:57.880 | to not be able to pull away from the gravitational field

00:42:02.240 | of that jealousy and it would build and build

00:42:03.800 | and build and build.

00:42:04.800 | So I think, not to disagree with a brilliant person,

00:42:10.040 | but I feel like that flame has the capacity

00:42:14.240 | to engulf the whole world, I guess.

00:42:16.320 | The initial flame of jealousy, the little bit,

00:42:18.960 | like especially the younger you are,

00:42:21.320 | it's almost like a habit that you get to build

00:42:25.240 | in either direction, 'cause I've early on built the habit

00:42:28.480 | of saying I'm going to channel that jealousy

00:42:33.480 | into productivity and into celebrating other people

00:42:36.720 | and that jealousy disappears.

00:42:38.280 | That was like a little discovery for me.

00:42:40.920 | I discovered that.

00:42:41.840 | That doesn't come, nobody tells that to you.

00:42:44.720 | You kind of discover that little thing.

00:42:46.160 | I could have easily not discovered it.

00:42:47.980 | I could have easily discovered that it kind of feels good

00:42:51.360 | to mess with that other person, to think shitty thoughts,

00:42:56.360 | think negative thoughts, do negative things

00:43:01.440 | to that other person, 'cause that could also,

00:43:03.200 | I just think the capacity in that initial feeling is there

00:43:07.120 | and I think it's a decision we'll make,

00:43:08.560 | 'cause otherwise, I think it dissolves responsibility.

00:43:13.560 | Like, well, surely I'm not Hitler,

00:43:17.200 | therefore this jealousy is normal.

00:43:19.760 | No, I just feel like every jealousy

00:43:21.360 | has the capacity to turn into, maybe not Hitler,

00:43:23.840 | but a toxicity that destroys, in a small way,

00:43:27.560 | in your own little private life, but it could destroy.

00:43:30.340 | - I agree that jealousy brings us,

00:43:35.820 | can bring us dangerously close to envy.

00:43:37.720 | I mean, maybe, let's see if,

00:43:39.800 | a heuristic we could agree on, right?

00:43:42.480 | Let's see.

00:43:43.320 | So, let's say, okay, if we look at the terrain

00:43:46.640 | of the mind as geography, right?

00:43:48.100 | So, if I'm feeling happy, satisfied, proud,

00:43:51.160 | like I'm pretty far from envy land, right?

00:43:54.760 | But if I'm feeling jealousy now,

00:43:57.120 | I'm coming kind of closer to that border, right?

00:44:01.500 | And I still, I think there's,

00:44:04.860 | it's a big thing to go over the border, right?

00:44:06.800 | That the border isn't a gray area, right?

00:44:09.000 | There's a border to go over,

00:44:10.820 | and I think that you're, I agree completely,

00:44:13.280 | one, certainly about trauma,

00:44:14.620 | that the more trauma there is,

00:44:16.740 | because then the more misunderstandings there are

00:44:18.680 | about self and feelings that I'm not good enough,

00:44:20.500 | and then that can be anger about why,

00:44:22.340 | and who might be oppressing me,

00:44:23.560 | and, you know, I hate myself,

00:44:25.360 | and everyone else who seems to be better.

00:44:26.780 | Like, so, trauma can drive us in these negative directions,

00:44:30.640 | but we're still crossing over something, right?

00:44:33.280 | So, if you have the trinket, and I think,

00:44:35.480 | that's awesome, I want that, I wanna work harder.

00:44:38.880 | You know what I could do, though,

00:44:39.760 | is I could sneak in tonight when no one's around,

00:44:42.360 | and I could move something.

00:44:43.880 | No, no, I don't wanna do that, right?

00:44:45.380 | But it's like I came over the border a little bit,

00:44:47.280 | and I thought, maybe that's a better way,

00:44:49.320 | but then I came back, right?

00:44:51.080 | And we're responsible for that, right?

00:44:54.200 | Because it is a choice to say,

00:44:55.720 | I don't wanna work hard, I'm already working how hard,

00:44:57.960 | I don't wanna make my trinket better,

00:44:59.200 | I wanna think mine's the best one,

00:45:01.040 | I could destroy yours, right?

00:45:02.640 | And, you know, we're letting our mind go over that border,

00:45:05.320 | and do we say, right, run that forward, right?

00:45:08.080 | Let's run that forward, and put people around us

00:45:09.860 | who feel the same way, and start doing it

00:45:11.540 | so we think less of ourselves, and we debase ourselves.

00:45:14.280 | Do we run headlong in, or do we come over that boundary,

00:45:18.280 | and that's maybe the capacity for evil in us,

00:45:20.280 | that we come over that boundary, all of us, right, at times.

00:45:24.080 | But do we come over it, and then say,

00:45:25.800 | no, that's not my choice, that's not my self-definition,

00:45:29.160 | and I'm coming back.

00:45:30.280 | - But I'm trying to justify,

00:45:31.680 | maybe there's certain other sociological forces

00:45:34.280 | that help us cross the border, too.

00:45:36.040 | So in Nazi Germany, we've been talking about Hitler,

00:45:39.480 | but then there's also the German people.

00:45:43.240 | And so maybe when there's a bit of a mass hysteria,

00:45:45.720 | so all these effects of, like, a combination of propaganda

00:45:50.480 | with the small jealousies and resentments

00:45:53.600 | of the people that don't cross the border,

00:45:56.560 | together they can, with great charismatic leaders

00:46:00.120 | that sort of really fuel that fire that we feel

00:46:03.800 | when we're a part of the crowd.

00:46:05.060 | So maybe those individual kind of psychological barriers

00:46:07.840 | we have to take that leap from jealousy to envy,

00:46:11.240 | those can be made easier.

00:46:13.240 | The leap can be catalyzed through this mass hysteria.

00:46:15.440 | - 100%, 100%.

00:46:17.720 | I think that, to me, is a massive point.

00:46:20.560 | We're talking about layers of emergence, right?

00:46:22.100 | So if there's individual consciousness,

00:46:24.360 | then there's culture, right?

00:46:25.840 | And we're products of the soup we swim in, so to speak.

00:46:28.360 | People would say that when I was growing up, right?

00:46:30.200 | We're products of the soup we swim in.

00:46:32.160 | So if the soup that we're swimming in

00:46:34.120 | is the soup of hatred, right?

00:46:36.640 | Then it's gonna foster all of those things.

00:46:38.720 | So then you think about,

00:46:40.040 | just in a painting with a very broad brush,

00:46:42.360 | the culture created in Germany prior to the Second World War

00:46:45.920 | and what was the impact of the reparations

00:46:48.680 | after the First World War, right?

00:46:50.040 | Of the punishing reparations, impoverishment,

00:46:52.800 | and basically humiliation that people were feeling.

00:46:56.400 | Okay, there were a whole bunch of decisions

00:46:59.160 | that impacted that cultural perspective, right?

00:47:01.880 | Then there must have been aspects,

00:47:03.580 | just like I see in many ways parallels in America now,

00:47:07.920 | of what are our standards

00:47:09.480 | for what we're communicating to others, right?

00:47:12.660 | How is the media deciding what's real and what's not real,

00:47:15.460 | what's true, what's not true, what's hatred,

00:47:18.420 | that is only gonna do evil versus what's hatred,

00:47:22.280 | that's okay because I might sell something

00:47:24.240 | by putting it out there?

00:47:26.240 | I mean, we know that was going on in Germany

00:47:30.600 | during the rise of the Nazis,

00:47:31.880 | and I think there's a parallel to,

00:47:34.280 | do we value truth?

00:47:35.920 | Can we stand together and say,

00:47:37.200 | no matter how much I might disagree with you politically,

00:47:39.980 | we can still understand that there's right and there's wrong.

00:47:43.420 | There's truth and there's lies, right?

00:47:45.300 | So I think those are just two examples

00:47:48.040 | of determinants of culture,

00:47:49.700 | and then the culture is a determinant of,

00:47:53.020 | is someone like Hitler marginalized,

00:47:56.040 | that's a crazy evil person, oh my goodness, whoa, right?

00:48:00.640 | Or is that someone who gains a greater following

00:48:03.280 | and more adherence,

00:48:04.160 | and then there starts to be a momentum,

00:48:06.400 | because why, because what do demagogues do?

00:48:09.160 | I think they have a giant lasso

00:48:10.880 | and they harness the envy

00:48:12.840 | of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people

00:48:16.480 | that's right, you feel worse about yourself too,

00:48:18.360 | doesn't matter what the reasons are.

00:48:19.780 | Maybe it's your childhood, maybe it's not,

00:48:21.660 | maybe it's job failings, maybe it's professional,

00:48:23.660 | maybe it's personal, doesn't matter.

00:48:25.220 | You have envy too, let's put it together

00:48:28.100 | and do some destruction,

00:48:29.300 | 'cause that'll make us feel better, which is a lie.

00:48:32.260 | - So we've talked about envy,

00:48:35.060 | where does, from the leader perspective,

00:48:38.060 | things like narcissism or sociopathy,

00:48:40.780 | psychopathy come into play?

00:48:42.820 | What can you make of the world we live in,

00:48:46.620 | maybe the leaders that run the world

00:48:49.320 | from the perspective, from the lens of narcissism?

00:48:52.400 | - So I am struck, 20 years of doing what I do now,

00:48:57.400 | I've been a psychiatrist for 20 years

00:48:59.020 | and I practice in so many different settings

00:49:00.960 | and I consult in different settings,

00:49:02.400 | I've been fortunate to have a very wide purview

00:49:05.040 | of what's going on in people and in the world around us.

00:49:08.280 | And I am struck with amazement

00:49:11.120 | that of all the things I see that are, say, abnormal,

00:49:14.920 | let's say, from the mental health perspective.

00:49:16.840 | This could be depression, panic attacks,

00:49:19.380 | hearing voices, addiction,

00:49:22.560 | there's so many things that cover everything

00:49:24.860 | that narcissism is not frequent

00:49:30.520 | compared to a lot of other things.

00:49:32.200 | So it's small in terms of, say, a narcissistic diagnosis,

00:49:36.200 | right, it's much less than many other things.

00:49:38.600 | But it causes the lion's share,

00:49:41.400 | I don't just mean the most compared to anything else,

00:49:43.720 | but I think more than 50%,

00:49:45.640 | the majority of bad things, evil things,

00:49:50.480 | destructive things that I see in the world around us.

00:49:53.560 | I think narcissists are wildly destructive

00:49:57.060 | because they are driven completely,

00:49:59.540 | they are lodged completely in the lane of envy.

00:50:04.540 | - Can you try to sneak up,

00:50:08.900 | and we don't wanna be lost in definitions,

00:50:10.920 | but can you try to sneak up to a definition,

00:50:13.480 | non-clinical definition of narcissism

00:50:15.440 | that we're talking about?

00:50:17.160 | - So narcissism is a deep, pervasive,

00:50:22.160 | and unquestioned sense of inadequacy in the self

00:50:27.720 | that comes along with anger and fear and vulnerability,

00:50:32.540 | fear of destruction, fear of annihilation,

00:50:36.000 | that is compensated for by aggression,

00:50:41.920 | by the mechanics of envy,

00:50:44.240 | by trying to make the self seem better

00:50:49.160 | at the expense of others,

00:50:50.400 | by taking from others,

00:50:53.560 | by being completely cavalier

00:50:55.800 | to the thoughts and feelings of others.

00:50:58.240 | That narcissism is not arrogance.

00:51:00.120 | Now, narcissism is the opposite of arrogance.

00:51:02.520 | There is such a deep sense of inadequacy

00:51:06.560 | and incompetence in the self

00:51:09.080 | that the defensive structure around that

00:51:12.360 | becomes dominated by rocket-fueled envy.

00:51:16.700 | - So the machinery of narcissism is envy,

00:51:21.400 | but what do you make of the more popularly discussed

00:51:26.160 | symptom of narcissism,

00:51:28.760 | which is a seeming not caring about other people,

00:51:33.340 | sort of a very inward-facing focus

00:51:38.120 | in terms of the calculation you make

00:51:40.040 | when making decisions about the world?

00:51:42.320 | - Narcissistic people definitely care about other people.

00:51:46.200 | It's the people who are schizoid

00:51:48.120 | and say that don't necessarily register other people.

00:51:51.720 | But narcissism, people care about other people,

00:51:54.180 | but it's entirely vis-a-vis the self.

00:51:57.200 | If I'm schizoid, I don't really notice

00:51:58.700 | or care much who you are.

00:52:00.320 | But if I'm narcissistic, I absolutely care,

00:52:03.240 | because I'm watching every last detail of you.

00:52:05.200 | What might you have that's better than me?

00:52:07.320 | It's an incredibly intense focus

00:52:11.560 | upon individuals and demographics of people,

00:52:15.340 | but the priority, the goal is entirely about the self,

00:52:20.340 | which is why it can become easy to say,

00:52:22.600 | I don't care if a million people die.

00:52:24.920 | How different is that from going out

00:52:26.960 | and destroying one person or a million people?

00:52:30.380 | It's in the same category of those people,

00:52:33.800 | their existence is only meaningful in how it relates to me.

00:52:37.180 | - But it's still meaningful.

00:52:40.800 | It just seems like a very difficult leap to take

00:52:44.240 | that I don't care that a million people die.

00:52:46.620 | That seems to be, even with envy,

00:52:52.760 | that seems to be a big feeling and thought to have,

00:52:58.040 | if you at all care about them.

00:53:00.720 | Are other people, I guess, tools for alleviation

00:53:05.720 | of your sense of inadequacy?

00:53:08.720 | - Right, I don't even care about being caring at all.

00:53:12.240 | I mean, care about in that noticing

00:53:14.660 | that the person exists.

00:53:16.220 | Someone who wants money and notices

00:53:19.800 | that there's a $100 bill out cares about that.

00:53:22.160 | They don't care about the $100 bill

00:53:24.200 | and that doesn't mean anything to them.

00:53:25.480 | It's just their thoughts and feelings.

00:53:27.160 | But it's gonna attract attention.

00:53:28.640 | They care about it because it's something that they want.

00:53:32.240 | The same way people will care about others,

00:53:34.120 | but only from the perspective of,

00:53:35.640 | do you have things that I want?

00:53:37.280 | Or can I feel better about myself

00:53:39.560 | by taking something from you,

00:53:40.800 | by making things worse for you?

00:53:43.040 | - People often talk about narcissism

00:53:44.600 | as the opposite of empathy.

00:53:46.300 | But empathy, again, depends how you define it,

00:53:51.800 | but is a careful consideration of the mental state

00:53:57.320 | of the mental space of another person,

00:53:59.960 | of how the other person sees the world.

00:54:02.360 | And so you're kind of saying that narcissistic people

00:54:07.000 | would also be very good at that

00:54:09.400 | in order to understand how maybe the other person

00:54:12.720 | could be manipulated or something

00:54:14.320 | to alleviate your sense of inadequacy.

00:54:16.660 | - Right, so there's a difference

00:54:17.640 | between the mechanics of empathy.

00:54:19.520 | So let's say, and we can define things different ways,

00:54:21.880 | but let's say empathic attunement

00:54:23.720 | is the ability to be attuned and to think,

00:54:25.680 | okay, what's going on in you?

00:54:27.200 | What might you be thinking?

00:54:28.360 | What might you be feeling?

00:54:29.960 | Some people have a lot of empathic attunement,

00:54:32.400 | but we could look at that as mechanistic, right?

00:54:35.960 | It doesn't equate to care, right?

00:54:38.920 | And empathic attunement can come along with empathy or not.

00:54:43.520 | Right, so yes, people who are narcissistic,

00:54:46.240 | they can mentalize well.

00:54:47.480 | So you mentalize, meaning the ability to understand

00:54:52.040 | or to consider thoughts, feelings, motivations,

00:54:54.720 | and other people, right?

00:54:56.400 | So people who are narcissistic

00:54:59.960 | can have empathic attunement or mentalization,

00:55:02.200 | depending upon how we wanna describe those things,

00:55:04.400 | but that has nothing to do with care,

00:55:08.400 | with actual empathy or kindness or consideration.

00:55:12.520 | - So in that sense, empathy, usually popularly used,

00:55:16.360 | means that you care, like your happiness is aligned.

00:55:19.760 | There's this, I need to read this book.

00:55:22.220 | I've read so little science fiction.

00:55:23.800 | That's been one of my goals for this year,

00:55:25.760 | to catch up on some science fiction.

00:55:27.560 | So Robert Hyland from "Stranger in a Strange Land"

00:55:31.120 | has this quote about love, which is,

00:55:32.960 | "Love is that condition where another person's happiness

00:55:36.560 | "is essential to your own."

00:55:38.440 | So that's a good definition, I guess, of empathy,

00:55:40.120 | where you're very sensitive,

00:55:42.320 | so mechanistically very sensitive

00:55:44.040 | to the state of another person's mind,

00:55:46.440 | and your goal is to maximize their happiness.

00:55:50.360 | It's like essential to your own happiness.

00:55:52.520 | So the happinesses are aligned,

00:55:55.000 | and when that's elevated to its highest forms,

00:55:57.040 | you can call that love or magic love,

00:55:59.240 | friendship and so on.

00:56:00.720 | Okay.

00:56:01.560 | - There's one more thing about the narcissist,

00:56:03.160 | is some people can be sort of benign narcissists,

00:56:05.960 | where they want great things for themselves,

00:56:10.080 | but if they have enough great things,

00:56:12.480 | they can sort of tolerate others being happy too.

00:56:14.920 | And these are people who sometimes

00:56:18.000 | are actually quite highly liked,

00:56:19.760 | because they have to have the most money,

00:56:21.820 | the most power, the most of anything,

00:56:23.680 | anything more than anyone else could challenge.

00:56:25.920 | But as long as I have that,

00:56:26.920 | it's okay that you have some too, right?

00:56:28.960 | And then that can make you happy

00:56:30.440 | and can make you like me, right?

00:56:32.080 | So benign narcissists can be well-liked

00:56:35.520 | from that perspective,

00:56:37.040 | but it's still all about them,

00:56:40.400 | and that can change if, for example,

00:56:42.280 | there's a scarcity of resources now, right?

00:56:44.680 | But they're generally,

00:56:45.840 | they're not people who are being overtly destructive,

00:56:48.000 | although that, they're over the border

00:56:50.360 | into the envy territory, right?

00:56:53.780 | Malignant narcissists are very different,

00:56:55.740 | where they then want to have everything.

00:56:58.100 | So even if I have a thousand times more than you do,

00:57:00.940 | I still envy you what you have,

00:57:02.540 | because I want to have,

00:57:04.180 | I don't think I can feel good enough about myself

00:57:05.860 | unless I have everything.

00:57:07.540 | And once I have everything,

00:57:08.380 | I won't feel good enough about myself either,

00:57:09.740 | and I don't have to have more, right?

00:57:10.940 | It's like, that's malignant narcissism,

00:57:13.660 | which we think of as sociopathy, right?

00:57:16.340 | We can define these words in different ways,

00:57:18.020 | but they're very, very negative concepts.

00:57:20.340 | That's profound sociopathy, malignant narcissism,

00:57:24.220 | envy writ large.

00:57:26.420 | - So sociopathy is malignant narcissism.

00:57:29.300 | That's a convenient way to think about it.

00:57:31.400 | - No, 'cause we can do sort of sociopathic things,

00:57:35.300 | but not be sociopathic,

00:57:36.740 | like, well, you tell a white lie.

00:57:38.620 | It's like sort of sociopathy on steroids, right,

00:57:41.380 | is then envy writ large is malignant narcissism.

00:57:45.180 | - Well, just like you're saying,

00:57:46.660 | there's empathic attunement, as you said.

00:57:49.380 | So there's the mechanistic aspect of empathy and sociopathy,

00:57:54.100 | and then there's the big label you get attached

00:57:56.100 | if you're just doing that thing regularly, I guess.

00:57:59.380 | - Living your life through that lens, right?

00:58:01.580 | - Yeah.

00:58:02.420 | And is there a nice spectrum that's like

00:58:05.740 | narcissism, sociopathy, and psychopathy?

00:58:08.580 | Is it all the same kind of nice stroll through the woods

00:58:12.260 | to off the cliff, or?

00:58:13.860 | - Not really, because the words don't have clear definitions

00:58:16.580 | like psychopathy and sociopathy.

00:58:18.300 | There's no real definition of psychopath or psychopathy,

00:58:23.220 | or does that mean someone's sociopathic but psychotic?

00:58:26.380 | There's really not a,

00:58:27.220 | we end up using those words colloquially,

00:58:29.740 | which is why concepts that we can define,

00:58:32.540 | like envy, empathic attunement, narcissism,

00:58:36.460 | even though there might be nuances and definitions,

00:58:38.900 | we can define them in ways that are widely accepted,

00:58:42.580 | including within psychology and psychiatry.

00:58:45.340 | - So it's nice to just think about this broad umbrella

00:58:47.620 | of narcissism and the levels to which it's benign

00:58:49.980 | or malignant, and then also separating it

00:58:53.180 | to the different mechanisms, like interaction by interaction,

00:58:57.300 | which sometimes can be narcissistic, but broadly speaking,

00:59:00.380 | do you do everything through the lens

00:59:01.740 | of malignant narcissism that makes you a sociopath

00:59:06.260 | or a malignant narcissist?

00:59:09.220 | - Yes, and the thing I would add to that

00:59:10.820 | is the thought about culture, right?

00:59:12.340 | It's like how does the cultures we're in,

00:59:14.340 | whether it's a culture of a household, right,

00:59:16.500 | the culture of a community,

00:59:17.660 | the culture of a nation or the world,

00:59:19.740 | how does that impact what unfolds in that person,

00:59:23.900 | and then how does what unfolds in that person

00:59:26.260 | impact that culture?

00:59:27.380 | - Well, the question is what unfolds in that person,

00:59:30.580 | yeah, how does culture affect it,

00:59:33.220 | but how does your own psychological development

00:59:36.820 | unfold that?

00:59:37.820 | Because narcissism in leaders

00:59:39.860 | is the most impactful thing, right?

00:59:42.860 | Who are the most impactful individuals?

00:59:45.180 | What is the most impact of individual psychology?

00:59:47.380 | We have, it's usually leaders of countries

00:59:49.900 | or leaders of major organizations and so on,

00:59:52.540 | and one of the things you mentioned with benign narcissism,

00:59:56.260 | that seems to be aligned with success, right?

00:59:59.500 | If you care about your own success,

01:00:01.220 | that's going to be, you're more likely to be,

01:00:05.300 | have narcissistic tendencies, I suppose,

01:00:08.980 | and so my question is when you follow

01:00:12.660 | that thread of narcissism to become the leader of a country,

01:00:16.780 | now you have a lot of new,

01:00:20.020 | interesting psychological complexities to deal with,

01:00:22.780 | like power, that old cliche that power corrupts,

01:00:26.100 | does that, is it possible for power to corrupt

01:00:30.860 | the human mind to where it pushes you

01:00:33.220 | farther and farther into malignant narcissism,

01:00:38.220 | into this destructive envy?

01:00:40.460 | What are your thoughts on power,

01:00:42.140 | like the effect of power on the human mind?

01:00:44.300 | - Power is an accentuator, right, an intensifier, right?

01:00:50.740 | So I think it is true that there are people

01:00:56.420 | who can be sort of in a gray area

01:00:58.540 | where there are malignant narcissistic tendencies

01:01:01.980 | and behaviors, but there are also ways

01:01:05.620 | in which that person can think outside of themselves

01:01:07.660 | and think in a broader way

01:01:08.900 | and think sort of kindly about others,

01:01:11.220 | and they're sort of trying to navigate,

01:01:14.860 | whether they're aware or not,

01:01:15.940 | that they're trying to navigate between one and the other,

01:01:18.100 | and then the allure of power is,

01:01:19.980 | well, just look, just exercise that power

01:01:21.660 | and you'll feel better, right?

01:01:22.940 | It'll show you, right, that you're good enough.

01:01:24.760 | Look at the power you have,

01:01:25.780 | and whatever may be going on in the person's mind,

01:01:28.420 | that then power, yes, can corrupt, yes.

01:01:32.300 | I think that's why we have to have checks and balances,

01:01:34.740 | right, because we don't, you know,

01:01:36.940 | we're all inscrutable to ourselves, let alone to others,

01:01:39.540 | so we must have checks and balances,

01:01:41.860 | and we should always have them on ourselves

01:01:44.020 | as well as on others.

01:01:45.140 | We should want that for the health of ourselves

01:01:47.420 | and the world around us.

01:01:49.460 | So I think all of that is true,

01:01:51.780 | but there are also people who don't necessarily

01:01:54.420 | become corrupted by power, right?

01:01:57.420 | There can be an understanding and a grounding

01:02:00.060 | that they're a steward of power, right,

01:02:02.700 | you know, a shepherd.

01:02:04.340 | I mean, there are ways people describe utilizing power

01:02:06.980 | and utilizing it in a benign way

01:02:10.140 | that then fosters the healthy aspects of self, right?

01:02:14.940 | So like, gratitude and humility, right?

01:02:17.300 | If we could add a healthy dose of gratitude and humility

01:02:21.420 | to everyone or to our society, there would be a sea change,

01:02:24.740 | right, but how do you feel gratitude?

01:02:26.520 | How do you feel humility?

01:02:28.040 | Those things are incompatible with narcissism, envy, right,

01:02:32.280 | with really the bad pole of things that we're talking about.

01:02:35.200 | And part of the reason I'm so focused in my work

01:02:38.560 | and in really what runs through all of my thoughts

01:02:40.920 | about life is the impact of trauma, right,

01:02:43.480 | because trauma creates these false lessons

01:02:46.260 | and it walls us off from truth,

01:02:47.920 | and it starts to point towards the unhealthy ways

01:02:52.800 | of trying to feel better about ourselves.

01:02:57.000 | But we have the health in us too.

01:03:00.120 | We have those seeds of health too

01:03:01.780 | that can grow into being a steward of power

01:03:04.060 | and sharing power, being considerate and kind.

01:03:06.480 | And we see a lot of that in the world too, right?

01:03:09.320 | It's not all just the evil.

01:03:11.000 | We see plenty of people who do good

01:03:13.520 | and who are generous of spirit.

01:03:14.920 | And we have both in us, and it is,

01:03:17.360 | I think you're talking about our culture

01:03:19.460 | and the seeds that we sow and the climate that we set,

01:03:23.340 | including putting governors and boundaries around.

01:03:25.440 | Like, how do we rein in or say that the more aggressive,

01:03:29.280 | the more envious or destructive is unacceptable, right?

01:03:32.280 | How do we foster the part that's kind

01:03:35.320 | and considerate and reflective and slow to judge,

01:03:38.340 | of like, hey, let's learn a little bit more.

01:03:39.680 | Like, how do we foster that?

01:03:40.940 | And I think a lot of that comes back

01:03:43.040 | to early childhood education.

01:03:44.520 | I mean, I think we don't do nearly enough

01:03:46.080 | to protect children, and as a corollary to that,

01:03:50.120 | we don't do nearly enough to educate children.

01:03:52.400 | I mean, I wanna write a book.

01:03:53.960 | Second book I write is gonna be

01:03:55.520 | everything I needed to know about life

01:03:58.240 | I learned as a second year postgraduate psychiatry resident.

01:04:02.040 | It's like, why?

01:04:03.360 | You know, why then did I learn so much

01:04:06.280 | about unconscious motivation, about the impact of trauma,

01:04:09.880 | about how we can be envious and how we can act out,

01:04:12.940 | you know, even about how our emotions trump logic in us.

01:04:15.880 | Like, why don't we teach these things

01:04:19.620 | when we're young enough to understand?

01:04:21.320 | Like, why is that other kid bullying me, right?

01:04:23.760 | Or why, just because I'm a little bit bigger,

01:04:26.400 | do I wanna go thump that other kid on the head?

01:04:28.760 | Like, what's going on?

01:04:31.080 | We don't do those things.

01:04:33.160 | You know, we're just tripping ahead of ourselves

01:04:35.440 | and we don't stop and think, how are we using our resources?

01:04:38.720 | How are we shepherding forward the next generation,

01:04:42.080 | which, by the way, is a generation

01:04:43.160 | that's gonna determine our fates too, right,

01:04:44.880 | as we get older, but we don't, you know, do that.

01:04:48.560 | I often think of, like, in the Olympics,

01:04:49.920 | you know, you see, like, the great sprinters, right,

01:04:52.520 | and they've gotta come out of the blocks perfectly, right?

01:04:54.520 | So if they come out of the blocks a little bit too fast,

01:04:56.380 | they're gonna fall over, right?

01:04:57.440 | They're gonna just fall forward,

01:04:58.520 | and I often see that in my head about us,

01:05:02.440 | as humans and as a culture,

01:05:04.380 | that we're rushing so far forward,

01:05:06.200 | we don't stop and say, wait, let's keep the basics here,

01:05:09.320 | the basic techniques of, like,

01:05:10.600 | how are we navigating forward in life?

01:05:13.640 | Or do we just throw all those away,

01:05:14.900 | because I can get some benefit by saying that you're bad,

01:05:18.760 | even though what's being leveled against you is wrong, right?

01:05:21.600 | Like, why, do I take that?

01:05:23.760 | Or do I say, no, there's something more important here

01:05:26.360 | that we wanna shepherd forward in ourselves as a culture?

01:05:28.980 | And I think preventing childhood trauma

01:05:31.620 | and changing the ways that we educate children and adults

01:05:34.260 | would, could, again, make a sea change

01:05:36.980 | and maybe set us on a course towards,

01:05:39.300 | you know, even towards a greater likelihood

01:05:40.860 | of survival as a species.

01:05:42.520 | - Yeah, so talking to, like, people in elementary school

01:05:47.520 | about human nature and teaching them

01:05:52.180 | so how people can be resentful and envious

01:05:55.420 | and how to deal with your emotions,

01:05:58.500 | how to, yeah, so these basic interaction things

01:06:02.300 | about human relationships, about friendships,

01:06:04.580 | about betrayal, about love, about all those things.

01:06:08.500 | Like, it just, it's actually strange that we don't,

01:06:12.600 | we kind of hope the parents talk about that kind of stuff.

01:06:16.020 | - Right.

01:06:16.860 | - But then the parents often, you know,

01:06:20.980 | need therapy themselves.

01:06:22.700 | - The parents didn't learn it, right?

01:06:24.580 | - Yeah, the parents didn't learn it.

01:06:25.420 | - I mean, I'm not joking that I was mad,

01:06:27.780 | you know, second year after medical school.

01:06:29.340 | Like, how is it?

01:06:30.180 | Like, I think of even things in my own life

01:06:31.740 | and, you know, how I, you know,

01:06:33.900 | how much shame I felt after my brother's suicide.

01:06:36.300 | Like, I was already an adult, right?

01:06:38.100 | I was a young adult, but I felt so much shame.

01:06:41.060 | I didn't, like, I had no understanding that,

01:06:43.760 | that, oh, like, it's a reflex to trauma, right,

01:06:47.620 | to feel guilt and shame,

01:06:49.060 | and that, of course, I was feeling that.

01:06:51.240 | It didn't mean it was true because I felt it,

01:06:54.280 | but I mapped the fact that I felt ashamed

01:06:56.420 | to the fact that I should have felt guilty and ashamed,

01:06:58.980 | and it, like, led to some very negative things in my life

01:07:02.020 | that I had to sort of pull myself back from

01:07:03.780 | and recover from, and, like, I didn't know that, right?

01:07:07.780 | I didn't know the automaticity of the reflex

01:07:10.620 | and how pervasive it can be

01:07:11.780 | and how it can put blinders on us,

01:07:13.180 | and, I mean, it's just one example,

01:07:15.380 | but, you know, it's an example of something big

01:07:16.780 | that happens to people that we don't learn about,

01:07:19.820 | and I find myself sometimes

01:07:21.700 | having conversations with a person.

01:07:23.260 | So, you know, I still do a lot of clinical care

01:07:24.800 | of having conversations with a person after a tragedy,

01:07:28.320 | and I'm saying, I can't believe, right,

01:07:30.000 | again, I'm saying the things that this person

01:07:32.240 | didn't learn in elementary school

01:07:34.180 | because, like, none of us did, right?

01:07:35.760 | And then look at the misery and the suffering,

01:07:37.680 | and then I think this is one person

01:07:38.960 | among how many millions among us

01:07:41.120 | who, you know, try and go about their way

01:07:44.020 | without knowing things that are easily knowable

01:07:46.600 | 'cause they don't even know that they're knowable

01:07:47.920 | because we don't teach them to ourselves.

01:07:50.500 | - So how to deal with trauma,

01:07:52.640 | that trauma happens, first of all,

01:07:54.560 | that suffering can happen,

01:07:58.380 | and small trauma and big trauma,

01:08:01.420 | all of it can happen,

01:08:02.660 | and there's natural ways to deal with it.

01:08:05.060 | So in the case of trauma, as you write about,

01:08:08.520 | and we can also just talk about

01:08:10.860 | some more of the details of that,

01:08:12.200 | but it's good to bring it to the surface

01:08:14.900 | to talk about it, to not be ashamed to hide it inside,

01:08:19.260 | to be some kind of secret,

01:08:20.860 | that it's actually, I mean,

01:08:24.320 | there's a lot of positive things to say here,

01:08:26.140 | at least from my perspective.

01:08:27.280 | One is it's discussing trauma

01:08:29.500 | and dealing with trauma together with other human beings

01:08:31.480 | by talking about it is a path to deep friendship

01:08:34.300 | and intimacy with those people.

01:08:36.180 | There's a dark aspect to trauma, to war,

01:08:41.420 | that communicating it or sharing it bonds you.

01:08:46.420 | So, like, the other side of trauma is, like, love.

01:08:51.600 | You need that hardship, not you don't need it,

01:08:54.000 | but hardship and trauma can often be a catalyst

01:08:56.520 | for a deep human connection,

01:08:57.960 | if you bring it to the surface,

01:08:59.120 | as opposed to kind of hide it on the inside.

01:09:02.160 | If we can just linger on it,

01:09:03.760 | because you've been through a few

01:09:05.760 | very traumatic events in your life.

01:09:09.160 | When you were 25 years old, as you mentioned,

01:09:11.960 | your brother committed suicide.

01:09:13.560 | What did that event teach you about life, about death,

01:09:20.160 | and about the human mind?

01:09:21.720 | - Well, it certainly brought me face to face

01:09:25.200 | with the truths of life and death,

01:09:28.720 | because I had not had a major trauma before then.

01:09:33.380 | So there wasn't a major trauma

01:09:34.760 | sort of in my developmental years

01:09:37.000 | that what can carry forward

01:09:39.100 | is a sort of omnipotence defense, right?

01:09:40.880 | I mean, the thought is that when we're toddlers,

01:09:42.980 | we all have like an omnipotence defense,

01:09:45.040 | which is like, I can just try and get up and run and move.

01:09:47.600 | And if I run into something,

01:09:48.800 | I'll get up and do it again, right?

01:09:50.120 | That we kind of have to,

01:09:52.480 | and it's partly the protection of the parent, et cetera,

01:09:54.440 | but we think we can get out there in the world

01:09:56.320 | and do things, and we just do.

01:09:57.520 | And if we don't have major traumas,

01:10:00.140 | we can sort of carry through the,

01:10:01.720 | oh, like bad things aren't gonna happen to me.

01:10:03.960 | I know that they're there,

01:10:05.880 | and I know they happen to people,

01:10:06.760 | but they don't happen to me, right?

01:10:08.900 | And sometimes what will happen

01:10:10.900 | is being confronted with such a tragedy

01:10:13.680 | wipes that away very, very quickly,

01:10:15.360 | and then the person feels extremely exposed.

01:10:18.200 | Like, oh, I thought that I was gonna be okay,

01:10:22.560 | and now I know that I'm not,

01:10:24.480 | and that can start to lead to, well, what does that mean?

01:10:27.120 | And now, is this all coming for me now?

01:10:30.240 | Did I get so lucky for 25 years, nothing bad happened,

01:10:34.200 | and now nothing but bad things are gonna be happening?

01:10:35.800 | Am I cursed?

01:10:36.760 | Is my family cursed, right?

01:10:38.600 | And I think that leads to, say,

01:10:41.040 | the learning about the human mind in retrospect.

01:10:44.520 | I think I understood at the time to some degree,

01:10:47.800 | but not like I do now.

01:10:48.760 | I can put words to it now, right?

01:10:50.040 | Of how incredibly important,

01:10:53.920 | powerfully important negative emotion is, right?

01:10:58.640 | That how a sense of guilt and shame and vulnerability

01:11:02.880 | can just pervade our entire life perspective.

01:11:07.800 | So all of a sudden,

01:11:08.640 | we're swimming in a very different soup,

01:11:10.720 | and it's a frightening soup, and it's a toxic soup,

01:11:14.120 | and I'm most struck by that.

01:11:17.080 | And that goes along with the idea

01:11:19.040 | that we're not taught that emotion always beats logic.

01:11:23.760 | I think the idea of Descartes,

01:11:25.240 | and the idea that we're rational creatures,

01:11:27.720 | that kinda comes down to us through Western thought,

01:11:30.360 | is completely not true.

01:11:32.520 | We're rational creatures,

01:11:34.680 | only if there is an emotion grabbing for our attention.

01:11:39.200 | We're attending to one another,

01:11:40.400 | we're being very logical, right?

01:11:41.600 | What we're doing now,

01:11:42.840 | if we heard a frightening noise right outside the door,

01:11:46.360 | we'd be entirely different, right?

01:11:47.800 | The emotion would trump everything.

01:11:49.040 | It's like, stop paying attention to this, right?

01:11:50.720 | Now safety is at stake,

01:11:51.760 | and we'd think differently, feel differently,

01:11:53.680 | behave differently, right?

01:11:55.240 | And this is what happens to us,

01:11:57.560 | not just in situations where something drags us,

01:12:01.160 | yanks us from one emotional state to another,

01:12:03.360 | but it can be very, very pervasive.

01:12:05.160 | So my sense of anger, frustration, inadequacy,

01:12:09.160 | and then soothing in unhealthy ways,

01:12:10.960 | soothing by drinking too much,

01:12:13.120 | and then kinda hating myself in the first place,

01:12:15.160 | and hating the world around me,

01:12:16.800 | and then starting to think, well, who cares what happens?

01:12:19.880 | Like, there's some very dark thoughts and choices

01:12:24.000 | that came from a changed perspective of self in the world.

01:12:29.000 | - So what do you do when that, because of trauma,

01:12:33.240 | again, small or large,

01:12:35.800 | you find yourself swimming or drowning

01:12:40.120 | in a soup of negative emotion?

01:12:43.200 | What do you do?

01:12:45.040 | What do you do with that emotion?

01:12:46.720 | I mean, we don't have to even talk about trauma,

01:12:49.040 | as I think the interesting thing is,

01:12:51.880 | you know, any one of us throughout the day

01:12:56.840 | can find ourselves taking a bit of a dip

01:13:00.160 | in the pool of negative emotion.

01:13:02.480 | What do we do with that?

01:13:03.800 | - The first thing is to separate how we feel

01:13:06.960 | from what's true,

01:13:08.880 | 'cause we don't do a good job of that as humans.

01:13:11.240 | If I feel bad about myself, it's very easy to,

01:13:15.360 | then I conclude, like, I'm bad, right?

01:13:17.880 | If I feel ashamed of myself,

01:13:19.080 | I conclude I'm a terrible person who's shameful, right?

01:13:22.320 | This is the, you know, there's an old psychodynamic concept

01:13:25.440 | of what they used to call an observing ego.

01:13:27.600 | It still gets called that.

01:13:28.760 | It's not ego in the sense of arrogance, right?

01:13:31.120 | It's the ability to step outside and to see ourselves, right?

01:13:34.840 | So that's what lets us keep the difference

01:13:37.040 | between our feelings, right, and what we know to be true.

01:13:40.560 | Like, we can be very angry at someone.

01:13:41.960 | So I think that person's terrible.

01:13:43.240 | I think that person's stupid.

01:13:44.640 | I think that right now,

01:13:45.560 | because, like, something negative just passed between us.

01:13:47.960 | This inside of me, it's just because of how I feel.

01:13:50.320 | Like, when I can separate that,

01:13:51.800 | how do I actually think about that person, right?

01:13:54.160 | And, you know, we get driven so,

01:13:58.040 | so frequently by how we feel,

01:14:00.920 | because how we think, therefore what we believe, right,

01:14:04.800 | just kind of comes on its heels,

01:14:06.300 | as if the feeling is dragging it along.

01:14:08.760 | And I've been struck by that.

01:14:10.440 | It's one of the things that has struck me so,

01:14:13.440 | the most, right, among the very most

01:14:15.360 | in 20 years of working as a psychiatrist,

01:14:18.040 | is how we are led by our feelings, our emotions,

01:14:22.280 | as if they are truth.

01:14:23.560 | And then they create truth,

01:14:25.360 | because we embrace what they're telling us as true.

01:14:28.920 | And that is, I think, incredibly,

01:14:32.040 | I think it's how people learn prejudice.

01:14:33.680 | I think it's how people learn self-hatred.

01:14:36.160 | I think it's how we learn so many destructive behaviors.

01:14:39.200 | And then the blinders on us come in

01:14:41.960 | more and more and more and more.

01:14:44.080 | So separate, you know, we're driven by what we feel,

01:14:46.360 | unless we understand that what we feel

01:14:48.920 | is different from what we know to be true,

01:14:51.280 | or what we can decide on one way or another.

01:14:53.440 | - And that requires realizing

01:14:55.960 | and catching the emotions themselves,

01:14:57.960 | realizing that it's an emotion.

01:14:59.840 | A feeling comes into your mind,

01:15:01.120 | overtakes you, a feeling of anger,

01:15:03.840 | dislike, hatred, all of that, it just comes in.

01:15:08.000 | It's like, why did that person just cut me off in traffic,

01:15:11.520 | or something like that, that feeling.

01:15:13.520 | So what, you just kind of take it as a feeling

01:15:16.120 | and realize it's a feeling that doesn't represent

01:15:19.080 | some deep reality about the world that's fundamental,

01:15:21.440 | or you, that you just kind of watch it and let it pass,

01:15:26.440 | which is the natural way of things.

01:15:29.800 | - Yeah, or decide if it means anything.

01:15:32.080 | You know, if I'm mad, right, someone cut me off,

01:15:34.240 | and I feel hatred, and I want to destroy them, right,

01:15:37.200 | to stop and think, look, I've got that in me.

01:15:39.600 | Are the stressors running too high in my life?

01:15:42.840 | Like, is it really good?

01:15:43.680 | Should I be on this road 10 minutes behind schedule?

01:15:48.360 | What am I really doing?

01:15:49.200 | So we can learn, but yes, it's an observation skill,

01:15:52.880 | and it's an observation skill that we can develop.

01:15:56.160 | I often think of something called the tapestry theory,

01:15:59.480 | which I think initially was a theodicy of explaining,

01:16:03.160 | I believe this is true, I'm not sure of this,

01:16:05.440 | that the idea was that, oh, we don't see God's plan

01:16:09.120 | because we're up too close to it, right?

01:16:11.520 | Like, as if there was a beautiful tapestry on the wall,

01:16:14.120 | and we're standing right up it,

01:16:15.440 | we're only gonna see one part of it.

01:16:17.560 | We need to stand back from it.

01:16:18.960 | And I remember learning that in a religion studies class,

01:16:21.960 | being really fascinated with that at the time,

01:16:24.600 | and I think that there are a lot of things

01:16:27.560 | we do that about, right?

01:16:28.600 | And in training ourselves to have an observing ego,

01:16:32.200 | what we're saying is, hey, just the busyness of life

01:16:36.120 | or my own impulses or the pool of emotions

01:16:38.920 | are trying to pull me up right close

01:16:40.600 | to whatever tapestry there is there,

01:16:42.080 | and I wanna sort of resist that.

01:16:43.240 | I mean, I'm better off if I really stay further behind it,

01:16:47.520 | and then I make a choice if I wanna come close to it.

01:16:50.300 | If there's some really positive emotion,

01:16:52.200 | it's friendship or it's love or it's nurturing,

01:16:54.600 | you know what, let me come right up to this, right?

01:16:57.120 | But I wanna choose when I'm doing that.

01:16:59.540 | I don't want some drive.

01:17:01.840 | I didn't decide to take me by the back of the head

01:17:04.240 | and put me up against that tapestry.

01:17:07.280 | - So the interesting exercise for me,

01:17:11.280 | and I think for a lot of people in modern civilization

01:17:13.560 | is the internet with social media,

01:17:16.200 | that it's almost like going to the gym

01:17:19.240 | or something like that.

01:17:20.080 | At least that's the way I see it,

01:17:21.560 | because there's a bunch of forces on social media

01:17:25.960 | that are trying to make you feel things.

01:17:28.840 | Most of it is kind of in the negative space of feelings,

01:17:33.480 | because there is actually a strong gravity pull

01:17:36.840 | to negative feelings for some reason,

01:17:38.640 | and the brain notices them more.

01:17:42.560 | I don't know what that pull is, but it's there,

01:17:45.000 | and you get to observe it on social media.

01:17:46.640 | Like if you actually just scroll through social media,

01:17:49.400 | you feel the gravitational pull of negative emotions.

01:17:54.560 | And I just see it as a kind of exercise of like,

01:17:58.400 | you feel the pull, just like when you go to the gym,

01:18:00.320 | there's a resistance, and I practice like stepping away

01:18:03.920 | to look at the tapestry, right?

01:18:06.000 | And there's different mechanisms

01:18:07.240 | I think all of us have to learn.

01:18:09.080 | For me, there's a kind of,

01:18:11.440 | you mentioned gratitude and humility.

01:18:14.680 | So like if somebody, if it's me personally,

01:18:20.000 | I've recently gotten attacked a few places here and there,

01:18:22.960 | if they're saying that they're much smarter than me,

01:18:27.280 | I practice kind of humility, like you mentioned,

01:18:30.040 | and I kind of imagine that they are smarter than me.

01:18:33.000 | Those things help me to kind of like pull away,

01:18:35.840 | and then maybe they have a lesson to teach me.

01:18:38.120 | Like I don't take their sort of negative comments to heart,

01:18:42.120 | but I imagine the human being,

01:18:43.560 | and that they might have a lesson to teach me.

01:18:46.360 | And in general, when it's more amorphous,

01:18:48.440 | kind of negative feeling,

01:18:49.640 | I think the other thing is the gratitude.

01:18:52.120 | Just like different versions,

01:18:54.720 | almost meme-ifiable versions of like,

01:18:57.560 | oh, this is pretty cool.

01:18:58.960 | Like we got a thing going here.

01:19:00.520 | There's like human civilization,

01:19:01.760 | like bickering and having a little fun,

01:19:04.120 | like lunch food fight.

01:19:06.880 | And it's kind of cool.

01:19:08.040 | Like we get to interact in this way,

01:19:09.900 | and there's a bit of humor.

01:19:12.640 | It's like Thanksgiving dinner.

01:19:13.880 | Like Thanksgiving dinner,

01:19:16.120 | if you're arguing about politics,

01:19:17.560 | it can feel like really intense.

01:19:18.960 | Like I can't believe you said this,

01:19:20.240 | but if you zoom out, it's like family.

01:19:22.600 | This is like, this is amazing.

01:19:24.480 | So that kind of feeling really helps.

01:19:27.480 | But it's like, it really is like going to the gym.

01:19:29.800 | It's like building up a muscle

01:19:31.880 | to be able to pull away from those emotions.

01:19:36.040 | I don't think I get to practice that kind of emotion

01:19:39.440 | in regular day-to-day life.

01:19:41.000 | 'Cause like, it's hard to get those reps.

01:19:43.440 | On social media, you can really get the reps in.

01:19:45.480 | It's kind of cool.

01:19:46.320 | Like that's the way I see social media,

01:19:48.560 | is a chance to sort of practice that stoicism

01:19:51.600 | of like, of gratitude, of humility,

01:19:54.160 | of loving other people in the face

01:19:56.080 | of this negative emotion, all that.

01:19:58.080 | - Yes, and there's a certain kind of psychotherapy

01:20:01.840 | that talks a lot about this idea that like,

01:20:04.120 | oh, everything is as it should be, right?

01:20:06.120 | Which doesn't mean from some moral or justice point.

01:20:09.520 | It's just that often if you look at things,

01:20:12.080 | one thing leads to another, to another, to another

01:20:15.960 | in a way that's actually very, very predictable,

01:20:18.980 | even though we might be surprised about it, right?

01:20:21.520 | And so an example,

01:20:23.000 | so I would say that gratitude often does come along

01:20:27.960 | with a healthy pride, right?

01:20:30.120 | So you could say in the example you gave,

01:20:33.160 | hey, I'm being assailed on social media, okay?

01:20:36.280 | So you could say, well, there was a time I sat at,

01:20:39.120 | I set forth to impact people, right?

01:20:42.520 | To be able to reach people and to impact them, right?

01:20:46.240 | And look, I feel a sense of both gratitude and pride

01:20:49.360 | that I've done that, right?

01:20:51.040 | 'Cause look, you did it because of your effort, right?

01:20:53.640 | Your work, your intelligence, your thoughts,

01:20:55.360 | like you're responsible for it, right?

01:20:57.400 | But also you feel gratitude because any one of us

01:21:01.320 | who's here and has any opportunity

01:21:02.980 | has reason to feel immense gratitude, right?

01:21:05.160 | So then you can say, okay,

01:21:06.640 | what's actually going on here is something successful.

01:21:09.520 | I set out to do something and I'm doing it, right?

01:21:13.540 | And what it brings with it

01:21:16.340 | absolutely includes being assailed.

01:21:19.120 | There's no surprise there, right?

01:21:20.520 | That because people who have anything good

01:21:24.920 | serve as lightning rods for envy.

01:21:27.080 | So then, yes, there will be people who wanna make up lies

01:21:30.800 | or whatever they wanna do

01:21:31.920 | because you become a lightning rod for envy

01:21:34.420 | by having succeeded at the thing you set out to do

01:21:37.420 | about which you can feel a healthy pride and gratitude,

01:21:40.320 | right?

01:21:41.160 | And then I think that kind of puts it in its place.

01:21:43.480 | I mean, you're still gonna make decisions about it,

01:21:45.180 | but it makes sense then.

01:21:47.040 | Like you have a mechanism of understanding it

01:21:49.840 | that not only makes sense to you,

01:21:52.280 | but reflects the truth of what you actually have done

01:21:56.400 | and achieved and what's going on in the world around you.

01:21:58.840 | - Well, I wonder if we're all kind of

01:22:01.040 | a little bit unique in this because for me,

01:22:03.200 | I mean, maybe it's useful to kind of talk

01:22:06.360 | through my own experience of it,

01:22:08.220 | is for me, I try to avoid,

01:22:11.960 | especially in those situations, to feel pride

01:22:14.640 | because I'm just looking empirically.

01:22:19.480 | I feel way happier if I focus on humility.

01:22:23.040 | If I ever think of like, oh yeah,

01:22:26.760 | when you do something meaningful

01:22:28.200 | or you become more popular,

01:22:29.880 | you're going to experience these kinds of,

01:22:31.480 | I feel the attacks more and it's like me versus the world.

01:22:36.000 | That's the feeling that you start getting

01:22:37.560 | and that does not create a pleasant feeling.

01:22:39.920 | So to me, the pleasant feeling is like stepping away,

01:22:43.800 | like kind of laughing at it all, like with a smile

01:22:47.040 | and not like in a negative, like laughing at people,

01:22:49.120 | but just like laughing at the theater of it,

01:22:52.000 | the circus of it, like this whole absurd existence

01:22:54.320 | we've got going on.

01:22:55.320 | And then just having a humility in like,

01:22:57.640 | everybody has a lesson to teach me.

01:22:59.120 | It just makes me feel good.

01:23:00.440 | The pride thing, I do like feeling

01:23:03.660 | when in a positive pool of emotion.

01:23:07.700 | So if I'm building a trinket and I finish it,

01:23:11.120 | I'm like really happy with myself.

01:23:12.560 | Like I finished this thing

01:23:13.720 | and I usually actually like to do that alone.

01:23:16.800 | Like I don't need an audience for pride.

01:23:18.480 | I like to sit there and just like, ooh, this is cool.

01:23:21.240 | I did that, you know?

01:23:22.920 | But I just, I find that in social interactions,

01:23:25.820 | pride is just a danger, it's a dangerous drug for me

01:23:31.240 | because it's such a small,

01:23:34.080 | it's a small step away from then losing all the humility.

01:23:39.820 | And then you start getting very defensive

01:23:42.360 | and that's not going to,

01:23:43.560 | that's just, it starts you on a spiral of negative emotion.

01:23:47.480 | But I also, I mean, with everybody,

01:23:50.680 | you've mentioned this,

01:23:51.520 | we'll probably sneak up to it in different directions.

01:23:54.020 | I do think there's different brains that we all have.

01:23:58.320 | Like my brain is exceptionally self-critical,

01:24:02.020 | like nonstop.

01:24:03.640 | It's like an engine that's always there.

01:24:06.160 | But at the same time, I'm able to zoom out

01:24:12.280 | and have gratitude.

01:24:13.160 | And it's just, there's like two brains

01:24:16.000 | and they're like cohabitating happily.

01:24:19.320 | And I can, the better I get at this,

01:24:21.440 | the more I can use the one that's self-critical

01:24:23.880 | when I'm trying to be productive

01:24:25.400 | 'cause naturally I'm super lazy.

01:24:27.000 | So I'm trying not to be less lazy, I'll be self-critical.

01:24:30.320 | And then when I'm not being lazy,

01:24:33.680 | when I just, there's a special moment,

01:24:35.280 | I want to enjoy that moment,

01:24:36.280 | I'll turn on the gratitude engine.

01:24:38.600 | I feel like generic advice that people would give,

01:24:40.720 | if your brain is self-critical, that's not a good thing.

01:24:43.440 | Like you should probably get rid of that.

01:24:45.360 | I don't know about that.

01:24:46.760 | 'Cause it seems to be working.

01:24:48.600 | Like I kind of like it.

01:24:50.920 | I kind of like this grumpy old man that's in there

01:24:54.560 | that's like, that thing you did, that really sucked.

01:24:58.700 | I was like, and I kind of,

01:25:01.800 | there's a movie, "Grumpy Old Man."

01:25:03.120 | Like I like that grumpy boy, the grumpy cat is in there.

01:25:07.000 | And it's nice, but yeah, it can have bad effects

01:25:10.060 | on relationships and on maybe my wellbeing,

01:25:14.320 | maybe as you get older and all that kind of stuff.

01:25:16.040 | So you have to monitor all this kind of stuff.

01:25:17.920 | But I don't know, I don't know which one,

01:25:20.400 | it's like, 'cause you've kind of highlighted,

01:25:22.200 | it's good to have gratitude and humility,

01:25:24.000 | but it's also good to have a little bit of pride.

01:25:25.640 | I wonder what that like set of ingredients

01:25:28.780 | for a healthy life looks like for each of us.

01:25:32.800 | Whether we have to customize and figure out what that is.

01:25:36.280 | Some of the cake is already baked is the problem.

01:25:40.240 | And because of the trauma, like if I was like eight years old

01:25:43.520 | maybe I could be a little more flexible.

01:25:45.160 | But at this point, like you got the thing you got

01:25:47.960 | and it's hard to like fix it.

01:25:49.800 | - You can do a lot with it.

01:25:50.960 | - You could.

01:25:51.800 | - It may not be easy, but there's a lot of plasticity

01:25:54.320 | and a lot of pliability there.

01:25:56.320 | - Across all ages.

01:25:58.560 | - Again, people are different and there may be idiosyncrasies

01:26:01.300 | of why one person is in a different place.

01:26:03.120 | But as a general rule, I think the answer is absolutely yes.

01:26:05.920 | I mean, people have evolved and I've worked with people

01:26:08.580 | who've really changed themselves

01:26:10.560 | and broadened their conception and understanding.

01:26:12.480 | You know, they're in their 80s.

01:26:14.560 | I think we can do it at any stage of life.

01:26:16.480 | And I would make a case for intrapsychic.

01:26:21.320 | So not between people necessarily, right?

01:26:23.900 | But inside of oneself for the feeling of pride.

01:26:26.440 | And maybe if we call it self-esteem, right?

01:26:28.120 | Let's say we call it self-esteem, right?

01:26:30.280 | Or we could call it healthy pride.

01:26:31.800 | We could put either word to it.

01:26:33.280 | But if you think about what we're trying to avoid,

01:26:36.120 | is say a sense of inadequacy,

01:26:38.680 | then it is good to sort of own what's ours.

01:26:42.020 | We can put ourselves a little bit out of balance,

01:26:44.760 | either in terms of building up resentments

01:26:47.640 | or in terms of decreasing self-confidence, right?

01:26:50.600 | If we're not owning everything that's ours, right?

01:26:54.120 | So a thought I would have about,

01:26:56.860 | let's say about some pride or some self-esteem, right?

01:27:00.680 | Is it can work against vulnerability, right?

01:27:03.780 | Which we know can also in some situations

01:27:06.120 | push us towards jumping the boundary into envy

01:27:09.240 | and all of that.

01:27:10.080 | So think about vulnerability.

01:27:12.260 | If you conceive, okay, people are assailing me

01:27:16.700 | and you just go to a place of gratitude,

01:27:19.860 | it can send a message that, okay, I'm just lucky

01:27:25.340 | and I hope I continue to get lucky

01:27:26.820 | as opposed to like, that's not true, right?

01:27:29.020 | Like there's ability inside of me

01:27:31.620 | and discernment inside of me that tells me

01:27:34.060 | I can have a greater sense of confidence

01:27:36.220 | that I'll navigate what comes my way, right?

01:27:38.820 | So because the pride or the self-esteem part

01:27:42.040 | is owning what we've contributed

01:27:44.000 | to the goodness we've created, right?

01:27:46.160 | Which does in a sense helps us feel better about ourselves

01:27:49.720 | and it also helps us feel armed against say,

01:27:52.560 | the slings and arrows of whatever outrageous fortune

01:27:56.120 | may come next.

01:27:57.000 | - I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

01:27:58.840 | Again, disagreeing with an expert here.

01:28:00.720 | Yes, I think that's generally good advice

01:28:02.920 | but I think you mentioned vulnerability.

01:28:07.280 | I think it's like, I've just been doing a lot of research

01:28:10.540 | on rocket engines and fuel.

01:28:12.860 | Speaking of fuel, I just think I get a lot

01:28:16.740 | from being vulnerable because vulnerable leads to intimacy

01:28:20.180 | in friendships and relationships.

01:28:22.060 | I get a lot from being intimately close with human beings

01:28:24.620 | just on a friendship, on like a ideal level

01:28:29.160 | in conversations and so on.

01:28:31.040 | And so I would rather err on the side of vulnerability.

01:28:36.340 | Okay, to me, pride is destructive.

01:28:38.560 | I think I already,

01:28:39.480 | yeah, I already have a pretty good engine that says like,

01:28:46.060 | life is awesome.

01:28:49.200 | I don't need help for that.

01:28:50.920 | That's fine, that one is working.

01:28:52.560 | I just feel like the way to face the world

01:28:58.560 | that's full of uncertainty, that could be full of cruelty

01:29:01.120 | is with humility and gratitude.

01:29:03.880 | I don't know, this pride thing,

01:29:06.120 | it feels like, I know that for a lot of people,

01:29:09.740 | it's really important to really work on pride

01:29:14.740 | to make sure they don't crumble under the pressure

01:29:17.880 | of like, they don't give into this insecurity

01:29:21.100 | that destroys them.

01:29:22.180 | But I just, for me, empirically speaking,

01:29:25.140 | I seem to be happier facing the world with humility

01:29:29.060 | and just being grateful.

01:29:30.100 | The pride I'm really worried about,

01:29:31.980 | it feels more destructive than anything.

01:29:35.940 | - See, what I think, as you're telling me that,

01:29:38.020 | I don't wanna be presumptuous,

01:29:39.100 | but I make some thoughts or some conclusions that tell me,

01:29:42.100 | hey, you're in a pretty healthy place.

01:29:44.500 | The reason I say that is because

01:29:46.540 | I agree completely about vulnerability.

01:29:48.700 | I mean, think about humility and gratitude

01:29:51.020 | make us vulnerable.

01:29:51.860 | If you're like, wow, I'm grateful, thank you,

01:29:53.580 | I'm grateful for you, we could get shot down

01:29:55.940 | or something bad could happen,

01:29:57.460 | something could make us feel bad.

01:29:59.100 | So yes, we need vulnerability.

01:30:01.860 | If we try and eliminate vulnerability,

01:30:03.840 | we're living miles into the envy land.

01:30:08.180 | So you're describing a healthy vulnerability,

01:30:11.420 | but then my brain says that's because

01:30:13.180 | on the other side of the seesaw, so to speak,

01:30:16.280 | has to be a healthy sense of self,

01:30:18.940 | whether we call it self-esteem or healthy pride.

01:30:21.280 | And then I'll cite what I think is the evidence for that

01:30:24.320 | is you described the negative voice

01:30:27.220 | as like the grumpy cat.

01:30:28.560 | But that's a good negative voice to have,

01:30:33.240 | because it's telling you like, hey, that wasn't your best.

01:30:35.660 | Like, come on, do better.

01:30:37.580 | You can do better.

01:30:38.420 | There's a negative voice in some ways,

01:30:41.100 | but it believes in you.

01:30:42.420 | Where that voice could be,

01:30:45.700 | it could be a negative voice that says,

01:30:48.100 | no, you didn't do that well because you suck.

01:30:50.300 | You don't deserve anything good.

01:30:52.900 | Why should you even be alive?

01:30:54.700 | That's the negative voice that can gain so much force

01:30:59.020 | if there isn't a balance of healthy self-esteem.

01:31:01.280 | So I think because you're well-balanced,

01:31:03.540 | you have what you need,

01:31:05.660 | and then having more of it seems like,

01:31:07.220 | oh, that's not so good.

01:31:08.500 | But there are people whose negative voice

01:31:10.080 | isn't the grumpy cat.

01:31:12.620 | It's hateful, right?

01:31:14.500 | And then that's a person who needs to bring that

01:31:18.260 | into greater balance.

01:31:20.140 | - Yeah, I think my negative voice is like a grumpy cat

01:31:24.260 | that's like a French existentialist,

01:31:26.820 | maybe a little bit of a nihilist,

01:31:28.780 | but just kinda is--

01:31:30.180 | - Sartre's cat.

01:31:31.200 | - Yeah, Sartre's cat.

01:31:32.860 | So it doesn't get hateful.

01:31:33.700 | It's not like a Hitler cat.

01:31:34.700 | So it's a little more,

01:31:37.460 | yeah, I guess there is kinda like this line

01:31:40.660 | that we've come across a couple of times

01:31:42.720 | between the benign and the malignant.

01:31:45.120 | But of course, you have to monitor that line.

01:31:47.900 | I think you have to be careful

01:31:50.540 | when you face really difficult situations

01:31:53.700 | of as you go on through life,

01:31:56.900 | more and more difficult,

01:31:57.900 | so you face a lot of loss and suffering,

01:31:59.900 | especially later in life.

01:32:01.180 | You have to be careful with that voice.

01:32:05.100 | That grumpy cat can get awfully confident.

01:32:07.540 | And then if you don't have any source

01:32:09.180 | of positive emotions in your life,

01:32:11.820 | you can become too heavy of a burden.

01:32:14.380 | - Yes, which I think this leads us to,

01:32:16.780 | well, I think it's a really important fact, right?

01:32:19.540 | That there are some people,

01:32:20.860 | like a significant subset of people,

01:32:23.100 | who get happier as they get older.

01:32:25.900 | They have more contentment, a stronger sense of self.

01:32:28.500 | We might think, how could that ever happen?

01:32:30.820 | We're getting closer to death,

01:32:32.500 | we're accumulating insults, right?

01:32:34.540 | Everything hurts a little bit more,

01:32:35.380 | and we have less energy,

01:32:36.500 | and we accumulate losses and traumas.

01:32:38.500 | Why would anyone be healthier across time,

01:32:41.900 | be happier across time?

01:32:43.620 | And what we see is it's linked

01:32:45.220 | to the things that we're talking about.

01:32:47.260 | It's linked to, let's say, vulnerability versus pride.

01:32:50.300 | There's a good balance there.

01:32:51.460 | There's a lot of humility.

01:32:52.660 | There's a lot of self-esteem.

01:32:54.340 | The person is spending a lot of time

01:32:56.780 | standing back from the tapestry and looking at it.

01:32:59.860 | And what can come into people

01:33:02.740 | is in sort of a sense of equanimity.

01:33:04.460 | Like, I sort of understand,

01:33:06.660 | I'm being the best person I can be.

01:33:08.740 | And that's not always even great,

01:33:10.460 | and there are things that I don't feel great about,

01:33:12.180 | even while I'm trying to do that.

01:33:13.540 | But look, I'm being who I'm choosing to be, right?

01:33:17.780 | And that doesn't have to be in some big way.

01:33:19.620 | I'm not saying that means any one specific thing.

01:33:22.380 | That can mean the person who's taking care of their cat

01:33:24.620 | and tending their garden.

01:33:25.900 | That's enough.

01:33:26.780 | We have to have love,

01:33:28.900 | the ability to put good things out in the world,

01:33:31.380 | and to put our ability to work

01:33:33.820 | and to make things different out into the world

01:33:36.260 | and make things better.

01:33:37.500 | And if we're doing that,

01:33:39.220 | we get happier across time

01:33:41.460 | because we come to a sense of peace with ourselves.

01:33:44.420 | I'm not supposed to be everything.

01:33:45.660 | I'm not supposed to do everything.

01:33:46.820 | I'm not supposed to fix everything.

01:33:48.860 | I'm also not supposed to suffer all the time

01:33:50.540 | for the things I haven't gotten right.

01:33:52.420 | You know what?

01:33:53.460 | I guess I'm kind of, and it leads back to Winnicott,

01:33:56.300 | the British physician,

01:33:58.380 | of I'm good enough.

01:34:00.900 | And that seems to help people feel happy,

01:34:05.300 | contentment and be generative and productive

01:34:07.460 | into later life.

01:34:08.380 | It's like that's what we all should be wanting.

01:34:10.940 | But it's even, it's kind of an afterthought, though.

01:34:12.660 | Some people are like that as opposed to,

01:34:14.460 | wait a second, right?

01:34:16.020 | What's going on with them?

01:34:17.780 | And let's do all of that.

01:34:21.100 | Albert Camus writes in "Myth of Sisyphus,"

01:34:23.620 | quote, "There's only one real serious philosophical problem

01:34:27.100 | and that is suicide.

01:34:29.180 | Deciding whether or not life is worth living

01:34:31.860 | is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy.

01:34:34.580 | All other questions follow from that."

01:34:38.340 | So basically, to be or not to be.

01:34:40.240 | Do you think there's a truth to that statement?

01:34:46.060 | This question of why live at all?

01:34:49.040 | - Mm-hmm.

01:34:49.880 | Do you think there's truth to that statement

01:34:52.840 | being a really, really important question for us to answer?

01:34:55.400 | - Yes, yes.

01:34:57.080 | - And what's the answer?

01:34:58.720 | - I think the answer is yes.

01:35:00.680 | And I think Camus answered it yes, too.

01:35:03.680 | You know, I love his writing,

01:35:06.120 | and I think there was a streak of nihilism

01:35:11.120 | that I think grew in his writing over the years,

01:35:15.360 | and the thought is, I think, that Camus died by suicide.

01:35:18.280 | I think we're not sure of that

01:35:19.360 | because it was a car accident.

01:35:21.520 | But I've always read that as the primary scholarly opinion.

01:35:25.400 | And I think it's interesting that after his death,

01:35:28.000 | a book called "The First Man" was published,

01:35:30.760 | which I don't know if he had intended to publish.

01:35:32.760 | I don't remember the specifics about it,

01:35:34.280 | but it's about him as a child, right?

01:35:36.560 | And it's interesting, the first man.

01:35:38.280 | He was the first man in his existence, right?

01:35:41.440 | The most, you know, the one that felt

01:35:43.480 | and experienced everything.

01:35:44.960 | And there's sadness and distress and all in that book,

01:35:48.680 | but there's a beauty of life and living and experience.

01:35:52.240 | And I think to compare that beauty,

01:35:55.040 | like that's life,

01:35:56.720 | even if something's difficult and scary and sad.

01:35:58.800 | Like there's something beautiful around the corner,

01:36:00.400 | and here's a kind person and a new discovery.

01:36:02.760 | You know, more what was in him as a child.

01:36:05.160 | And I think that we can get jaded,

01:36:07.480 | as you and I were just talking about a few minutes ago.

01:36:09.440 | We can accentuate the negative and foster the negative

01:36:12.080 | and come to a place where we're looking for

01:36:15.880 | some in-depth philosophical answer, you know,

01:36:18.440 | some thick book, you know,

01:36:20.120 | that's gonna explain all that to us

01:36:22.040 | instead of the simplicity that we've been talking about.

01:36:25.560 | I think humility, gratitude,

01:36:27.800 | helps us have just simple positive experiences,

01:36:32.360 | feelings of contentment,

01:36:33.400 | feelings of connection with another person,

01:36:35.240 | learning, discovery.

01:36:36.640 | And I think the answer to Caymu's question is yes,

01:36:39.200 | and I think it lies in his writing

01:36:41.380 | about when he was a child,

01:36:43.280 | which I think he saw as less important

01:36:45.880 | than his later writings and the intellectual heaviness

01:36:48.760 | when I think maybe he had lost his way a little bit

01:36:52.280 | from the things he understood when he was younger.

01:36:54.800 | - So another way to talk about it,

01:36:56.840 | and I'd love to hear what you think,

01:36:58.860 | is about these broad categories,

01:37:02.360 | let me be started with Kierkegaard,

01:37:05.280 | of existentialism, absurdism, and nihilism.

01:37:08.920 | And I think Caymu considered himself an absurdist,

01:37:12.140 | not actually an existentialist.

01:37:13.740 | It's kind of a middle ground where I think existentialists,

01:37:16.780 | I don't want to characterize it in the wrong way,

01:37:21.020 | and there's a lot of different definitions,

01:37:22.460 | but I think existentialists ultimately

01:37:24.740 | do think that there is meaning

01:37:29.180 | in sort of pursuing the passion of life,

01:37:32.260 | like pursuing the, like in living life.

01:37:35.900 | That's where you discover the meaning

01:37:37.180 | at that individual level of fully embracing life.

01:37:41.640 | And I think sort of nihilism is,

01:37:46.780 | again, it's kind of like a spectrum,

01:37:48.060 | but nihilism basically says there's no meaning,

01:37:52.060 | and it doesn't matter, nothing matters.

01:37:56.520 | I don't even know, but somehow that lands you

01:37:59.500 | in a place that's totally uninspired.

01:38:02.860 | Maybe nihilists would disagree with that.

01:38:05.500 | Maybe there's a way to live a creative life

01:38:08.260 | in a nihilistic mindset.

01:38:10.220 | And I think absurdism is somewhere in the middle

01:38:14.540 | where pursuing meaning at all is not a good idea.

01:38:19.540 | So kind of I think existentialists say

01:38:23.860 | you should be looking for meaning,

01:38:25.540 | and it's to be discovered in your own actions,

01:38:28.060 | in your own life, in the moment.

01:38:30.140 | And absurdism says life is absurd, nothing makes sense,

01:38:34.440 | don't look for the meaning, just live, just be.

01:38:37.620 | I think that's kind of the later Camus kind of philosophy.

01:38:42.620 | I don't know if you can sort of comment

01:38:44.320 | on these kind of nuanced ideas here.

01:38:47.340 | If there is no religious guide to your life,

01:38:52.340 | what do you think about this kind of search for meaning?

01:38:56.820 | Do you see that there's some wisdom

01:38:58.460 | in the existentialist perspective of discovering it

01:39:01.620 | in your own life, in this passion,

01:39:03.680 | in this kind of day-to-day existence,

01:39:06.220 | in the moments of your life that bring you joy,

01:39:08.120 | that kind of thing?

01:39:08.960 | - You're bringing different sort of perspectives

01:39:10.720 | and trying to tease apart, like, well, wait,

01:39:12.200 | what are the differences in those perspectives?

01:39:14.480 | And I think what it points out is that,

01:39:17.040 | okay, we tend to conflate things as human beings,

01:39:19.720 | and to take two different things

01:39:21.120 | and try and make them into one.

01:39:22.680 | But we also, I think, on the other end of the spectrum,

01:39:24.800 | get very overly reductionist.

01:39:26.960 | And I think that when we get too overly reductionist,

01:39:30.340 | we lose the ability to learn from anything

01:39:32.360 | or to generate meaning.

01:39:33.200 | I mean, think about Sartre,

01:39:35.000 | who the thought of existentialism

01:39:37.120 | is so consistent with him,

01:39:38.640 | who, on the one hand, wrote about very clear terms,

01:39:43.120 | like this is what it is and this is what it isn't,

01:39:44.600 | and here's how you're gonna make your meaning

01:39:45.960 | in a very academically proscribed way.

01:39:48.800 | But he also wrote short stories like "The Wall,"

01:39:52.320 | where something totally absurd happens

01:39:54.920 | as part of the story.

01:39:56.360 | So I think what ends up happening

01:39:58.720 | is people either reduce themselves

01:40:00.240 | or get associated with something,

01:40:02.160 | that by being overly reductionist

01:40:04.140 | takes us away from meaning.

01:40:05.900 | The idea that, look, we don't know

01:40:08.640 | if there is an overarching religious meaning

01:40:12.200 | or what we call a religious meaning or purpose.

01:40:14.800 | We don't know that.

01:40:15.960 | So, okay, if we take that as a given,

01:40:18.720 | that people who say that they know are having faith,

01:40:21.440 | like how Spinoza described faith.

01:40:23.080 | Faith is that you don't know, but you believe anyway.

01:40:27.120 | It's not because you have faith

01:40:29.100 | now you know something, right?

01:40:30.760 | Because I think that's a slippery slope

01:40:32.840 | to the persecution of others, right?

01:40:35.200 | So if we say, okay, we don't know,

01:40:38.520 | then we're left either deciding,

01:40:41.360 | okay, well, then to hell with everything.

01:40:44.160 | There's that movie "A Strange Brew," right?

01:40:46.280 | Bob and Doug McKenzie, where the brakes don't work

01:40:48.880 | on the car and one of them says,

01:40:50.280 | "Oh, why bother steering?"

01:40:52.080 | So if we don't know that there's meaning,

01:40:53.600 | like why bother steering?

01:40:54.440 | Let's just give up the ghost, right?

01:40:55.920 | And I don't think that's even what the nihilists said.

01:40:58.160 | I mean, I think Bakunin said,

01:40:59.760 | we should get rid of everything that we've ever created

01:41:02.740 | except Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

01:41:04.520 | and start over from there.

01:41:06.140 | But so even people who are very nihilistic

01:41:08.300 | or associated with that,

01:41:10.040 | a lot of them were just not liking what we had built, right?

01:41:12.500 | So if we accept that a lot of what we have built

01:41:15.700 | as humans inside of us and outside of us

01:41:17.720 | is really counterproductive and doesn't help us,

01:41:19.980 | and that absurd things happen in the world, right?

01:41:23.080 | And that often the way social structures

01:41:24.780 | and systems build up, build themselves up is absurd.

01:41:27.980 | I think our healthcare system

01:41:29.560 | operates in a way that's absurd, right?

01:41:32.060 | So if we accept that there are absurdities

01:41:34.500 | that we don't know if there's truth,

01:41:36.580 | then what are we left with?

01:41:37.760 | But like, well, let's try and make meaning, right?

01:41:40.740 | Ortega y Gasset said,

01:41:42.660 | "Yo soy yo en mi circunstancia," right?

01:41:44.740 | I am myself in my circumstances, right?

01:41:46.820 | Which is like, look, we can't control everything.

01:41:49.160 | We live in circumstances around us,

01:41:51.940 | but within those circumstances,

01:41:54.020 | we can make decisions and define ourselves.

01:41:57.980 | And I think the brilliance of that,

01:41:59.660 | and I think tying it all together, right,

01:42:01.800 | in a way that's not trying to be,

01:42:04.020 | in a sense it ties it all together

01:42:05.240 | by not trying to answer everything concisely,

01:42:08.160 | that yes, we can make meaning.

01:42:09.860 | Like, we see that.

01:42:10.700 | If someone trips in front of me,

01:42:12.500 | I could walk around them or I could help them up.

01:42:14.320 | I mean, no one can tell me that it doesn't matter what I do.

01:42:17.700 | I absolutely reject the idea that,

01:42:19.860 | oh, I could step over them or on them,

01:42:22.180 | or I could help them up and it doesn't matter.

01:42:24.060 | Oh yeah, try being the person on the ground, right?

01:42:27.300 | So we create meaning, but we live in our circumstances,

01:42:31.540 | and there are absurdities both within us

01:42:34.140 | and outside of us in our social structures.

01:42:36.420 | And there are a lot of things

01:42:37.660 | that pretend to have meaning that don't,

01:42:40.020 | and there's the shades of nihilism,

01:42:42.060 | but ultimately there's something going on here

01:42:44.300 | that's doing the best we can

01:42:45.580 | in the context of just not knowing.

01:42:47.340 | - Yeah, I tend to see, I don't know if it's genetic,

01:42:50.500 | I think, I tend to think just observing the internet,

01:42:53.820 | the number of memes there are,

01:42:55.320 | I think many other people are like me.

01:42:58.860 | I tend to see the humor in the absurdity.

01:43:01.900 | I tend to enjoy it from that kind of angle.

01:43:03.900 | I see the Kafkaesque nature of society,

01:43:06.300 | different aspects of society,

01:43:07.860 | and just kind of notice the magic with a smile.

01:43:11.300 | And just laugh at the circus of it all.

01:43:15.780 | 'Cause it is magical that the circus all comes together.

01:43:18.860 | It's like a little bit out of sync,

01:43:20.100 | and then there's a guy playing trombone,

01:43:22.380 | but overall it's pretty good.

01:43:24.260 | It's pretty good.

01:43:25.100 | - Right, and we can look at that and just kind of marvel,

01:43:27.060 | go, huh, which I think is a relation

01:43:30.500 | to at least a lot of what we, in the Western world,

01:43:33.420 | think of as Eastern, as non-attachment.

01:43:36.340 | Because then if there's something absurd,

01:43:38.580 | and it's not good for me, then I accept that too,

01:43:42.580 | instead of getting angry about it, and railing about it,

01:43:44.780 | or seeing some cosmic meaning in it.

01:43:47.080 | I think there's also a healthy non-attachment

01:43:49.060 | in what you're saying too.

01:43:50.580 | - So there's, you mentioned Eastern thought,

01:43:53.340 | there's Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, but also Buddha,

01:43:57.180 | have kind of spoke of life as suffering.

01:44:00.420 | Do you think there's truth to that,

01:44:01.960 | that suffering is a fundamental part of life?

01:44:06.060 | - I think it is a fundamental part of life.

01:44:08.620 | I don't think that means that life is suffering.

01:44:11.820 | If we say, well, life is suffering, then what am I doing?

01:44:14.780 | That I'm trying to erase from my mind

01:44:16.900 | the birth of my children, right?

01:44:18.420 | Things that were filled with joy, right?

01:44:20.940 | Life is not entirely suffering,

01:44:23.500 | but life brings a lot of suffering.

01:44:26.060 | And for some people, it brings such disproportionate

01:44:29.140 | suffering, and the people don't survive the suffering.

01:44:31.500 | And I think when people are conscientious and empathic,

01:44:34.260 | that really bothers us, right?

01:44:36.740 | The suffering in our own lives,

01:44:38.060 | and the fact that others at times could seem to be

01:44:40.920 | so overwhelmed by suffering,

01:44:42.420 | that they don't even get a chance to see good.

01:44:45.060 | And I think that there's, I do think there's truth to that,

01:44:48.020 | and there's sadness and distress to that.

01:44:50.260 | But to say, therefore, life is suffering,

01:44:52.860 | I think is completely untrue.

01:44:54.780 | And it ignores the fact that someone even made a trombone,

01:44:58.340 | right, let alone that there's a little bit out of sync,

01:45:00.180 | and someone's playing the trombone.

01:45:01.740 | That's cool, there's elements of the absurd

01:45:05.340 | that are neat and interesting.

01:45:06.980 | And if we start accepting that we can't understand

01:45:10.620 | or control everything, then we can accept,

01:45:13.300 | and I think really love and foster the beauty in our lives.

01:45:18.460 | - Yeah, I think the word suffering

01:45:21.500 | is doing a little bit too much work,

01:45:24.060 | 'cause I think it's probably referring

01:45:25.260 | to the philosophical concept of that,

01:45:27.920 | yeah, that it's absurd, the absurdity.

01:45:31.820 | - Right. - That stuff

01:45:32.660 | just happens randomly.

01:45:33.840 | Evil people succeed, good people fail.

01:45:37.580 | - Right. - There's a seeming

01:45:38.940 | random injustice on occasion.

01:45:41.540 | - Right. - And on occasion,

01:45:43.060 | there's justice in, yeah, all of it

01:45:46.660 | that feels like, and maybe because it,

01:45:51.140 | often there's a lot of loss,

01:45:52.980 | and then there's a kind of matching complementary aspect

01:45:57.980 | to any good feeling that all comes crashing down,

01:46:02.600 | like every hello from a physics perspective

01:46:06.780 | ends in a goodbye.

01:46:08.000 | Like, that's a really sad thing,

01:46:14.700 | like I've, all the amazing people I get to meet in my life,

01:46:19.700 | all the amazing experiences, eventually they have to end,

01:46:23.500 | and that's part of what makes them amazing.

01:46:26.180 | - Why is that sad?

01:46:27.780 | Is it because we're taught to think that it's,

01:46:30.380 | look, at some point, you and I are gonna say goodbye today,

01:46:32.340 | like I hope we're richer for it,

01:46:33.820 | and then we take that goodness off with us.

01:46:35.700 | Like, I wanna celebrate that

01:46:38.140 | because it's all part of the goodness.

01:46:39.860 | I think we're taught to think, oh, that's so bad,

01:46:41.660 | and it equates to death and misery,

01:46:43.660 | and I think it's often not that way.

01:46:47.420 | - I think there is a sadness to it,

01:46:48.660 | but I also don't think that sadness is a negative thing.

01:46:53.380 | It's a different way to celebrate a beautiful thing,

01:46:56.280 | so there's a melancholic nature to it,

01:46:58.260 | something passing of it leaving.

01:47:01.140 | I mean, it's that old Louis C.K. thing

01:47:03.580 | that I go back to over and over from his show "Louis,"

01:47:07.020 | where he was all heartbroken that he just broke up

01:47:13.260 | with somebody he loved,

01:47:16.420 | and he told about that to an old man,

01:47:18.940 | and the old man said, "You're a fool.

01:47:21.620 | "That's the best part.

01:47:22.820 | "I missed that part,"

01:47:24.220 | where you sort of are lingering in that loss.

01:47:27.180 | You're feeling the pain of that loss

01:47:28.940 | because that lasts the longest.

01:47:30.920 | It's the most intense.

01:47:32.220 | It's the most reliable,

01:47:33.740 | and it's a kind of celebration of the love you had.

01:47:37.020 | Like, losing the love is still a celebration of the love.

01:47:43.220 | I think you don't wanna over-romanticize that,

01:47:45.900 | but there's some aspect of truth to that.

01:47:48.220 | Like, that melancholic feeling of remembering

01:47:51.860 | a beautiful time that's no longer there

01:47:53.980 | is a kind of celebration of it

01:47:57.340 | and is a kind of joyful experience,

01:47:59.340 | even though it's very easy to experience it

01:48:04.340 | as a negative emotion.

01:48:06.260 | I think it's just like you said.

01:48:07.540 | I mean, it's up to our mind to determine

01:48:09.420 | how that emotion is really felt,

01:48:11.300 | but it's a tricky one 'cause it's like heartbreak

01:48:13.420 | to experience that as a positive thing.

01:48:15.380 | - People can reminisce at funerals, right, and laugh

01:48:17.900 | because people can be very, very, very sad

01:48:19.780 | and perceive that this person has died

01:48:23.220 | and perceive the sadness of it,

01:48:25.000 | but in perceiving that and really living in it,

01:48:27.980 | then you can have people who wanna remember that person

01:48:30.820 | by telling a funny story.

01:48:32.620 | Why?

01:48:33.460 | Because each of those people carries that with them.

01:48:35.300 | So I think what you're saying is consistent

01:48:38.020 | with healthy function as human beings

01:48:40.260 | because we're gonna encounter sadness and loss.

01:48:42.540 | What do we do with that, right,

01:48:44.360 | and do we do things that ultimately create some redemption

01:48:47.220 | or even reparation inside of us?

01:48:49.520 | And reparation's a big word in psychology, right?

01:48:52.380 | It's how we repair damage and loss.

01:48:54.140 | So if we lose someone and we're sad,

01:48:56.260 | can we, by telling funny stories about that person,

01:48:59.580 | remind ourselves that, hey, they're still inside of us.

01:49:01.720 | Whether they're out there looking at me, I don't know,

01:49:03.320 | but I can call that person of mine inside of us

01:49:05.700 | and then we have something that's good and beautiful

01:49:08.240 | that comes of that too.

01:49:10.340 | - In the introduction to your book on trauma,

01:49:15.220 | Lady Gaga wrote it.

01:49:16.660 | She wrote the foreword, the intro.

01:49:18.360 | She said this about you, quote,

01:49:21.420 | "I can now say with certainty that this man saved my life.

01:49:26.180 | "He made life worth living."

01:49:29.140 | This goes to our discussion about

01:49:31.100 | the myth of Sisyphus, Camus question about why live.

01:49:37.560 | So I think, at least to me,

01:49:39.600 | she's one of the most brilliant and unique artists ever.

01:49:43.160 | So it's a difficult question, but a question of creativity.

01:49:47.400 | What role does trauma play in somebody like that,

01:49:52.400 | in this artist that has created some incredible things?

01:49:57.860 | What positive, constructive role does trauma serve

01:50:04.960 | and what limiting role does it serve

01:50:08.160 | in preventing that person from flourishing more?

01:50:10.980 | - Trauma can certainly drive us to creativity,

01:50:15.260 | even to push against or to protest against

01:50:19.000 | what the trauma tells us.

01:50:21.040 | Trauma tells us lessons, like nothing matters

01:50:23.220 | and you don't matter and nothing will ever be good

01:50:25.680 | and nothing is beautiful and we can push against trauma.

01:50:30.160 | There is life in me, there's something,

01:50:31.720 | there's goodness for me to spread in the world,

01:50:33.880 | to express and spread.

01:50:35.480 | So I think trauma fuels creativity in many, many, many ways.

01:50:39.680 | Trauma also shuts down creativity.

01:50:42.320 | People who are, one example,

01:50:45.320 | trauma that escalates to the point

01:50:47.360 | where now the person is soothing it with alcohol,

01:50:49.880 | one example, and now the impact of the alcohol

01:50:52.440 | shuts down any creativity.

01:50:53.960 | So can people be creative

01:50:56.520 | and outward thinking without trauma?

01:50:58.600 | I think sometimes, if I remember correctly,

01:51:00.560 | people will use Immanuel Kant as an example,

01:51:02.640 | someone who I think hadn't traveled much

01:51:04.280 | and didn't have trauma and look at what he knew.

01:51:05.960 | So okay, there are gonna be exceptions,

01:51:07.880 | but a lot of our creativity is in some ways

01:51:11.760 | fueled by our suffering, although it's complicated

01:51:14.780 | because it comes from generative places in us.

01:51:17.040 | So those places are there, they're not created by suffering,

01:51:20.000 | but maybe suffering makes an incentive

01:51:22.760 | or a passion inside of us.

01:51:24.880 | And a person, Stephanie, who you referred to,

01:51:28.360 | is just such an incredible, astounding creative force.

01:51:33.120 | And sure, some of that comes from trauma,

01:51:35.120 | some of it comes from trauma

01:51:37.440 | fueling the generative creative places in her.

01:51:40.560 | But what I helped her to do,

01:51:41.960 | she's very generous with her words,

01:51:43.560 | but what I helped her to do was to see

01:51:47.360 | all that she is and all that the creativity in her is

01:51:51.120 | and all that there is to create

01:51:53.920 | through love and caring and compassion

01:51:58.840 | and to again, see that.

01:52:00.640 | I mean, a lot of time, that's what I'm doing clinically.

01:52:03.240 | I think it's what good psychiatrists

01:52:04.640 | or mental health professionals do

01:52:06.120 | is we help people see the beauty that is there, right?

01:52:09.600 | Because oftentimes we're way too close up to that tapestry

01:52:13.040 | and what brings us close is often the sad thing.

01:52:15.680 | So we're up close and all we see is the negative.

01:52:18.300 | I mean, it's easy then to get classically nihilistic,

01:52:21.120 | but by helping someone take a step back

01:52:23.680 | and to see who they are and what's in them,

01:52:26.640 | that's how people get better

01:52:28.280 | and it's how people re-engage in life.

01:52:31.320 | - It's such a difficult thing

01:52:33.320 | because if you were to,

01:52:34.720 | from studying human beings,

01:52:38.120 | it seems like the optimal trajectory

01:52:40.560 | is having some trauma that doesn't destroy you,

01:52:45.020 | that forces you early in life to really struggle

01:52:50.600 | with the intricacies of the human condition

01:52:54.040 | and then later in life, as you form

01:52:56.600 | and you build an expertise around and mastery,

01:53:00.000 | start to do exactly what you said,

01:53:02.320 | which is step back and look at the tapestry.

01:53:04.680 | So if you don't have the trauma,

01:53:08.640 | it seems like just empirically speaking,

01:53:10.680 | there's of course just a huge amount of data

01:53:12.600 | and all kinds of anecdotal evidence,

01:53:15.360 | but I wanna be careful here

01:53:17.880 | 'cause maybe I'm romanticizing hardship,

01:53:22.600 | but it does seem that hardship in childhood,

01:53:25.880 | if it doesn't break you, can be constructive.

01:53:28.480 | It's like you said, having that trauma,

01:53:31.440 | one of the ways to fight it is to say,

01:53:33.920 | I am worth something.

01:53:35.400 | David Goggins talks about this.

01:53:40.720 | I am somebody, I can be somebody special

01:53:46.520 | and I'm gonna prove it to you, I'm gonna do this,

01:53:48.640 | I'm gonna do this big thing.

01:53:49.920 | It's this engine that drives you forward.

01:53:52.240 | Yeah, comment on that because from a parent's perspective,

01:53:56.440 | you want a child to have an easy life, right?

01:54:01.440 | You want them to not have hardship,

01:54:05.280 | certainly not have trauma,

01:54:06.740 | but that's such a difficult dance

01:54:09.360 | because in some ways, a little bit of hardship

01:54:14.400 | and a gradually increasing amount of hardship

01:54:17.280 | that doesn't break you can really develop you

01:54:19.760 | into a really interesting, complicated person

01:54:23.800 | and it helps you flourish as a creative being.

01:54:26.280 | I don't know if there's a question.

01:54:29.000 | I just keep saying random things.

01:54:31.040 | - No, I think it makes good sense to me.

01:54:34.600 | I think you're trying to get at,

01:54:36.120 | do we need trauma and how are we defining it?

01:54:39.800 | Because we say trauma, hardship, difficulties.

01:54:42.840 | I mean, we could set aside, we could set apart,

01:54:45.800 | say and differentiate things that are difficult

01:54:49.000 | but that are overcomable versus things

01:54:52.400 | that we could use the word trauma this way,

01:54:54.960 | if we chose to, that are just entirely negative.

01:54:57.960 | Like someone saying, oh, you can't do that

01:55:02.200 | and you'll never succeed because,

01:55:04.080 | and then they tell you something about yourself,

01:55:05.680 | because you're from here or you're this race, religion,

01:55:07.600 | whatever it is, right?

01:55:08.640 | We think, well, that could make someone say,

01:55:11.440 | hey, I'm gonna show you, I'm gonna overcome, right?

01:55:13.760 | But then they're overcoming something bad, right?

01:55:16.880 | Like it's just like there's nothing good

01:55:18.280 | or helpful about that, right?

01:55:19.520 | If someone's saying that,

01:55:20.360 | so the person has to overcome it.

01:55:22.160 | That's different than something that is placed

01:55:24.800 | in front of a person where the whole conception

01:55:29.600 | of it is something positive

01:55:31.480 | that you can make through effort, right?

01:55:34.240 | So, I remember, I don't know, I think I was 15 years old.

01:55:37.760 | There was some rule like where you could then go,

01:55:40.160 | I don't think it was picking raspberries or blueberries,

01:55:42.160 | right, and I think, and my parents wanted me to see,

01:55:43.960 | like, hey, go see how that works,

01:55:45.680 | and now you got 50 cents at the end of it, right?

01:55:47.800 | And then you think about that when you wanna buy

01:55:50.120 | baseball cards or you think about it and you work hard.

01:55:53.600 | And I can remember like it was hard

01:55:55.440 | and I was sweating and I was tired,

01:55:57.920 | but I learned from it.

01:55:59.160 | I mean, it's the reason I remember it today.

01:56:00.760 | So, yes, parents might want their kids

01:56:03.240 | to have like a good life, right?

01:56:04.480 | But not necessarily an easy life, you know?

01:56:06.560 | And I think that was done,

01:56:08.920 | they took me to do that so I'd have

01:56:10.760 | a greater sense of responsibility

01:56:12.120 | and a sense of like hard work is meaningful

01:56:14.000 | and it's important.

01:56:14.840 | And I think that that kind of thing is good,

01:56:18.280 | but if we separate that from something

01:56:20.320 | that's just denigrating, prejudicial,

01:56:22.480 | like I think those things aren't good,

01:56:24.320 | but they're unavoidable.

01:56:25.680 | So, it's not necessarily that, oh, is some trauma good?

01:56:28.320 | I would look at it more that some trauma's unavoidable.

01:56:30.600 | I mean, you know, it's hard to,

01:56:32.440 | how do you go through life and not have any losses

01:56:34.960 | or anything negative or anything sad?

01:56:38.000 | And then people are people.

01:56:39.040 | There may be people who have not a lot of that

01:56:41.040 | and then there's a sort of complacency

01:56:42.800 | and they don't do as much as they could

01:56:44.800 | or feel as good as they could.

01:56:46.160 | You know, then there's other people

01:56:47.320 | who have a highly attuned emotional,

01:56:49.040 | so there's people with very highly attuned

01:56:51.000 | emotional compasses for which a little bit

01:56:53.560 | of trauma becomes so intrusive.

01:56:55.960 | So, it's so much of it is person-driven,

01:56:58.320 | but I do wanna distinguish between things

01:57:00.160 | that are just purely bad that we might overcome

01:57:03.160 | or find some fire in our belly about

01:57:04.800 | or whatever the case may be,

01:57:06.280 | and things that may be boundaries or barriers

01:57:08.760 | either purposely placed or not that, in a sense,

01:57:12.960 | invite us or inform us of the possibility

01:57:16.080 | of striving and overcoming.

01:57:17.520 | - Finally, in tuned emotional compasses,

01:57:20.600 | it's so true that there is, that's a component of it too.

01:57:24.920 | It's almost genetic, how sensitive you are

01:57:29.400 | to particular trauma.

01:57:30.360 | So, little things can have a huge impact

01:57:32.640 | or gigantic things, serious abuse in childhood

01:57:37.280 | can be, by some people, overcome more easily.

01:57:40.920 | It's so interesting. - It's not just

01:57:41.760 | what's the trauma.

01:57:42.600 | What's the trauma that makes certain problems?

01:57:44.760 | You have to match the trauma to the person,

01:57:46.720 | and a big part of what you're matching to

01:57:48.400 | is that genetically-based characteristic

01:57:51.440 | of how finely attuned is that empathic attunement

01:57:54.800 | to that compass.

01:57:55.680 | - So, when you think about, let's just return to childhood.

01:57:58.760 | When you think about trauma in childhood,

01:58:01.800 | what can we say about the impact of child abuse

01:58:06.800 | on the development of a human being?

01:58:13.240 | I think the impact of it is so disproportionately bad,

01:58:18.240 | hurtful, compared to things that happen

01:58:26.400 | when we're not children.

01:58:27.560 | And I wanna be very careful about how I'm saying that

01:58:29.960 | because people can, through their strength and resilience

01:58:34.120 | and human interconnectedness, can overcome that.

01:58:38.200 | I don't mean to say that anyone who's experienced

01:58:42.200 | those things can't make it through it or over it.

01:58:45.960 | That part is not true.

01:58:48.120 | But it is true that the impact is so disproportionate

01:58:51.800 | to anything else that can happen

01:58:53.480 | because the brain is formulating.

01:58:56.240 | So, both, if we say psychology

01:58:58.280 | is like applied neurobiology, right?

01:59:00.720 | And we look at both of those as different ends, right?

01:59:05.720 | Even though there's a lot of gray in the middle,

01:59:07.800 | you know, the neurobiology is changed.

01:59:10.440 | So, just one example of a much greater salience

01:59:15.120 | of vigilance mechanisms, of mechanisms of self-protection,

01:59:20.120 | mechanisms that can make a person feel more fear

01:59:24.720 | and more insecurity and hide themselves away from the world

01:59:27.640 | and not trust the world.

01:59:28.920 | And I mean not trust the world even enough that,

01:59:31.920 | oh, I'd like to have a better job

01:59:33.560 | and another one is here that I could take,

01:59:36.520 | but maybe it could be worse.

01:59:38.240 | And then being afraid of that, right?

01:59:40.280 | There are all sorts of ways in which

01:59:43.080 | the changes to those pathways impact someone.

01:59:46.080 | And that's just one of,

01:59:47.680 | you know, we could bring trauma experts together

01:59:49.720 | that could talk about that for days, right?

01:59:51.360 | Like, what is the impact upon the brain biology?

01:59:54.000 | So, that then gets changed inside the person.

01:59:57.640 | And from the perspective of those changes,

02:00:00.040 | the psychology on top of it changes.

02:00:01.880 | Like, what do I think about myself?

02:00:03.280 | Do I think that I'm worthwhile?

02:00:04.960 | You know, even in my mid-20s after,

02:00:07.280 | without formative traumas and a pretty strong sense of self

02:00:11.800 | and some achievements, there's a big trauma then

02:00:14.840 | with the death of my brother and I start questioning,

02:00:17.480 | am I cursed, am I worth anything?

02:00:19.520 | I mean, I was 20-something years old

02:00:20.920 | and doing reasonably well at the time.

02:00:23.760 | You know, how does this impact a child

02:00:27.600 | of six, seven, 10, 12 years old, right?

02:00:31.800 | We're sending such powerful messages

02:00:34.340 | that then change conception of self

02:00:37.440 | and that negatively changed conception

02:00:39.840 | sits upon the negatively changed neurobiology.

02:00:42.400 | And I think if we really thought,

02:00:44.360 | hey, let's do the best we can just for humans in general,

02:00:46.840 | for the human race, for species in general,

02:00:48.760 | is we would handle children and caring for children

02:00:52.520 | so much differently in terms of protection mechanisms,

02:00:56.360 | intervention mechanisms.

02:00:57.560 | How many times do you see where,

02:00:59.080 | where like now there's been some tragedy

02:01:01.360 | and the child gets a little bit of support

02:01:03.480 | and they had some therapy that was provided

02:01:06.880 | by some insurance carrier, you know,

02:01:09.200 | that they got once a week for 16 weeks or whatever.

02:01:12.680 | I mean, we should be wrapping our societal resources

02:01:16.560 | around children, but we don't use our resources well.

02:01:20.360 | You know, I was just reading, it's a little bit of an aside,

02:01:22.160 | but about 300 and something billion dollars a year

02:01:26.000 | in cost to the US economy just from schizophrenia.

02:01:30.400 | And you think, it costs a fraction,

02:01:33.720 | what do we actually put into caring for people

02:01:36.080 | who have schizophrenia?

02:01:37.360 | So first there's a moral imperative,

02:01:39.760 | but let's say we put that aside

02:01:41.160 | and we only care about the economy, right?

02:01:43.880 | Because there are mechanisms of thinking

02:01:46.040 | that look at it that way.

02:01:46.880 | How could we not amend that, right?

02:01:49.560 | But we are so reckless with our resources

02:01:52.560 | and we're tripping ahead of ourselves

02:01:54.360 | that we don't think, oh my goodness,

02:01:56.280 | there is no better place on God's earth

02:01:58.160 | for prevention than here,

02:02:01.160 | prevention in terms of human suffering

02:02:02.920 | and also where do people like that go?

02:02:05.240 | I mean, more often people like that go

02:02:07.440 | to a place of increased suffering,

02:02:08.960 | inability to take care of themselves

02:02:10.640 | or to be in supportive relationships.

02:02:13.360 | Okay, we know there's a higher prevalence of that,

02:02:15.640 | but we're also creating the pool of people

02:02:18.120 | through which the envy, the narcissism,

02:02:21.640 | the sociopathy, the destruction arises.

02:02:24.840 | So again, if we care about people,

02:02:26.960 | we would be so focused on that.

02:02:29.400 | If we don't care about other people

02:02:31.200 | and just ourselves or just economic costs,

02:02:33.200 | we would still be so focused.

02:02:34.840 | But we're not and we tend to just kind of call it good

02:02:38.520 | because we don't see anything disastrous

02:02:41.000 | happening at the moment.

02:02:43.280 | And I think there's a societal negligence there

02:02:45.720 | to the shame really of all of us

02:02:47.320 | when child abuse and the impact neurobiologically

02:02:52.440 | and psychologically is potentially

02:02:55.240 | the greatest cause of suffering directly

02:02:57.160 | and indirectly on the face of the planet.

02:02:59.200 | - How much does trauma of that kind

02:03:04.800 | and later in life affect your ability

02:03:06.800 | to love another human being,

02:03:08.920 | say inside a relationship,

02:03:10.800 | connect with another human being?

02:03:13.360 | - It can impact it a lot.

02:03:14.840 | And again, I wanna say, can people overcome

02:03:17.120 | and be as loving to a partner or a child or anyone else?

02:03:20.800 | Yes, but we're talking across society, right?

02:03:23.720 | How are we setting the odds, right?

02:03:25.680 | We're setting the odds towards a higher sense of vigilance,

02:03:29.080 | a decreased sense of self-confidence,

02:03:31.600 | an increased sense of vulnerability, right?

02:03:33.800 | A decreased comfort interacting with others, right?

02:03:36.600 | What we're doing is we're pushing towards isolation

02:03:39.240 | and misery and depression and resentment.

02:03:41.800 | I mean, those factors push towards that.

02:03:44.400 | We know that the research is so strong

02:03:46.480 | that adverse childhood experiences,

02:03:49.120 | that these things that happen,

02:03:50.760 | the more the worse, the more prolonged,

02:03:53.540 | the more that person is up against

02:03:56.020 | as they try and navigate life.

02:03:58.520 | - And I suppose one of the elements of intimacy

02:04:03.260 | like what we're talking about is vulnerability.

02:04:06.440 | And maybe there's a, is there a fear of being vulnerable,

02:04:11.440 | of being hurt again?

02:04:14.240 | - Sure.

02:04:15.080 | - Is that ultimately the barrier to intimacy?

02:04:17.320 | - Yeah, if you're taught a lesson that says,

02:04:19.240 | the world is not safe,

02:04:21.440 | and you're not good enough for someone to keep safe,

02:04:24.240 | and you're not strong enough to keep yourself safe,

02:04:27.280 | that's a final common pathway

02:04:28.880 | of the vast majority of child abuse, right?

02:04:32.120 | Is telling those lessons to people,

02:04:34.120 | then how can that not change the lay of the land

02:04:38.720 | against openness, against the ability

02:04:41.840 | to rationally consider trust and mutuality

02:04:45.420 | and to protect oneself, but also take chances

02:04:47.600 | and do the things that we have to do

02:04:49.920 | to create the greatest happiness in our lives.

02:04:52.820 | We set the odds so much against that.

02:04:56.160 | - There's another pathway,

02:04:57.200 | which I think is really interesting

02:05:00.360 | because I've seen it in people,

02:05:02.800 | is this kind of ability to detach yourself

02:05:05.600 | from feeling any emotions, to protect yourself.

02:05:11.480 | It's almost like you're not quite there.

02:05:14.240 | - There's a word for this, isolation of affect.

02:05:16.360 | It's a defense mechanism.

02:05:17.840 | Yeah.

02:05:18.660 | - Isolation of affect.

02:05:19.500 | - Yeah.

02:05:20.320 | - Is that a common way,

02:05:21.320 | another common way to deal with trauma?

02:05:24.960 | - Well, isolation of affect can cut both ways.

02:05:28.440 | So if there's been a major trauma,

02:05:30.960 | let's say someone has seen something terrible

02:05:33.000 | and they're isolated from their affect.

02:05:35.840 | And at one time it was thought,

02:05:37.120 | well, maybe that's good, right?

02:05:38.320 | They're not hysterical, they're not distraught,

02:05:40.520 | but we see that is not good, right?

02:05:42.420 | Because what needs to be held, processed,

02:05:46.920 | we need to get our arms around in some way, shape, or form

02:05:49.040 | has just been separated off, right?

02:05:51.480 | So we know that is not good, right?

02:05:53.760 | But isolation of affect can also serve us very well.

02:05:57.720 | When I think back to being an intern,

02:06:00.600 | a medical intern in the hospital,

02:06:02.360 | and you might have to go and pronounce someone dead

02:06:06.880 | with hysterical family members.

02:06:11.160 | And then 10 minutes later, five minutes later,

02:06:14.880 | maybe two minutes later, really,

02:06:17.080 | you have to go to another room

02:06:19.220 | and you've got to maybe do some procedure

02:06:21.520 | that involves having your focus on a certain thing

02:06:25.260 | and making sure your hand movements are the right way

02:06:27.260 | or talking to a person in a way that is,

02:06:30.160 | that's very different than where you just came from,

02:06:32.040 | that's very hopeful.

02:06:33.040 | And so then you have to isolate affect

02:06:35.480 | of what's going on around you.

02:06:36.880 | And it happens not just in, it's just one example,

02:06:39.960 | but we have to do it in life

02:06:41.880 | so that we can put affect aside to process later

02:06:45.760 | or not feel the full weight of affect

02:06:48.200 | where we know the meaning.

02:06:49.400 | Like I knew the meaning of the tragedy

02:06:51.000 | of the person I just pronounced dead,

02:06:52.960 | but I want to separate that from myself

02:06:54.720 | 'cause I'm also aware that it's not my tragedy

02:06:56.680 | so that I can then, okay, put that affect aside

02:06:59.280 | and go do the next thing that I have to do.

02:07:00.980 | So that I think can cut both ways.

02:07:03.520 | - Right, but then you have to reattach it,

02:07:08.360 | understand that it's good to be close with emotion,

02:07:11.300 | even painful emotion, right?

02:07:14.440 | Because that's the human experience.

02:07:16.240 | I feel like if you build up a skill

02:07:20.260 | that you can detach yourself from emotion,

02:07:22.700 | I think that can become its own kind of--

02:07:25.720 | - Yeah. - Addictive qualities.

02:07:27.240 | - It can become too easy to do it, right?

02:07:29.200 | And to reinforce.

02:07:30.520 | That's when people are suffering too much

02:07:33.320 | over too long a period of time,

02:07:35.760 | then we're creatures of habit, right?

02:07:38.360 | And even though our brains are,

02:07:40.160 | you can talk about our brains are sitting on the shoulders

02:07:42.080 | of the giant of the maybe thousand levels of emergence

02:07:46.040 | that come underneath of them,

02:07:47.680 | our brains also work in very simple habit-based ways.

02:07:51.960 | Like if you and I chose a word right now

02:07:54.200 | and said it 500 times, we would know,

02:07:56.860 | it's just a silly experiment,

02:07:58.360 | but we'd both be saying it tonight, right?

02:08:01.080 | Because our brains are also creatures of habit.

02:08:03.560 | So if you over and over and over

02:08:05.700 | have to isolate yourself from affect

02:08:08.240 | and you develop those mechanisms,

02:08:09.680 | well, you develop those mechanisms

02:08:11.520 | and they don't go away any easier

02:08:13.640 | than if we said the word 500 times and decided to forget.

02:08:17.160 | We won't forget no matter what we decided.

02:08:19.260 | - So how do we find our way back?

02:08:24.080 | How do we overcome trauma?

02:08:27.200 | What are the different pathways?

02:08:28.480 | - The first thing, the very first thing

02:08:30.600 | is to acknowledge to ourselves and often to others,

02:08:35.560 | which might be one other person,

02:08:36.760 | it might be in words, spoken, it might be written,

02:08:39.680 | what the trauma has been, right?

02:08:42.360 | Because the lessons of trauma, the evil lessons of trauma,

02:08:47.360 | and I'll use the example of my own life,

02:08:49.600 | the lesson that told me that I was shameful,

02:08:54.320 | cursed, and hopeless, right?

02:08:57.720 | It's a very evil lesson, right?

02:09:00.720 | But my brain will say it over

02:09:02.640 | and did say it over and over and over to me.

02:09:05.160 | And if that just sits inside, that's how trauma festers,

02:09:08.960 | that's how trauma hijacks our thoughts, our emotions.

02:09:12.320 | So being able to say to ourselves and to another,

02:09:16.040 | like, this is what's happened, right?

02:09:18.520 | Okay, this is what's happened.

02:09:19.600 | We're built to massage words

02:09:22.520 | and to create meaning through words, right?

02:09:24.320 | Like we don't massage pictures, right, images.

02:09:26.640 | We talk and massage meaning with words.

02:09:29.080 | So when I finally went to see a therapist

02:09:31.880 | and I could say, you know,

02:09:34.820 | my brother, whatever words I would have said,

02:09:38.240 | like he killed himself and I can't accept it

02:09:43.240 | or I can't imagine it and like, I let it happen.

02:09:45.600 | Like, so I had to say those things, right?

02:09:47.440 | So then I could begin to bring some sense of truth to it.

02:09:51.680 | You know, and it was a long time ago,

02:09:53.560 | but the therapist probably said something like,

02:09:55.200 | okay, probably sees on you, you let it happen.

02:09:57.440 | It's your fault, right?

02:09:58.280 | 'Cause you gotta get at those things

02:09:59.960 | so that one can begin to bring into focus

02:10:03.740 | what does the trauma mean and what does it not mean?

02:10:06.920 | I mean, a classic example is the,

02:10:09.080 | what would you say to someone else example?

02:10:10.920 | You know, you'll say, well, I,

02:10:12.440 | now how many times have I,

02:10:14.080 | it's just, I could cry if I stop and think about it.

02:10:16.200 | Now if you stop and talk to someone

02:10:17.920 | who is sexually assaulted through no fault of their own,

02:10:21.280 | who comes in and tells the story

02:10:22.820 | they've been telling themselves about how it's their fault.

02:10:25.040 | They should have walked home a different way,

02:10:26.160 | they should have dressed differently,

02:10:27.040 | they should have left earlier, right?

02:10:28.560 | I wrote about it in the book over and over and over.

02:10:31.440 | Now you have a person who,

02:10:34.080 | let's say you take a person who's intelligent,

02:10:36.180 | engaged in the world, who's like capable of understanding

02:10:38.400 | lots and lots and lots of things,

02:10:39.680 | but doesn't understand that, right?

02:10:42.200 | If it were someone else,

02:10:43.020 | that person would understand in a moment

02:10:44.320 | that's not that person's fault, right?

02:10:45.520 | So what you wanna do is overcome the fact

02:10:48.680 | that the negative emotions,

02:10:50.080 | the hijacked emotion systems of trauma

02:10:52.740 | are telling that person a lie,

02:10:54.640 | and they're telling them so strongly and so awfully,

02:10:59.400 | so meanly, that the person just takes it inside

02:11:02.400 | and starts to see it as true, right?

02:11:05.560 | So you begin to hold that up to the light of day.

02:11:07.680 | And again, one example could be,

02:11:08.960 | oh, okay, so someone,

02:11:10.480 | the person who's coming in next

02:11:11.920 | has actually been through something similar, right?

02:11:13.560 | And do you mind, can you stay

02:11:15.160 | and just tell her how it's her fault, right?

02:11:17.880 | And like, oh my God, no, oh,

02:11:19.480 | because I could never, like, then they see, right?

02:11:21.960 | And again, this is not always how you do it,

02:11:23.760 | but sometimes you can get a person to see, like,

02:11:26.000 | well, that would be the most horrible,

02:11:28.360 | how could you do that, right?

02:11:29.880 | And the person can maybe commit

02:11:31.000 | to doing it to themselves.

02:11:31.960 | So you begin to put words in a structure and say,

02:11:36.400 | okay, let's look at what's going on inside of you.

02:11:38.360 | You don't have to be scared

02:11:39.200 | of anything you're thinking and feeling.

02:11:40.600 | In fact, the fear is in not exposing it

02:11:43.840 | to the light of day.

02:11:44.840 | That's where it gets the best of us.

02:11:46.600 | And now, like, everything is different.

02:11:48.800 | And whether that involves use of medications

02:11:51.640 | for intrusive thoughts and depression,

02:11:53.880 | or there's no medicines needed, but it's all reframing,

02:11:56.080 | like, whatever it may be that comes next,

02:11:58.800 | the whole world has changed

02:12:00.760 | when the person has acknowledged what's happened,

02:12:04.120 | exposed it to themselves and to trusted others around them,

02:12:08.840 | and begun to look at it in some way

02:12:11.480 | other than the stuffed-in-an-evil-box place

02:12:16.120 | that the trauma initially puts us

02:12:17.880 | through the reflexes it creates in us.

02:12:20.480 | - It's interesting that there's power

02:12:21.960 | to just saying it out loud.

02:12:23.600 | - Right.

02:12:24.560 | - So first saying your perception of it out loud,

02:12:27.800 | then in that case, that might be your fault.

02:12:31.080 | And then working out loud,

02:12:33.880 | working through that it may not be.

02:12:38.360 | - Any experienced therapist will tell you this,

02:12:40.600 | that every now and then it will happen

02:12:43.000 | that someone will come and they'll say something.

02:12:46.640 | Usually it's very early on in the process.

02:12:48.760 | They'll say something they've never said before,

02:12:50.600 | and they immediately are in an entirely different place,

02:12:54.920 | and they may have been for decades.

02:12:56.840 | Right, and I can remember a person saying

02:12:58.920 | that a coach had raped him, and just saying it.

02:13:02.840 | This was decades before, and everything was different.

02:13:06.840 | I'm not saying everything is now as perfect,

02:13:08.720 | but his life was in a different place.

02:13:10.000 | As soon as he said it, he could see how dare,

02:13:12.160 | like he thought that person did that to this child.

02:13:15.200 | The child was me.

02:13:16.440 | He never thought it until he said it out loud,

02:13:18.520 | 'cause his mind was going over and over

02:13:20.020 | with why it was his fault, what he did to deserve it,

02:13:22.680 | how he kept going back, so it must be his fault.

02:13:25.920 | It was in it, as soon as he put words to it,

02:13:28.080 | he saw the truth of it, and it was a bifurcation

02:13:31.800 | in the path of life then.

02:13:32.920 | And any therapist has stories like that,

02:13:35.340 | which just shows the immense power

02:13:36.880 | that it can even be that just uttering the words

02:13:40.280 | makes just a cascade of change all at once.

02:13:44.120 | - Just saying those words to another human being,

02:13:46.580 | it makes you wonder about that compulsive loop

02:13:51.560 | that happens in our heads.

02:13:53.200 | Until it's brought to the surface, it's so interesting.

02:13:58.800 | - Entirely non-productive, the loops,

02:14:00.600 | and sometimes even if we put, what would I say to another?

02:14:03.040 | Let me write it down, it can get rid of those loops

02:14:05.520 | in our brains, any even thought of outward expression

02:14:09.560 | is the enemy of those internal,

02:14:11.800 | persecutory negative thought loops.

02:14:14.240 | - How do you find a good therapist?

02:14:16.000 | I tend to think of, listen, I'm a fan of podcasts,

02:14:22.320 | I'm a fan of conversations, it feels like a,

02:14:24.720 | it's like finding a good friend, or something.

02:14:29.120 | It feels like a difficult journey.

02:14:30.780 | Maybe I'm wrong in that, but it just feels like such a,

02:14:35.520 | it feels like a partnership, a journey together,

02:14:38.560 | versus some very simple clinical procedure.

02:14:43.560 | - Well, the first thing I would say is

02:14:45.880 | to change the entire paradigm.

02:14:47.840 | Most people, like okay, I need a therapist,

02:14:50.120 | so people feel often like they're in a weakened position

02:14:52.760 | because they need, quote unquote, a therapist.

02:14:56.000 | Then therapists are rationed, right?

02:14:58.880 | I mean, how many insurance panels have lists a mile long

02:15:03.080 | of qualified therapists who could be

02:15:06.080 | on that insurance panel, but there's a certification process,

02:15:09.440 | like this just makes no sense, right?

02:15:10.520 | The state's already certified the person, right?

02:15:12.660 | But there's so many barriers to entry

02:15:14.360 | that now we're rationing this resource,

02:15:16.840 | which we should all stop and pause for a second

02:15:19.000 | and think like, we're okay with that as a society,

02:15:21.320 | and by the way, everything else is like that too,

02:15:23.280 | when we're trying to get help for our health.

02:15:25.440 | So let's step back from that for a second.

02:15:27.800 | Now it's a resource that's not in great supply,

02:15:30.840 | and then a person begins to think,

02:15:33.040 | you know, essentially, I'll take what I can get,

02:15:34.760 | like I just gotta get somebody,

02:15:35.720 | and I don't know enough to know anyway, right?

02:15:37.880 | And those are very disempowering thoughts,

02:15:40.520 | as opposed to saying, look,

02:15:41.960 | I'm gonna be an empowered consumer,

02:15:43.600 | and I need to choose someone who gets over

02:15:47.560 | just some basic hurdles of what I think

02:15:49.760 | are reasonable human interaction, right?

02:15:51.960 | So like, is the person making eye contact?

02:15:53.640 | Do they seem interested, right?

02:15:55.040 | Like, these are basic points about any human interaction,

02:15:57.600 | including a therapist, right?

02:15:59.400 | Then you can say, okay, is there word of mouth?

02:16:01.120 | Anyone else has something good?

02:16:02.280 | Nothing better than a word of mouth recommendation

02:16:04.160 | from someone you trust, right?

02:16:05.920 | Or anybody can have a good website,

02:16:07.800 | but you say, let me look at the website.

02:16:09.120 | What is it saying if there is one, right?

02:16:11.840 | Does it resonate with me or not, right?

02:16:15.480 | But after all of that, then you go to see the person

02:16:19.000 | with the idea that you're interviewing them, right?

02:16:21.720 | The idea that, yeah, I hope this person can help me,

02:16:23.960 | and if so, great, I'm with the program,

02:16:25.760 | but I'm thinking about it.

02:16:27.120 | Do I want this person?

02:16:28.640 | Do I feel heard?

02:16:29.760 | Do I feel cared for?

02:16:31.480 | Which doesn't mean, is it easy, right?

02:16:33.360 | It might mean, is it hard?

02:16:34.680 | And I leave, and I feel like,

02:16:37.240 | emotional for a couple of days,

02:16:38.960 | but I see that I'm facing new things.

02:16:41.640 | No, this process of assessment

02:16:43.720 | so that one isn't settling for something

02:16:46.760 | that is formulaic, over-packaged,

02:16:48.920 | and I'm not trying to be overly critical of therapists.

02:16:51.160 | I mean, there are people everywhere who do their jobs well

02:16:53.080 | and people who don't do their jobs well,

02:16:55.200 | but most therapists are working in systems

02:16:58.600 | that push against doing the job well, right?

02:17:01.720 | Because they're rationing care,

02:17:03.000 | and there's an allotted number of sessions,

02:17:04.520 | and there's enough such time before a person can return,

02:17:07.080 | and so often, it's an uphill battle

02:17:09.160 | because we're trying to be helped

02:17:10.920 | within systems we've created and tolerate

02:17:14.280 | that are pushing against helping us.

02:17:17.600 | - Yeah, but that interview process is tricky.

02:17:23.000 | I mean, if you're in a rough place mentally,

02:17:27.120 | just like with any kind of interview,

02:17:29.240 | it's hard not to think that a failed interaction,

02:17:32.980 | failed interview, there's something wrong with you.

02:17:37.400 | - Sure, right.

02:17:38.760 | - There is an authority to a therapist, I think,

02:17:40.960 | where you think, like, they've got it all figured out.

02:17:44.080 | - Right.

02:17:44.920 | - And I'm a mess, and therefore,

02:17:47.660 | if there's something off, it's all my fault.

02:17:50.520 | All right, so it's a very tricky,

02:17:53.000 | and it's easy to then give up,

02:17:54.320 | and then, 'cause that step to try to get a therapist,

02:17:57.760 | the first step, to get help,

02:18:00.120 | if I get a therapist, any kind of help,

02:18:01.880 | that's a big leap to take,

02:18:04.040 | especially when you're in a rough place.

02:18:05.680 | - I agree completely.

02:18:06.880 | We should not make people swim against

02:18:09.920 | such a strong current to get their needs met.

02:18:12.880 | I mean, we see this in such obvious places

02:18:15.200 | where an elderly homebound person

02:18:18.280 | who can't get their medicine

02:18:20.120 | because, oh, there's been some change,

02:18:21.480 | and they didn't put the new number

02:18:22.520 | into the form, or Lord knows what.

02:18:24.880 | I mean, it's incredible how we force people

02:18:28.720 | to swim against strong currents

02:18:30.800 | to get things that are just basic,

02:18:32.960 | at times, for their survival.

02:18:34.960 | And with that in mind, I don't have a lot of respect

02:18:38.260 | for where healthcare is at, or where mental health is at.

02:18:41.960 | The field that I work in has accepted

02:18:44.600 | all sorts of aspects of how things go,

02:18:48.960 | someone else controlling,

02:18:50.920 | how long the interaction can go on,

02:18:53.480 | how the interaction is bounded,

02:18:55.000 | what can be said and done,

02:18:56.100 | what medicines can be prescribed.

02:18:58.120 | There's so many external controls

02:19:00.780 | in the systems we work in that we,

02:19:03.940 | and I say me included, like all of us in the field,

02:19:07.880 | have let it get to a place

02:19:09.760 | where it's obscenely difficult to get help,

02:19:13.200 | obscenely difficult.

02:19:15.000 | And we should say that's not okay.

02:19:18.880 | I think psychiatrists and therapists

02:19:21.780 | and master's level social workers,

02:19:23.920 | psychologists, and you name it,

02:19:25.600 | I think we should all say this is not okay,

02:19:29.440 | and then we as a society should be saying this is not okay.

02:19:32.080 | Otherwise, what you're saying,

02:19:33.240 | which is, I think, completely true,

02:19:35.360 | will only become worse as there's more and more barriers

02:19:38.600 | to getting the help a person needs,

02:19:40.040 | and each time a person isn't helped,

02:19:42.200 | it sets the odds against them getting more help.

02:19:44.560 | I should say, Hugh, that when I started working,

02:19:47.700 | there were times I would send people to an emergency room,

02:19:50.120 | right, if there was some emergency,

02:19:51.800 | emergency in their mental health, and they were at risk.

02:19:54.160 | And there were times I'd send somebody to an emergency room

02:19:56.480 | where if you stopped and looked,

02:19:58.160 | it would have been malpractice not to do that, right?

02:20:01.320 | Now, it's not just me who has an incredibly high threshold

02:20:06.320 | for sending someone to an emergency room

02:20:09.880 | because you send someone who's in a lot of distress,

02:20:12.520 | and oftentimes, they're sitting on a gurney in a hallway,

02:20:15.420 | or they're locked in a small white room,

02:20:17.440 | and all they had was depression.

02:20:18.840 | You know, they're just scared when they go in,

02:20:20.680 | and 36 hours later, oh, they're feeling a little better.

02:20:23.320 | Why?

02:20:24.160 | Because they're desperate to get out of there,

02:20:24.980 | and someone sends them home.

02:20:26.240 | I mean, so our systems have shifted so much

02:20:29.800 | that we tolerate now, en masse,

02:20:33.160 | what is egregious to the individual.

02:20:35.340 | - So you are a psychiatrist.

02:20:39.640 | In terms of doing therapy, psychotherapy,

02:20:43.720 | what does the successful interaction look like?

02:20:47.240 | Perhaps a fun question, perhaps not.

02:20:50.600 | What do you think of the psychiatrist,

02:20:51.840 | Sean and Goodwill Hunting, played by Robin Williams?

02:20:55.360 | So what is the full range of interesting interactions?

02:20:58.120 | Can there be an intimacy, a friendship,

02:20:59.800 | a kind of varied interaction that kind of blends the lines

02:21:04.560 | of, you know, 30-minute session once a week or whatever,

02:21:09.320 | versus like a really kind of deliberate, long-term project

02:21:15.240 | that cares about the well-being of a person

02:21:17.720 | across the months and years?

02:21:20.200 | Or what can you say about a successful interaction

02:21:24.680 | between therapist and patient?

02:21:26.920 | - I think we're much better served by the latter, right?

02:21:30.160 | And again, it doesn't have to be over years.

02:21:32.280 | I mean, maybe a person might need that over weeks.

02:21:34.920 | They might need it over months.

02:21:36.020 | They might need it over years.

02:21:37.720 | But if I'm understanding correctly,

02:21:39.760 | you're describing something that is

02:21:41.960 | like a real human engagement, right?

02:21:44.520 | And I work in a field that for years and years and years,

02:21:49.120 | the patient didn't get to see, right?

02:21:51.480 | The therapist was sitting in a place,

02:21:53.200 | sitting behind the person, right?

02:21:54.920 | So that's not, of course, the only tradition,

02:21:57.400 | and there are aspects of that tradition

02:21:59.400 | that can be very humanized.

02:22:01.000 | But the idea that we're supposed to not be human,

02:22:04.560 | I mean, this medicine is shot through with this, right?

02:22:06.520 | That the doctor's supposed to be God

02:22:07.760 | and it protects the doctor.

02:22:09.200 | And that makes its way into therapy.

02:22:11.120 | And the idea of the superiority,

02:22:13.560 | the therapist knows more.

02:22:15.040 | I mean, in some ways, yes,

02:22:18.400 | but the idea is to know more about mechanical things,

02:22:21.640 | right, to know more about facts and knowledge,

02:22:25.040 | not as a human being, right?

02:22:26.680 | If we approach therapy as a collaborative human endeavor,

02:22:30.720 | right, where if we're gonna do it together,

02:22:33.100 | of course I'm gonna learn from you too, right?

02:22:35.320 | I mean, we're two human beings

02:22:36.640 | and we're talking about things that are deep

02:22:38.240 | and personal and intimate,

02:22:39.360 | and I'm not gonna participate in a way

02:22:41.960 | that makes it about me as much as it's about you,

02:22:45.200 | but we're two humans and what's going on in me

02:22:47.920 | may have relevance and sharing it may have relevance.

02:22:50.440 | And at times, you doing something back for me

02:22:53.580 | may have relevance.

02:22:54.680 | I'll give you an example of a person

02:22:56.000 | who would not let me help him.

02:22:58.560 | It was a young man, so when I was in training,

02:23:00.560 | who was very, very sick and needed to change

02:23:03.920 | certain choices and habits,

02:23:05.760 | or he was not gonna survive.

02:23:07.520 | And I had no ability to help him whatsoever.

02:23:11.600 | And I went and I saw a supervisor

02:23:13.280 | who was existentially trained,

02:23:14.760 | where here it's different from existentialism

02:23:16.840 | in the classic sense,

02:23:17.880 | but it's about really human connection, right?

02:23:20.400 | And the guy was always wanting to teach me something,

02:23:23.240 | right, 'cause I can get by in Spanish,

02:23:25.100 | but he was fluent in Spanish.

02:23:26.360 | And he wanted to, oh, you traveled here

02:23:28.840 | and he'd say a word to see if I knew.

02:23:31.520 | And I was always directing back

02:23:33.000 | to what I was supposed to do, right?

02:23:34.260 | And the supervisor, I'll never forget,

02:23:35.680 | he said, "Let him teach you Spanish."

02:23:37.840 | Like, okay, come on.

02:23:39.280 | So we had a couple sessions where if you look

02:23:41.160 | from the outside, you say, what is going on there?

02:23:43.000 | Like, right, like, they were Spanish lessons to me, right?

02:23:46.880 | And then at some point, he brought in his mother

02:23:49.360 | and we hadn't brought her in yet,

02:23:51.400 | and he was in part showing off

02:23:53.760 | that he taught me something, right?

02:23:55.120 | And I said a couple things and he felt more powerful.

02:23:58.120 | Like, he was younger than me

02:23:59.080 | and he felt sick and disempowered,

02:24:01.340 | but he didn't feel that way once he taught me something

02:24:03.920 | and we showed it off to his mother, right?

02:24:06.160 | And his behavior started to change.

02:24:07.860 | He started taking better care of himself.

02:24:10.040 | He could see a little more what I was saying.

02:24:11.920 | It was like, you're a wonderful person.

02:24:13.320 | Look, you love your mother and your aunt and they love you.

02:24:15.840 | And like, he could start seeing that about himself.

02:24:18.360 | But that came from humanness.

02:24:20.120 | And I think that's the way we help people.

02:24:23.720 | I don't understand why we don't do everything that way.

02:24:25.760 | It's like, we're two humans,

02:24:27.640 | but if you're doing something for me,

02:24:29.120 | then there's something, you have an expertise and I don't,

02:24:31.400 | that's why you're doing it for me.

02:24:32.800 | The reverse could be true,

02:24:34.020 | but it doesn't mean we're not just two humans

02:24:36.300 | doing something together.

02:24:37.720 | - And the healthcare system and the legal system

02:24:39.800 | should not get in the way of that.

02:24:40.880 | I mean, there's liability and all these kinds of things

02:24:43.440 | that can get in the way of the humanness.

02:24:48.340 | I mean, some of that is justified.

02:24:50.680 | You have to be careful.

02:24:51.560 | You have to make sure there's--

02:24:52.760 | - Of course.

02:24:53.760 | - Irresponsible, but a little too much

02:24:56.440 | can destroy the humanness.

02:24:57.880 | - I'll use a way to usually say something is insane.

02:25:00.760 | Like, it's not consistent with sanity.

02:25:02.480 | - Yeah. (laughs)

02:25:03.320 | - And the presence of the legal system,

02:25:06.520 | look, I'm all for, of course, physicians have to be held,

02:25:09.280 | but to be responsible and everybody makes mistakes

02:25:12.080 | and people have to be accountable for their mistakes.

02:25:15.080 | I understand all of that, but what we see now,

02:25:18.980 | it's so absurd that, oh, like everyone is frightened.

02:25:23.980 | - Yeah.

02:25:25.080 | - Everyone is frightened and just looking to,

02:25:26.800 | like, how do I slot into the box,

02:25:28.240 | check the boxes of what I'm supposed to do

02:25:31.000 | and not get in trouble?

02:25:32.620 | You know, people get sued because someone was

02:25:36.180 | at that hospital and that doctor touched their care.

02:25:38.600 | This happens in the VA system.

02:25:39.760 | It happens in other systems, too.

02:25:41.520 | So you might have touched their care

02:25:42.840 | and no one's even saying you did anything wrong,

02:25:44.520 | but they say the next person did.

02:25:45.960 | Oh, someone settled on your behalf

02:25:47.640 | and now you have a malpractice.

02:25:49.360 | Ding, and maybe you can't get a license somewhere else.

02:25:51.820 | Like, doctors are terrified and they're terrified

02:25:54.800 | for good reason because the same society

02:25:58.480 | that has given doctors, in many ways,

02:26:00.480 | too much power over time and treated doctors

02:26:03.440 | maybe too much like gods, now is, I think,

02:26:05.800 | enacting some of society's anger and envy

02:26:08.920 | out on the physicians.

02:26:10.600 | Even the idea that, like, a person would know what medicine.

02:26:13.760 | Like, I saw a couple TV commercials, give me this.

02:26:16.440 | Like, it's interesting, right?

02:26:18.600 | Because even if, let's say I take my self-advice,

02:26:21.600 | it doesn't feel good, obviously, but it's like, wow.

02:26:24.520 | Like, I went to school for like eight years for this

02:26:26.560 | and you don't even wanna hear my opinion, right?

02:26:28.520 | You're not taking good care of yourself, right?

02:26:30.400 | It doesn't mean you should think my opinion is gospel

02:26:32.440 | 'cause I said it, but people then don't

02:26:35.240 | have an understanding of, like, what is expertise?

02:26:37.640 | What do people learn?

02:26:39.120 | How can people help us understand and make better decisions?

02:26:42.760 | It kinda goes out with the wash

02:26:44.480 | and then the position of the expert,

02:26:47.560 | I mean, a lot has been written about this, right,

02:26:48.920 | gets diminished over time very much to our own peril.

02:26:52.840 | And then often with aggression in the medical world

02:26:56.080 | coming back towards the alleged expert.

02:26:59.880 | - Yeah, expertise is a tricky one.

02:27:01.880 | It's such a tricky thing

02:27:03.920 | because coupled with expertise,

02:27:08.920 | the attention is this arrogance

02:27:12.960 | that can come with expertise.

02:27:14.880 | The arrogance can make the expert feel

02:27:18.040 | like they're more of an expert.

02:27:19.600 | And it's a vicious cycle.

02:27:22.040 | And then the arrogance in the current, in the 21st century,

02:27:25.000 | especially with the internet,

02:27:25.960 | the arrogance can completely force the public

02:27:29.640 | to distrust the expert 'cause it always sees

02:27:31.800 | the arrogance versus the expertise.

02:27:33.960 | So ultimately you have to have, I think,

02:27:37.720 | the greatest experts and masters I know

02:27:41.080 | are the ones that have complete humility.

02:27:44.280 | - Right, humility and gratitude.

02:27:45.800 | - And gratitude. - Leads us back.

02:27:47.240 | - Which is usually a really good sign

02:27:49.400 | that somebody is at the top of their field.

02:27:53.240 | - Right, and they'll acknowledge

02:27:54.520 | that they don't know everything.

02:27:55.600 | - Right, which is hilarious, right?

02:27:57.320 | So like the best experts I know

02:28:00.200 | are the ones that will say that they don't know.

02:28:05.200 | - Right. - They will not

02:28:06.400 | call themselves an expert.

02:28:08.080 | - Right, right.

02:28:09.200 | It's very confusing.

02:28:11.040 | - Or know that they know a lot

02:28:12.200 | but don't know the answer to this.

02:28:13.400 | You see that a lot in medicine.

02:28:14.560 | That person knows they're an expert surgeon,

02:28:16.640 | but they also acknowledge they don't know

02:28:18.440 | if this is the right time to operate.

02:28:20.200 | That's how you get to the best answer

02:28:21.720 | instead of someone who is an expert

02:28:23.200 | and always knows the answer.

02:28:24.520 | - Yeah, if we actually rewind

02:28:27.000 | to the beginning of our conversation,

02:28:28.880 | we talked about, you mentioned something

02:28:31.520 | I wanted to return to.

02:28:33.320 | So there's layers that are,

02:28:36.480 | there's an emergent novelty,

02:28:38.800 | and you mentioned that we as human beings,

02:28:40.640 | and we introspect on our own mind,

02:28:43.920 | we really can't know most of it.

02:28:46.140 | Which of course makes me think of this,

02:28:50.080 | the unconscious mind, subconscious mind,

02:28:52.480 | and Carl Jung, how much is hiding there in the shadows?

02:28:55.800 | You've investigated a lot of trauma.

02:28:58.880 | How much is there in our mind

02:29:00.800 | that's not directly accessible to us?

02:29:03.440 | Like what can you say maybe philosophically

02:29:06.440 | about how much is there lurking in the Jungian shadow?

02:29:11.440 | - I think there's a tremendous amount there,

02:29:15.800 | but I wouldn't, I don't immediately go

02:29:18.960 | to an ominous perspective, right?

02:29:21.880 | Because if it's lurking there, right,

02:29:23.360 | it can come get us, right?

02:29:24.640 | And to some extent, that's true, right?

02:29:26.720 | You can say that the seeds of evil are there

02:29:28.280 | if we want to plant and nurture them.

02:29:29.920 | - You think good things can't lurk?

02:29:32.120 | - I guess, I was--

02:29:32.960 | - I was being poetic.

02:29:34.800 | But you're right, you're absolutely right.

02:29:35.880 | And the Jungian shadow is supposed

02:29:37.440 | to not just be dark things,

02:29:38.600 | it's supposed to be everything.

02:29:39.440 | It's supposed to be a lot of positive things as well, yeah.

02:29:42.040 | - Right, which I think brings us

02:29:43.680 | to self-knowledge, to truth,

02:29:46.000 | where I think the opposite of envy,

02:29:49.240 | narcissism, sociopathy, I do think is all rooted in truth.

02:29:53.480 | It's both the truth of the good things about us

02:29:55.880 | or the ways we're not blameable,

02:29:59.080 | blameworthy for the things we're blaming ourselves for,

02:30:01.200 | et cetera, but the self-knowledge and the truth

02:30:04.680 | and getting away from the reflex of anger,

02:30:08.400 | frustration, envy, shame, what I think happens then

02:30:12.100 | is all of that underneath the surface.

02:30:14.260 | If we look at the consciousness as the top of the iceberg,

02:30:16.800 | you know, outside the top, outside the water,

02:30:19.660 | so is what's underneath shifting

02:30:22.240 | and it can pull the top under, right,

02:30:24.120 | or is it supporting the top?

02:30:26.040 | And really, I believe is honesty, truth,

02:30:30.200 | self-knowledge, humility, gratitude,

02:30:32.080 | all this simple stuff.

02:30:33.320 | Good mental health is always consistent with simplicity.

02:30:36.560 | You know, humility, gratitude are easy things to say.

02:30:39.560 | Like, we know what that is, right?

02:30:41.240 | We understand what that is.

02:30:42.640 | Soothing envy by having immense power

02:30:46.360 | and subjugating others is getting very, very complicated,

02:30:49.000 | right, what that is and how that plays out.

02:30:51.520 | So if we are in touch with ourselves,

02:30:54.160 | if we're honest with ourselves, if we own what's ours,

02:30:57.240 | we don't try and own what's not ours, right,

02:30:59.640 | what happens then is something isn't waiting inside of us

02:31:02.320 | to sort of jump us with some new fact of self

02:31:06.720 | or challenge of self, right?

02:31:08.380 | Then I think what happens are phenomena

02:31:10.760 | like intrinsic learning, like the way that so much happens

02:31:13.440 | inside of us automatically, right?

02:31:15.520 | How people who have high levels of expertise

02:31:18.840 | know the answer to complex questions more rapidly, right?

02:31:23.760 | It doesn't take them longer to think through it,

02:31:25.720 | but they have more knowledge to think through.

02:31:27.440 | It's that more happens rapidly and unconsciously,

02:31:30.580 | so they know the more complex answer

02:31:33.300 | more quickly and readily, right?

02:31:35.180 | And we can build that in ourselves,

02:31:37.040 | not just in terms of factual knowledge,

02:31:39.440 | but in terms of how we respond to things, right?

02:31:42.240 | If I make a mistake, do I respond with reflexive shame,

02:31:45.760 | right, if I see someone has something I'd like,

02:31:47.600 | how do I respond?

02:31:49.120 | We're more in accord with ourselves

02:31:51.760 | and then the automaticity in us is serving us better.

02:31:56.440 | - So that's in the positive.

02:31:57.480 | Do you think, do you draw some wisdom

02:31:59.320 | from the early pioneers of psychotherapy

02:32:03.780 | like Freud and Jung?

02:32:05.800 | - Yes.

02:32:06.640 | - That there's some repressed,

02:32:07.600 | there's some stuff to work through

02:32:12.400 | that is in the unconscious mind.

02:32:15.720 | - Yes, I think there's always,

02:32:17.800 | like 100% of the time, if you have a living human,

02:32:21.400 | you have things to work through in the unconscious mind,

02:32:24.380 | right, there's too much that goes on around us

02:32:26.520 | that we might find unacceptable and suppress, right?

02:32:30.160 | There can be smaller but important examples, right?

02:32:33.760 | Someone who feels that they're not a good enough parent

02:32:38.480 | and they, I don't know, they drop the child's plate, right,

02:32:43.680 | and there's a feeling about that of badness in them

02:32:48.680 | that the person can't tolerate and pushes away, right,

02:32:53.440 | and maybe they become a little bit less confident,

02:32:55.440 | a little bit less assertive.

02:32:57.120 | Those small examples are important

02:32:59.640 | because they may be low valence

02:33:01.160 | but there can be many, many, many, many, many of them, right?

02:33:04.200 | Then you can look at the opposite end of the spectrum

02:33:06.160 | where someone, for example, feels,

02:33:08.320 | or they're repressing their sexuality, right, unconsciously.

02:33:12.400 | Something that is so important,

02:33:15.120 | say, to how a person feels about themselves,

02:33:16.880 | to whether they can seek fulfillment,

02:33:18.320 | to how they feel about their ability to interact

02:33:20.800 | and engage with others in ways that are loving

02:33:23.000 | and generative over time.

02:33:24.760 | So from smaller things that accumulate often at rapid pace

02:33:29.400 | to really big things,

02:33:30.840 | we are pushing things into the unconscious

02:33:33.160 | because they're not acceptable and we need to explore,

02:33:36.480 | like, why is that not acceptable?

02:33:37.960 | Maybe there's an unacceptable urge

02:33:39.400 | 'cause it's really not acceptable to me, right,

02:33:41.360 | like a violent urge.

02:33:42.640 | Maybe there's an unacceptable urge

02:33:44.700 | because I'm actually listening to the lies

02:33:47.160 | society is telling me about what's okay

02:33:49.040 | and what's not okay, right?

02:33:50.460 | So in exploring those things,

02:33:52.600 | yes, we become happier and healthier

02:33:54.880 | and that could mean if we're already happy and healthy,

02:33:57.920 | it gets better, we get more insulated against the negative,

02:34:01.160 | or it can mean the person who's really nurturing

02:34:03.600 | some of those seeds of evil and envy

02:34:06.480 | does that less or steps away from it.

02:34:08.800 | So whether it's good or it's bad,

02:34:10.360 | it's in there inside of us

02:34:12.360 | and we benefit from understanding

02:34:15.160 | that idea of the observing ego, right?

02:34:16.840 | Like you said, the part that can stop and say,

02:34:18.680 | hey, this is what's, I see what's going on in me.

02:34:22.200 | - What have you learned about exploring the human mind

02:34:25.280 | about the art of conversation?

02:34:27.440 | 'Cause ultimately, therapy is conversation.

02:34:29.480 | - Yeah.

02:34:30.520 | - Is there something you can put into words?

02:34:33.200 | - Yeah.

02:34:34.040 | - Like what makes a good conversation?

02:34:37.320 | - I think language is among the most amazing gifts we have

02:34:41.600 | and it's also one of the most clunky routes

02:34:45.320 | to misunderstanding, right?

02:34:47.000 | I think of like, there's a concept of facticity,

02:34:49.320 | things that are like, I guess, unnecessary evils

02:34:51.800 | from the religious perspective,

02:34:52.920 | I think is where the word started,

02:34:54.480 | but of language being like a facticity, right?

02:34:57.360 | That we need to communicate with one another,

02:34:59.540 | we wanna communicate, so we develop words

02:35:01.580 | and we have these amazing brains that can have language

02:35:03.680 | and that's all well and good,

02:35:05.600 | but our fantasy would be more like Mr. Spock, right?

02:35:08.560 | You know, the Vulcan mind meld,

02:35:09.960 | where it's like, I communicate with you

02:35:11.480 | 'cause we put our hands on one another

02:35:12.800 | and we know, you know, by doing this,

02:35:15.000 | what we're thinking and what we're feeling

02:35:17.300 | and we won't have misunderstanding.

02:35:19.500 | So because I think we can approximate that,

02:35:22.440 | we can come kind of close with language, right?

02:35:25.320 | Or we can be so far away from it

02:35:28.100 | that we can say the same word and of opposite meanings

02:35:31.240 | and have it generate immediate animosity, right?

02:35:33.960 | That we need to be very, very careful

02:35:37.320 | with language, with communication, with conversations.

02:35:40.240 | And I've come to understand that much, much more

02:35:43.240 | as I've gotten older, both in terms of how hurtful,

02:35:46.440 | you know, reckless speech is,

02:35:49.840 | which is why I'm horrified by so much

02:35:51.760 | of what we see in our political discourse, right?

02:35:53.840 | The slurs, the negativity that's attached to something,

02:35:57.200 | to some word, you know, how one can utter something

02:36:00.160 | and it can go into another person's just into the ear,

02:36:02.880 | but then goes through so many parts

02:36:04.480 | of the meaning of the brain

02:36:05.460 | that that person feels a pervasive sense

02:36:07.360 | of shame or beleagueredness, right?

02:36:10.400 | So yes, reckless language absolutely hurts people

02:36:14.960 | and we see that all the time in ways

02:36:16.780 | that I think are just atrocious.

02:36:18.520 | And also how bad miscommunication harms us.

02:36:22.480 | I mean, I really learned that through a lot

02:36:24.400 | of different ways, but in the work as a therapist

02:36:26.460 | of like really wanting to make sure

02:36:28.480 | that I'm really understanding you

02:36:30.520 | and you're really understanding me.

02:36:32.440 | And a lot of work goes into that communication.

02:36:34.800 | I think people, we can get into a rhythm of it

02:36:36.400 | and then it happens more easily,

02:36:38.080 | but I think it's a life and death difference at times,

02:36:42.320 | you know, lots of times, right, in the world around us

02:36:45.040 | between clear and accurate communication.

02:36:47.280 | Just so I said a word because I think you know what I mean,

02:36:49.320 | or something like that.

02:36:50.960 | - Yeah, so to that, I mean, there's the Camus quote

02:36:54.600 | that I like, "As much unhappiness has come into the world

02:36:58.240 | "because of things left unsaid."

02:37:02.180 | So that has to do with clear communication.

02:37:05.060 | But there's also a dance to a conversation,

02:37:11.520 | a poetry to it.

02:37:15.200 | There is ambiguity to language.

02:37:17.680 | And if you have a kind of awareness of that ambiguity

02:37:20.560 | and you play with it, that's where wit and humor come in.

02:37:23.440 | That allows you to sneak up to difficult topics

02:37:27.600 | without sort of trampling on them.

02:37:30.400 | I don't know, there's an art to it as well.

02:37:34.120 | There's an art to the silence, you know?

02:37:36.320 | Just allowing both human beings,

02:37:40.260 | one of the most intimate things you can share

02:37:41.840 | with a human being is silence.

02:37:43.440 | - Yeah, that's communication.

02:37:45.440 | It's a different communication,

02:37:46.720 | but at times more powerful.

02:37:48.800 | - Yeah, giving a person space to accumulate,

02:37:53.260 | to integrate, to make sense of their thoughts,

02:37:55.960 | enough to say a word.

02:37:57.440 | Maybe a memory sparks so they can think

02:37:59.620 | about that memory and process that memory.

02:38:03.200 | - So it's not just words, right?

02:38:04.520 | It's not just words, right?

02:38:05.400 | 'Cause now you're talking about communication

02:38:06.680 | as it's body language, it's expressions of empathy,

02:38:11.040 | it's movements, it's pauses, right?

02:38:13.320 | The communication process is very,

02:38:15.760 | very complicated and deep.

02:38:18.640 | - Yeah, and some of that is building trust,

02:38:20.760 | but also challenging a person.

02:38:22.880 | I wonder about that whole process with strangers,

02:38:25.760 | for example, of how you do that successfully.

02:38:29.480 | Like you and I just met today,

02:38:31.640 | but I think a lot of our interaction is very free.

02:38:37.240 | We can get to know each other in any way we want.

02:38:39.760 | There's a few conversations I have coming up in general

02:38:43.400 | where there's a lot of other pressures and constraints

02:38:45.620 | on those conversations.

02:38:46.640 | There's a danger to it, there's risks,

02:38:49.760 | there's political forces involved.

02:38:51.600 | Not from my perspective, but probably from mine as well,

02:38:56.180 | of how do you say this thing?

02:38:58.140 | What are the words that are going to offend?

02:39:00.480 | And you're learning that about a stranger at the same time.

02:39:03.720 | It's an interesting dance because you have to walk

02:39:10.800 | carefully but deliberately, right?

02:39:12.680 | Carefully because I've learned this about myself,

02:39:17.120 | about others, there's certain words

02:39:20.080 | that can trigger a person,

02:39:21.560 | that can make a person feel poorly,

02:39:25.520 | like shitty about themselves.

02:39:28.080 | So you can push, you can challenge a person about something

02:39:33.300 | and they're totally okay with it,

02:39:34.740 | but if you use a certain word to do it,

02:39:36.700 | maybe it maps to some childhood thing

02:39:40.200 | that their father or mother used to say

02:39:41.620 | or something like this.

02:39:42.820 | Part of the art of conversation is actually

02:39:46.980 | being a little bit free in using those words,

02:39:50.060 | but being extremely sensitive in detecting

02:39:53.020 | when a person reacts to a particular word

02:39:55.520 | and storing that away.

02:39:57.520 | It's like, okay, we might want to return to that later

02:40:01.520 | 'cause there might be an interesting,

02:40:03.160 | that could be a tip of an iceberg

02:40:04.400 | that's actually representing something beautiful.

02:40:06.560 | Or you might want to just, it's a nothing word

02:40:09.720 | that you just want to avoid because it's a distraction.

02:40:12.640 | And so all of that kind of has to be integrated

02:40:15.040 | into the dance of language.

02:40:16.240 | This is really interesting,

02:40:17.520 | especially when the stakes are really high.

02:40:19.080 | When you get one conversation,

02:40:22.120 | when you sit down, you have one conversation,

02:40:24.300 | and it makes the difference between,

02:40:27.260 | say you had one conversation with a patient.

02:40:29.220 | This is the only conversation you get to help them.

02:40:31.380 | - Sometimes it is the case, yeah.

02:40:33.980 | - This is pretty high stakes.

02:40:35.660 | - Yeah. - Oh, man.

02:40:37.460 | Yeah, it's tough.

02:40:39.700 | I guess you get over,

02:40:40.820 | and over time, I guess you get used

02:40:45.540 | to the high stakes nature of it.

02:40:48.300 | - When you develop an ability.

02:40:49.780 | With all that unconscious processing, right?

02:40:51.700 | - Right, right.

02:40:52.600 | All that part of the iceberg that's underneath the surface

02:40:55.140 | is doing all of that, right?

02:40:56.240 | It's reading behavioral cues, verbal cues,

02:40:59.000 | and recognizing the primacy of emotion over logic, right?

02:41:03.720 | If it were all logic, it'd be different.

02:41:05.760 | Okay, we're gonna talk about this thing.

02:41:06.860 | I'll say things, you say things back,

02:41:08.360 | even if it's politically contentious, say.

02:41:10.520 | So, okay, we're just gonna talk logically.

02:41:12.040 | But you know, that's not the case, right?

02:41:13.840 | There could be a word that raises a certain emotion,

02:41:17.360 | and you know you don't want to tread there

02:41:18.800 | because the emotion will color

02:41:20.280 | the person's ability to engage.

02:41:22.380 | So, you're aware of all of this.

02:41:24.580 | And then I think from the perspective of all of that,

02:41:27.260 | I mean, it's like standing on the shoulders

02:41:29.420 | of your own internal giant, right?

02:41:31.620 | That understands language and emotions

02:41:34.940 | and body language and attunement

02:41:36.900 | and history and triggering and all of that.

02:41:40.020 | And then on top of that,

02:41:41.860 | as you're standing up on those shoulders,

02:41:43.260 | you're trying to be effective, right?

02:41:45.460 | And then I think that's where effectiveness

02:41:48.280 | can be unilateral or it can be together.

02:41:51.140 | I mean, I think some of what emerged

02:41:53.660 | from Viktor Frankl's writing after the Second World War

02:41:56.260 | was how much a shared humanness means to us,

02:42:00.260 | how much of that can be an incentive

02:42:02.820 | for survival beyond all others, right?

02:42:05.420 | So, the idea of are we doing something,

02:42:07.940 | if we're communicating unilateral,

02:42:09.540 | like I want information from you

02:42:12.500 | or I want you to do a certain thing

02:42:14.580 | when we're done talking, right?

02:42:16.260 | Right, done communicating.

02:42:17.860 | That's a very unilateral type of effectiveness,

02:42:20.760 | which can make sense.

02:42:21.760 | Sometimes I want information out of a patient

02:42:23.440 | because I wanna know what to do next, right?

02:42:25.040 | So, it doesn't have to always be negative,

02:42:26.920 | but it can also be a tool of manipulation, right?

02:42:29.360 | If someone would say coming from envy or narcissism,

02:42:31.840 | I wanna communicate with you in a way

02:42:33.680 | that makes you do what I want you to do, right?

02:42:36.000 | Different from that is where it's a shared communication,

02:42:39.540 | where there's like an umbrella, so to speak, over us

02:42:42.680 | and we're doing something that can only happen together

02:42:46.040 | because we're us, we're each person, right?

02:42:48.380 | And we come together to do something

02:42:50.360 | that's a shared effectiveness.

02:42:51.880 | Like I think we're doing now of like elucidating

02:42:54.520 | and pursuing thoughts and getting ideas out.

02:42:57.360 | And I think the best situations

02:42:59.400 | are shared effectiveness situations

02:43:01.240 | 'cause you call upon the resourcefulness

02:43:03.200 | and the internal resources of both people.

02:43:05.960 | - But you, especially with strangers,

02:43:09.320 | especially when it's not labeled a therapy session,

02:43:13.400 | you kind of actually stumble into that cooperative state.

02:43:18.400 | Like you have to organically develop a trust together

02:43:23.720 | and almost lose yourself.

02:43:30.400 | Ultimately, I think you put it really nice.

02:43:32.360 | I think successful conversations,

02:43:34.080 | even when it's with, like even if it's like

02:43:37.760 | with world leaders or logicians,

02:43:40.600 | people that operate in the space of reason,

02:43:42.720 | the most successful conversation will ultimately be

02:43:46.200 | in the layer, in the landscape of emotion.

02:43:49.920 | Like that's where the interesting stuff will happen.

02:43:52.240 | That's where you'll discover anything.

02:43:53.760 | And that's where you get to actually meet,

02:43:55.520 | to start getting an understanding of each other,

02:43:58.000 | or what you actually mean, even by the statements

02:44:01.440 | that are supposed to be kind of rationally based.

02:44:04.240 | It's like you lose yourself.

02:44:06.920 | You lose yourself in the way you do when you're children

02:44:10.400 | and you're just shooting the shit

02:44:12.140 | about whatever topic and you just forget yourself.

02:44:14.720 | Forget the things you're supposed to say.

02:44:15.560 | - You lose yourself in the context, right?

02:44:17.120 | - Yeah, where you kind of plug

02:44:19.120 | into the unconscious mind a little bit

02:44:21.840 | and you get to speak, maybe indirectly,

02:44:24.720 | but to the things that really drive you,

02:44:27.940 | to the thing that really, to the things,

02:44:30.560 | to the emotions, I suppose, that underlie your worldview.

02:44:35.160 | I feel like that's where productive conversations

02:44:38.840 | can happen, whether it's a patient

02:44:40.360 | or just a stranger you're talking to at a bar

02:44:43.940 | about geopolitics.

02:44:45.180 | You mentioned Viktor Frankl.

02:44:47.780 | What do you make of his work, "Man's Search for Meaning"?

02:44:50.420 | What are the lessons you draw from his work,

02:44:53.500 | of him as a psychologist, but also from that,

02:44:56.500 | a very powerful work that reflects on his experience

02:44:59.500 | in a Nazi concentration camp?

02:45:02.020 | - Yeah, I think that it was almost a profound reinvention

02:45:09.620 | of humanness, right, after something so awful,

02:45:14.140 | so bleak and so despairing, to speak anew

02:45:20.260 | about shared humanness, human connection,

02:45:25.620 | meaning, compassion, that I think it was

02:45:30.260 | an intellectual direction that was adorned

02:45:34.760 | with all of the emotions that we need

02:45:37.400 | to adorn the logic with in order to make real change

02:45:41.600 | in the world, and I think that his work

02:45:43.860 | has fueled so many branches, have come from his work,

02:45:48.860 | the existential psychotherapy and its place

02:45:52.460 | in helping human activities today, right,

02:45:55.980 | a trend away from the idea that we're all quite isolated

02:46:02.140 | and that what's going on between us

02:46:04.240 | is all very transactional, right?

02:46:05.780 | I'm putting something out and you take it in,

02:46:07.240 | you put something out, I take it in, right?

02:46:08.980 | The idea that no, there's a difference there,

02:46:10.520 | there's a shared humanness that creates a meaning

02:46:13.820 | beyond the transactional, kind of like you were just saying,

02:46:16.300 | the logical stuff isn't really that interesting

02:46:18.720 | because the logic is, there's an answer

02:46:21.480 | to whatever logic is, we can do math, right?

02:46:23.740 | It's where does the surprises come in, right,

02:46:27.360 | either in terms of wonderful behavior

02:46:30.680 | or destructive behavior, right,

02:46:32.180 | they're coming from people's emotions,

02:46:33.980 | so that's what we want to understand,

02:46:36.520 | and that occurs in the context of a person

02:46:39.120 | and other humans, even if it's the conception

02:46:41.520 | of someone and other humans as enemy,

02:46:44.820 | or it's the conception of two people sitting together,

02:46:49.160 | the idea that there's a shared humanness

02:46:51.000 | and it's not all transactional,

02:46:52.840 | and that he could take that out of a pinnacle

02:46:57.840 | of human tragedy and utilize it in a way

02:47:01.300 | that informs us being better as a species going forward,

02:47:05.740 | I think is really monumental.

02:47:08.000 | - What do you think is the role of emotion

02:47:10.680 | in the human mind, in the human condition?

02:47:14.980 | Because we've talked several times in different ways

02:47:19.980 | that emotion matters and it's a big part of who we are,

02:47:23.800 | but why is it there, why is it useful, what's good about it?

02:47:30.320 | We've almost said it's almost like a negative thing

02:47:35.400 | that we just have to live with,

02:47:37.340 | but why is it also maybe a beautiful thing?

02:47:39.640 | - Yeah, well I think you said, what's the role of emotion?

02:47:42.080 | Emotion is the king, if we want to use that analogy,

02:47:44.440 | it's the CEO, if we want to use that analogy.

02:47:47.000 | Emotion rules all.

02:47:49.880 | We're taught that we're logical creatures,

02:47:51.680 | but we have innumerable pieces of data,

02:47:54.040 | even over the course of just a day,

02:47:55.900 | let alone a human experience,

02:47:57.720 | to tell us that is not the truth.

02:47:59.440 | Is it ever logical to run into a burning building?

02:48:02.440 | No, right?

02:48:04.280 | I mean, logic's never gonna tell one to do that.

02:48:06.080 | Okay, someone you love is in the building.

02:48:07.480 | The person's already sprinted halfway to the building.

02:48:10.560 | Emotion rules us, and so the thought, a thought,

02:48:15.560 | is some of that is evolutionary,

02:48:18.800 | that strong negative emotion stays with us

02:48:21.960 | very, very profoundly.

02:48:24.180 | So example I'll give is if we're hunter-gatherers

02:48:26.760 | and I find a new berry and it tastes good

02:48:29.080 | and it seems nutritious, and it is, everything's fine.

02:48:33.040 | It'd be good to remember that, right?

02:48:34.760 | But if I find a new berry and it tastes good

02:48:36.600 | and it seems nutritious, and we both eat it

02:48:39.040 | and almost die of sickness, we better remember that, right?

02:48:43.240 | So the primacy of emotion is in us

02:48:47.320 | for reasons that are about survival,

02:48:49.860 | that the emotion of it's my child in that building

02:48:52.400 | or my loved one is why I don't give a damn about logic

02:48:55.160 | and run into the building, right?

02:48:56.800 | The emotion of I thought that was good

02:48:58.840 | and I got really sick and I better never forget

02:49:01.400 | is also about survival.

02:49:02.920 | And the same applies to humans.

02:49:04.320 | If we're from different tribes back then,

02:49:06.640 | and in my tribe when you put your hand out,

02:49:09.200 | it's a greeting.

02:49:10.360 | In your tribe, if someone puts their hand out,

02:49:13.080 | it means, hey, I'm gonna attack you and take your stuff.

02:49:16.040 | Then I put my hand out and you slug me, right?

02:49:19.600 | Then I better remember that, right?

02:49:22.400 | But you see how that can lead into

02:49:24.760 | the constructs around that.

02:49:27.320 | I say, oh, people in your tribe are violent, right?

02:49:30.120 | We start then to make stories around that.

02:49:33.040 | But the primacy of emotion, whether it's berries

02:49:35.480 | or it's humans who might threaten us

02:49:37.440 | or it's humans we love, I think it's hard

02:49:40.320 | to even look at the anthropological,

02:49:42.960 | psychological literature to look at what's out there

02:49:46.040 | and I think the face validity, that's part of survival.

02:49:49.600 | Right, it's part of survival.

02:49:50.760 | - But it's so cool that you get also things like love,

02:49:53.760 | which are not often rational or grounded in logic and so on.

02:49:57.600 | If you look from a transactional perspective,

02:50:00.940 | a lot of times falling in love,

02:50:03.520 | whether it's with friends or friendship or romantic love,

02:50:09.440 | it doesn't really make sense.

02:50:10.920 | I'm still not sure what the hell it is.

02:50:14.440 | (laughing)

02:50:15.280 | 'Cause it's the thing that is one of the things,

02:50:20.120 | or love for your kids when they're born,

02:50:22.960 | that love, the parental love,

02:50:26.800 | what is that?

02:50:29.360 | That's so cool that we get to have,

02:50:31.360 | if you're looking in the menu of items

02:50:34.920 | that give life meaning, that seems like a pretty good one.

02:50:37.720 | - Yeah, so my response, you just said

02:50:40.840 | that it gives life meaning.

02:50:42.100 | My response initially was gonna be,

02:50:43.640 | it's the meaning of life, right?

02:50:45.800 | Because saying, okay, emotion is about survival,

02:50:48.160 | that's one part, right?

02:50:49.760 | And it's a very important part, right?

02:50:50.980 | If we don't survive, then we're not there

02:50:53.860 | to have emotions, right?

02:50:55.040 | So yes, it's about survival, but as important as that is,

02:50:58.800 | that's the small part of it, right?

02:51:00.440 | I think it is about the meaning of life

02:51:02.800 | because it's about the beyond self.

02:51:04.920 | And I think it relates back to what we talked,

02:51:07.640 | we were talking about at the very beginning

02:51:08.800 | and the levels of emergence, right?

02:51:11.480 | And when we feel love, we feel happiness

02:51:14.560 | because that person feels happiness, right?

02:51:17.320 | There's something that's so generative,

02:51:19.120 | so creative about that.

02:51:20.480 | Like we wanna bring order to things

02:51:22.240 | and happiness is consistent with simplicity, right?

02:51:26.080 | If we're healthy, there's nothing negative

02:51:27.560 | to say about our health, right?

02:51:28.720 | If we have health problems, there's a lot to say, right?

02:51:30.880 | And it's emotion that pushes us towards the goodness

02:51:35.280 | that I think makes all the meaning for us.

02:51:38.000 | I mean, it's interesting, I actually was wondering

02:51:40.360 | your thoughts about this as a scientist, right?

02:51:42.480 | Because we accept it by and large that we have free will,

02:51:45.800 | right, we feel that we have free will,

02:51:47.160 | but then we get upset that there's not justice, right?

02:51:49.600 | So, but how is it like if we have free will,

02:51:52.400 | I could act in an unjust way and then you're surprised

02:51:55.240 | or vice versa, why, right?

02:51:57.040 | We have these thoughts because I think

02:51:59.800 | because we're rooted, we want logic to rule.

02:52:03.160 | Like there's a way in which I can understand logic,

02:52:04.800 | I can manage it, I can manipulate it.

02:52:06.720 | We sort of want it to be that way.

02:52:08.880 | So then we glorify logic and then we misapply it.

02:52:13.880 | Like ideas like, oh, I know we have free will,

02:52:16.440 | but I'm now shaking my fist at the heavens

02:52:19.200 | because there's no justice, right?

02:52:21.200 | And I think maybe what we're looking for is

02:52:23.920 | we should go back and look at the givens.

02:52:25.500 | Like why is there there's only goodness if there's justice?

02:52:27.960 | I mean, that doesn't make, I think the goodness,

02:52:30.880 | why does the goodness have to be tied to that, right?

02:52:32.760 | Maybe it goes back to the counter entropy

02:52:35.160 | and the fact that when there is something,

02:52:37.080 | there is not nothing, right?

02:52:38.600 | And where there is something, there can be awareness,

02:52:40.800 | there can be goodness, there can be compassion, right?

02:52:44.240 | Is it that what's really going on is not about justice?

02:52:48.820 | Yes, we have free will, but it's that goodness,

02:52:52.760 | creating, shoring up, making better,

02:52:56.400 | that is the meaning, that is the good, right?

02:53:01.400 | And that the evil is the destruction

02:53:04.320 | as evidenced by the fact that it's overdetermined

02:53:07.240 | probably a million times that we're in this eddy current

02:53:09.780 | of counter entropy and we could destroy that quite readily,

02:53:13.280 | right, and then we're nothingness,

02:53:15.400 | like everything else that we know of that's not us,

02:53:19.060 | that doesn't have the ability to do something

02:53:21.180 | that's creative or constructive.

02:53:23.900 | I mean, I think that that's the answer

02:53:27.220 | and I think that our science really tells us

02:53:29.820 | that that's the answer.

02:53:30.780 | And I think it beckons us with ideas,

02:53:33.100 | like we know that things happen outside of space and time,

02:53:36.620 | right, I mean, they're physics experiments, right?

02:53:38.260 | Like we know this from the science of it,

02:53:40.700 | yet we don't stop and look and say, wait, is that?

02:53:43.840 | The magic of the idea, Einstein said,

02:53:45.500 | God doesn't play dice with the universe.

02:53:47.660 | I think, okay, maybe God doesn't play dice with the universe,

02:53:51.980 | that quantum indeterminacy and all of that

02:53:54.120 | is not just a flip of the coin, so to speak,

02:53:56.580 | but maybe it's in that indeterminacy

02:53:59.960 | that we're given the opportunity to assert ourselves,

02:54:03.680 | right, to make something one way or another.

02:54:06.180 | You know, maybe it's not God playing dice with the universe,

02:54:08.800 | but it's God loading the dice in our favor

02:54:11.500 | if we'll only listen to truth,

02:54:14.220 | the truth that being destructive

02:54:15.820 | doesn't help pursue anything,

02:54:17.280 | even in the person who thinks it will for themselves

02:54:19.740 | and that creativity and generativeness

02:54:22.060 | and kindness and compassion, like this is,

02:54:24.540 | doesn't that seem sort of analogous

02:54:26.220 | to the eddy current of counter-entropy

02:54:27.920 | that has us here in the first place?

02:54:29.940 | And I think that's where I pin meaning

02:54:32.520 | and that meaning then, going back to the initial question,

02:54:35.100 | right, is generated in us through emotion,

02:54:38.860 | through what we feel that leads us to feel something

02:54:40.820 | that is mysterious, I don't know why I feel it.

02:54:43.660 | - Yeah, in some sense, emotion is kind of the fuel

02:54:46.460 | of that creative imperative we have.

02:54:48.960 | But if you step back and look at the tapestry a little bit,

02:54:52.880 | it does seem that the destruction,

02:54:54.740 | the creation and the destruction

02:54:55.980 | are the yin and yang of life,

02:54:58.700 | that it all works only if the main engine

02:55:03.460 | is towards creativity,

02:55:05.060 | but destruction also makes way for new things.

02:55:10.460 | So that's the, this kind of struggle,

02:55:13.780 | it seems like life is struggle

02:55:15.740 | between the different forces

02:55:16.820 | that make up the individual human,

02:55:18.460 | that make up society, all these tensions

02:55:20.940 | are necessary for growth, for development,

02:55:24.220 | this kind of inner conflict and outer conflict

02:55:28.280 | are necessary for growth.

02:55:30.000 | It's not just, I mean, in some sense,

02:55:33.140 | it's from the logic aspect,

02:55:34.480 | you kind of want everything to be perfect and just,

02:55:37.940 | for nobody to suffer, for everything to be perfect,

02:55:40.180 | but just like we talked about with trauma,

02:55:42.020 | it just seems like it's such a big, giant mess.

02:55:45.420 | What is it, Bukowski said,

02:55:46.940 | find what you love and let it kill you.

02:55:48.940 | There's some aspect of,

02:55:52.180 | the negative aspect of passion and pursuit and obsession

02:55:55.220 | and the turmoil of the pursuit of happiness,

02:56:00.220 | of the creative pursuits and all of that,

02:56:05.220 | I mean, that's part of life as well.

02:56:07.860 | That's, and I don't know what to do with that

02:56:10.500 | from an individual perspective

02:56:13.700 | in terms of figuring out how do you live a good life?

02:56:16.620 | How do you live a healthy life?

02:56:18.260 | 'Cause it does seem that a bit of hardship

02:56:21.220 | or sometimes a lot of hardship

02:56:22.740 | can make a pretty interesting life.

02:56:25.940 | I think it brings us back to the discussion

02:56:28.380 | that we were having sort of before about like,

02:56:30.620 | what does it mean, like the challenges of trauma, right?

02:56:32.700 | And of overcoming, and I think here,

02:56:34.780 | we gotta be careful with the language, right?

02:56:36.820 | Because I would then say, let's take destruction, right,

02:56:40.780 | and separate it into two things, right?

02:56:43.300 | Like one is, you say destruction is like the breaking down,

02:56:47.100 | the tearing down of something, right,

02:56:48.940 | versus a process that has malice in it, right?

02:56:53.660 | So just like when we were talking about trauma

02:56:56.980 | and setbacks, things to overcome,

02:56:59.900 | and we'd say, okay, if you say,

02:57:00.980 | hey, you have it harder than the next person

02:57:03.020 | and you have more to overcome,

02:57:04.980 | or someone put a barrier in front of you

02:57:07.020 | for you to overcome,

02:57:08.660 | that there can be a lot of growth in that,

02:57:10.380 | including the times when you don't know,

02:57:11.900 | if you, gosh, can I do this, right, can I get over it, right?

02:57:14.940 | We're saying like that's challenge

02:57:17.900 | and something to overcome that's very positive,

02:57:19.980 | but we're saying, but there's no benefit

02:57:21.660 | of like throwing a racial slur in there, right?

02:57:24.220 | We're saying, because that's all bad,

02:57:25.940 | like that's not, even if the person says,

02:57:27.540 | I'm angry about that and I'm gonna overcome that,

02:57:29.220 | it's like, that didn't need to be,

02:57:30.180 | that didn't make anything better.

02:57:31.700 | If the person sees that and says,

02:57:33.260 | I'm gonna overcome that, it makes things less worse, right?

02:57:37.580 | Right, but there's no good to something

02:57:40.500 | that's created as destructive.

02:57:42.260 | We may look at forest fires, like, look, controlled burns.

02:57:45.220 | You say, there's a forest burning down,

02:57:46.820 | but that's, okay, there's some,

02:57:48.660 | there's some weakening, destruction there,

02:57:50.260 | there's a tearing down there,

02:57:51.700 | but it's in the service of the next fire

02:57:53.700 | not running through the community,

02:57:55.180 | you know, the town that's on the other side of it.

02:57:57.120 | That's very different than a forest fire,

02:57:59.340 | say, started by arson, right?

02:58:01.300 | So you might say, they're both a tearing down,

02:58:03.020 | they're a tearing down of the forest,

02:58:04.780 | but one is in the service of goodness,

02:58:06.860 | even though it's hurting the animals and the plants,

02:58:09.260 | it's not all good, right?

02:58:10.540 | But it's in the service of something

02:58:12.660 | as opposed to something else that's wantonly destructive.

02:58:15.420 | I think there's no good to the racial slur,

02:58:17.580 | there's no good to the arson, right?

02:58:19.740 | That's destruction in a way that's incorporating,

02:58:22.020 | I think, the malice of envy,

02:58:24.020 | the, you know, something that's really purely,

02:58:26.500 | if there's a yin and yang, that's the destructive,

02:58:30.020 | that's the badness end.

02:58:31.260 | - So racial slurs is a surface wave of a deeper thing.

02:58:36.060 | And so, I mean, the reason I bring that up is like,

02:58:39.860 | all right, well, you have these discussions of censorship,

02:58:42.380 | like, what good does allowing racial slurs

02:58:46.260 | in public communication do, right?

02:58:49.300 | And it's like, our communication would surely be better

02:58:52.100 | if we don't say bad things to each other.

02:58:54.140 | But it's like, it seems like the truth is,

02:58:58.480 | our communication will be better

02:58:59.960 | if the amount of bad things

02:59:02.020 | is a small fraction of communication.

02:59:04.960 | That seems to be more true.

02:59:06.740 | Because another aspect of human nature with power,

02:59:09.820 | the moment you start censoring and removing bad words

02:59:13.580 | that everyone agrees are bad words,

02:59:15.940 | then the people at the top, they're doing the censoring,

02:59:19.180 | start getting greedy.

02:59:20.620 | It starts expanding.

02:59:22.300 | And this is the giant mess of human civilization

02:59:25.340 | where we can't, the nice piles you created

02:59:28.380 | are kind of overlapping.

02:59:29.720 | (laughs)

02:59:30.560 | - I-- - It's a gray area.

02:59:32.000 | - Yeah, I agree. - That's the problem with it.

02:59:33.720 | - No, I agree completely.

02:59:34.800 | There's a control of language, there are slippery slopes.

02:59:37.720 | I think there's a very big problem there.

02:59:40.760 | So I agree.

02:59:41.840 | I think, again, split parsing out the language,

02:59:44.760 | I'm not saying, hey, we shouldn't have racial slurs

02:59:47.400 | as if like, let's stop saying the words.

02:59:49.000 | I mean, the idea is the premise behind it, right?

02:59:52.520 | Like, you know, the prejudices.

02:59:54.320 | If we could eliminate the prejudice behind it,

02:59:56.800 | you know, I was struck,

02:59:58.180 | it said I do almost nothing about medicine.

03:00:00.800 | I get to medical school and start with anatomy, right?

03:00:04.040 | And it's remarkable as, you know, to see,

03:00:07.600 | as the bodies are being dissected,

03:00:09.640 | that like, we're all humans.

03:00:11.300 | Like, it doesn't matter,

03:00:13.840 | any of these things on the outside,

03:00:15.840 | and that's true, not just like in our bodies,

03:00:18.880 | but in our minds, part of the person that's not there,

03:00:21.840 | right, because now we're trying to learn from the body.

03:00:24.000 | And, you know, it shows how ridiculous it is

03:00:27.640 | if you think that we're 99 point how many nines,

03:00:30.160 | you know, percent all alike genetically.

03:00:32.080 | And by the way, it's only like take another 10th off

03:00:34.360 | and we're all orangutans, right?

03:00:36.360 | But somehow, we have to see these differences between us,

03:00:40.740 | right, and where does that come from?

03:00:42.760 | And I think that, I believe that all comes from envy

03:00:46.120 | in that classical sense, that if I don't feel good enough,

03:00:49.320 | I'm gonna want someone to feel better about.

03:00:52.000 | And sure, there can be visual things

03:00:54.160 | that that person looks different, right?

03:00:56.760 | Or you think about the, you know,

03:00:59.360 | I spent some time in Great Britain,

03:01:01.280 | and when there's a lot of conflict

03:01:03.720 | between Northern Ireland and Ireland, right?

03:01:05.560 | And you thought, wow, there's not,

03:01:06.960 | there's not even a look difference, right?

03:01:08.560 | It's the same general religious umbrella,

03:01:11.640 | same ethnicity, right?

03:01:12.720 | But now there's some religious difference.

03:01:14.560 | And I thought, it's not me trying to be denigrating,

03:01:17.160 | you know, around the Irish conflicts,

03:01:18.640 | like that's human of, oh, there's no actual difference

03:01:21.760 | between us, if I don't feel good about myself,

03:01:23.920 | I'm gonna find one, right?

03:01:25.680 | It's that, that I believe could go away.

03:01:30.240 | It's driven by maybe the trauma of just being alive

03:01:33.040 | in the world and things can happen to us.

03:01:34.760 | But we certainly promote in the human created trauma,

03:01:38.700 | people feeling not good enough, finding differences,

03:01:41.360 | there's a place for the envy to attach,

03:01:43.240 | and we're off to the races of, you know, wars.

03:01:46.500 | I mean, we're talking about the Second World War,

03:01:48.040 | and we think, well, what have we learned since then?

03:01:50.280 | It'll take us a day to map out all the wars since then,

03:01:53.080 | right, let alone, for goodness sakes,

03:01:55.280 | everything that's salient right now.

03:01:57.240 | So we're not pretty, we're not good at learning

03:01:59.760 | from what seem to be some very salient lessons.

03:02:03.260 | - I should mention one thing is that I also know

03:02:08.360 | that you're interested in Russian culture a little bit.

03:02:11.600 | - Yes.

03:02:12.440 | - Churchill said, "I cannot forecast to you

03:02:15.720 | "the action of Russia.

03:02:17.720 | "It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery

03:02:19.420 | "inside an enigma."

03:02:20.640 | So what to you are some interesting differences

03:02:23.800 | between this eastern part of the world of Russia,

03:02:28.800 | Ukraine, the Slavic countries, the former Soviet Union,

03:02:32.040 | all of that versus sort of the US culture?

03:02:35.080 | What stands out to you from the literature,

03:02:37.120 | from the music, from the science, all that kind of stuff?

03:02:40.980 | - I think there's so much intensity,

03:02:44.880 | intensity and I guess I would say fearlessness

03:02:49.460 | of expression that I see in a Slavic culture.

03:02:54.460 | Maybe it's across cultures 'cause there's a different way

03:02:59.420 | that expression occurs.

03:03:00.420 | We say like, oh, it's different in the French

03:03:02.980 | than the Spanish or it's different than in parts of Africa.

03:03:05.660 | And I think when you take that part of the world

03:03:08.280 | for whatever reason and maybe it's just totally random

03:03:10.860 | or maybe it's aspects of geography and experience

03:03:14.100 | and migration, but there's such an intensity.

03:03:16.980 | And I remember listening to Tchaikovsky very early on,

03:03:21.340 | maybe not for the very first time,

03:03:22.620 | but early on in my life, or reading Dostoyevsky

03:03:25.100 | and feeling like, oh, Dostoyevsky's willingness,

03:03:29.980 | his ability and his willingness to express

03:03:33.860 | and create such powerful aberrant states

03:03:38.220 | of human experience.

03:03:40.020 | Tchaikovsky in his music, the depths of suffering

03:03:43.320 | that it expresses has always stood out to me

03:03:47.060 | as a way that if that's the brightest light,

03:03:52.020 | so to speak, communicating information,

03:03:54.020 | that that's a place to look.

03:03:56.140 | And it's also a place that resonated with me so strongly

03:03:59.780 | because I think for some people who are informative years

03:04:03.420 | and having very difficult feelings, right,

03:04:05.780 | of like a depth of feeling of fear

03:04:07.860 | and how's the world gonna be?

03:04:09.500 | Am I gonna be annihilated?

03:04:10.860 | What do I even want?

03:04:11.900 | What do I feel inside of me?

03:04:13.720 | To encounter that being expressed so intensely,

03:04:18.220 | I found to be very, very moving.

03:04:21.160 | So I don't know if that's a good answer or not,

03:04:22.800 | but I think there's an intensity of expression

03:04:24.900 | and a fearlessness.

03:04:26.180 | Dostoyevsky wrote about terrible things.

03:04:28.780 | What happens in the person?

03:04:30.780 | Is there a person who is brilliant intellectually

03:04:34.300 | and very persuasive and very capable of being effective

03:04:39.180 | who also just chooses to be a child rapist, right?

03:04:42.820 | I mean, he wrote about that.

03:04:44.300 | He wrote about the truth of this is what we can be

03:04:48.220 | as humans, and I think there's so many lessons,

03:04:50.860 | including the truth.

03:04:52.420 | Like people will tend to think, oh, evil's not very bright

03:04:54.740 | or not very intelligent.

03:04:56.280 | That's a way to let evil propagate, right?

03:04:58.680 | Evil can be effective and attractive and very compelling,

03:05:03.680 | but evil nonetheless.

03:05:05.460 | And I just think there's a fearless willingness

03:05:08.200 | to look at that and to describe it

03:05:10.180 | that I see primarily I've studied in Russian culture.

03:05:14.180 | - Yeah, the fearless exploration

03:05:16.060 | of this whole human drama.

03:05:18.780 | Definitely Dostoyevsky and others since in the 20th century

03:05:21.460 | and the 19th century have done an incredible job of that.

03:05:24.340 | Some of that, just like you said,

03:05:25.500 | is the language, the culture.

03:05:27.260 | I think that intense romanticism is there.

03:05:30.400 | That is almost an overdramatic exploration of human nature.

03:05:38.060 | It can err on the side or falter

03:05:41.440 | when it goes into a kind of cynical view of life.

03:05:45.400 | You know, life is suffering.

03:05:47.360 | I think that also has to do with the way you deal

03:05:49.800 | with the trauma of the world wars and so on.

03:05:52.800 | This is something the different nations throughout Europe

03:05:55.040 | had to deal with that in different ways.

03:05:57.120 | Some of them have channeled into envy and resentment.

03:05:59.360 | Some of them channeled into a kind of nihilism or cynicism.

03:06:05.360 | And ultimately the intensity of feeling is there,

03:06:09.620 | which is sort of interesting to see

03:06:12.460 | and interesting how that manifests itself

03:06:14.100 | in the kind of governments it builds up.

03:06:18.660 | You know, there's more authoritarianism

03:06:22.660 | in that part of the world versus the Western world

03:06:25.900 | that's more focused on the individual versus the collective.

03:06:29.180 | And when more focused on the individual,

03:06:31.100 | you have a propensity to value individual rights

03:06:34.140 | with democracy and so on.

03:06:35.640 | It's interesting to watch and yeah,

03:06:37.220 | to reconstruct how that all came to be.

03:06:40.020 | Is it in the blood?

03:06:42.840 | Is it in the mind?

03:06:44.480 | Is it in some kind of thing that more ethereal,

03:06:48.000 | a collective set of ideas that we pass

03:06:49.680 | from generation to generation between each other,

03:06:52.680 | sort of the collective of it?

03:06:54.880 | Yeah, it's fascinating to see.

03:06:57.660 | But now reinvigorated because there's conflict

03:07:00.600 | in that part of the world.

03:07:02.840 | You've also thought about the Cold War.

03:07:06.020 | What lessons about the human mind,

03:07:09.060 | about psychiatry, psychology,

03:07:10.800 | and about looking at the Cold War

03:07:14.220 | can we take forward in the 21st century

03:07:18.120 | so that we can avoid World War III?

03:07:21.580 | - Right.

03:07:22.420 | - A major cold or hot war in the 21st century.

03:07:26.900 | - Yeah.

03:07:27.780 | Well, I think unspoken animosities

03:07:29.580 | are very, very, very dangerous.

03:07:32.380 | I mean, it was a cold war.

03:07:34.520 | There was fighting through proxies.

03:07:38.280 | The superpowers were fighting surrogate wars

03:07:41.840 | through proxies, which of course,

03:07:43.480 | in and of itself causes immense suffering.

03:07:46.080 | But it becomes the opposite of an exchange of ideas

03:07:51.080 | or an exchange of thought.

03:07:53.000 | You know, I mean, even Khrushchev, right?

03:07:55.060 | Not believing that the kitchen could look like it did

03:07:57.720 | at the World's Fair, right?

03:07:58.960 | And some of the misconceptions here

03:08:02.080 | of what things were like in Russia, right?

03:08:04.520 | It was an utter, it was a thought

03:08:06.600 | that those other people are not actually people, right?

03:08:09.640 | There's an enemy society of evil,

03:08:12.360 | which then paints with a broad brush

03:08:14.640 | in a way that makes it easy, too easy for the Cold War,

03:08:18.000 | the war to go from being cold, right,

03:08:20.320 | to having boiling over into utter destruction.

03:08:23.640 | And I wrote, it was really a true story

03:08:27.200 | that when I was in, it was still the Soviet Union,

03:08:31.480 | but it was right around the time

03:08:32.560 | of the Soviet Union coming to an end,

03:08:34.840 | and I had gone on a trip for students from England,

03:08:39.840 | and we got to go places that people hadn't gone.

03:08:42.440 | You know, foreigners hadn't gone in many, many years.

03:08:45.680 | It was just kind of the right timing to experience that.

03:08:48.760 | And it really is true that someone said on short notice

03:08:52.720 | to these poor kids that these group of Americans were coming

03:08:57.040 | and I have a picture somewhere of the kid in a gas mask.

03:09:00.520 | Like, as they went under their desks and put on gas masks,

03:09:03.480 | and they thought, right, that's what, I mean, that's what,

03:09:07.320 | they're taught to think about us

03:09:09.600 | and we're taught to think about them.

03:09:11.480 | And like, now we're back in an us/them, right?

03:09:15.560 | When, you know, we're all trying to survive

03:09:18.360 | and we're all such, human life is so delicate, right?

03:09:23.360 | You know, let alone human happiness.

03:09:27.240 | And we make these divisions and we create this aggression

03:09:30.500 | and latent aggression.

03:09:31.560 | We do the Cold War, we developed, right,

03:09:33.200 | the ability to destroy the Earth, right?

03:09:35.380 | And then just sat looking at one another, you know,

03:09:37.680 | with further growing misunderstanding

03:09:40.320 | and the opportunity for the proxy fights,

03:09:42.720 | like when they said the Cuban Missile Crisis,

03:09:44.840 | which I know wasn't a war, but it's an aspect of that,

03:09:47.000 | right, where we just have ourselves wildly, you know,

03:09:50.600 | at risk of destruction without any mutual understanding.

03:09:54.640 | And again, I would argue that that is the opposite

03:09:57.600 | of the counter-entropy, right?

03:09:59.440 | Like we are setting everything up for less,

03:10:01.440 | lack of communication, lack of understanding.

03:10:03.120 | How do those feelings of love and shared humanness happen?

03:10:07.920 | They don't, right?

03:10:08.800 | If you separate people and then we push ourselves

03:10:11.680 | more and more and more towards reinstating

03:10:15.080 | the state of entropy that's present

03:10:16.600 | in the rest of the universe.

03:10:18.000 | - What advice would you give to young people

03:10:21.360 | that are fighting entropy with all their might?

03:10:26.840 | So young people and people that are wondering

03:10:30.600 | how to find their way in life,

03:10:32.640 | what advice would you give how to have a career,

03:10:35.880 | how to have a life they can be proud of?

03:10:38.240 | - I think starting off with sort of first principles.

03:10:43.840 | Okay, what are my values, right?

03:10:46.200 | How do I want to live life?

03:10:47.480 | Because, you know, I'm in my early 50s

03:10:49.760 | and when I was a kid, you know, we waited for the,

03:10:52.280 | the newspaper came in the afternoon and then, you know,

03:10:54.800 | and then we'd see something,

03:10:55.880 | okay, what's going on in the world?

03:10:57.040 | We'd learn something.

03:10:57.880 | I'd get the West Coast baseball scores, right?

03:11:00.480 | And learn about, oh, here's what happened

03:11:02.600 | in different parts of the world.

03:11:04.240 | And by and large, I and everyone else there,

03:11:06.920 | adult or child, were like living in a reality

03:11:10.960 | that was largely, our conception was largely

03:11:13.000 | what was around us, right?

03:11:14.960 | And now, in many ways, it is,

03:11:17.360 | I'm not saying it's entirely negative, of course,

03:11:19.120 | that we have more information,

03:11:20.120 | we can sort of think globally, so to speak, right?

03:11:22.720 | But the other side of that is so much

03:11:25.400 | of the world's problems are on us all the time, right?

03:11:29.560 | Like, here's this awful thing that happened.

03:11:31.360 | How many awful things happen each day

03:11:33.000 | and they're right in front of us

03:11:34.720 | and there's such an immediacy to it all

03:11:37.720 | that I think it can be, it can like paralyze us

03:11:40.240 | with terror, right?

03:11:41.600 | And for someone who's young and trying to make their way,

03:11:44.920 | it's like, how do you figure your way out in this world

03:11:46.840 | that you're worried isn't even gonna exist, right?

03:11:49.160 | And then you see how profligate

03:11:51.280 | the generations before you are, right?

03:11:54.320 | In so many ways, and there can become,

03:11:57.360 | I think, a push towards extremes,

03:11:58.880 | either nihilism or I'm gonna change everything, right?

03:12:03.360 | And it's like, how about, let's start from

03:12:05.680 | how do I wanna behave in my own community, right?

03:12:08.560 | Which starts with like,

03:12:09.400 | how do I wanna behave in my household, right?

03:12:11.160 | What kind of neighbor do I wanna be?

03:12:12.360 | I mean, it might seem like things like that

03:12:13.960 | are silly or small in comparison to the big things,

03:12:17.380 | but I don't think they are.

03:12:18.580 | I think that's how we start building foundations

03:12:22.040 | that lets us tackle the big things.

03:12:24.600 | And I do find myself saying when I'm working with,

03:12:27.240 | sometimes doing therapy with younger people,

03:12:29.560 | of helping them kind of bring back their thoughts,

03:12:33.820 | their strivings, their decisions more to themselves

03:12:37.200 | and living with and around themselves more

03:12:40.400 | instead of in something that becomes very theoretical

03:12:44.520 | and therefore very threatening and unnerving.

03:12:48.520 | So focusing on the people around them,

03:12:50.120 | taking one small step at a time

03:12:52.360 | to form deeper connections to build something locally.

03:12:56.800 | - Yeah, how do I wanna be today?

03:12:57.920 | If I go into the grocery store

03:12:59.520 | and the person in front of me drops something,

03:13:01.640 | you know, I can scowl 'cause I'm in a rush, right?

03:13:04.560 | And I can be like that, right?

03:13:06.440 | I can be like that.

03:13:07.280 | I've been that way many, many times in my life, right?

03:13:09.160 | And it's never done anyone a damn bit of good,

03:13:11.320 | including me, right?

03:13:12.560 | Or I can realize like,

03:13:13.800 | the 10 seconds aren't gonna matter.

03:13:15.080 | Can I help pick that thing up or just smile?

03:13:17.400 | These are the seemingly small things

03:13:19.480 | that I think make the tenor of our lives.

03:13:22.560 | - Yeah, I moved, I think I mentioned to you offline,

03:13:25.720 | one of the, really the main reason I moved to Austin, Texas,

03:13:30.720 | I just remember deciding it when I went to Walmart

03:13:34.240 | and a lady said, "You look handsome in that tie

03:13:39.240 | "or in that suit and tie," whatever.

03:13:42.000 | Like I don't think anyone's ever,

03:13:43.680 | it's an older lady, she was very sweet,

03:13:45.280 | there's kindness in her eyes.

03:13:46.240 | She said that, I don't think anyone ever said

03:13:47.840 | anything like that to me in my entire life.

03:13:51.200 | And it was just, I don't know, it was like,

03:13:54.800 | wow, there's kindness in this world.

03:13:56.440 | I know it sounds ridiculous, but like--

03:13:58.240 | - Does not sound ridiculous to me.

03:13:59.080 | - It's like those, you could be that for somebody.

03:14:02.240 | You go walk around in Walmart.

03:14:04.320 | - Right, the thing that you remember that,

03:14:06.520 | and it's pivotal, you're citing it as,

03:14:09.200 | hey, that was a big part of me moving here.

03:14:11.280 | So the thing with the branch point in your life

03:14:13.420 | that comes from the simple kindness, right,

03:14:15.860 | of a person who had goodness to give, right,

03:14:18.520 | and wasn't scared that you're gonna be upset by it.

03:14:21.840 | - Took the risk. - Right, right.

03:14:23.720 | She probably didn't have the thought

03:14:26.480 | that you could be assailing, right?

03:14:28.280 | Probably she looks at you, she's got goodness to give,

03:14:30.320 | it's simple to give it.

03:14:31.280 | It's that simple and it's beautiful

03:14:34.540 | and it's worth more to you than like

03:14:35.960 | how many studies would be on where's the right to live

03:14:38.280 | or this and that.

03:14:39.120 | None of that matters.

03:14:39.940 | What mattered was-- - It was just that.

03:14:40.780 | - Her freedom to be kind.

03:14:42.320 | - And that's emotion.

03:14:43.560 | That's not logic at all.

03:14:45.080 | - Right. (laughs)

03:14:46.560 | - That's purely just human emotion

03:14:48.160 | and a little bit of humanness,

03:14:49.800 | that little bit of connection.

03:14:51.960 | And then that's what makes life great.

03:14:55.000 | - Which is why it's not a bad idea, right,

03:14:56.660 | that you moved here that way instead of,

03:14:59.480 | one could say, well, I can't believe you did that

03:15:02.220 | instead of looking at all the data

03:15:03.520 | and hiring consultants of what's the best place to live.

03:15:05.760 | But that would be wrong, right?

03:15:07.160 | Like you made a good decision, right?

03:15:09.520 | Like that was good data.

03:15:11.040 | It was impactful data, even in your thoughts

03:15:13.340 | about how you're happy living here, right?

03:15:15.540 | It's not that, oh, you discount,

03:15:17.260 | you shortchange yourself by not relying on all the logic.

03:15:21.020 | You felt something about the place

03:15:22.580 | and you felt it as symbolized in a person

03:15:24.900 | and that made the choice for you.

03:15:26.700 | - It's a balance, of course,

03:15:28.140 | but you also have to know yourself a little bit.

03:15:30.700 | Sometimes you can find stability and comfort

03:15:33.340 | in kind of reasoning things out a little bit.

03:15:36.820 | Maybe as people close to me have sometimes criticized

03:15:41.380 | and that I'm a little bit too romantic

03:15:44.140 | where I'll just follow the feeling.

03:15:46.580 | And life, there's physics,

03:15:50.300 | there's a reality to this world.

03:15:52.220 | And sometimes reality doesn't allow you to flourish

03:15:57.220 | if you just follow your feelings,

03:16:00.140 | but there's a dance there.

03:16:02.140 | And happiness is ultimately found in that landscape

03:16:05.680 | of feeling and emotion versus facts and reason and logic.

03:16:11.300 | - As you said, have their place, right?

03:16:12.900 | - Everything, yeah.

03:16:13.740 | - They have their place.

03:16:14.580 | - They do, they do.

03:16:15.400 | - But they're not the be all and end all.

03:16:17.300 | - You're an incredible person.

03:16:20.420 | Andrew Huberman is a friend of yours.

03:16:22.540 | He said, "You absolutely must talk."

03:16:24.580 | Carl Dyseroth, the number of people you know,

03:16:29.020 | they're just incredible people.

03:16:30.300 | There's just this group of folks

03:16:32.760 | that somehow helped each other flourish and grew together.

03:16:35.940 | And I'm so happy you exist.

03:16:38.420 | I'm so happy you're doing the work you're doing.

03:16:40.380 | I can't wait for your second book.

03:16:42.060 | - Thank you.

03:16:42.900 | - And thank you for talking today.

03:16:44.060 | This was really cool.

03:16:45.220 | - Thank you so much.

03:16:46.040 | I'm proud to be among the group of people that you cited,

03:16:50.320 | proud to be their friend,

03:16:51.220 | and proud that you've had me on today.

03:16:52.860 | Thank you so much.

03:16:53.700 | - Thank you, Paul.

03:16:55.060 | Thanks for listening to this conversation with Paul Conte.

03:16:57.580 | To support this podcast,

03:16:58.700 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

03:17:01.640 | And now let me leave you with some words

03:17:03.580 | from Viktor Frankl.

03:17:04.900 | "Everything can be taken from a man,

03:17:08.260 | but the last of the human freedoms,

03:17:10.780 | to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."

03:17:14.500 | Thank you for listening,

03:17:16.540 | and hope to see you next time.

03:17:18.500 | (upbeat music)

03:17:21.080 | (upbeat music)

03:17:23.660 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil | Lex Fridman Podcast #357

Chapters