Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. In this episode,
Speaker 1: I talk to renowned developmental psychologist Paul Bloom. Bloom is
Speaker 1: the author of a bunch of books, but his most
Speaker 1: recent one is called The Sweet Spot, The Pleasures of
Speaker 1: Suffering and the Search for Meaning. Paul and I go
Speaker 1: way back to my grad school days at Yale when
Speaker 1: he was one of my mentors. We always have a
Speaker 1: great chat and this one is no different. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we cover a lot of territory. We discuss the value
Speaker 1: of suffering in pursuit of meaning and make the distinction
Speaker 1: between unforeseen tragedy and chosen suffering. Paul elaborates on BDSM
Speaker 1: and horror as examples of benign masochism, activities that people
Speaker 1: find comfort and enjoyment in despite the experience of pain.
Speaker 1: We also touch on the topics of meditation, Buddhism, attachment, parenting, empathy,
Speaker 1: and rational compassion. This is a very juicy episode and
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy it just as much as I did. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, I bring you Paul Bloom, Doctor Bloom,
Speaker 1: it is so great to chat with you today on
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast. It's nice to see you again, Scott.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on. Thank you. I was coming
Speaker 1: up with the sweet Spot by memory. That is the
Speaker 1: title of the book, right, That is exactly the title
Speaker 1: book this week. Great, Great, Now you had a prior title,
Speaker 1: which is one that I was working with in my
Speaker 1: own head while you were writing it. I thought it
Speaker 1: was going to be called the Pleasure of Suffering or
Speaker 1: something along those lines. Is that right? That was that
Speaker 1: your work title? You have a good memory. We had
Speaker 1: a conversation, but just a while ago it was originally
Speaker 1: going to be called the Pleasures of Suffering, and it
Speaker 1: was originally going to be about that, about what Paul
Speaker 1: Rowsen calls benign masochism. Why we get pleasure from pain,
Speaker 1: from BDSM, from hot bass, from cutting ourselves from you know,
Speaker 1: your mind may vary, but why that kind of activity
Speaker 1: gives us pleasure? And I got into the book doing
Speaker 1: a lot of that, and then I became more interest
Speaker 1: in idea to suffering could yield other things like purpose
Speaker 1: and meaning, issues that I know you're very interested in.
Speaker 1: So the book expanded and so it ended up as
Speaker 1: a sweet Spot. Cool. Well, why did and I very
Speaker 1: cares about this a lot would be a good place
Speaker 1: to start. Why did Daniel Gilbert almost persuade you to
Speaker 1: not write this book. So, so, Daniel Gilbert, I know,
Speaker 1: you know him. He's a psychologist at Harvard, one of
Speaker 1: the nicest and one of the smartest people into business.
Speaker 1: And Dan as a hedonist. Dan will tell you that
Speaker 1: he believes that in the end, all that were after
Speaker 1: his pleasure. So and my book is very much against that.
Speaker 1: My book could be seen as an argument against hedonism,
Speaker 1: arguing that, you know, yeah, we do seac out pleasure,
Speaker 1: we like to scratch where it dishes, but we also
Speaker 1: seek out purpose and meaning and other longer term goals.
Speaker 1: And Dan just kept pushing me on this. You know,
Speaker 1: whenever I said, you know to Dan, well, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly people choose to suffer, they choose to sacrifice for
Speaker 1: higher goals. Dan's response was always yeah, because they like it.
Speaker 1: They like it more than an alternative. And it turns
Speaker 1: it to be hard to argue against that. So a
Speaker 1: good chunk of the book, particularly in an end, is
Speaker 1: sort of taking on Dan and talking about his views.
Speaker 1: You really did you really did? You even got to
Speaker 1: the point where you're like, look, not to beat a
Speaker 1: dead horse here, but I feel like it's important that
Speaker 1: I tackle this. I feel like you even like, you know,
Speaker 1: broke the third wall second there at one point in
Speaker 1: the book and you're like, look, I know I've gone
Speaker 1: on three pages about this and might seem excessive, but
Speaker 1: this is really important, and I agree, I mean it
Speaker 1: is important. This this difference of opinion. You know, he
Speaker 1: really he has this view of you know, this additive model, right,
Speaker 1: we kind of added all right, at the end of
Speaker 1: our lives and we're on their deathbed, we're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've had forty seven thousand positive experiences, I've had twenty
Speaker 1: four thousand shitty experiences. It's been a good wife, and
Speaker 1: then you die. Yeah, but your arguably, so maybe the
Speaker 1: additive model is not the right the right way to
Speaker 1: think about this in your book, it's not. So let's
Speaker 1: let's dive into some of the ideas in your book
Speaker 1: and present your views now, you know. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: want to ask what is the potential value of suffering?
Speaker 1: So there's there's several answer to that question. The base
Speaker 1: that one answer, which everybody agrees on is sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to suffer to get what you want. So, you know,
Speaker 1: if you have a baby, you might wake up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night to feed the baby. You
Speaker 1: might not enjoy that, but you just do it because
Speaker 1: because you have to. You you might have a painful
Speaker 1: vaccine shot because you don't want to get COVID. You
Speaker 1: you know, you take the age fifteen into the city.
Speaker 1: You do work because you need money to survive. And
Speaker 1: that's the obvious answer. My book explores two less obvious answers.
Speaker 1: One is suffering could be a source of pleasure. So sometimes,
Speaker 1: like we choose to watch movies that scare the pans
Speaker 1: off of us, that make us cry, we choose to
Speaker 1: engage in activities like you know, martial arts or endurance
Speaker 1: training or whatever that that just exhausts us and hurt us,
Speaker 1: and we love it. It gives us a certain sort
Speaker 1: of pleasure. And then I think it may be most significantly,
Speaker 1: we are creatures that pursue meaning, like extended, purposeful activities
Speaker 1: that have often have significant ends, And you don't get
Speaker 1: that without suffering. So in this second case, it's not
Speaker 1: suffering per se that we're after. We're after what I
Speaker 1: call meaning. But suffering is a necessary part of the package. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not something that just comes along for the package.
Speaker 1: You're saying it's actually an essential part of the package.
Speaker 1: And that's an interesting distinction, important distinction. You you really,
Speaker 1: if we can double clicker for a second, you're tally
Speaker 1: about chosen suffering, exactly chosen suffering. There is another very
Speaker 1: important distinction, chosen suffering versus unchosen suffering. Now I work
Speaker 1: a little bit and in the field of post traumatic growth.
Speaker 1: In fact, my next book is on post traumatic growth. Yes,
Speaker 1: believe it or not. Do you have a title? Yes,
Speaker 1: the title is called Choose Growth. At least that's the
Speaker 1: working title. You know that we have some choice, you know,
Speaker 1: in our arsenal, about whether or not we can make
Speaker 1: that decision versus make a different decision. So this is
Speaker 1: very interesting. This this, I think we should we should
Speaker 1: have a cop We should have we should we should talk,
Speaker 1: we should talk, like right now, right now, let's have
Speaker 1: a conversation, yes about this, because you kind of take
Speaker 1: on that field of post traumatic growth and make it
Speaker 1: clear of this that's not what you're talking about. So
Speaker 1: first of all, I would like your own voice to
Speaker 1: speak here. So can you tell a little bit about
Speaker 1: why your book is not a book about post traumatic growth.
Speaker 1: It's it's a book about chosen suffering, and I think
Speaker 1: it's an important distinction, right. My book is is fundamentally
Speaker 1: about what people want, and it take a step back.
Speaker 1: It's about why we so often choose to suffer and
Speaker 1: the sort of examples as we're talking about, and it
Speaker 1: explores different reasons for it. And I mean the story
Speaker 1: it tells is that where it defends motivational pluralism, meaning
Speaker 1: we want different things and for many of the things,
Speaker 1: suffering is essential to getting them, for pleasure, for morality,
Speaker 1: for meaning, if you're not experiencing suffering in your life,
Speaker 1: you probably are not satisfying the goals you should as
Speaker 1: a person. But this is chosen suffering. There's another claim,
Speaker 1: which is that unchosen suffering, the bad stuff that happens
Speaker 1: to you in some way can add value to your life,
Speaker 1: can make you more altruistic, can make you more resilient,
Speaker 1: can in some way make you better. And I'm skeptical
Speaker 1: about that. I'm not skeptical, and maybe here just going
Speaker 1: to sketch out an agreement. I'm not skeptical that there's
Speaker 1: different ways to respond to bad stuff that happens to
Speaker 1: having your house burn down, your child die, dying, being raped,
Speaker 1: that there's ways to deal with this. In some ways
Speaker 1: are better than others. I also can understand it in
Speaker 1: some cases, some bad stuff could happen to you and
Speaker 1: you could end up getting better as a result. It
Speaker 1: just it just can't happen that way. The world is strange.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, I would argue that I've
Speaker 1: been accused of making unintuitive claims in my career. Here's
Speaker 1: an intuitive one, which is bad things that happened to
Speaker 1: you should be avoided. Do avoid suffering, if you avoid
Speaker 1: unchosen suffering, if you can do We disagree on this, No,
Speaker 1: we don't disagree on this. And as you even say
Speaker 1: in one of your paragraphs, you said, look, I don't
Speaker 1: even need a it seems ridiculous to even put footnotes
Speaker 1: citations saying rape is bad. Yes, I thought that was clever.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're right, you know there's some things you
Speaker 1: don't you don't need to like. In order for it
Speaker 1: to be true, you know, you have to include scientific
Speaker 1: study that shows you know that to be the case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, we're definitely in agreement that. I would say
Speaker 1: that you mischaracterized the main thesis of the post traumatic
Speaker 1: growth literature. However, and at least, that's certainly the way
Speaker 1: that I'm presenting it in my new book next year. Essentially,
Speaker 1: we are not making the case that suffering the event
Speaker 1: itself is good, or the event itself is what is
Speaker 1: the catalyst for growth, but we make the case that
Speaker 1: it is the cognitive structuring of the event. It is
Speaker 1: the extent to which the event causes us to see
Speaker 1: change fundamentally change our worldview, like a seismic earthquake, but
Speaker 1: a psychological earthquake. It is the meaning that we gather
Speaker 1: from the event. So in that sense, I think we're
Speaker 1: actually quite aligned from the meaning perspective of it. And
Speaker 1: I also think we're quite aligned in the sense you
Speaker 1: talk about the word suffering as applying to a wide
Speaker 1: range of events, not just ones we stereotypically think of
Speaker 1: a suffering, but anything that's kind of challenge, lenging our
Speaker 1: worldview and shakes us up in a significant way. And well,
Speaker 1: that's exactly how the postramac growth literature thinks about suffering
Speaker 1: as well. So I think there's, you know, there's more
Speaker 1: a line there than than not. I think that you, probably,
Speaker 1: as I do, have the certain bone in your body
Speaker 1: where I think you enjoy actually saying things that are
Speaker 1: anti established a standard. You know, like you wrote a
Speaker 1: book called against Empathy, but when you actually get into
Speaker 1: the details, you're like, hey, that's pretty reasonable. You know.
Speaker 1: You look at the title against Empathy, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: but you read your book and I found it quite reasonable.
Speaker 1: I found it. It's okay, rational compassion, you know, don't
Speaker 1: always rely on the gut, you know, sometimes it can
Speaker 1: lead us straight. Yeah, no, these are good points. So
Speaker 1: I think that you had a lot of good points there.
Speaker 1: I would just push back from the strong claim that
Speaker 1: there was one sentence I think in your book where
Speaker 1: you say something like post traumatic growth that's all ridiculous
Speaker 1: or that's that's not right. Uh. But I think that
Speaker 1: when you actually get in the details of the thesis
Speaker 1: of the postermac growth literature, some researchers, including Merit, try
Speaker 1: to be very careful to say that it's not the
Speaker 1: event itself. It's it really is to what extent can
Speaker 1: that can that event create meaning? But let me first
Speaker 1: let me it's let me you've been very fair and
Speaker 1: sort of causing up my views. Let me make a
Speaker 1: distinction which I think we could agree with, and then
Speaker 1: let me ask you a question. So distinction is actually
Speaker 1: really nicely made by C. S. Lewis. So C. S
Speaker 1: Lewis talks about fasting, and he compares it to you
Speaker 1: ran out of food. You go three days without any
Speaker 1: food because there's no food, and you wish your food
Speaker 1: was no food. And he says, you know, they're both
Speaker 1: forms of suffering, but fasting is a way of it
Speaker 1: can be wonderful, could be it could be a way
Speaker 1: of exercising your will is by choice. Running out of
Speaker 1: food is just something awful and happens to you and
Speaker 1: doesn't carry the same sort of psychological implications. So let's
Speaker 1: now go back to So something terrible happens, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: death of a child, say the worst thing I can imagine,
Speaker 1: death of a child. And are you saying I don't
Speaker 1: doubt that death of a child can lead to psychologe, Well,
Speaker 1: definitely leads to psychological changes, can under some circumstances, lead
Speaker 1: to psychological changes that in some cases person could say
Speaker 1: I'm better off. But are you saying that if you
Speaker 1: had one hundred people whose child died and one hundred
Speaker 1: people who didn't, there's a sense in which the first
Speaker 1: one hundred are better than the second hundred. No, no,
Speaker 1: we're saying, given that it happened, how does one move
Speaker 1: on from there in a way where they can grow
Speaker 1: as opposed to have postromac stress become depressed, say, life's over,
Speaker 1: I think, and I think that's that's that's the important thing,
Speaker 1: and that that goes right back to Victor Frankel, who
Speaker 1: you quote, you know, luminous, Yeah, no one, what did
Speaker 1: you say? Sorry, I quote him voluminously. He's yeah, that
Speaker 1: my subtitle part of something that search for meaning is
Speaker 1: a shout out. Yeah damn. So we're you know, this
Speaker 1: is the points he made as well. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not you know, I'm not claiming that a hundred people
Speaker 1: who went through the Holocaust it was better for them
Speaker 1: than and then if they didn't go through the Holocaust.
Speaker 1: You know, but I can give you a quote from
Speaker 1: Rabbi Harold Kirshner, who is reflecting on the death of
Speaker 1: his son, and I think he put it quite well.
Speaker 1: He said, I am a more sensitive person, a more
Speaker 1: effective pastor, a more sympathetic counselor because of Aaron's life
Speaker 1: and death. Then I would ever have been without it,
Speaker 1: and I would give up all those gains in a second,
Speaker 1: if I could have my son back, if I could choose,
Speaker 1: I would forego all of the spiritual growth and depth
Speaker 1: which had come my way because of our experiences. But
Speaker 1: I cannot choose, and I think that's just what I
Speaker 1: try to emphasize. So I'm going to be hard boiled here.
Speaker 1: The second half of the quote I totally agree with.
Speaker 1: Nobody would choose that if it gave me super powers,
Speaker 1: made me empathic, it made me wonderful. No way, what
Speaker 1: I want is terrible thing to happen. It's the first
Speaker 1: sentence that I want to push back. Is it really
Speaker 1: true on average for most people that we do end
Speaker 1: up more sensitive, compassion, et cetera after something terrible happens
Speaker 1: to us. It seems to me in like an empirical
Speaker 1: question about how to mine works. And I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: are you are you? Do you think he's right? I
Speaker 1: mean you can't. And you know, somebody says, somebody says
Speaker 1: to you, you know, I got cancer and now I'm
Speaker 1: much more My life is much more, meaning, I'm much kinder,
Speaker 1: I'm more resilient, And it's simply bad manners to disagree.
Speaker 1: But are they right? I could point to a lot
Speaker 1: of people who these terrible things happen, and they get
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Speaker 1: dot com slash psychology. Well, you know, you make a
Speaker 1: good point. Well, unfortunately we don't have a control group
Speaker 1: within a person, and there's not a lot of terribly
Speaker 1: great systematic studies on the topic that have a control group,
Speaker 1: even in a group of people who've undergone such a thing.
Speaker 1: So that you make a good point in your book
Speaker 1: about that. I do think that that there are ways
Speaker 1: in which, because of the way the event was processed,
Speaker 1: because of the meaning that was made from it, that
Speaker 1: there was growth. Perhaps we should we maybe we should
Speaker 1: just stop there, as opposed to make the claim it's
Speaker 1: better than if they didn't have the event. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what you're pushing back on. And I think
Speaker 1: that's fair because they're just not enough good studies with
Speaker 1: that control group. So maybe the best scientist you know,
Speaker 1: when I talk about I still think the field of
Speaker 1: postmac growth is important because I think that it emphasizes
Speaker 1: the fact that these kinds of ways of processing challenging
Speaker 1: events in our lives, which we're less likely to do
Speaker 1: with positive events. When there are wonderfully positive events, you
Speaker 1: don't really care much about the meaning of it. You're like,
Speaker 1: I'll take it. Yes, Yes, When someone you know gives
Speaker 1: me a million dollars, I'm not like, let me journal
Speaker 1: about this. No, let me spend that money. Yes, I
Speaker 1: have to. I have to reassess how I'm living my
Speaker 1: life now. No I don't really, this is I'm doing well, right.
Speaker 1: So I think that, uh, you know, let's let's let's
Speaker 1: sort of meet together and say, I think the value
Speaker 1: of that postmat growth the literature and the reason why
Speaker 1: I'm writing, you know, we're devoting so much in my
Speaker 1: own personal time to write a book about is because
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we couldn't choose to have had COVID.
Speaker 1: Now it's an open empirical question is do we have
Speaker 1: show any growth during COVID that we wouldn't have shown
Speaker 1: if there wasn't COVID. But this I can say, during COVID,
Speaker 1: so many of us did reprioritize things in a way
Speaker 1: we probably would not. I really think we probably would
Speaker 1: not have if there wasn't COVID. Would we were going along,
Speaker 1: you know, without that violation of our expectations. And I
Speaker 1: think there's something interesting that happens psychologically when our violations
Speaker 1: about our assumptions, you know, the assumptive world theory, where
Speaker 1: assumptions of the world are really shaken up. But there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things that can cause that kind
Speaker 1: of shaking up process, including some of the chosen suffering
Speaker 1: you talk about in your book, right, And and you know,
Speaker 1: there's a riff we could take on this, which is
Speaker 1: which means I think we might both again agree on,
Speaker 1: which is when bad things happen, people want to find
Speaker 1: meaning in them. And you know, I have a chapter
Speaker 1: in my book on religion and on the idea that
Speaker 1: everything happens for a reason. And you know, sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: tempted to the view that One of the reasons we
Speaker 1: have religion at all is that we see it as
Speaker 1: having a promise of answering the question, you know, why,
Speaker 1: where does the suffering come from, and giving and giving
Speaker 1: us an answer that that's ennobling and positive. As an atheist,
Speaker 1: I think it's all nonsense. But nonetheless, you know, the
Speaker 1: question wanting to find meaning in the suffering my child died,
Speaker 1: why and to hear the answer is all for the
Speaker 1: best is extremely powerful and extremely seductive, extremely powerful, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people who like lost their children to
Speaker 1: school shootings, for instance, then become strong advocates of gun
Speaker 1: you know, against against gun violence, right, And so would
Speaker 1: they have been as ardent anti gun violence. Would they
Speaker 1: have gone out there and trying to change other people's
Speaker 1: lives and change the whole system as ardently if they
Speaker 1: didn't lose their son. Probably not? Would they Would they
Speaker 1: prefer that their son died because it made them ardent supporters? No,
Speaker 1: I mean that'd be ridiculous to make that claim. Yes,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, this is why this stuff, this
Speaker 1: is why humans are. But you're choosing a case where
Speaker 1: a tragedy motivates people to work for a cause that
Speaker 1: I think you and I would would believe in I know,
Speaker 1: we could both easily think of cases where tragedy pushes
Speaker 1: people towards other causes. A lot of people who choose
Speaker 1: lives of violence and hatred do so in response to
Speaker 1: some tragedy in their life. Yeah, yeah, it's it's true.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's certainly true. And and well, this is
Speaker 1: also just a fascinating question about the development of trauma
Speaker 1: and individual differences in the way it manifests its stuff
Speaker 1: in in adulthood, you know, when there was childhood trauma.
Speaker 1: I'm very interested in that question, very fascinated with that
Speaker 1: because you do see people going down different paths with
Speaker 1: the same exact experiences. Right, Some people have had experiences
Speaker 1: or they're sexually molested, and then they become they grow
Speaker 1: up and they sectually molest others. Some are sexual molested,
Speaker 1: they grow up becoming really strong, you know, activists against
Speaker 1: sexual violence. You know, what causes that difference between the two,
Speaker 1: and then what are the moderating variables, whether individual difference
Speaker 1: in societal variables. I mean, it's fascinating. It's such an
Speaker 1: important question, and I would never claim to have the
Speaker 1: answers to all of it, but you might by the
Speaker 1: time your book comes up, maybe by the time maybe
Speaker 1: maybe I could be your Dan Gilbert just kind of
Speaker 1: nudging you, and it ultimately else of you address me
Speaker 1: and you're just kind of move on. Well, let me
Speaker 1: ask you a question. You know, there's something within you
Speaker 1: as well where you took Daniel's points and you said
Speaker 1: you were almost persuaded, but you didn't you obviously ahead
Speaker 1: with your own thesis in the book. There was a
Speaker 1: certain confidence, self confidence you had in your own particular thesis,
Speaker 1: which what is that individual differences variable? What is it
Speaker 1: within you? You know? I mean, maybe you've been around
Speaker 1: the block long enough where you're like, I, you know,
Speaker 1: I earned the right to have self confidence in my
Speaker 1: own theories and ideas and the research that you amassed.
Speaker 1: But maybe someone else would have listened to Dan Gilbert.
Speaker 1: You see what I'm doing. I'm mapping on my point
Speaker 1: to asking you directly, why do you go in one
Speaker 1: direction versus the other? You know, someone else may have
Speaker 1: listened to the great Dan Gilbert and be like, you're right,
Speaker 1: I'll just I wasted the last three years of my
Speaker 1: life working on this, you know, But you didn't. Nobody
Speaker 1: to that nobody should. Nobody should ever give up a
Speaker 1: theory just because there's a good knockdown argument against it,
Speaker 1: Because there's a good knockdown argument against anything, any any
Speaker 1: proposal you could come up with, some smart person, I
Speaker 1: could give you ten reasons why it's wrong. And so
Speaker 1: in the end we sometimes have to go off the
Speaker 1: weight of the evidence. We have to say. I can't
Speaker 1: explain away that, I can't answer that question. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna gonna plug ahead. Unfortunately, you know, you write your
Speaker 1: book and someone else write a book saying the opposite thing,
Speaker 1: and then you know the world will be richer as
Speaker 1: a result. I love that attitude, and I also love
Speaker 1: the idea of you being my Dan and Gobert. Is
Speaker 1: it okay if we send you a draft over intro,
Speaker 1: I would love it, tear it to pieces, and then
Speaker 1: and then that process will cause me to have growth.
Speaker 1: We'll both we'll both grow as a result. That's a
Speaker 1: meta meta growth. That's meta growth. That's meta when you're
Speaker 1: writing a book about it. But I mean, and then
Speaker 1: there's opinions, and then there's another debate lurking behind all
Speaker 1: of this, which is I know you you talked to
Speaker 1: page Harden recently. And as you you you more than
Speaker 1: more than most I think you've You're you're very sophisticated
Speaker 1: about the extent to which heredity plays some degree in
Speaker 1: determining what we are. And there's sort of a real
Speaker 1: complex dance between heredity and environment. And we're sort of
Speaker 1: at a stage where or somebody says, well, you know,
Speaker 1: early childhood events have a profound effect on personality. We
Speaker 1: could say, well, it seems that way. That's what Freud
Speaker 1: taught us, That's what most people believe. It's just not clear.
Speaker 1: It does get tricky when you talk about genetics. That's
Speaker 1: you know, like what happens when you make that claim
Speaker 1: and you see the empirical evidence for it, but then
Speaker 1: you control for genes and the effect goes away. It's
Speaker 1: in those cases where it's like, holy cow, what do
Speaker 1: we do with that finding? And a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about some of those kind of findings,
Speaker 1: like in criminology field and sociology, they would rather you
Speaker 1: never even control for genetics because they are it's like
Speaker 1: and we don't want to know. But that does raise
Speaker 1: some interesting questions, as Page and I discussed in terms
Speaker 1: of where are the implications for helping vulnerable people. You know,
Speaker 1: what are the implications there for making the world a
Speaker 1: better place, as opposed to just talking about those findings,
Speaker 1: as some people do in a kind of almost a
Speaker 1: mean spirited way. Do you know what I mean, Paul?
Speaker 1: Some people might raise the point of genes and be like, well, look,
Speaker 1: just deal with the truth. I'm capital t truth. Parents
Speaker 1: don't matter, And it's like, well, look, there's more of
Speaker 1: the story than just that. They matter in a way
Speaker 1: that might be a little bit different, but they still matter.
Speaker 1: They gave you their genes. That kind of matters. That
Speaker 1: kind of matters. If you want to blame your parents,
Speaker 1: you have plenty of room to do so, right, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, they still are to blame for that. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: they brought you into the world. You could always be like,
Speaker 1: why do you bring me into this shitty world? They
Speaker 1: are constantly responsible for our existence. And what's more, what's
Speaker 1: a more way to act, right? Right? And also the
Speaker 1: way that and the actions they do onto you do
Speaker 1: matter in various ways as well. I always felt the
Speaker 1: discussion on that has always been a little bit weird.
Speaker 1: There's a point that people like Judith Harris and Steve
Speaker 1: Pinker make repeatedly and seem to be very true, which
Speaker 1: is some people can read into the genetic stuffed idea
Speaker 1: all parents don't matter. So and then they say, either
Speaker 1: happily or derisively, does this mean it doesn't matter how
Speaker 1: I treat my kids? But you, as a parent have
Speaker 1: an enormous responsibility for the happiness and flourishing of your kid.
Speaker 1: A cruel parent could make a kid's life hell, and
Speaker 1: a wonderful parent could make your kid's life as good
Speaker 1: as it could possibly be. And even if this doesn't
Speaker 1: end up fixing their IQ in some direction or another personality,
Speaker 1: it's still it's still an enormous responsibility. In some way.
Speaker 1: It's like saying, if you tell me, look, how I
Speaker 1: treat my partner won't change her personality. And then I
Speaker 1: respond so so I could treat her horribly. You'd say,
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. You treat her kindly because you love her
Speaker 1: you want her to be happy. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: couldn't agree more with that. It It does get tricky
Speaker 1: because you know someone could say, well, yes, I love
Speaker 1: the spirit of what you're saying. However, I could show
Speaker 1: you data showing that whether they trade you horribly or
Speaker 1: good doesn't officially change their longitournal big five score, that's right,
Speaker 1: and you almost I almost want to respond to sometimes
Speaker 1: like okay, like okay, mister robot, let's let's have a
Speaker 1: you know, human point of discussion, which is like, maybe
Speaker 1: it didn't budge the big five too much, but you know,
Speaker 1: there's still a moral implication of making someone's life a
Speaker 1: living hell, like that still matters. Do you see what
Speaker 1: I'm saying exactly? You you you know, no, no sane
Speaker 1: parent you know takes their kid for a really fun
Speaker 1: day doing something that kid loves to do, and and
Speaker 1: then says, well, I'm doing this because this will change
Speaker 1: the kid's personality if it doesn't screwed me five. I
Speaker 1: want to budge their I want to budge the big five. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to lower neuroticism, you know, And I think
Speaker 1: sometimes we we actually part of the problem is we
Speaker 1: forget children, our people, and that you know, and that
Speaker 1: some of our moral obligations to them are the same
Speaker 1: as with people. Do not Einstarily projects are things to
Speaker 1: be molded. Yeah, we're a complete complete address on that. Yes,
Speaker 1: just returning to some of the ideas in your very
Speaker 1: interesting new book. You'd argue there are multiple independent drives
Speaker 1: that normal humans possess. So we already talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about the hedonic drive that Daniel Gilbert espoused us
Speaker 1: so much. There's more. There are moral drives, as you
Speaker 1: talk about in your book, and then there's meaning and purpose.
Speaker 1: Let me add one? Can I add one? You can
Speaker 1: add one? I think I know what you're going to
Speaker 1: say it, but go for it. I'm so okay, I'm
Speaker 1: going to say it, and then tell me if this
Speaker 1: is what you thought I was going to say. I
Speaker 1: think the exploration drive is a unique drive that contributes
Speaker 1: to what researchers are calling the psychologically rich life, which
Speaker 1: has been distinguished in rec in years from from the
Speaker 1: pleasure end end meaning. And I would say morality as well.
Speaker 1: So if I could add a candidate one of the list,
Speaker 1: it would be the psychological richal life. And is that
Speaker 1: the way you thought? I was thinking that? It's it's related.
Speaker 1: It's I like that. There's a recent paper by I think,
Speaker 1: OHI and Westgate, Right, that's the one I'm referring to, yes,
Speaker 1: And and I think the paper opens up this other alternative.
Speaker 1: And I think I think that that's true. I think that.
Speaker 1: I think it was Mike Norton who talked about EMO diversity,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, we want to have a diversity
Speaker 1: of feelings, and then there's just broadly you want to
Speaker 1: you want to explore. Yeah, I definitely think so. I
Speaker 1: think that. I say, I thought I would have guessed
Speaker 1: some version actually more of self actualizing and personal growth
Speaker 1: was that one? Would that be when you put on
Speaker 1: your list as an independent one or do you think
Speaker 1: it falls from the others? It falls from the others.
Speaker 1: I think you know, in fact, I would say that, uh,
Speaker 1: self actualization is really bringing your whole self to the
Speaker 1: table in a really integrative sort of way. I would
Speaker 1: actually make the case of self actization is the real
Speaker 1: harmonious integration of all those multiple independent drives that you
Speaker 1: talk about in your book. That would be the emergent
Speaker 1: property of the of the deep integration of that in
Speaker 1: your life in a way where neither one is so outsized,
Speaker 1: where you're not a pure hedonist, but you're also not
Speaker 1: a pure meaningist. Meaning in this Yes, I invented that word.
Speaker 1: I think I think that's I think that's that's that's clever.
Speaker 1: I think it's clever. There's price them. We're not just
Speaker 1: a set of motivations or a set of drives. There's
Speaker 1: some probably integrative principle that we want to sort of
Speaker 1: pull things together and put things in h in balance.
Speaker 1: I'll also say that that it's going to be a
Speaker 1: fairly long list. So you and I are just saying
Speaker 1: pleasure hedonism. But to drive for sex, and to drive
Speaker 1: for food, and to drive for status, and to drive
Speaker 1: to be loved or just different things. They're different parameters.
Speaker 1: You could see them. You can imagine them on a
Speaker 1: dial where some people you know, have very little sex
Speaker 1: drive but are enormously concerned about status. Some people don't
Speaker 1: care for physical comfort, but you know, love food and
Speaker 1: so on. So I think the true story of human
Speaker 1: motivation is going to involve a lot of different things. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and Abraham Azell would agree with you. Scottburykauffman agrees with
Speaker 1: you too. But Abraham Aseel had this very interesting idea.
Speaker 1: He called it a hierarchy of pleasures, and he actually
Speaker 1: had the concept meta hedonism. And so his idea of
Speaker 1: meta hedonism is that there's actually a hierarchy of pleasures
Speaker 1: all way up to the fact that altruism can be pleasurable,
Speaker 1: so we make this kind of false distinction, he argued
Speaker 1: between pleasure and meaning, because a lot of things that
Speaker 1: bring us meeting in life actually bring us pleasure. So
Speaker 1: this is a He had this hierarchy of of hedonism.
Speaker 1: I thought you might get a kick out of that
Speaker 1: concept of meta hedonism higher pleasures versus sex. You know,
Speaker 1: like just raw sex is a lower pleasure. Maybe like
Speaker 1: sex integrated with the wall is a higher pleasure, and
Speaker 1: we higher levels of integration, you have higher levels of hedonism.
Speaker 1: Does that even that makes sense to you? It does?
Speaker 1: I mean even Jeremy Bentham, who's often parodied as a
Speaker 1: sort of simple minded hedonism saying we just want what
Speaker 1: feels good, had a taxonomy of pleasures, including ones like
Speaker 1: the pleasure of a good name. It is what we
Speaker 1: call now status, the pleasure of mastery, which is something
Speaker 1: I'm very interested in. And so so you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot. There's ways to put sophisticated glosses
Speaker 1: on hedonism. Even if ultimately we end up saying that
Speaker 1: there's something more, we don't want to quickly deride it. Agreed, Okay,
Speaker 1: Now I really want to jump into this idea of
Speaker 1: benign masochism and this phrase you using your pleasurable pain.
Speaker 1: I really like this phrase, and maybe we could start
Speaker 1: by jumping to the deep end and discussing b D
Speaker 1: s M. Yeah, because you defend b D s M
Speaker 1: as the reflection of normal appetites. That's how you put it.
Speaker 1: So I was wondering if you could do the same
Speaker 1: defense live on well, not a lot, it'll be recorded,
Speaker 1: but if you could do the same defense on my
Speaker 1: podcast right now. It's funny where a career takes you
Speaker 1: where Now I'm talking to you, and now I'm doing
Speaker 1: a defense of BDSM. This is this is life, choices, choices, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And first of world, we'll do something which, as you
Speaker 1: well know, benign masochism is a term, not mine. It's
Speaker 1: thought up by a great psychologist, Paul Rosen, who sent
Speaker 1: some lovely work, lovely work on it. So so my
Speaker 1: interest in in in the book isn't so much to
Speaker 1: defend or attack certain practices, but sort of to explain them.
Speaker 1: But I will defend BDSM from the very start, even
Speaker 1: before we get into what it's about and why people
Speaker 1: do it, by saying that the studies have been done
Speaker 1: and if BDSM was the expression of pathology, has something
Speaker 1: gone wrong, you'd expect it to come along with other
Speaker 1: mental illnesses. People who do it would be depressed or
Speaker 1: anxious or schizophrenic, or failures at life or high end
Speaker 1: bad traits. And it does not seem to be true.
Speaker 1: The people who partake in BDSM seem to be psychologically
Speaker 1: healthy in other ways. So whatever, If you have a
Speaker 1: moral objection to this sort of consensual act, that's one thing.
Speaker 1: But to simply dismiss it, as Freud did, to say
Speaker 1: this is just expression of madness is wrong. But why
Speaker 1: do we do it? And the best theory I've come
Speaker 1: across on this is from Roy Baummeister, who's written a
Speaker 1: lot about it. Roy Boum is someone a creative mind
Speaker 1: in our field and hear in our friend it's uh,
Speaker 1: you have good taste in friends. He's a smart, creative guy,
Speaker 1: and he talks about in terms of escape himself, which
Speaker 1: which sounds like a kind of weird, kind of crunchy,
Speaker 1: maybe mildly bullshitty term. But the idea is that is
Speaker 1: that ourselves weigh upon us, are the voices of ourselves
Speaker 1: in it? How How how am I looking physically. You're
Speaker 1: looking at me. Am I looking okay, I'm talking with
Speaker 1: my voice. Okay. I think I'm thinking about things I've
Speaker 1: done in the past. And just as you come sick
Speaker 1: of somebody else, you come sick of yourself and want
Speaker 1: to escape it. And one meditative practices or one attempt
Speaker 1: to do so. Drugs are one attempt. But b D
Speaker 1: s M, where it's the sort of controlled, chosen experience
Speaker 1: of pain and maybe humiliation, is arguably a way to
Speaker 1: escape from yourself and so and so that's the case
Speaker 1: for it. That's that's what it might it might give
Speaker 1: you if you particularly if you're obsessed with status and
Speaker 1: obsessed with how you appear. I mean pain. Does this
Speaker 1: forget about media? Simple simple pain. If you think of
Speaker 1: experiences where you experience sudden pain, you slammed a car
Speaker 1: door on yourself, you you stepped on a nail. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of negative things to be said
Speaker 1: about this, but one positive thing is while that was happening,
Speaker 1: you weren't thinking about anything else. It's true. And so
Speaker 1: certain forms of you know, exercise, martial arts do this
Speaker 1: for me. And I'm curious what you have to say
Speaker 1: for me. Actually, meditation is to opposite. So I'm very
Speaker 1: frustrated with meditation because I always want to escape from myself,
Speaker 1: and meditation evolves the way I do it as this
Speaker 1: total novice locking myself in a room and being stuck myself. Well,
Speaker 1: I would defend a meditation practice a little bit and
Speaker 1: say that when I do it in a way where
Speaker 1: I can really divorce my self from my thoughts, I
Speaker 1: really do feel like it's an escape from myself. It's
Speaker 1: hard to get to that point. Just like you talked
Speaker 1: about flow and why flow is so hard to get to,
Speaker 1: It's one of those things I would say. It's analogous
Speaker 1: to you. The point you make about flow in your
Speaker 1: book is that, well, I love flow, and I love
Speaker 1: being in a certain as certain meditative state, but it
Speaker 1: takes a lot to get there, whereas immediate pain might
Speaker 1: get me there quicker. I think that's right. I think
Speaker 1: that's right. I think that I know enough people who
Speaker 1: are good at meditation. It sounds like you sounds like
Speaker 1: a whipping sound in the background. It's it's my show.
Speaker 1: I don't have somebody whip me to capture my attention.
Speaker 1: I heard. I think it's just your imagination, your powerful imagination.
Speaker 1: I did read a news story once about about a guy,
Speaker 1: some sort of CEO type, spent too much time on
Speaker 1: Facebook and hired this person to stand next to him
Speaker 1: and slap him in the face when everyone on Facebook.
Speaker 1: And then I would imagine a story would go on
Speaker 1: and they would fall in love because of all the
Speaker 1: agreandoline and everything. Yeah. Yeah, it could be the point here,
Speaker 1: the nuanced. The nuance here seems to be picking something
Speaker 1: that is less painful than what you're currently experiencing, but
Speaker 1: is painful enough that gets your attention away from it.
Speaker 1: It seems like, you know, if we like put this
Speaker 1: into a math equation, because last night I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I was reading your book, I was finishing it, finishing
Speaker 1: it last night, and I had a splitting headache, and
Speaker 1: I went and I took a really really hot shower
Speaker 1: that felt so good and it made me forget my headache.
Speaker 1: But the hot shower, you know, it stung a little bit.
Speaker 1: It was hot, it was really hot, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: as bad as the headache. I imagine that if I
Speaker 1: went into a scolding hot shower, you know that like
Speaker 1: that gave me third degree burns. I wouldn't be like,
Speaker 1: oh gosh, I'm so much more happy I did that
Speaker 1: than the headache than just focusing on the headache, right,
Speaker 1: because there some truth to what I'm saying. Yes, so
Speaker 1: nobody should do that and ensue me for giving like
Speaker 1: false advice. So so one one explanation from niemasochism we
Speaker 1: just talked about was escape himself. But there's a more
Speaker 1: general thing going on involving a sort of calculus of
Speaker 1: pain and pleasure. And so sometimes what we do is
Speaker 1: we seek out pain, typically not intense pain, pain nonetheless
Speaker 1: like hot curry or a hot bath or something like that.
Speaker 1: Sauna's rigorous exercise because when we when it is relieved,
Speaker 1: there's a jolt of pleasure, and sometimes a jolt of
Speaker 1: pleasure is more is enough set it compensates for the pain.
Speaker 1: It sounds, it sounds kind of weird. It's like this
Speaker 1: old joke my father told me about the guy banging
Speaker 1: his head against the lamp post and you ask him
Speaker 1: why he's doing it because it feels so good when
Speaker 1: I stop. But weirdly enough, I think one ingredient of
Speaker 1: benign masochism is you you experienced pain under control conditions,
Speaker 1: You feel a mastery why you're doing it, but also
Speaker 1: it feels so good when you stop. Yeah, yeah, it's all.
Speaker 1: It seems to come back to the contrast. That's right, well,
Speaker 1: and the thesis of your whole book about the sweet
Speaker 1: spot and why you decided to write your book more
Speaker 1: about the sweet spot than what you were going to
Speaker 1: write about before, which is just the pleasure of suffering.
Speaker 1: So this, this all is real consistent, and I like it.
Speaker 1: I like when that happens. I like when happens right,
Speaker 1: and and you know, think about along these lines, certain entertainments,
Speaker 1: like like certain movies, which are you know, the typical
Speaker 1: arc of a revenge film is terrible things happen. You know,
Speaker 1: they kill John Wick's dog. It's very sad, and then
Speaker 1: there's the satisfying vengeance at the end. And you and
Speaker 1: you be asking the wrong question if you said it,
Speaker 1: wouldn't John Wick be a better movie and prevention if
Speaker 1: you took away the first half. But you can't have
Speaker 1: the second half of the first half. You can't have
Speaker 1: the satisfaction of seeing revenge being unleashed unless you have
Speaker 1: this sort of horrible stuff at the beginning. You can't
Speaker 1: have the satisfaction to end it a little engine that
Speaker 1: could where the little engine really succeeds if you didn't
Speaker 1: have the struggles in the first half. And I talked
Speaker 1: about it in my book, So I don't buy my book.
Speaker 1: This data scientist did this big analysis of stories and
Speaker 1: basically it took like one hundred thousand stories plots of stories,
Speaker 1: and basically the answer is, you know, things get worse
Speaker 1: and worse and then they get better. And that's sort
Speaker 1: of a typical story arc. You know. Just to also
Speaker 1: defend meditation a little bit as well, they're a big
Speaker 1: part of that is is being able to witness non
Speaker 1: judgmentally that arc. You know, you through a whole meditation session,
Speaker 1: you can witness you know, the catastrophizing of the brain,
Speaker 1: the stabilizing of the brain, you know, then the catastrophizing again,
Speaker 1: and then and then oh well there's a moment of peace,
Speaker 1: and and what you do is you try to get
Speaker 1: attached to any one of it. Well, that's very Buddhist
Speaker 1: of me to say this, but that's extremely Buddhist. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'll take controversial positions all day, but I'm
Speaker 1: not going to argue against meditation. It's sacred. But but
Speaker 1: certainly you wouldn't want to be in that sort of
Speaker 1: Buddhist state, you know, while watching Rocky you don't want
Speaker 1: to be detached from it. You want to dive in
Speaker 1: great point, great point. And you make this point in
Speaker 1: your book as well, where you even rethink rational compassion
Speaker 1: a little bit. I liked that you did that. You know,
Speaker 1: there was this one, this one paragraphere you're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, umping and fully into the stream of love,
Speaker 1: into the stream of connection. And and you said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I need to rethink some of my own ideas.
Speaker 1: And against empathy, so can you talk about some some
Speaker 1: of that a little bit? Do you remember that? No,
Speaker 1: this is intering, this isn't I mean, it's people read
Speaker 1: things in your books that I didn't that I didn't
Speaker 1: intend to be overt about. So tell you more so,
Speaker 1: tell me more so. And against empathy, I I argue
Speaker 1: that our gut feelings, whatever of empathy, whatever or other benefits,
Speaker 1: are poor moral guides, and we're better off with rational compassion.
Speaker 1: And you're saying I repudiate this at one point is
Speaker 1: when I talk about the complete story? Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: know I talk at one point about children, about having
Speaker 1: children in relationships. And I wonder whether that said what
Speaker 1: I do talk about I'm not Google search, I'll search
Speaker 1: within your book search search search with for my last
Speaker 1: book was mistaken, you said. My last book was called
Speaker 1: Against Empathy, and I argued there that emotions such as
Speaker 1: empathy are too biased and in numerus and parochial to
Speaker 1: be good moral guides who are better off and making
Speaker 1: important decisions with a more distance approach what I call
Speaker 1: rational compassion. And I drew upon Buddhist ideas to make
Speaker 1: this argument. In this regard, my book was quite aligned
Speaker 1: with this butte but in this book I also wrestled
Speaker 1: with challenges to my view, and one of these was
Speaker 1: the issue of close relationships. Rational compassion seems antithetical to
Speaker 1: being a loving partner, a friend or romantic partner. You're
Speaker 1: not supposed to be distant and unbiased towards those of
Speaker 1: you love. What I just appreciated about that section of
Speaker 1: your book is that you wrestled with some of these criticisms,
Speaker 1: and I thought that was admirable. That's all I wanted
Speaker 1: to say, Well, thank you, well, thank you, I mean,
Speaker 1: just to say what the objection is and I've had
Speaker 1: discussions with people. I have so many friends who meditate,
Speaker 1: like Robert Wright and Sam Harris, and I had the
Speaker 1: same discussion in different forms of each one of them
Speaker 1: convincing neither one, which is that it is antithetical to
Speaker 1: certain things. There's this old joke about you, if you
Speaker 1: hear about the Buddhist vacuum cleaner, it comes with no
Speaker 1: attachments that I love that. I've never heard that, so
Speaker 1: I don't even know where I got it from, but
Speaker 1: I'm totally tweeting that one. Yeah, that's that's good. I
Speaker 1: do not want to fight with the meditators. But but
Speaker 1: the idea is that I think a good morality is objective, detached, impartial.
Speaker 1: It is it is wrong for me to and I
Speaker 1: go out in the world favor people who look like me,
Speaker 1: and favor people who are close and so on. But
Speaker 1: the exception is family, and it's complicated there. And I
Speaker 1: do wrestle with this in my in My Against Empathy book,
Speaker 1: and I'm still wrestling with it honestly, which is that
Speaker 1: I don't no. I mean, I think I think a
Speaker 1: good a good leader, a good politician. In many ways,
Speaker 1: it's fair and objective, but a good father or mother
Speaker 1: isn't fair or good. They're partial. They're they're partial to
Speaker 1: their friends, they're partial to their children, to those close
Speaker 1: to them. I would favor my child infinitely more than
Speaker 1: over a stranger, and I don't think that that's mistaken.
Speaker 1: And I also don't think that the Buddhist model of
Speaker 1: detachment fits well with parental love, are romantic love or
Speaker 1: sexual love. I mean, what do you think You probably
Speaker 1: have thought of it as more than I have. Well,
Speaker 1: I've seen some data because I originally thought that it
Speaker 1: seemed incompatible. I thought, for instance, I thought attachment theory
Speaker 1: like insecure attachment would be or secure attachment would be
Speaker 1: almost the opposite of non attachment in the Buddhist way
Speaker 1: of thinking. But I looked at studies that actually attempted
Speaker 1: to rationalized both constructs and showed that that secure attachment
Speaker 1: is very very strongly correlated with non attachment ideas and Buddhism.
Speaker 1: So non attachment Buddhism is actually very very aligned with
Speaker 1: secure attachment in the literature on attachment theory, which they
Speaker 1: argue is most secure attachments very conducive to mental health
Speaker 1: and healthy relationships and strong connections. I think perhaps you're
Speaker 1: mischaracterizing the idea of non attachment and Buddhism. I think
Speaker 1: that that Zen Buddhists, if they were on the show
Speaker 1: right now, would say, it doesn't mean we don't fully
Speaker 1: feel the emotions or we don't really appreciate the value
Speaker 1: of those experiences, but there's almost a bitter sweetness to
Speaker 1: them where we recognize the impermanence of them in such
Speaker 1: a way that we, yeah, we don't get so identity
Speaker 1: attached to them. But is that any different than what
Speaker 1: you're saying. To some extent, recognizing in permanents of things
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be in any way intention with love
Speaker 1: and relationships, right, but other things might. One of the
Speaker 1: things which you had actually mentioned before when we're talking
Speaker 1: about movies is seeing things as they really are, sort
Speaker 1: of stripped from our preconceptions and our biases and so on.
Speaker 1: But I don't think a good I don't think a
Speaker 1: good father sees his son or daughter as they as
Speaker 1: they really are. They see them in a way that's
Speaker 1: sort of clouded by their love and their favoritism and
Speaker 1: their affection, not as they would see anybody else. And
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think that in
Speaker 1: that case, having your vision clouded is a good thing.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anything you know, the people who
Speaker 1: love me, I imagine see me in a way that
Speaker 1: favors me. They they, And there's there's psychological claims we
Speaker 1: can make at a level of perception to literally see
Speaker 1: me differently, And there's debate about that, but certainly, at
Speaker 1: some level it's an old psychological finding that we think
Speaker 1: the people we love look better than anybody else. Does
Speaker 1: they just look more attractive, because you know, Shakespeare would
Speaker 1: have would have told you this too, But it seems
Speaker 1: to have data for it. I'm not sure if it's
Speaker 1: a bad thing. Maybe it's not a bad thing, And
Speaker 1: in general I could see instances where it could be
Speaker 1: a bad thing. A topic I've really become interested in
Speaker 1: lately and I'm writing an article about right now is
Speaker 1: group of narcissism. There's an extent to which when we
Speaker 1: identify someone as you know, part of us, you know
Speaker 1: it could be in a love relationship, could be in
Speaker 1: terms of a club identity ideology. We're more likely to
Speaker 1: overlook moral transgressions in the other person that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: overlook with someone where we didn't feel that way towards them,
Speaker 1: So I could see that being a potential case of
Speaker 1: it not being so good. That's really interesting. I agree,
Speaker 1: I could imagine that. I can see that causing all
Speaker 1: sorts of damage, even for my closest friends. I don't
Speaker 1: think i'd want to overlook their moral transgressions. Overlooking implies
Speaker 1: a sort of stupidity and obliviousness to them. But I would,
Speaker 1: I imagine I would want to think of their moral
Speaker 1: transgressions differently than if they were strangers. I mean, really,
Speaker 1: if you don't, if you didn't, if you don't treat
Speaker 1: your friend or think of your friend differently than a stranger,
Speaker 1: what makes them a friend? Yeah? What even is a
Speaker 1: friend anymore? Exactly? That's a great question. It's a great question.
Speaker 1: I don't have a precise definition of a friend, and
Speaker 1: it seems to intuitively to me, it's you know, there's
Speaker 1: a there's an element there that seems key, which is
Speaker 1: are they there for you in times of need? Right?
Speaker 1: Are you there for them in times of needed? They're
Speaker 1: a part of a support system. Yeah, And all of
Speaker 1: that demands bias. If your friend is there for you
Speaker 1: when you need, when you need her, then that means
Speaker 1: she's not available for everyone else who's comes to her.
Speaker 1: You're on a top of her list, and this is
Speaker 1: really treats you like everybody else. And then maybe again
Speaker 1: it hits a sort of Buddhist ideal or a sort
Speaker 1: of rational compassion impartiality ideal, but you've lost a friendship.
Speaker 1: Super interesting, Yeah, because it adds further nuanced to your
Speaker 1: book Against Empathy. It almost begs for us an extra subtitle,
Speaker 1: you know, or no asterisk, you know, against empathy overall
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases. But look, don't take my
Speaker 1: book so seriously where you never have biased empathy towards
Speaker 1: someone else, because sometimes that can actually be some of
Speaker 1: the most beautiful experiences on earth well to that extent.
Speaker 1: So Against Empathy was always about moral choices, and I
Speaker 1: never doubted And here I guess I'm not very impartial
Speaker 1: and not very bodists. I've never doubted the importance of partiality.
Speaker 1: It's where I sort of in some way part company
Speaker 1: with the consequentialists, which utilitarians who say we should live
Speaker 1: our life, you know, as if all pleasure and old
Speaker 1: pain are of equal currency. But I don't think I
Speaker 1: think that that's I don't think you can have a
Speaker 1: moral code that asks people to do something they simply
Speaker 1: cannot do, and ignoring the ties of family and friendship
Speaker 1: is as mammals, as primates, as creatures of our culture
Speaker 1: and society, we cannot do that. It's asking too much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about it even I'm thinking of it
Speaker 1: at the group level, because you, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: make a great point in your book about how that
Speaker 1: can leave us strap, they can lead us astray and
Speaker 1: make us have hate for an out group when we say,
Speaker 1: you know, we have so much love for our in group,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a great point. But then we're
Speaker 1: kind of saying, there's another hand here, which is that
Speaker 1: you can have this beautiful empathy. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: lead to alkroup heat, you know, it can just lead
Speaker 1: to more intense and you know, love for for a friend,
Speaker 1: for a family member, for you know, for others that
Speaker 1: you identify as part of your part of yourself in
Speaker 1: some way or your identity. And there's a big difference
Speaker 1: in loving yourself more and hating others. Agreed, But but
Speaker 1: it's still in a sense zero sum, which is really
Speaker 1: I if well, if there's if I'm in if I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Suppose somebody says, it's not that I
Speaker 1: hate black people, I really don't. I just like white
Speaker 1: people more. There is a difference, that really is a difference.
Speaker 1: But still it means that this individual, in either case,
Speaker 1: when choosing between one group or another, would choose the
Speaker 1: group that they belong to. Fascinating is it is a
Speaker 1: zero sum? Is every bias in one direction? Zero sum?
Speaker 1: Is what I'd ask you. I don't think so, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. Well, it's not it's not zero s
Speaker 1: not like someone else loses in every case just because
Speaker 1: you're preferentially treating one particular making one decision. Suppose in
Speaker 1: your classes, you prefer to spend time with the male
Speaker 1: students than the female students just you feel more of
Speaker 1: an affinity or remind you of yourself and so on.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you see in this case that the female students
Speaker 1: lose something, even if you have no animus towards them.
Speaker 1: Look that that is a good point. But I'm saying,
Speaker 1: you know you're I'm saying I don't think this applies
Speaker 1: to all cases. So let me give you a case.
Speaker 1: What if so, it's not like when I choose the
Speaker 1: love of my life to marry. You know, I guess,
Speaker 1: in one sense, a narcissist sense, I can be like,
Speaker 1: all the ladies have lost you are you are depriving you,
Speaker 1: but they have but they have every That's not just
Speaker 1: a narcissistic point. That's actually a good point. You're saying that.
Speaker 1: It's not just a narcissistic, cheeky comedian kind of stand
Speaker 1: up routine. But you're saying, actually it is zero sum
Speaker 1: because all those ladies have lost out on the great
Speaker 1: Scott Berry Kaufman. No, I I accept your point. I
Speaker 1: accept your point, which is either if the resources are
Speaker 1: abundant like or they aren't in demand, you don't have
Speaker 1: to have a zero some situation suppose I love my
Speaker 1: son the best, I love everybody in the world, and
Speaker 1: i devote all my resources towards him, but I'm not
Speaker 1: in a position to help anybody else anyway, so nobody loses.
Speaker 1: It's just that in the real world often there is
Speaker 1: this trade off. Let me ask you about this art
Speaker 1: that the group narcissism seems fascinating you against group pride.
Speaker 1: Pride is sort of a gentler word in narcissism. I'm not.
Speaker 1: And I almost don't want to give too much of
Speaker 1: a spoilert to this article, which should be coming on
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic soon, because I wanted to make a
Speaker 1: big splash fair enough, but but but absolutely not. I
Speaker 1: I go through great pains to distinguish between healthy group love,
Speaker 1: healthy in group love versus collective narcissism, which I see
Speaker 1: is very unhealthy and even detrimental to the goals of
Speaker 1: the group itself, in the same way that an individual
Speaker 1: narcissist makes lots of decisions that are actually in the
Speaker 1: long run, detrimental to their own rational goals. In a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, is irrational a lot of the decisions
Speaker 1: they make in the name of greater ego protection. I
Speaker 1: so much want to pursue this, but I also respect
Speaker 1: your desire to pull off and make the make a
Speaker 1: splash of this. Well. Thank you. That's ex and suggests
Speaker 1: that a lot of people might be interested by this article.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to share it with you. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's going to cause a lot of interest. Yeah, I hope.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about imagination, the human imagination. This can
Speaker 1: kind of be our last topic today. I'm really interested
Speaker 1: in why we suffer in our imagination? What is the
Speaker 1: value of suffering in our imagination? And you you take
Speaker 1: this up in a way that is actually a continuation
Speaker 1: of discussions me and you had over a decade ago
Speaker 1: in your round table room in the in the round
Speaker 1: table room, I remember exactly where I was sitting. I
Speaker 1: remember exactly. I can picture it so vividly. May had
Speaker 1: you standing up there, pacing around being what's the value
Speaker 1: of horror? And do you remember our discussions about this?
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember in the room, I remember you
Speaker 1: being there. I forget exactly how that went back and forth.
Speaker 1: So remind me, Well, No, you just had these weekly
Speaker 1: laughetings that I was a part of, and and you
Speaker 1: and these were issues that were on your mind then,
Speaker 1: and when you were there just starting to wrestle with them,
Speaker 1: I was just sick. It's a while ago. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a long time ago, but but but I was
Speaker 1: equallys captivated then and fascinated by these questions as I
Speaker 1: am now. So it's it's so cool that there's still
Speaker 1: this continuity of interest in trying to figure out this puzzle.
Speaker 1: I've always been I've always been interested in these questions.
Speaker 1: I've always been interested in question of why are imaginations
Speaker 1: populated with such horrors, such such sadnesses, And you know
Speaker 1: we're done with horror movies and tragedies. But also, you
Speaker 1: know Dan Gilbert, who we talked about before as a
Speaker 1: lovely study of Matt Killingworth, which looks at what people
Speaker 1: daydream about, and people's day dreams are often sad. Other
Speaker 1: studies and what people dream about most most dreams aren't
Speaker 1: so good. They're slightly below the midpoint and everything. And
Speaker 1: so it's such a a rife topic. And I explore
Speaker 1: different explanations, some which would we touched upon before, about
Speaker 1: the rhythms of a story. One theory, which I think
Speaker 1: is deserves to be taken very seriously, is the idea
Speaker 1: that we're drawn towards negative things and imagination as a
Speaker 1: form of sort of perhaps an evolved propensity to deal
Speaker 1: with them, to prepare ourselves for them. You know, I
Speaker 1: can't help my mind wandering to the worst cases, because
Speaker 1: if I think about it, maybe I'm better prepared if
Speaker 1: they were to happen to me in real life. To
Speaker 1: go back to your example, it's fun to fantasize about
Speaker 1: winning a great prize or a great sum of money,
Speaker 1: but you don't to steal yourself. Well, we have to
Speaker 1: say thank you. It's just great. But to think about
Speaker 1: the world going to hell, which is a common theme
Speaker 1: in horror movies and zombie movies, it is something that
Speaker 1: we dwell on, and I think we dwell on it
Speaker 1: because it's useful to sort of think about it and prepare.
Speaker 1: It's a case for what we what we want to do,
Speaker 1: and what we want to think about isn't necessarily what's
Speaker 1: pleasant to do or pleasant to think about, for sure.
Speaker 1: How do you explain there's individual differences? You know, some
Speaker 1: people they have found certain personality traits are attracted more
Speaker 1: to horror than other personality traits. You know, people who
Speaker 1: are thrill seekers, for instance, love that they love haunted houses.
Speaker 1: They are personality traits that have to do with the
Speaker 1: hot house. Well, so the people who don't really don't
Speaker 1: like that stuff, do they suffer in their imagination in
Speaker 1: other ways? Or is there a general individual differences variable
Speaker 1: here of a propensity towards enjoying, suffering and imagination, and
Speaker 1: there others that don't enjoy suffering imagination as much just
Speaker 1: cares from the individual differences perspective? Is that a fair question.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair. I think that's a great question.
Speaker 1: I think one answer is the one you gave, which is,
Speaker 1: we do not that sensation seeking of a sort correlates
Speaker 1: with different forms of desire for imaginative suffering. And you
Speaker 1: know that there are age effects that if you're I
Speaker 1: think having to do with the fact that you don't
Speaker 1: want to take imagination too seriously, you have to reinsulate
Speaker 1: yourself against it. It's very pleasant for me reading, as
Speaker 1: you know, Stephen king novel about a small town with
Speaker 1: an axe murderer. But I don't want an axe murder
Speaker 1: in my own town. And if I can't keep them
Speaker 1: apart too much, I'll have trouble. But I'll answer your
Speaker 1: big question, which is as best I know. Nobody knows
Speaker 1: to answer to that question. I certainly don't. I don't
Speaker 1: know why some people like spicy foods and others don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know why some people like b DSM and
Speaker 1: others don't. I don't know why some people like tragedies
Speaker 1: and like to cry, Other's like sad songs, other like
Speaker 1: horror movies. There are not the sex differences you would expect.
Speaker 1: There are not. It's it's it's a puzzle. It's a
Speaker 1: puzzle in my experience. If I stand up in front
Speaker 1: of an audience and I say describe masochistic play measures
Speaker 1: and ask for a show of hands, does anybody have
Speaker 1: at least one of them? All the hands will go up,
Speaker 1: but it will be very different. There are some people
Speaker 1: that cannot bear to see a horror movie. There are
Speaker 1: other people who who love spicy foods. And it's just
Speaker 1: it's a mystery. And I know you've done a lot
Speaker 1: of great work on personality differences and how and how
Speaker 1: the traditional measures of personality predicting. What would do you
Speaker 1: have a prediction where we could look Oh, well, I
Speaker 1: think that the sensation is seeking to me is very
Speaker 1: very relevant here. And I also think that there people
Speaker 1: really do differ in their threshold for pain. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, you you just even discuss this in terms
Speaker 1: of self injuring. A lot of people self injure say
Speaker 1: they don't even really feel it too much, and there
Speaker 1: could be a lot of reasons for that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people would would feel it, you know,
Speaker 1: whereas they don't tend to feel it though you know,
Speaker 1: there's a difference. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean,
Speaker 1: And as you pointed out, there's there's a debate over
Speaker 1: whether people who injured themselves who don't feel it, whether
Speaker 1: that's they choose to injure themselves because they they are
Speaker 1: to people less likely they feel pain from it, or
Speaker 1: whether this is because of their engaging in a practice.
Speaker 1: One thing we do know, it used to be thought
Speaker 1: that a solution to the to why people like horror
Speaker 1: movies or disgusting movies is they just aren't as scared
Speaker 1: or disgusted. And it turns out it's not true. People
Speaker 1: who love scary movies are just as scared as people
Speaker 1: who hate them. They just enjoy the fear. They enjoy it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and enjoy And you know what does it mean
Speaker 1: to enjoy, Well, it's a certain degree. It means that
Speaker 1: they tolerate it. They can tolerate it more than others
Speaker 1: to a certain degree where they're able to fill in
Speaker 1: the blank, They're able to what is the pleasure part
Speaker 1: of it? They're able to overcome the struggle. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: the pleasure is in the the overcoming a child knowing
Speaker 1: that there's something that maybe other people couldn't even handle it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yet they can handle it. It could be the
Speaker 1: joy want to unpack that, Yeah, and it could be
Speaker 1: the joy of mastery. That could be part of it,
Speaker 1: but it can also be And in some way here
Speaker 1: I've been influenced by some emotion researchers, including Lisa Feldman Barrett,
Speaker 1: who I disagree with in other ways, but I think
Speaker 1: has a sophisticated take on emotions. We might have to
Speaker 1: give up the idea that fear is bad. So we
Speaker 1: tend to think fear is a verse of who wants
Speaker 1: to be afraid. But I think what's bad is the
Speaker 1: things that frighten us. If a rabid dog was chasing me,
Speaker 1: I'd be very frightened, and it's a bad experience. But
Speaker 1: the badness comes from the worry about being bitten by
Speaker 1: the dog, not the fear itself. If you could have
Speaker 1: the fear stripped of the danger, as in a horror
Speaker 1: movie or a haunted house or fantasy, that could be
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Same with absolutely absolutely not only
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. But I'll kind of end this
Speaker 1: interview today with your point about transcendence, you know, not
Speaker 1: just for hedonistic reasons, but for transcendent reasons as well.
Speaker 1: You know. You say in your book, you say, I'm
Speaker 1: the look you like, look, I'm the least spiritual person
Speaker 1: on earth. But but even I can you say this
Speaker 1: in your book you say this near we you say,
Speaker 1: but even I can say that. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: men's value to transcendent experiences. And as you point out
Speaker 1: in your book, a lot of these things are not
Speaker 1: only done for hedonistic reasons. But there, you know, we
Speaker 1: make sacrifices because there's this more like, all the feeling
Speaker 1: of all the feeling of wonder, the feeling of transcending
Speaker 1: ourself in some way that can carry on after our
Speaker 1: our mere mortality. Right is a beautiful reason sometimes in
Speaker 1: itself itself, even above and beyond the hedonistic reasons. That's nice,
Speaker 1: very nicely put. I think that is a good place stand. So, Paul,
Speaker 1: it is always such a delight chatting with you. I
Speaker 1: feel like I can always chat with you, like all
Speaker 1: day long. And this has been over a fifteen year
Speaker 1: intellectual love affair, to put it, intellectual love affair. I
Speaker 1: feel the same. And I hope this doesn't hope just
Speaker 1: makes it and it isn't cut out at the end
Speaker 1: of the when you people need to cut things out.
Speaker 1: But I really appreciate the care, very careful and very
Speaker 1: thoughtful read of my book and connecting with other works.
Speaker 1: It's unusual and you push me in places, and this
Speaker 1: has been really, really a delight. Thank you, Paul. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at thusycology
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Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.