WEBVTT - Wellness Check: Happiness expert Arthur Brooks on why we're all so desperately chasing down happiness 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:05.000 Hi everyone, I'm Katie Couric and this is next question. Today. 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:08.320 We're going to be exploring happiness because we seem to 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:10.040 be obsessed with that as a culture. 0:00:10.600 --> 0:00:11.520 Just look to hire ed. 0:00:11.640 --> 0:00:15.000 Some of the most elite universities tap courses on happiness, 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:18.119 the science of it, the value of it, the history 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:22.200 and future of it. There are podcasts about happiness, whole 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:26.120 genres of Ernest's TV shows built to temporarily evoke it. 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:29.800 I'm looking at you, Ted Lasso. Why are we all 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:33.760 so smitten with happiness? Is it because the world is burning, 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:38.160 because we're doom scrolling, because the Internet makes us want 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:41.520 what we can't have. Let's find out. My guest today 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:44.480 is none other than happiness expert and one of those 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:47.360 aforementioned happiness scholars, Arthur C. 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:47.960 Brooks. 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:52.320 Arthur also writes a regular column for The Atlantic on happiness, 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:55.960 and his most recent book is called From Strength to Strength, 0:00:56.320 --> 0:01:00.320 Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the second half 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:07.800 of Life. Here's our conversation, with all due respect, Arthur, what. 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:08.759 Makes telling me? 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:14.280 What makes you qualified? And what makes you an expert 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:15.080 on happiness? 0:01:15.440 --> 0:01:15.720 Yeah? 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:18.920 So, I am a PhD social scientist and I have 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:23.440 studied behavioral economics and social psychological principles my entire career. 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:27.400 I started off by studying beauty and why people admire things, 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:30.720 why people love and are attracted to beauty. Later, I 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:34.520 was studying philanthropy and charitable giving, why people voluntarily serve 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:37.479 other people, And I kept finding that in those two areas, 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:42.480 the tap root was happiness. The tap root was trying 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:44.440 to live a better life. And so I thought to 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:46.479 myself as I as I got to the middle part 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:48.800 of my career, you know, I'm going to study the 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:51.720 main thing, the main thing that everybody wants. You know, 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:54.400 I have the skills to look at these things. You know, 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.520 I'm trained and applied statistics and all of these things 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:00.280 that people suffer through and they're getting their PhDs. But 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:03.200 it's very easy to get kind of stuck, you know, 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:06.480 studying marginal things. And when I started talking about the 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:09.280 science of happiness, which there really is a huge science. 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:12.320 I'm really bringing in the neuroscience and the social science 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:15.600 and the philosophy of happiness and using my academic skills 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.360 to bring these things together. I found everybody wanted to 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:21.760 know more. And this is the magic part of it, Katie, 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:24.160 You know, we're all we all have skills, you know, 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:26.120 we've all worked hard to be good to what we're doing. 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:29.560 The real question for us in our careers is the why. 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:31.520 And I got to the point in my life when 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.440 I said, you know what, the why of my career 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:36.800 is to lift people up and bring them together. And 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:38.720 the way that I can do that is using my 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:43.360 knowledge and my skills to help them pursue their happiness. 0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:44.920 And so I decided I was going to do that 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:46.000 for the rest of my life. 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:49.440 Do you think happiness is the wrong word for what 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:53.320 we're all searching for? Because it can be so fleeting 0:02:53.400 --> 0:02:57.480 and so elusive, and I'm not sure if it is 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:02.240 even accurate in terms of what you talk about in 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:03.119 your book. 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.920 Right, Yeah, No, So that's actually that's the first issue 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:08.840 that I raise in my class. I teach a class 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:11.000 in the Science of Happiness at the Harvard Business School, 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:13.160 and I have one hundred and eighty students and about 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:14.880 four hundred on the waiting list. I mean, it's it's 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:18.120 a class that obviously, hey, kids, free candy. I mean 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:20.560 they I mean happiness is something that they think I want. 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:22.880 And one of the ways that I reasons I use 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:25.160 the word happiness is to bring people in, and then 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:28.480 when we're talking with more precision, we boil it down 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:30.320 a little bit more So on the first day of class, 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:33.480 I say, okay, you spent all your elective points to 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:35.560 get into the happiness class. You obviously must know what 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:37.280 it is. So what is it in a cold column, 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:39.080 which is you know? You go out and you say you, okay, 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:42.360 you know what's happiness? And they'll say, that's the feeling 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:45.120 I get when you know, I see my family on 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:47.320 Thanksgiving or something and they'll talk about their feelings. And 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:50.480 I say, now, that's not right. That's like saying that 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:53.720 your Thanksgiving dinner is the smell of the turkey. You 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:55.760 wouldn't say that. I mean that the smell of the 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.960 turkey is evidence of Thanksgiving dinner, and your feelings of 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.960 happiness are evident of something deeper, more profound or real 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:06.160 phenomenon that you can study and practice and share. And 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:08.440 then we start to develop the idea and the truth 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:12.200 is that happiness is really a combination of three things. 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:17.080 It's a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. Those are 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:19.640 the big three things that people are looking for. And 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:23.080 the truth is you need all kinds of experiences and emotions. 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.040 You even need unhappiness to get those things. You need 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:29.839 a full life, fully alive, And the science actually brings 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:32.200 out all those ideas. So you're right, we got to 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:35.280 get people's attention. But happiness is a much deeper phenomenon 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:37.479 than just hey, I feel happy. 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:44.080 I think of words like contentment, fulfillment, and inner piece. 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:47.640 Even as happneyed as that phrase is when I think 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:51.560 about what one's goal should be, right. 0:04:51.839 --> 0:04:53.839 So the way to think about that, so contentment is 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:57.240 really important. That's part of satisfaction with life. And so 0:04:57.279 --> 0:04:59.720 the key thing is that all the happiest people they 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:02.919 haven't and think about it kind of like the macronutrients. 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.559 You know, when you say dinner is protein, carbohydrates, and fat. 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:08.320 I mean, it's kind of a clinical way to look 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:10.400 at dinner. It's not very romantic, but you know it's like, 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:13.480 join me for dinner of protein, carbohydrates and fat. It's 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:15.040 not that great, But the truth is, if you want 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:17.400 to be healthy, you need all those three things in 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.920 balance and abundance. Happiness basically is a way that we 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:23.560 need to understand how to enjoy our lives. You know, 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:26.640 from moment to moment, and which is not pleasure. It's 0:05:26.800 --> 0:05:30.479 it's something much deeper, something much more human than than 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:32.599 than pleasure, and that there's a whole science behind that. 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:36.960 Satisfaction is is the piece that you get when you 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:39.599 you achieve something that you've really worked for. That's the 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:43.040 sense of contentment with your life because you've met your goals. 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:44.800 Now that can be a curse too. 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:48.120 Yeah, we'll talk about that later because I know I'm 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:49.200 dying to talk to you. 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:52.240 Satisfaction as a real killer, but it can be. But 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:54.760 then there's purpose and meaning and that's the that's really 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:56.920 the deepest of all. You know, what is my life 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:57.480 all about? 0:05:57.560 --> 0:05:58.000 You know? How? 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:01.640 What's the coherence? What's the the general direction of my life? 0:06:01.720 --> 0:06:04.400 Why am I alive? And that takes a whole lot 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:07.400 of work and a whole lot of suffering for people 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:10.080 to understand the answer to that question. And nobody wants 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:11.600 to suffer, and we don't need to look for it. 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:13.480 It will, in point of fact, find all of us. 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:16.799 And so those three things altogether, they encompass so many 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:19.520 things and so many skills. And that's what's my privilege 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:20.200 to write and teach. 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:21.360 But I'm curious. 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:26.680 What about our society today has made people have this 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:30.520 yearning to learn more, to do more. I think if 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:33.920 I told my parents when I was growing up, yeah, 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:36.640 you know, I want to be happy and what can 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:39.280 we do to be happy? I mean, it does sound 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:45.040 marginally or moderately, I guess self indulgent to say it 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:49.200 to our parents' generation. I think, but what is happening 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:54.160 right now in the culture where people need this and 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:56.520 they want it and they're yearning for it. 0:06:56.960 --> 0:06:57.279 Yeah. 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.320 A couple of different things have happened along the Waymber, 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:02.840 I was having a conversation with my dad. I changed careers. 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:05.080 I was a classical musician for a long time in 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:06.520 my late twenties. I knew I was going to have 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:08.640 to change careers and I told my dad I was 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:11.080 going to do it. He said, what, You're successful? Things 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:13.440 are going well, he said. He said, why do you 0:07:13.440 --> 0:07:15.160 want to do that? And I said, Dad, I'm not happy? 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:17.080 And he said, what makes you so special? 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:18.640 Yeah? 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:21.840 Yeah, right, totally, totally, Yeah, I get it. Well, A 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:22.880 couple of things have happened. 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:27.160 Number one is happiness as a science has really exploded. 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:29.920 And two generations ago, or even one generation ago, people 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.040 didn't realize that. They really thought it was a nice 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:35.640 to have, you know, good luck, live right, play by 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:37.640 the rules, try to get lucky, you know, when it 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:40.000 comes to happiness. And we actually know a lot more 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:42.640 than we did about that. In many ways, it follows 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:45.560 the advent of care for mental illness or for even 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:48.320 mood disorders, where you know, in nineteen fifty or even 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:50.760 nineteen sixty, people just had to suffer, and now we 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:53.120 know that there's a lot that you can do. The 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:56.000 happiness science is not trying to get you from behind 0:07:56.040 --> 0:07:59.720 the line of scrimmage to you know, functioning adequately. It's 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:01.960 going for you know, people who are functioning pretty well 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:05.640 to to be kind of fitness, you know, junkies. It's 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:07.480 sort of people who are in good health, but they 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:09.880 really want to work by going to the gym and 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:12.440 getting better at that. Another thing that my parents' generation 0:08:12.600 --> 0:08:16.239 thought was completely crazy. Here's the other problem. That's actually 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:20.160 why there's been such an explosion of interest. Happiness is declining. 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:24.040 We've seen actually happiness and decline since about nineteen ninety 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:26.040 and you know, you and I were you know, as 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:29.000 like young adults and these and you know, in those 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:32.120 days and I mean, that's pretty extraordinary that it would 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:35.719 be declining at a time when income is going up, 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:38.400 when standard of living is going up, literacy is going up, 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:41.439 child mortality is going down. Most indicators of what a 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:45.160 good life is are going in one direction, but happiness 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:46.560 is going in the other direction. 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:48.480 So you got to ask what's actually. 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:50.160 Going on and when people are I mean, you don't 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:52.240 study air unless you don't have enough of it, and 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.160 so that's a little of what's happening too. 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:55.760 I think, well, I thought. 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:58.760 That there were a lot of things that weren't going up. 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:02.960 You know, a lot of people younger generation don't feel 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:07.080 that they'll be as successful as their parents. They I think, 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:11.600 worry about climate change, They worry about sort of the economy, 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:16.160 there's so many They worry about democracy. So are these 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:18.760 things really as good as you say they are? 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:22.000 Well, part of the is the difference between things getting 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:24.480 better and what we're worried about, what we're worried about 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:26.240 the future. And the key thing that we all know 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:28.959 from our own lives is things can be pretty good, 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:31.800 but if you're in bad shape for your happiness, you're 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:33.960 going to be very worried about the future. And you're 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:36.720 only going to see the negative side of everything. So 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:38.280 this is a lot of what we see. Look, there 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:40.840 are concerns, there are all kinds of things that we 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:43.679 need to do differently to. We do need to work 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:46.680 on a democracy, we do need to work on all 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:49.400 sorts of social issues to make our world better. But 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.920 when people are very fired up, and quite frankly, there 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:54.320 are a lot of people that are our age that 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:57.000 are trying to conscript young people as kind of child 0:09:57.080 --> 0:09:59.360 soldiers into a culture war and kind of a baby 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:01.880 boom more culture or on right and left, let's make 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:04.720 everybody as afraid and angry as they can possibly be. 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:08.559 But they're willing to join up forces like that when 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:11.560 the happiness is too low. When people are in a 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:14.360 good place, they're less likely to say, look, I understand 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:17.480 those problems, but life is pretty good. And when they 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:20.280 say no, everything's rotten, you know we're all going to 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:22.520 be in trouble. You know, the truth is that young 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:26.080 people today they have as much opportunity and actually more 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:28.560 prosperity than people have ever had before. 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:30.520 But it's hard to see. 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:33.160 The good things when you don't actually feel the happiness 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:34.280 in life around you. 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:38.000 Well, let's talk about that. Why is happiness on the decline? 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:42.960 If in fact things are pretty good and the world 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:46.000 is humming along and things are as good as you 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:49.080 say they are, why has happiness declined. 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:52.200 It's not as if it's great for everybody. I mean, 0:10:52.240 --> 0:10:54.400 it's like, as they say, your results may vary in 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.240 almost anything, and so there's some people who truly are suffering, 0:10:57.240 --> 0:10:59.280 and so we don't want to make minimize that. 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:01.160 Even if things are going in the right direction in 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:02.359 terms of trends. 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:03.920 We don't you know, individuals might have been having a 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.400 hard time and there's still lots to do. So we 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:08.920 have to emphasize the fact that things aren't perfect and 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:11.400 we all have an opportunity to make things better. 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:12.400 So that's really good. 0:11:12.760 --> 0:11:15.720 But what happens is when things are on balance, pretty 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:18.720 prosperous and pretty free, but we don't see it. You 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.600 have to look to other kinds of forces, and what 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:23.840 we find is basically that we have a world that's 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:27.520 been kind of torqued towards these idols that a lot 0:11:27.520 --> 0:11:29.040 of young people are falling prey to. 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:29.439 Now. 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.720 One of the great blessings of people our age Ktie 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:35.200 is that there was no social media when we were young, 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:37.120 and that means that we didn't have the kind of 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:41.000 social comparison pressures, we didn't have the kind of materialistic pressures. 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:43.559 We didn't have a sense that everybody's life was great 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:45.240 and ours wasn't so good. 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:47.320 But that's a broader. 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:51.400 Case of people being induced toward these idols of money 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:56.680 and power and pleasure and the admiration of strangers. Whereas 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:58.880 the one of the great things that we find in 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:02.240 the science of happiness is there's really four big habits 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:05.640 that the happiest people have that are not consistent with 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.839 those idols, and those are faith or a life philosophy, 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:10.600 or something that gives you a sense of the why 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:13.120 of life. It doesn't have to be a traditional religious faith. 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:15.679 It has to be something that's bigger than you. Family 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:19.439 life and you decide what family life means. But these 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:21.559 are the ties that bind and don't break, and often 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:23.840 you don't choose, and God knows you wouldn't in many cases. 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:25.320 But there are the people who take the two am 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:29.400 phone call friendship as in real friends, not deal friends. 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:31.719 And last but not least, it's work where you can 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:36.640 serve others. And our society is pushing people away from faith, family, friends, 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:41.280 and work, and toward a kind of self worship around money, power, pleasure, 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:45.400 and fame. And those are just unhealthy things. And that's 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:48.120 really what explains a good deal of why it's so 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:51.200 hard to just find happiness on your own. 0:12:57.200 --> 0:13:00.719 You say, happy people love people and use things. Unhappy 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:04.960 people use people and love things. That's right, which is 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:08.920 basically their values and priorities are clearly not in the 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:09.600 right place. 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:13.560 Yes, that's a more concise way of saying. You know, 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:18.800 use people, love things, money, power, pleasure, and fame. Use things, 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:22.120 love people, faith, family, friends, and work. 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:22.600 The service. 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.040 Yeah, other than social media, what do you think has 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:31.600 caused a decline in happiness? Is it loneliness and isolation? 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:34.920 I know that you started writing during the pandemic, your 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:39.679 column for The Atlantic. You know what other factors are 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:42.720 contributing to a decline of happiness. 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:46.360 One is a big cultural phenomenon that's very interesting that 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:49.400 philosophers have been writing about for many centuries, which is 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:52.319 that you can get a culture of fear. Now, fear 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:55.480 and love are the opposite emotions. We often think that 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:58.200 hatred and love are opposites, but hatred is a function 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:00.400 of fear, and we find when we look at the 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:05.640 neuroscience of fear, it occupies it. It's the most prominent negative, 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:08.240 basic emotion produced by the limbic system of the brain. 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:10.960 Everybody's heard of the amygdala. It's the part of the 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.520 brain that actually the almond shape little things on either 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:15.840 side of your brain in the limbic system that they 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:20.600 stimulate a lot of stress hormones, fight or flight or freeze. 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:23.440 And what they do is they dominate all of the emotions. Well, 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:28.000 the opposite most basic positive emotion is love. Fear and 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:31.040 love are opposites. And you can have either polarity in 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:35.560 a company, or a family, or a whole country. And 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:37.840 we've been for quite a long time in a fear 0:14:37.920 --> 0:14:42.560 polarity in our policy, in our culture, and that's hugely problematic. 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.200 Look you and I, I mean, we're established, you know, 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:47.440 we have our families. There's a lot that we can 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.080 rely upon. But even people our age have been falling 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:51.880 prey to this. Young people, on the other hand, they're 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:54.480 quite vulnerable to the culture of fear and. 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:55.880 What foments it. 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:58.800 It's politicians that are you know, it's interesting, I'll tell 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:03.000 young people, you know, but you are an unwilling soldier. 0:15:03.240 --> 0:15:05.800 If you hate because somebody's trying to tell you that 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:08.640 you must hate and you must be afraid. You know 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:11.000 that person does not have your best interest at heart. 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:13.640 They're profiting You're not, as you know, I tell this 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:16.960 in every university campus that I go to. Don't be 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:20.720 a willing participant in the baby Boomer culture war with 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:25.320 canceling people you disagree with, you know, with actually weakening 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.320 the fundamentals of our democracy. What you're doing is you're 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:30.760 standing up for somebody else's values and you're falling prey 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:33.680 to this fear. So fear in our culture is one 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:36.840 of the biggest problems that we have, and it especially 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:37.720 affects young people. 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.040 Well, I would say that that cancel culture movement was 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:45.040 born on college campuses, not necessarily in the baby Boomer 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:51.200 generation where people who didn't agree with you basically were 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:54.440 I mean, where there's not a free and fair debate 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:59.000 on all these issues that you're marginalized, canceled, or whatever 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:03.000 you want to call it, you know, really ostracized if 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:05.920 you have a different point of view. So I'm not 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:08.800 sure I agree with this baby Boomer culture war that 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:09.600 you ascribe to. 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:12.240 Well, what I find is is, you know, sitting on 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:14.720 a college campus that it is largely it's a lot 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:18.480 of people my age that have been promoting these ideas 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:21.320 for a very long time. And you know, and in 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:24.760 creating the environment where the people who are canceling are 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:27.400 not the people who actually have been promoting these theories 0:16:27.440 --> 0:16:29.280 for a long time. I mean, these ideas took a 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:33.640 long time to take root. True, we go across generations 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:36.360 in this, and you know, cancel culture, which by the way, 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:39.720 it transcends campuses. You know, it's interesting if you're if 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:42.400 you're somebody with very progressive politics and you're sitting in 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:45.680 an evangelical church, for example, cancel culture is going to 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:47.400 come for you too. If you're you know, if you're 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:51.640 trying to get ahead in very populous Republican circles and 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:55.040 you have more moderate conservative viewpoints, you're going to find 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:55.960 cancel culture as well. 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:58.160 It's just really acute on college. 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.720 Campuses, and most ironic because this is supposed to be 0:17:00.800 --> 0:17:04.160 the marketplace of ideas. You know, we're all ide You're 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:06.720 not supposed to feel safe on a college campus intellectually. 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:08.640 You're supposed to be like, ah, I have heard something 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:10.560 I really disagree with and now I'm. 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:13.399 Going to engage. And that's it's especially. 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:16.480 Troublesome when on a college campus we will have this 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:19.720 particular campus culture. But it's the young people that can 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:21.440 actually solve this problem. 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:25.720 How do you fight against the forces of fear and hate? 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:29.240 Because I know that you write that happiness takes work, 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:33.439 right and discipline and focus. You can't expect it to 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:38.000 just happen. And so for us on a day to 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:41.280 day basis, how do we try to get out of 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:46.280 that kind of angry, enraged state that seems to be 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:48.760 part and parcel of our daily existence. 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:51.639 Yeah, it's such a great question. And here's the good news. 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:53.480 There's actually a way to do this that all of 0:17:53.520 --> 0:17:55.600 us can practice in our own lives, and we can 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:58.280 do it to you know, make manifest in our country 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:00.199 and or make our world a little bit better. You know, 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:03.879 there's a famous, you know, Bible verse that says perfect 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:07.280 love drives out fear. But that's an ancient idea. Five 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:09.920 hundred years before that was in you know, the New 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:13.439 Testament of the Bible. Lausu, you know, the founder of 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.600 Taoist philosophy, said exactly the same thing. And what they 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:18.880 were talking about is what we have learned as social 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:22.480 scientists and people in the world of neuroscience have found 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:25.800 that these are neutralizing factors on each other. That fear 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:29.119 will neutralize love, but love will neutralize fear as well. 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:31.800 We don't have to fight against fear. We simply need 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:32.600 to have more love. 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:35.440 All right, Give me an example, because this does sound 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:38.720 sort of woo woo to me, Arthur like, so, so 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:41.400 play this out in real time, in real life. 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:43.280 Yeah, So this is what I do when I go 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:44.240 on college campuses. 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:46.280 I say, look, do you want to do you want 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:49.600 to weaken the forces of fear in your life and 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:53.280 on your campus. You need to make friends with somebody 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:54.520 with whom you disagree. 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:56.240 You need to go on social media and. 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:59.760 Say five loving things where other people are expressing hate. 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:03.760 To go out of your way like a missionary, bringing 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.840 love on purpose, even when it's uncomfortable. And then I 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:08.960 take it up a notch, right, because one of the 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:11.720 things that you see in a fear based culture. Very interestingly, 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:14.280 people in their twenties today are a third less likely 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:16.760 to say they're in love than you and I did 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:18.480 when we were that when we were that age in 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:21.320 the nineteen eighties, So what's up with that? And the 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.320