Speaker 1: Pushkin. The science of happiness is progressing all the time.
Speaker 1: Hardly a week goes by without some fascinating new wellbeing
Speaker 1: finding hitting the news, and today's researchers have been able
Speaker 1: to harness so many amazing new technologies, from complex MRI
Speaker 1: scanners to new medical treatments, all to help unlock the
Speaker 1: secret of how our minds work. But in spite of
Speaker 1: all these new insights, it's important to remember that the
Speaker 1: quest to feel better is much older than these modern
Speaker 1: scientific tools. The pursuit of happiness is a challenge that's
Speaker 1: occupied our species for a long time. In fact, many
Speaker 1: long dead philosophers, thinkers, and spiritual leaders have had some
Speaker 1: powerful ideas for improving our well being, strategies that are
Speaker 1: just as relevant today in the age of the podcast
Speaker 1: as they were back in the time of Caesar or
Speaker 1: the Pharaohs. If you've listened to others for the Happiness Lab,
Speaker 1: you probably know that I get a lot of inspiration
Speaker 1: from ancient lives and insights, and that I love to
Speaker 1: share all those old school tips with you. But our
Speaker 1: past episodes have only just scratched the surface on all
Speaker 1: the strategies that ancient wisdom can teach us, So get
Speaker 1: ready to go old school and welcome back to Happiness
Speaker 1: Lessons of the Agents with me, Doctor Laurie Sanders. In
Speaker 1: today's episode, I want to share the happiness insights of
Speaker 1: a towering figure in the history of Western thought. He's
Speaker 1: the og disruptor, a philosopher who challenged everything, but someone
Speaker 1: who is never so vain as to think that he
Speaker 1: knew it all. He's a scholar who's beloved worldwide by
Speaker 1: some of the most brilliant philosophers and academics around. A
Speaker 1: thinker that I personally was lucky to be exposed to
Speaker 1: all the way back in the nineteen eighties, but not
Speaker 1: because I read his student, Plato's famous account of his teachings.
Speaker 1: Now I learned of this famous scholars work from Bill
Speaker 1: and Ted's X Adventures. The only true wisdom consists in
Speaker 1: knowing that you know nothing. That's us, dude. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: For those uninitiated in adi cinema culture, Bill and Ted's
Speaker 1: Excellent Adventure is a movie about Bill S. Preston Esquire
Speaker 1: and Theodore Logan aka Bill and Ted. They're two san
Speaker 1: Dimas high school students who, in an attempt not to
Speaker 1: flunk their history exam head back in time to meet
Speaker 1: the great thinkers of the past. Bill and Ted were
Speaker 1: the first to expose me to the central doctrines of Socrates,
Speaker 1: or as I would later get to know him, Socrates.
Speaker 1: Socrates's famous idea, which very much appealed to Bill and Ted,
Speaker 1: is that we know far less than we often think.
Speaker 1: It may sound like a simple concept or a joke
Speaker 1: out of some classic high school movie, but it's also
Speaker 1: a hugely important insight, especially if you want to live
Speaker 1: a happier life. There are rors in history where Socrates
Speaker 1: was considered a figure alongside Jeez. This is my dear friend,
Speaker 1: the Yale philosopher and cognitive scientist Tomar Gendler. Benjamin Franklin,
Speaker 1: who has this wonderful autobiography which is full of really
Speaker 1: good advice about happiness, wrote Humility, Imitate, Jesus, and Socrates.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow teaches a popular class at Yale known as Philosophy
Speaker 1: in the Science of Human Nature. You can check it
Speaker 1: out for free on the Open Yale Course Network. The
Speaker 1: class looks to ancient scholars for insights into the problems
Speaker 1: we all face today, and Tomorrow agrees with Ben Franklin
Speaker 1: that Socrates is a perfect model of intellectual humility, and
Speaker 1: that his example, if we can follow it, will bring
Speaker 1: lots of benefits to our daily lives. Socrates is a
Speaker 1: fascinating figure. He lived about twenty five hundred years ago
Speaker 1: in ancient Athens. He was born some time around for
Speaker 1: seventy before the Common era, and though we don't know
Speaker 1: his exact birth date, we do know his exact death dache,
Speaker 1: because he was put to death in a very famous
Speaker 1: public trial in Athens in three ninety nine BC, which
Speaker 1: was recorded by his student, a man named Plato, who
Speaker 1: described socrates intellectual integrity and bravery in his willingness to
Speaker 1: be put to death for what he believed. What Socrates
Speaker 1: was known for is sitting out in the public square
Speaker 1: of Athens and drawing people into conversations about fundamental questions,
Speaker 1: questions like what's the nature of truth, What's the nature
Speaker 1: of justice? What is it for a society to be fair?
Speaker 1: What should our attitudes be towards the gods? What should
Speaker 1: our attitudes be towards religious rituals? What should our attitudes
Speaker 1: be towards prisoners that we captured from other countries? And
Speaker 1: because Socrates was willing to question everything, he was accused
Speaker 1: of being a corruptor of the youth, and when he
Speaker 1: was put on trial, he was put on trial for
Speaker 1: corrupting youth by causing them to question the received wisdom
Speaker 1: of their culture. So, like, what was his background? How
Speaker 1: did he become the kind of guy that was questioning
Speaker 1: all these things. Here's what we know about Socrates. We
Speaker 1: know that his father was a stone worker and his
Speaker 1: mother was a midwife, and those are roughly middle class
Speaker 1: professions in ancient Athens. So he wasn't a super elite guy,
Speaker 1: but he was born into a social class that gave
Speaker 1: him access to the elite, so he didn't have many
Speaker 1: financial concerns. He heerted his father's estate. That is, he
Speaker 1: came from the part of society that had inherited wealth,
Speaker 1: which allows a certain kind of security and stability, and
Speaker 1: as a result, he was free to pursue ideas that
Speaker 1: intrigued him. And he had been trained up in the
Speaker 1: way that most middle class opinions of his time were.
Speaker 1: He knew how to read and how to write, and
Speaker 1: he knew a little bit about poetry and music. But
Speaker 1: even though he was kind of this middle class dude
Speaker 1: with some inherited wealth, he also kind of wasn't into
Speaker 1: that wealth himself, right, Like, he kind of just didn't
Speaker 1: dress as awesomely as other Athenian dudes and things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say one of the striking things about Socrates
Speaker 1: is that he was a pretty idiosyncratic guy. He was
Speaker 1: not conventionally attractive by the norm of his time. He
Speaker 1: was being bellied and snub nosed, and he, let us say,
Speaker 1: eschewed class to marry bathing practices. So he was kind
Speaker 1: of a guy on the corner who engaged passers by
Speaker 1: in conversation. He was a funny guy. So you can
Speaker 1: imagine him as sort of an owner of a Brooklyn
Speaker 1: corner store who just engages all of the people who
Speaker 1: pass him by in really really really interesting conversation. But
Speaker 1: instead of being about the Yankees or the Mets or
Speaker 1: the lottery, his conversation is about the nature of mathematics
Speaker 1: or the value of justice. But really what he is
Speaker 1: is a guy at the corner store who's engaging everyone
Speaker 1: going by in his quirky, idiosyncratic, individualistic way. And he
Speaker 1: wound up being the corner store guy that got a
Speaker 1: lot of followers, including some like really famous ancient philosophers,
Speaker 1: right Socrates was the person who was the teacher of Plato.
Speaker 1: Plato is the person who was the teacher of Aristotle,
Speaker 1: and Aristotle taught Alexander the Great, So in his intellectual
Speaker 1: legacy is all of ancient Greek history. But he was
Speaker 1: really famous even at the time where he lived. If
Speaker 1: you have heard of any of the ancient playwrights, they
Speaker 1: wrote plays about Socrates in which he appears as a
Speaker 1: character a gad fly or a funny guy on the corners.
Speaker 1: So there are famous comic play about him by a
Speaker 1: Greek dramatist called Aristophanes. He's also written about in historical works.
Speaker 1: For example, the ancient historian Xenophon writes about him. So
Speaker 1: he was, in some sense the person whom all of
Speaker 1: the rich, cool kid of Athens hung out with a
Speaker 1: contrary to their parents' desires. So imagine your Plato's parents.
Speaker 1: You want him to go on to live a normal
Speaker 1: Athenian life where he makes money and has a position
Speaker 1: of honor, and instead he's hanging out on the corner
Speaker 1: with this funny looking guy who is wearing ratty robes
Speaker 1: and has a messy demeanor about him, who's asking him
Speaker 1: to think about fundamental questions. And it's not just Plato,
Speaker 1: it's all the fancy youth of Athens who are down
Speaker 1: there hanging out with this dude, Stocrates. But the parents
Speaker 1: didn't really like the fact that their kids were hanging
Speaker 1: out on the corner with the slovenly guy, and that
Speaker 1: was one of the reasons that his life played out
Speaker 1: in a sort of unfortunate way and the end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the parents really didn't like the fact that their
Speaker 1: kids were hanging out on the corner with this slovenly guy.
Speaker 1: And the stity of Athens decided to put Socrates on trial,
Speaker 1: and they made three charges against him. The first was
Speaker 1: that he was corrupting the youth, the second was that
Speaker 1: he was worshiping false gods, and the third was that
Speaker 1: he was defying the state religion. And the trial of
Speaker 1: Socrates is documented in a dialogue written by his student Plato,
Speaker 1: in which Plato allows the world to hear what happened
Speaker 1: at the trial and what happened when Socrates accepted the
Speaker 1: outcome of the trial. So famously, Socrates was condemned to death,
Speaker 1: and the death was to take the form of drinking
Speaker 1: poison hemlock. Socrates students offered him the opportunity to escape
Speaker 1: Athens so that he could avoid what they viewed to
Speaker 1: be an unjust penalty, and Socrates instead said, I have
Speaker 1: lived within the city of Athens. I have thrived because
Speaker 1: of its laws and culture, and therefore I am compelled
Speaker 1: to take the penalty which is given to me, whether
Speaker 1: or not it is the penalty I think appropriate. So
Speaker 1: he spent his last day surrounded by his students and
Speaker 1: then voluntarily took upon himself the penalty which had been imposed.
Speaker 1: So one of the reasons Socrates is famous is for
Speaker 1: this kind of drinking the hemlock corrupting the youth story.
Speaker 1: But one of his main philosophical legacies is the way
Speaker 1: that he went about his argument. And so this is
Speaker 1: what's known as the Socratic method. What is the Socratic
Speaker 1: method and why was it so kind of novel and important?
Speaker 1: So the Socratic method is the method of asking questions
Speaker 1: rather than giving answers, as a way of causing people
Speaker 1: to think through their own commitments and allowing them to
Speaker 1: bring them into some sort of equilibrium or harmony. So
Speaker 1: there's a famous example in one of Plato's dialogues about Socrates,
Speaker 1: which is a dialogue called the Mino, where Socrates encounters
Speaker 1: a young, uneducated boy and he teaches that boy the
Speaker 1: Pythagorean theorem. You may remember, that's the theorem from geometry
Speaker 1: about a right angle in a triangle and the relation
Speaker 1: between the sides of the triangle. And the way that
Speaker 1: Socrates teaches this young boy about the Pythagorean theorem is
Speaker 1: by asking him, the young boy, a series of questions
Speaker 1: that cause the young boy to realize explicitly something which
Speaker 1: he had already realized implicitly, which are certain facts about
Speaker 1: geometrical relations. So you can see how that works in
Speaker 1: the case of geometry, and we can think of our
Speaker 1: own examples of teaching children basic facts of arithmetic. You
Speaker 1: cause them to come to reason. If I have one
Speaker 1: apple and I put one other apple on the table,
Speaker 1: how many apples would we have. That's Socratic method. It's
Speaker 1: eliciting from somebody a fact about the world or a
Speaker 1: view about the world, which they held, but they didn't
Speaker 1: realize they held. So what Socrates does is he uses
Speaker 1: the method that you might use in arithmetic or geometry
Speaker 1: about the sorts of things that matter most. So he
Speaker 1: might ask you a question, why does truth matter, and
Speaker 1: you might say truth matters because truth is a good
Speaker 1: guide to the world. And then he would say, but
Speaker 1: what if there were something untruthful that were an equally
Speaker 1: good guide to the world. Would that matter to you
Speaker 1: as much as truth? And you would engage in a
Speaker 1: back and forth about it until you yourself come to
Speaker 1: recognize either that you don't fully understand something, or that
Speaker 1: your previous view about it was just based on assumptions
Speaker 1: for which you don't have real justification. And the cool
Speaker 1: thing about the syncratic method is that Socrates didn't just
Speaker 1: ask these kinds of questions of other people. He also
Speaker 1: applied the same method to what he himself knew, to
Speaker 1: his own sets of knowledge. Right, that's right. So there
Speaker 1: is a famous story about this, And to tell you
Speaker 1: the story, I'm going to need could give you just
Speaker 1: a little bit of background about ancient Greek religion and culture.
Speaker 1: So one of the things the ancient Greeks believed is
Speaker 1: that the gods could speak to human beings through what
Speaker 1: we're called oracles. Oracles were basically mystical priest who interpreted
Speaker 1: the words of the gods. And there was a very,
Speaker 1: very famous oracle at a place called Delphi in Greece,
Speaker 1: in the Temple of Apollo, and during the time this
Speaker 1: is reported in Plato's Apology. During the time of socrates trial,
Speaker 1: a young man named Hiraphon went to visit the oracle
Speaker 1: at Delphi, and Kirafond said to the oracle oracle, who
Speaker 1: is the wisest person? And the oracle answered Kairafon by saying,
Speaker 1: very specifically, no one is wiser than Socrates. The Kiraphon
Speaker 1: comes back and he says to Socrates, hey, I went
Speaker 1: to see the oracle at Delphi, and it said that
Speaker 1: no one is wiser than you. And Socrates responds as follows,
Speaker 1: and I'm now giving you the exact words as transcribed
Speaker 1: Into's Apology that are translated into English. When I heard this,
Speaker 1: says Socrates, I said to myself, what can the oracle
Speaker 1: mean when it says that no one is wiser than
Speaker 1: I am? For I know that I have no wisdom,
Speaker 1: small or great. And then Socrates continues, So I went
Speaker 1: to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and I
Speaker 1: began to talk with him, and I could not help
Speaker 1: thinking that he was not really wise, although he was
Speaker 1: thought wise by many and wiser still by himself. So
Speaker 1: Socrates continues, So I left him, saying to myself as
Speaker 1: I went away, although I don't suppose that either of
Speaker 1: us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better
Speaker 1: off than he is, for he knows nothing and thinks
Speaker 1: that he knows, whereas I neither know nor think that
Speaker 1: I know. So what Socrates saying here, he's saying, most
Speaker 1: people who have a reputation for being wise and knowing
Speaker 1: a lot of things have a mistaken degree of self confidence.
Speaker 1: They not only act to the world as if they
Speaker 1: know things, they are in their own minds more certain
Speaker 1: than they ought to be. And so this is what's
Speaker 1: been called the paradox of self knowledge, or the paradox
Speaker 1: of Socratic knowledge. What is that the paradox of Socratic
Speaker 1: knowledge is that the knowledge involves the recognition that Socrates
Speaker 1: himself is unsure. So think back to what the oracle
Speaker 1: said to Chirafon. The oracle didn't say in response to
Speaker 1: the question who is the wisest person? Socrates is the
Speaker 1: wisest person, the oracle said. One asked who is the
Speaker 1: wisest person, No one is wiser than Socrates. And in
Speaker 1: saying that, it emphasize that the way in which Socrates
Speaker 1: is wise is that he knows just how much he
Speaker 1: does not know. So this is cool. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: really setting up this idea that to know ourselves is
Speaker 1: to know that we don't know ourselves. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: beautiful way of putting the paradox. To know ourselves is
Speaker 1: to know that we do not know ourselves. It is
Speaker 1: to know that, in many ways, we do not have
Speaker 1: direct access to our motivations. We don't have direct access
Speaker 1: to what it is that we are actually responding to
Speaker 1: when we do something. And it's an endless process of
Speaker 1: engaging in Socratic self question. So there's a way in
Speaker 1: which each of us can give ourselves an inner Socrates
Speaker 1: who says, why do you think that? Is it possible
Speaker 1: that you think that for a different reason. Is it
Speaker 1: possible that, even though you assume you value that, actually
Speaker 1: that's just an old habit that you haven't questioned. Is
Speaker 1: it possible that you think you're responding to a person
Speaker 1: and in fact you're responding to a stereotype about people
Speaker 1: of that kind. Those are the kinds of questions that
Speaker 1: your inner Socrates tend to ask you. Harnessing your inner
Speaker 1: Socrates isn't always comfortable. It involves intentionally questioning why you
Speaker 1: think certain things and why you take certain actions. It
Speaker 1: also involves admitting that you probably aren't as smart as
Speaker 1: you think you are. But the science hints that channeling
Speaker 1: this ancient thinker a bit more can be an important
Speaker 1: step to becoming happier. The problem, as will explore when
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab returns from the break, is that our
Speaker 1: brains don't always make that an easy task. The Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab will be right back socrates is great insight is
Speaker 1: that we don't really understand ourselves as well as we think.
Speaker 1: It's an idea so radical that it got the great
Speaker 1: thinker condemned to death. But you know, Professor to Mar
Speaker 1: Gendler argues the Socrates might have been on to something.
Speaker 1: Modern scientific studies show that there are real limits when
Speaker 1: it comes to our self knowledge. In fact, some classic
Speaker 1: experiments have found that we don't even know why we
Speaker 1: feel the way we do. There's a fantastic study gun
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies that was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: whether people sometimes mistake what is going on around them
Speaker 1: or what is going on inside them. And so here's
Speaker 1: the study The study involved putting two people on a
Speaker 1: bridge and the bridge was either a really solid bridge
Speaker 1: and unthreatening, or it was a suspension bridge, and afterwards
Speaker 1: they looked to see how likely the two people were
Speaker 1: to think that they had physical attraction to one another,
Speaker 1: That is, how likely they were to call the other
Speaker 1: one and ask for a date. People were almost twice
Speaker 1: as likely to ask the other person for a date
Speaker 1: when they had been standing on an unstable bridge than
Speaker 1: when they had been standing in a stable place. That
Speaker 1: seems wild, right, that's a major major effect. Why are
Speaker 1: people twice as likely to think they were attracted to
Speaker 1: somebody if they met them on a bridge that was
Speaker 1: unstable then if they met them in a place that
Speaker 1: was stable. Think about what happens when you're on a
Speaker 1: shaky bridge. Your heartbeats a little faster, Your breath gets
Speaker 1: a little shallower, You notice a little bit of trembling.
Speaker 1: What happens when you fall in love with somebody and
Speaker 1: find them physically attractive. Your heartbeats a little faster, your
Speaker 1: breath gets a little shallower, you notice your hands trembling.
Speaker 1: That is, people can't distinguish whether the reason their heart
Speaker 1: is beating fast is because they're on a shaky bridge,
Speaker 1: or because they're attracted to a person. And that fact
Speaker 1: about people that we cannot tell what's causing us to
Speaker 1: respond in the way we do became the basis for
Speaker 1: almost fifty years of psychological studies that looked at exactly
Speaker 1: this question. And this is basically really falling prey to
Speaker 1: the thing that Socrates was worried about that even in
Speaker 1: the domain is fundamental is whether or not you're falling
Speaker 1: in love with somebody. We just don't have access to
Speaker 1: what it is. We really prefer what it is, We
Speaker 1: really believe what it is, we really think and why Yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine having an inner Socrates with you on the bridge, right,
Speaker 1: So there you are and you're thinking, ooh, this person
Speaker 1: across from me is really hot, and your inner Socrates says, hey,
Speaker 1: why do you think they're really hot? And you say, well,
Speaker 1: my palms are sweaty, and your inner Socrates says, is
Speaker 1: there any other explanation for why your palms might be sweaty?
Speaker 1: Did you notice you're standing on a bridge and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the fact that you are willing to
Speaker 1: doubt that you know yourself allows you to know yourself
Speaker 1: better and our inability to know this stuff doesn't just
Speaker 1: happen in these domains where you know, our heart is
Speaker 1: racing and it's this big physiological effect. Sometimes it's really
Speaker 1: just cognitive too. So tell me about these sort of
Speaker 1: choice blindness studies. So here's a fabulous choice blend in study.
Speaker 1: So you show people a pair of pictures and ask
Speaker 1: them to judge which picture they think is more attractive.
Speaker 1: So suppose they say the second picture is more attractive
Speaker 1: to them than the first picture. A minute later, when
Speaker 1: they show the pictures next, they've swapped them. You show
Speaker 1: them the first picture, not the one they chose the
Speaker 1: first picture, and you say to them, why did you
Speaker 1: think this one is more attractive? And they offer a
Speaker 1: rationalization where they say, oh, I thought picture one was
Speaker 1: more attractive than picture two because I like the color
Speaker 1: of the shirt, or I really like the shape of
Speaker 1: the eyebrows. But notice they didn't think that picture one
Speaker 1: was more attractive than picture two a minute ago they
Speaker 1: had selected the second picture. So not only do people
Speaker 1: have a really bad sense of why they make the
Speaker 1: choices that they do, they may not even be in
Speaker 1: a position to hold onto which choices they made. We
Speaker 1: are not transparent to ourselves. We should have our inner
Speaker 1: socrates check whether we mean what we just said. So
Speaker 1: these are kind of funny examples about our choices, and
Speaker 1: you know, who we might find attractive or what image
Speaker 1: we might like better. But this is also a big
Speaker 1: problem for our happiness, because our happiness also seems to
Speaker 1: depend on our preferences and how we think we should behave.
Speaker 1: If we don't have knowledge of that, that's going to
Speaker 1: be a big problem for how we act in the world.
Speaker 1: That seems exactly right. So when you ask the but
Speaker 1: what makes them happy and they make their first guesses,
Speaker 1: they give answers like, oh yeah, what makes me happy
Speaker 1: is money, and what makes me happy is external approval.
Speaker 1: And when people say those things, they're convinced of them.
Speaker 1: And exactly the same way that the person on the
Speaker 1: bridge was convinced that they were falling in love with
Speaker 1: this other person and they didn't recognize that they were
Speaker 1: wrong about what they thought they knew. In that same way,
Speaker 1: we're wrong about a whole bunch of things we think
Speaker 1: we know about what makes us happy. I mean, this
Speaker 1: whole podcast is filled with them, right, You know, we
Speaker 1: have episodes about how we think you know, spending money
Speaker 1: in our ourselves will make us feel happy, but actually
Speaker 1: we find out that spending money on other people is
Speaker 1: really the way to go. We have episodes on how
Speaker 1: trying to add to our workload will make us happy
Speaker 1: because we want accolades at work, but then we find
Speaker 1: that having more free time will make us happier. You know.
Speaker 1: There's even a famous episode where I get lots of
Speaker 1: critiques from people online where we tell people, hey to strangers,
Speaker 1: that will make you happy, but people consult their self knowledge,
Speaker 1: and their self knowledge says nah, that will make me
Speaker 1: feel like crap. I mean, it just feels like the
Speaker 1: whole field is one where we really need to recognize
Speaker 1: that our minds seem to be lying to us if
Speaker 1: we want to make some progress. But it's kind of
Speaker 1: a problem because we don't really know what we don't know.
Speaker 1: That's right, And the first step towards being able to
Speaker 1: recognize what we don't know is being ready to accept
Speaker 1: that any given moment where you seem to know something,
Speaker 1: you might not. You might know it, but you might not.
Speaker 1: And so let's walk through why we're so bad as
Speaker 1: self knowledge. Right. One comes from the structure of the
Speaker 1: way our minds work, which is like we kind of
Speaker 1: just don't have access to everything in our heads. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: anybody who's ever heard of the notion of the unconscious,
Speaker 1: or read a novel in which a character does something
Speaker 1: for a reason that they themselves don't recognize, or anybody
Speaker 1: who has ever been involved in therapy knows that one
Speaker 1: of the fundamental ways of understanding human beings it is
Speaker 1: to understand that a lot of what we do is
Speaker 1: not for conscious reasons, it's for unconscious reasons. And what
Speaker 1: it means for something to be unconscious by definition is
Speaker 1: that it's not something to which we have direct, immediate,
Speaker 1: automatic access as we move around in the world. And
Speaker 1: so that's the problem of things in our minds being unconscious,
Speaker 1: things we don't have access to. But there is also
Speaker 1: a problem where our mind isn't just a unitary thing too, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: so we sometimes act as if there's a single thing
Speaker 1: that we're thinking at any moment, but it's never the
Speaker 1: case that there's only one thing going on in your
Speaker 1: head at once. Previously, Laurie, you and I have the
Speaker 1: chance to talk about a metaphor from Plato which divides
Speaker 1: the mind into three parts. It says that there are
Speaker 1: two horses and a charioteer, a driver of those horses,
Speaker 1: and one of those horses is interested in things like
Speaker 1: food and reproduction. The second horse is interested in things
Speaker 1: like honor and social approval, and then the driver of
Speaker 1: these horses is interested in reason and rationality. And Plato's
Speaker 1: image there is echoed by everything we now know about
Speaker 1: the brain. So in the middle of all of our
Speaker 1: brains is a lizard brain, which is responding to really
Speaker 1: primitive things. When you are making a judgment about the world,
Speaker 1: there's stuff coming in from your visual system, and there's
Speaker 1: stuff coming in from your auditory system, but there's also
Speaker 1: stuff coming in from your amigdala, which is giving you
Speaker 1: a sense of your emotions, and there may be things
Speaker 1: coming in from your memory. And all of these things
Speaker 1: are coming in in lots and lots of different directions
Speaker 1: and pulling you in different directions, and your mind has
Speaker 1: to make a decision about what it's going to say
Speaker 1: it sees. One of the nicest examples of this is
Speaker 1: in an optical illusion. So if you're sitting in a
Speaker 1: train looking out the window and the train next to
Speaker 1: you starts moving, your visual system gives you a certain
Speaker 1: kind of information, and it runs to the front of
Speaker 1: your brain and it gets there to your conscious rational
Speaker 1: part before the stuff from your somatosensory or your vestibular system,
Speaker 1: And so you even though it's the other train that's
Speaker 1: moving and you're sitting still, your eyes full you they
Speaker 1: get to the front of your brain first. They tell
Speaker 1: your brain what to think, and your brain thinks, oh
Speaker 1: my god, my train is moving, but it's not. And
Speaker 1: that kind of mistake happens endlessly in brains that are
Speaker 1: built up of complex evolution nary layers, as every human
Speaker 1: brain is. So our pesky minds make it hard for
Speaker 1: us to really know ourselves. But don't disparage us yet,
Speaker 1: because when we get back from the break, we'll learn
Speaker 1: that we can get better at self knowledge if we
Speaker 1: commit to harnessing our inner Socrates. We'll see how when
Speaker 1: the happiness lab returns in a moment. When I first
Speaker 1: watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure back in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: my childhood self was able to pick up tiny snippets
Speaker 1: of the Socratic canon, mostly in the form of bad
Speaker 1: punch lines from the movie Excellent. But it wasn't actually
Speaker 1: until later in my education that I was introduced to
Speaker 1: one of Socrates' key phrases, one that's super important for
Speaker 1: feeling happier and one that I find to be, to
Speaker 1: paraphrase Bill and Ted, most excellent. The quote that people
Speaker 1: often think of and associate with Socrates is the unexamined
Speaker 1: life is not worth living. So what does it mean
Speaker 1: to say the unexamined life is not worth living? There
Speaker 1: are two ways of thinking about that, both with regard
Speaker 1: to one's relation to what we might call outer knowledge
Speaker 1: that is the way the world is, and with regard
Speaker 1: to what we might call inner knowledge, that is the
Speaker 1: way we ourselves are. So let me start with the
Speaker 1: outer knowledge. What does Socrates mean when he says the
Speaker 1: unexamined life is not worth living? He means society as
Speaker 1: we inherit. It isn't perfect. Your country may have a
Speaker 1: religion which has landed on certain really important truths and
Speaker 1: missed other really important truths. Your society may have some
Speaker 1: values which are really important to human flourishing, but some
Speaker 1: values which really impede human flourishing. And there are many
Speaker 1: many discoveries to be made about the world. This is
Speaker 1: the time when science as a way of making sense
Speaker 1: of reality begins. For example, people begin to do astronomical
Speaker 1: work and understand the relation between the stars and the
Speaker 1: planets and the earth. All of those are what Socrates
Speaker 1: we call the examined life in an external sense. And
Speaker 1: so the unexamined life is the life where you aren't
Speaker 1: curious about the natural world around you and you aren't
Speaker 1: ready to challenge the social world around you. So that's
Speaker 1: version one of the unexamined life. The second version of
Speaker 1: the unexamined life that Socrates is concerned about is the
Speaker 1: case where you trust your first impression instead of your
Speaker 1: deeper self. That is the case where you don't awaken
Speaker 1: your inner Socrates to ask yourself, Am I really in
Speaker 1: love with this person? Or is it just that my
Speaker 1: palms are sweaty? Am I really happier when I make
Speaker 1: lots of money? Or am I just taking at face
Speaker 1: value something that my brain is telling myself? Is my
Speaker 1: train really moving? Or am I just responding to what
Speaker 1: vision got into my body faster than the other senses.
Speaker 1: So the second sense in which Socrates means the unexamined
Speaker 1: life is not worth living is that he means we
Speaker 1: need to examine our own assumptions about what we think
Speaker 1: we want and about what we think we need. Another
Speaker 1: way we can do this is through the practice of mindfulness.
Speaker 1: Why does mindfulness help us kind of know ourselves better? So,
Speaker 1: mindfulness is a practice whereby we try to authentically recognize
Speaker 1: what is going on inside us. It's a process of
Speaker 1: removing distraction and focusing liberately attention on something particular. And
Speaker 1: there's a way in which you can think of meditation
Speaker 1: as a non verbal analog of Socratic self examination. So
Speaker 1: Socrates says, keep asking yourself, why do you think that?
Speaker 1: But why do you think that? But why do you
Speaker 1: think that? That's the verbal version of Socratic self questioning.
Speaker 1: Meditation is the non verbal version of Socratic self question
Speaker 1: It says, attend what's really going on, what's really going on?
Speaker 1: What's really going on? So both of these are processes
Speaker 1: of eliminating distraction and coming to authenticity. Neither of them
Speaker 1: demands that you get all the way there. It just says,
Speaker 1: here's a process that you can follow that's going to
Speaker 1: bring you closer to the truth, close sure to understanding,
Speaker 1: and that is being ready in the Socratic sense, to
Speaker 1: challenge yourself and ask why, and being ready in a
Speaker 1: meditation sense to focus yourself and eliminate distraction. So the
Speaker 1: first way that we can really get better self knowledge,
Speaker 1: according to Socrates, is through this idea of the Socratic
Speaker 1: method and applying it to ourselves. What does this look like,
Speaker 1: say in the context of, you know, maybe thinking that
Speaker 1: money might bring us happiness when it might not. So
Speaker 1: you might ask yourself in the way that Socrates would
Speaker 1: ask you, why do you think that money is going
Speaker 1: to give you happiness? Think back to a time that
Speaker 1: you got money, what did you really feel? Think back
Speaker 1: to other times when you were happy? What were those times? Like?
Speaker 1: I think that took things that you've learned from science
Speaker 1: about what it is that makes people happy. Why would
Speaker 1: you think those scientific facts don't apply to you. It's
Speaker 1: exactly like you come home and you have a fight
Speaker 1: with your spouse. Spouse says, why are you yelling at me?
Speaker 1: And you say blah blah blah, and your saust asks
Speaker 1: you a question again and you realize, Oh, I'm yelling
Speaker 1: at you because I was irritated by something that happened
Speaker 1: to me on the bus on the way home, and
Speaker 1: so I'm taking frustration that came from one source, and
Speaker 1: I'm bringing it out in another source. That kind of
Speaker 1: capacity to recognize that we're doing something for a reason
Speaker 1: other than the reason we thought we were doing it's
Speaker 1: familiar to all of us when we think about our
Speaker 1: relations to other people, and so it shouldn't be surprising
Speaker 1: that it's also the case when we're making decisions for ourselves.
Speaker 1: I think a final way that we can really embrace
Speaker 1: our inner Socrates is to really understand what the science
Speaker 1: is telling us. Right that sometimes it's just really hard
Speaker 1: to know our minds because of the unconscious makes us
Speaker 1: our own selves impenetrable. But if we know what's going
Speaker 1: on with other people, that that can kind of help
Speaker 1: us make better decisions ourselves. Yes, So, one of the
Speaker 1: amazing things about human beings is that each of us
Speaker 1: is different from one another, but in certain fundamental ways,
Speaker 1: we've each been given the same set of stuff to
Speaker 1: work with. All of us have brains that were subject
Speaker 1: to the same evolutionary process. All of us are affected
Speaker 1: by features of our external environment. And therefore one of
Speaker 1: the ways to understand yourself is to understand other people.
Speaker 1: And it's really really unlikely that everybody else in the
Speaker 1: world would be some way, and you, yourself would be
Speaker 1: another way. You are unique. You're unique in the configuration
Speaker 1: of facts which are true of you, but general tendencies
Speaker 1: that if your skin is cut, you will bleed, that
Speaker 1: if you are feeling sadness, your pupils will show a
Speaker 1: certain kind of dilation. Those are fundamental facts about human beings.
Speaker 1: And one of the many, very good ways to learn
Speaker 1: about ourselves is to learn about others. And one of
Speaker 1: the very many good ways to learn about others is
Speaker 1: to use scientific understanding. I think another insight of kind
Speaker 1: of finding our inner Socrates, is this idea that we
Speaker 1: can sort of treat ourselves the way we would treat
Speaker 1: a friend. Like if our friend was really struggling with something,
Speaker 1: we might ask them questions, we might kind of get
Speaker 1: curious with them, and ultimately what we're doing is just
Speaker 1: treating ourselves in the same friendlike way that we might
Speaker 1: treat other people when they're dealing with difficult situations. That's right.
Speaker 1: It's sometimes said a friend is a second self, but
Speaker 1: a self is a second friend. And just as when
Speaker 1: we're asking a friend questions, why do you think that?
Speaker 1: Why do you think that? Hey, that's inconsistent with that.
Speaker 1: We don't do it in an accusatory way. We don't say, oh,
Speaker 1: you loser, you were being mean to the cat because
Speaker 1: you were angry at the bus driver. We say, hey,
Speaker 1: that's so funny. You're being mean to the cat because
Speaker 1: you were upset with the bus driver. Now that you
Speaker 1: understand that, isn't it easier for you to be compassionate
Speaker 1: towards the cat in the way that you wanted it
Speaker 1: to be? So. One of the nice things about using
Speaker 1: a friend to understand yourself, or using yourself to understand
Speaker 1: your friend is that they're both ways of evoking simultaneously
Speaker 1: compassion and responsibility. You say simultaneously, I'm not letting you
Speaker 1: off the hook to yourself or your friend, and I
Speaker 1: understand that it is challenging, and that simultaneous attitude of
Speaker 1: compassion and responsibility towards self and other, through self and
Speaker 1: other is a key lesson that we can take from
Speaker 1: this Socratic image. Sometimes when people hear about this idea
Speaker 1: that we don't know ourselves very well, it can be
Speaker 1: a little bit destabilizing. How have you handled this? Heart
Speaker 1: of what self knowledge requires is a certain kind of
Speaker 1: humility that is really authentically understanding that you don't know
Speaker 1: yourself brings with it a kind of vertigo. You have
Speaker 1: this sense that I don't really know what's going on inside.
Speaker 1: But then there's this reassuring sense that even though you
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on inside, at least you're no
Speaker 1: longer under the false impression that you thought you knew
Speaker 1: what was going on inside when in fact you didn't.
Speaker 1: And even though there is a certain kind of anxiety
Speaker 1: which comes with recognizing that you really are opaque to yourself,
Speaker 1: at least realizing that you're opaque to yourself is a
Speaker 1: little more transparent than thinking that you're transparent to yourself.
Speaker 1: Knowing all these practices and studying Socrates yourself, have you
Speaker 1: been able to better turn on your inner Socrates to
Speaker 1: promote happiness? Absolutely, when I find myself frustrated, one of
Speaker 1: the tricks that I have tried to habituate in myself
Speaker 1: is just an asking of why am I feeling this
Speaker 1: emotion right now? Often it comes in the context of
Speaker 1: a case where I have a project that I want
Speaker 1: to engage in and I find myself procrastinating on it,
Speaker 1: and I ask myself, why am I putting this off?
Speaker 1: And often it's because I don't know what the next
Speaker 1: step is, or I'm told and I'm staying where I
Speaker 1: am because I have a Radian story in this room
Speaker 1: and I need something in another room. And discovering that
Speaker 1: these little things and make a difference that just likely
Speaker 1: move me towards what I'm trying to do. I never
Speaker 1: try to get all the way there all at once,
Speaker 1: but Socratic self questioning can help me understand what direction
Speaker 1: I need to go to take the very next step.
Speaker 1: Socrates's ideas were so challenging in his own time that
Speaker 1: he was put to death. Today, many centuries later, Socrates
Speaker 1: is called to constantly question ourselves and our motivations can
Speaker 1: still cause lots of discomfort, But as Tomorrow so eloquently
Speaker 1: put it before, it really is better to know that
Speaker 1: we don't know. So next time you're feeling a negative emotion,
Speaker 1: a flash of anger, or a sense of arousal, or
Speaker 1: a twinge of sadness, take some time to intentionally examine
Speaker 1: the reasons you might be feeling that way and look
Speaker 1: carefully at the steps you can take to address those emotions.
Speaker 1: And if you're planning to do something that you think
Speaker 1: will make you happy. Why not channel your inner Socrates
Speaker 1: and ask if the path you're planning to follow is
Speaker 1: really right for you, Does it fit with what the
Speaker 1: science says truly makes for a happier life? Or are
Speaker 1: you being fooled by the lies of your mind yet again?
Speaker 1: And do remember the great advice of Socrates's later students
Speaker 1: Bill and Ted, because harnessing your inner Socrates is yet
Speaker 1: another great way to be excellent to one another and
Speaker 1: to yourself. If you liked tearing about today's Ancient happiness insights,
Speaker 1: you should make sure you're signed up for Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus is our subscription service which allows you to
Speaker 1: enjoy ad free listening to this another pushkin podcasts, and
Speaker 1: as a special gift to pushkin Plus subscribers, I'll be
Speaker 1: sharing some of my favorite passages from the original texts
Speaker 1: that you heard about today, So be sure to sign
Speaker 1: up today at Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot FM.
Speaker 1: Our next edition of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients is
Speaker 1: going to be a little different. We'll head deep into
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab's past episode archive to look at the
Speaker 1: work of Socrates's famed pupils, Plato and Aristotle. We'll see
Speaker 1: that we're not yet done with the deep wisdom we
Speaker 1: can get from the ancient Greeks. Until next time, stay safe,
Speaker 1: stay happy, and party on. The Happiness Lab is co
Speaker 1: written by Ryan Dilley and is produced by Ryan Dilley,
Speaker 1: Courtney Grano and Britney Brown. The show was mastered by
Speaker 1: Evan Viola and our original music was composed by Zachary Silver.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Greta Kone, Eric Sandler, Carl Migliori, Nicole Morano,
Speaker 1: Morgan Ratner, Jacob Weisberg, my agent, Ben Davis, and the
Speaker 1: rest of the Pushkin team. The Happiness Lab is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries and by me, Doctor Laurie Santos.