Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. So
Speaker 1: today we have Nicholas Christachus on the podcast. Christoccus is
Speaker 1: a physician and sociologist who explores the ancient origins and
Speaker 1: modern implications of human nature. He directs the Human Nature
Speaker 1: Lab at Yale University, where he is the Sterling Professor
Speaker 1: of Social and Natural Science in the departments of Sociology, Medicine,
Speaker 1: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistics and Data Science, and Biomedical Engineering.
Speaker 1: He's also the co director of the u L Institute
Speaker 1: for Network Science, the co author of the book Connected,
Speaker 1: and most recently author of the book Blueprint, The Evolutionary
Speaker 1: Origins of a Good Society, which on its first week
Speaker 1: became a New York Times bestseller. Nicholas, so great to
Speaker 1: chat with you today. Thank you so much for having
Speaker 1: me Scott boy, you are involved in lots of departments
Speaker 1: that yeah, which department are you not part of? Is it? Like?
Speaker 1: What are you not part of? Over there? Well? I
Speaker 1: have you know, I H. I think one of the
Speaker 1: benefits of an academic life is the ability to explore
Speaker 1: lots of ideas and fields. You know. I think depth
Speaker 1: is important, but so is breadth. Typically people begin with depth,
Speaker 1: right they start their career, and they're very focused. They
Speaker 1: learn something in detail, they really try to master or
Speaker 1: discover new knowledge about something. But then I think ideally
Speaker 1: you put your head up and you start looking around
Speaker 1: and explore other fields, initially perhaps be adjacent to your own,
Speaker 1: and then further and further afield. And so in my
Speaker 1: own case, you know, as my career has an folded,
Speaker 1: I mean I always was interested in a variety of topics,
Speaker 1: but I have been progressively able to read more broadly
Speaker 1: and become interested more broadly. And because of the academic
Speaker 1: life allows us this, I've been able to pursue a
Speaker 1: number of fields. I think chemistry is probably next up
Speaker 1: on Oh that's interesting. Yeah, there's so many different levels
Speaker 1: of analysis to address the issue. Well, I think I
Speaker 1: can say, the good society. But yeah, what would you
Speaker 1: say is like the issue though for you, I don't
Speaker 1: want to put words in your mouth. Is that what's
Speaker 1: the common theme? Yeah? Well I think that. I mean,
Speaker 1: since you frame the opening question that way, I mean
Speaker 1: I I'll answer it in two ways. First of all,
Speaker 1: I will say that for too long, in my view,
Speaker 1: scientists have been overly interested in the dark side of
Speaker 1: human nature, you know, in our capacity for tribalism and
Speaker 1: selfishness and hatred and violence. But equally we are capable
Speaker 1: of love and friendship and cooperation and teaching and learning.
Speaker 1: And so I think one of the kind of bigger
Speaker 1: frames with respect to the intellectual scope of the book,
Speaker 1: as you asked, has to do with this desire to
Speaker 1: push back using a number of fields evolutionary biology and
Speaker 1: the social sciences, genetics and network science, to push back
Speaker 1: at this conception of human beings as being inveterately bad,
Speaker 1: because in fact, the benefits of a connected life must
Speaker 1: have outweighed the costs, or we wouldn't be living socially.
Speaker 1: If if I always came near you and you know
Speaker 1: you killed me, or were mendacious to me or brutal
Speaker 1: to me, I wouldn't approach you, and nobody would approach anyone.
Speaker 1: We'd live solitary lives. And the second big way, like
Speaker 1: the knowledge from all of these diverse fields, is relevant
Speaker 1: to the problem before us, which is, you know, how
Speaker 1: and why do we live socially? Is the following you know.
Speaker 1: I think there's been a lot of interest lately, especially
Speaker 1: because of Stephen Pinker's work on the social effects of
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment. So there's no doubt that in the last
Speaker 1: two hundred years, given the developments, the philosophical ors and
Speaker 1: scientific discoveries associated with the Enlightenment, that human beings are
Speaker 1: living vastly better lives. That we are safer, we're less murderous,
Speaker 1: we live longer, we have better health, have better wealth
Speaker 1: in every possible regard. But I don't think we need
Speaker 1: to look solely at historical forces to understand the origins
Speaker 1: of a good life. I think actually, deeper, more powerful,
Speaker 1: more ancient forces are at work as well, evolutionary forces
Speaker 1: that have shaped shaped our evolution shaped us as an animal,
Speaker 1: shaped our capacity for living socially, and in fact equipped
Speaker 1: us with all of these qualities to be good to
Speaker 1: make good society societies that are on balance further our interests.
Speaker 1: So this breadth of fields I think is required if
Speaker 1: one is to understand a problem of this kind, ranging,
Speaker 1: as I just said, from history to evolutionary biology. And
Speaker 1: so that's why I think the way in which this
Speaker 1: diversity of the fields, perspectives and interests can be useful,
Speaker 1: and in fact, I hope is captured by the book Wonderful.
Speaker 1: What broad were the goals you have there set out
Speaker 1: for yourself, But you also have a sort of I
Speaker 1: see this ravenous curiosity aspect of use not just the
Speaker 1: caring about making a side a better place, but it
Speaker 1: seems like you really want to triangulate as much sources
Speaker 1: of information to try to get the truth as possible.
Speaker 1: Is that fair? Yeah, I mean I think that is fair.
Speaker 1: I think the truth is difficult to see. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the one thing we should stipulate from being
Speaker 1: I think the truth is knowable. I think it's out there.
Speaker 1: I think there's an objective reality. I recognize that science
Speaker 1: is imperfect human activity, you know, prone to failures, but
Speaker 1: I think it's a falsehood. It's a nonsense to believe
Speaker 1: that there is no out there out there. But it's
Speaker 1: hard to see. And I think what you see depends
Speaker 1: on where you stand. Well, I mean, I think the
Speaker 1: more places you stand, the more perspectives you have on
Speaker 1: what it is that you're trying to see, the more
Speaker 1: likely you are to see it, the more likely already
Speaker 1: see it correctly. I think it's quite dangerous to stand
Speaker 1: in one perspective. You may not appreciate what's going on.
Speaker 1: In fact, if we even use a metaphor from physics
Speaker 1: of inertial frames, you know, you if you're standing in
Speaker 1: a train and you juggling balls, your whole world is
Speaker 1: this train and moving train, and the whole world is
Speaker 1: these balls that are juggling, and you just think they're
Speaker 1: moving at a certain velocity through space, But actually an
Speaker 1: observer outside the train, in a different inertial frame, sees
Speaker 1: that the balls actually have a completely different kind of
Speaker 1: motion than you think. So you know, what you see,
Speaker 1: of course depends on where you stand. But I think
Speaker 1: additional perspectives, as we said, you know, shed more light
Speaker 1: on the truth. Yeah, for sure. So your book is
Speaker 1: simultaneously wlantly realistic about human nature while optimistic about human nature.
Speaker 1: So I like that, by the way, I like that,
Speaker 1: And then that you don't always you always kind of
Speaker 1: maybe see one or the other. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: like combine two statements from your book. So the very
Speaker 1: interesting question you pose, which I tweet it out because
Speaker 1: I thought it was such an interesting question, can you
Speaker 1: love your own group without hating everyone else? And then
Speaker 1: here's another question you asked you posed in your book
Speaker 1: how can crowds be a force for good? And I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you could just kind of riff on
Speaker 1: the integration of those two questions. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: we evolved this capacity for tribalism or in group bias
Speaker 1: or hamathhai. These are slightly different concepts, but they're all similar.
Speaker 1: They're the idea that you know, we prefer the company
Speaker 1: of people we resemble, or we think more highly of
Speaker 1: the company of people we resemble. Resemble defined in whatever
Speaker 1: way it needn't be you know, superficial characteristics. It could
Speaker 1: be your religion or your language, or where you're from,
Speaker 1: or what kind of food you like, or all kinds
Speaker 1: of traits that people. You know, there are these famous
Speaker 1: experiments that but it done with toddlers that I discussed
Speaker 1: in the book. You randomly assign toddlers t shirts of
Speaker 1: a different color, and all of a sudden, the blue
Speaker 1: T shirt wearing kids think the red T shirt wearing
Speaker 1: kids are less deserving of toys and are you know,
Speaker 1: morally deficient just from this minimal group manipulation of the
Speaker 1: trivial assignment of different T shirt colors. So it's very
Speaker 1: easy to elicit this us versus them inclination and human beings,
Speaker 1: and it is, as I discuss, this, in group bias
Speaker 1: is a part of our human nature. It's unavoidable. There
Speaker 1: are arguments that I discussed in the book, and I
Speaker 1: don't think the science has settled on the evolutionary function
Speaker 1: of this predilection. So some people think that, and I
Speaker 1: think it's probably true that the evolution of cooperation required
Speaker 1: the evolution of in group bias. And so in order
Speaker 1: to have kindliness within you need to have you needed
Speaker 1: to have war likeliness without. That is to say, in
Speaker 1: order for me to be able to selectively cooperate with
Speaker 1: individuals and get the benefits of cooperation, I need it
Speaker 1: to be able to define my group. And therefore, in
Speaker 1: my group we cooperate with each other, whereas between groups
Speaker 1: we have animosity or we don't call great with each other.
Speaker 1: First point. The second point, however, is that the you know,
Speaker 1: sort of indifference to other groups is distinct from hatred
Speaker 1: of other groups. So it's still unclear. You know, you
Speaker 1: could have a preference for your own group and neutral
Speaker 1: feelings to other groups. So the origins of this sort
Speaker 1: of animosity. You know, there's a big difference between thinking
Speaker 1: ill of other groups and sending them to gas chambers.
Speaker 1: And you know, so we still don't idea, I think,
Speaker 1: have a full accounting of the origins of that kind
Speaker 1: of hatred, although we can know it's historical impact. We
Speaker 1: know that malicious leaders can whip groups into a frenzy.
Speaker 1: They can, as I talk about in the book, they
Speaker 1: can exploit this innate tendency in people and manipulate it
Speaker 1: so that they actually develop hatred of other people. So
Speaker 1: the first I think my answer to you is that
Speaker 1: in group tribalism and in group bias are an inherent
Speaker 1: part of our human nature. But I don't see a
Speaker 1: necessary reason for us to hate other people. And furthermore,
Speaker 1: natural selection has equipped us with two other abilities to
Speaker 1: efface the impact of tribalism, and so one of the
Speaker 1: challenges in living socially is the ability to get along
Speaker 1: with other people and to derive benefits from being near
Speaker 1: other people. And so we shouldn't be surprised to find
Speaker 1: that we have several tools that make it easier for us.
Speaker 1: For example, one of the arguments I make in the
Speaker 1: book is that the capacity for friendship to have a
Speaker 1: special attachment to particular individuals is also connected with the
Speaker 1: evolution of cooperation. So rather than cooperating blithely with every
Speaker 1: other human, the population has what is known as structure.
Speaker 1: So we're not all jostling around like in a herd
Speaker 1: of cattle, each of us cooperating with everyone else. No,
Speaker 1: each of us has our own unique friends. Everyone has
Speaker 1: some friends, and each of us is cooperating with those friends,
Speaker 1: and it kind of congeals the whole population into this
Speaker 1: cooperative matrix because we've added this structure. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of experimental and mathematical evidence that the addition of
Speaker 1: network structure to a population facilitates the emergence of cooperation.
Speaker 1: So it's not just that the definition of us versus
Speaker 1: them facilitates cooperation. Network structure can do it too. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: and now I'll get to the answer. If you think
Speaker 1: about populations as having like some large population composed of individuals.
Speaker 1: So at the top you have this like large population
Speaker 1: at the bottomy of the individuals, and in between you
Speaker 1: have groups within the population. If you find the groupingess problematic,
Speaker 1: as I do, there are a couple of other tools
Speaker 1: that evolution has equipped us with to cope with this.
Speaker 1: So one solution is to go up a level to
Speaker 1: the level of the large group. Because we can define
Speaker 1: the boundaries ourselves. They're not God given, they're not innate.
Speaker 1: We can expand those boundaries and come to think about
Speaker 1: being members of the entire group. And if you think
Speaker 1: about our history in the United States, you know, there
Speaker 1: was a kind of idea about the America and project
Speaker 1: that anybody could be an American. And you know, to
Speaker 1: talk Phil talks about us being a nation of Joiners.
Speaker 1: You can self define as an American. We all have,
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of eplur of us. You know,
Speaker 1: we're all united, and so you can exploit this tendency
Speaker 1: for us to be affiliated with groups and define the
Speaker 1: group up so that you, let's say you're defined on
Speaker 1: the level of nationality rather than the level of constituent
Speaker 1: group or and or you could go down a level
Speaker 1: to the level of individuals. Because one of the other
Speaker 1: things that's really unusual about oursist a species, is that
Speaker 1: we have this capacity to express and recognize individual identity.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the paradoxes of social life is
Speaker 1: that we have to be able to express individuality in
Speaker 1: order to live socially. So we do that with our faces.
Speaker 1: Each of our faces is unique. It's actually evolutionarily costly.
Speaker 1: It's a luxury that we all have unique faces. It
Speaker 1: needn't have been that way. We all could have had
Speaker 1: the same face. Why do we not all have the
Speaker 1: same face? We all have different look in faces. And
Speaker 1: you can recognize your friends from the appearance of their faces,
Speaker 1: but you cannot recognize your friends from the appearance of
Speaker 1: their hands. And in fact, hands look more similar to
Speaker 1: each other pars. You know, each person's hands are more
Speaker 1: similar to each other than each person's faces. Speak for yourself, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So the capacity to express and recognize individual identity is
Speaker 1: evolutionarily costly. There's a lot of brain power that's going
Speaker 1: into that, and this is not a coincidence, and it
Speaker 1: is related to the essential the necessity of cooperation and
Speaker 1: living socially, you need to be able to distinguish one
Speaker 1: person another, who is my offspring and who's not my offspring,
Speaker 1: Who is nice to me, who is not nice to me,
Speaker 1: Who is my friend, who is my enemy? And so
Speaker 1: the argument here is that we can go down a
Speaker 1: level from tribalism and start seeing people as individuals, and
Speaker 1: evolution has equipped us with this capacity to recognize that
Speaker 1: we're all individuals. Go down a level. And this is
Speaker 1: in essence Martin lue King's argument that everyone should be
Speaker 1: judged by the content of their character, not the color
Speaker 1: of their skin. So even in the American tradition we
Speaker 1: see we have both of these traditions, these still philosophical
Speaker 1: political traditions in our society, I would argue, which are
Speaker 1: built on these ancient, primitive evolutionary foundations, and which give
Speaker 1: us tools to combat to tribalism, which you know, I
Speaker 1: see as a depressing feature, undue tribalism, which I see
Speaker 1: as a tribalism that involves hatred of other groups. I'm
Speaker 1: not so worried about tribalism that, you know, say, I
Speaker 1: like my group, but I'm neutral to other groups anyway.
Speaker 1: So that's my answer to that question. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's a good answer, but it's where I'm thinking
Speaker 1: right now. Thank you. It's a very thought provoking answer,
Speaker 1: for sure, and you know it's got me thinking about
Speaker 1: lots of different things. So one of the fields I
Speaker 1: work with in this positive psychology, and like the positi
Speaker 1: psychologists in me like almost wants to reframe your question
Speaker 1: to like, because like the whole point of positology is
Speaker 1: like negative five to zero is not the same as
Speaker 1: zero to twenty, like flourishing. So can you love your
Speaker 1: own group and well other groups? Like that's my question too,
Speaker 1: It's like not just going to neutral. Do you think
Speaker 1: love or positive regard as zero sum? You think we're
Speaker 1: limited in our capacity to think highly of other people?
Speaker 1: That move? Absolutely not. So what I'm making a distinction
Speaker 1: here is something that I'm starting to distinguish in my
Speaker 1: work between the need for belonging and connection and the
Speaker 1: need for universal love. And you know, we can have
Speaker 1: like universal love without even like liking people, you know, Yes,
Speaker 1: So such a distinction. Well, thank you, I'm so glad
Speaker 1: you think. So it's possible they're different feelings. I think
Speaker 1: it's possible. I love you feel we use the same
Speaker 1: word love, but perhaps we shouldn't. So I think that
Speaker 1: you're kind of love for one's love for humanity, for
Speaker 1: which I think there's a word. It's escaping me right now.
Speaker 1: The Greeks, you know, philanthropy, let's say that might be
Speaker 1: a good word to use. So philanthropy in the strict
Speaker 1: Greek meaning of the word. You know, love of human
Speaker 1: beings might be rather different than love of an individual.
Speaker 1: So even if it's the same word love, they might
Speaker 1: two different feelings or experiences or phenomena there that you're distinguishing.
Speaker 1: That's right. And how can we, you know, have great
Speaker 1: admiration and pride for our in group while truly respecting
Speaker 1: that other people are equally admire their own in group
Speaker 1: as well, Like you know, have the society where like
Speaker 1: we kind of treat groups as sacred and recognize that
Speaker 1: our group is not necessarily the most sacred group. But
Speaker 1: you know, like we can still have that advertise. That's
Speaker 1: very combustible, of course, right, you know, every one of
Speaker 1: the things I find solf interesting about you know, the
Speaker 1: work of the anthropologists in the twentieth century is that
Speaker 1: they spanned out around the world, as you know, of course,
Speaker 1: as part of the colonial project, and they encountered, you know,
Speaker 1: peoples all over the world and traditional you know, forager
Speaker 1: populations for example, or agropastoralists, and in most of those cases,
Speaker 1: the people's word for their own people was the people.
Speaker 1: In other words, you know, in this language, what do
Speaker 1: you call your own group? Oh, we're the people? So everyone,
Speaker 1: you know, every group thinks are the right. So so
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're right that that philosophical stance
Speaker 1: would be entirely benign. You know, I worry that that
Speaker 1: would in fact lead rather quickly to well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: we can't both be you know, the people. One of
Speaker 1: us has to be on top. It might perhaps too optimistic,
Speaker 1: because I share your optimism. I'm just saying I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that's the way to achieve it. You're saying, you're saying,
Speaker 1: why don't we just try to frame the problem as
Speaker 1: one of our group is sacred, but we recognize that
Speaker 1: other groups can be sacred. That's an extra step, that's
Speaker 1: I think that's an extra demand compared to the idea
Speaker 1: we were discussing earlier, which is why can't we just
Speaker 1: have people say my group is terrific and I have
Speaker 1: neutral feelings of quality. Yeah, because you're asking that. Not
Speaker 1: only you don't just want me to think my group
Speaker 1: is terrific. You want me to think my group is sacred. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: you want me to grant that other groups also think
Speaker 1: there's sick. I mean, maybe they can do that. I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm a little nervous about your proposal is a
Speaker 1: fair enough? You know, sometimes I can think very utopia
Speaker 1: you know about things well, you know, you know, with
Speaker 1: hindred spirit, are utopianism as a kindred? Oh? Yes, And
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss our white triad scores later, which
Speaker 1: are some similar levels. I've been really interested in narcissism,
Speaker 1: but you know, I started off really interested in individual narcisism,
Speaker 1: but now I'm really interested in collective group narcissism. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it might be relevant to this discussion.
Speaker 1: So the same principles that operate by like individual ar like.
Speaker 1: The distinction between having a secure self esteem versus a
Speaker 1: narcissistic self esteem is the difference between just merely feeling
Speaker 1: like you're worthy, like self worth versus I am better
Speaker 1: than others. Like you can have a great, stable sense
Speaker 1: of self worth without feeling like you're better than others.
Speaker 1: But recently research psychologists had created this construct called collective narcissism,
Speaker 1: where you elevate your group as superior to other groups.
Speaker 1: And I've just been trying to think, like, well, applying
Speaker 1: the same principles, like isn't like stable secure self esteem
Speaker 1: groups possible, Like it doesn't have to be like collective
Speaker 1: narcissism doesn't have to exist. There are people with stable
Speaker 1: self esteem who report much greater levels of happiness in
Speaker 1: life and life satisfaction and meaning and purpose. It seems
Speaker 1: to me like there's a healthier way forward with groups
Speaker 1: where you maybe it's exactly what you're saying, like we
Speaker 1: have this you know, great pride in our group, which
Speaker 1: is great, but we don't need to rely on others
Speaker 1: for validation of that greatness, Like we don't have to
Speaker 1: constantly be telling others that were great, Like we can
Speaker 1: actually have this stable sense of pride within. So I
Speaker 1: just wanted to just riff on this a little bit. Well,
Speaker 1: I it's a new idea to me, it doesn't or
Speaker 1: new framing of this idea to me, it doesn't striken
Speaker 1: it's crazy. I think I think that there are many
Speaker 1: emotions which we customarily or temperaments which we customarily think
Speaker 1: of as being individually based. That's white, could have collective analogs.
Speaker 1: So for example, we're accustomed to thinking about this in
Speaker 1: the terms of happiness for instance, or you know, so
Speaker 1: you can have a group can be happy and not
Speaker 1: just an individual, or or fear. You know, a group
Speaker 1: a individual can be afraid, or a group can be
Speaker 1: panicking or rioting for example, with anger or whatever. So
Speaker 1: I think a quality like narcissism, I absolutely do think
Speaker 1: you could have a kind of collective narcissism that you're
Speaker 1: discussing now. Whether that well, I was going to say,
Speaker 1: whether that gives us additional purchase on the topic before us,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I actually would My bias would
Speaker 1: be yes, let's approach it from that point of view
Speaker 1: and give it and give it some thought. Thank you
Speaker 1: for entertaining it at least. Yeah. No, I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: what what can we learn about this kind of collective
Speaker 1: you know, the secure kind of sense of confidence versus
Speaker 1: the kind of deficient kind of narcissistic sense. What can
Speaker 1: we use from our understanding of these principles as has
Speaker 1: been developed in the case of individuals to understand the
Speaker 1: functioning of groups. I think that's an interesting idea. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you. Should I summarize your argument correctly? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: absolutely so, thank you. So many interesting intersections between psychology
Speaker 1: and the work you're doing, you know, like all the
Speaker 1: stuff psychologist do. You may a chance intersected with Molly
Speaker 1: Crockett over there at you Yeah, I know Molly. I
Speaker 1: think very highly of her. I've only met her a
Speaker 1: few times. Her lab is across the street from mine.
Speaker 1: Of course, Dan Gilbert is a very close personal friend.
Speaker 1: I've known him for a very long time. Steve Pinker
Speaker 1: and you know, and a whole bunch of as Paul Bloom,
Speaker 1: I mean, I hang out with a psychologists. Well maybe
Speaker 1: you'll add Scott Berry Kaufman to the list today, Yes,
Speaker 1: incited to do that. Yeah. Actually, Molly Crockett's psychology podcast
Speaker 1: episode is dropping today, Yeah, and yours will drop next week.
Speaker 1: So I thought that'd be a nicely pair parent. Yes.
Speaker 1: So you're talking in your book about the social Suite
Speaker 1: of Features of Humanity, and I was wondering if you
Speaker 1: could mention some of the members of the social suite
Speaker 1: and why you think that it's important to think this way, well,
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, the part of human nature that
Speaker 1: interests me is that part that we express inter individually.
Speaker 1: So there are of course many parts of human nature.
Speaker 1: This includes, for instance, your propensity to fear or wander lust.
Speaker 1: Your intelligence is a part of human nature curiosity. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are lots of qualities which are instinctive or natural,
Speaker 1: which are instantiated within individuals. But the part that I'm
Speaker 1: interested in is the part that we express between ourselves
Speaker 1: inter individually, and that are relevant to our ability to
Speaker 1: live together. So which qualities, what qualities has natural selection
Speaker 1: equipped us with to be able to live socially in
Speaker 1: the way that we do. Incidentally, these same qualities I
Speaker 1: argue in the book are found in other animals, such
Speaker 1: as elephants and whales and certain other primates, which have
Speaker 1: by convergent evolution and independently also evolved similar qualities, for example,
Speaker 1: capacity for friendship or pair bonding or cooperation and so forth,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a moment. So this convergent
Speaker 1: evolution of these qualities in other animal species, other social mammals,
Speaker 1: further vindicates my confidence that these qualities are crucial parts
Speaker 1: of living socially. And so the list of these qualities
Speaker 1: includes the capacity for individual identity, which we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about already. That paradoxically, in order to live socially,
Speaker 1: we have to have individuality. Love. When you think of
Speaker 1: the human virtues, when you think of our virtues, they
Speaker 1: are social virtues. We don't care whether you love yourself
Speaker 1: or are kind to yourself, or are just to yourself.
Speaker 1: We care whether you love others or are kind to others,
Speaker 1: are just to others. And so our virtues are social
Speaker 1: virtues primarily. So love is the second part of the
Speaker 1: social suite. You know, the fact that we love our
Speaker 1: mates is unusual in the animal kingdom, and it's something
Speaker 1: that's expressed into individually. Then I discussed friendship. I include
Speaker 1: friendship in this. Our capacity for friendship, again unusual in
Speaker 1: the animal kingdom. We form long term, non repri productive
Speaker 1: unions to conspecifics. Why do we do that? Other animals
Speaker 1: don't do that? We do. Elephants do it, certain whale species,
Speaker 1: certain primate species. That it's rare that we do this.
Speaker 1: So individual identity, love, friendship, social networks. Because of our
Speaker 1: capacity to form friendships, we form ourselves into networks, something
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about it for a very long time, obviously,
Speaker 1: and these networks have very particular mathematical properties which actually
Speaker 1: confer advantages on groups in ways we can discuss if
Speaker 1: you're interested. And then continuing the list, we have what
Speaker 1: I would call a sort of a cooperation I don't
Speaker 1: call everyone calls cooperation. Cooperation our tendency to cooperate with
Speaker 1: each other. And this creates multiplicative benefits for the individuals
Speaker 1: participating in cooperative exchanges and is the clinic core of
Speaker 1: how groups are together in group bias. This thing we've
Speaker 1: already discussed a little, This tendency to prefer and think
Speaker 1: more highly of your own group what I call mild hierarchy.
Speaker 1: So our groups are structured I think innately to manifest
Speaker 1: mild hierarchy. And here I rely on work by many primatologists,
Speaker 1: and including some of fascinating experimental work by Jessica Flack
Speaker 1: and her colleagues manipulating primate hierarchy and exploring what happens
Speaker 1: when you eliminate hierarchy in these groups. And then I
Speaker 1: have a whole argument in the book relying on natural
Speaker 1: experiments with shipwrecks and so forth that looks at the
Speaker 1: role of hierarchy, and finally, our capacity for social learning
Speaker 1: and teaching. We don't just learn. I mean many organisms learn,
Speaker 1: you know, worms can learn. A little fish in the
Speaker 1: ocean can learn that if it swims towards the light,
Speaker 1: it finds food. We learn socially, which is extremely efficient.
Speaker 1: So you can learn by putting your hand in the
Speaker 1: fire and pulling it out that the fire burns you.
Speaker 1: Or I can watch you put your hand in the
Speaker 1: fire and I learn almost as much but pay none
Speaker 1: of the cost. That's very efficient. But we don't just
Speaker 1: learn socially. We actually affirmatively teach each other, and that
Speaker 1: also is very rare in the animal kingdom, animals that
Speaker 1: affirmatively set out to teach each other stuff. That capacity,
Speaker 1: of course, lies at the root of our capacity for culture.
Speaker 1: That's the foundation for our ability to be a cultural
Speaker 1: animal and therefore to express, in fact, to have a
Speaker 1: manifested a kind of social conquest of the earth. I think,
Speaker 1: other than ants or something, we are the species with
Speaker 1: the widest ecological range, and we do this not because
Speaker 1: of changes in our body, but because of our capacity
Speaker 1: for culture. You know, we can make parkas and live
Speaker 1: in the Arctic and make canoes and live in the equator.
Speaker 1: And so this capacity we have to transmit knowledge across
Speaker 1: space and time, you know, to learn over generations and
Speaker 1: preserve that knowledge is the last part of the social suite,
Speaker 1: this teaching function. So those are the eight elements of
Speaker 1: the social suite, and that I think are essential for
Speaker 1: essential parts of our nature that have shape by natural
Speaker 1: selection and that make it possible for us to live
Speaker 1: socially the way we do. Cool. Thank you. I liked
Speaker 1: how you put that all together into like one cohesive list.
Speaker 1: That was helpful for me, So thank you. Well, so
Speaker 1: you talk about intentional versus intentional communities, can you please
Speaker 1: distinguish between those and maybe give an example of each. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that part of the book begins with a
Speaker 1: sequence of explorations of what's been called the forbidden experiment.
Speaker 1: So if you know, in the mind of a deranged
Speaker 1: scientist such as you and me, you know, the actual
Speaker 1: experiment would be to you know, take take a group
Speaker 1: of babies and abandon them on an island, you know,
Speaker 1: a cultural babies and abandon them on island, and somehow
Speaker 1: they would grow up, you know, without parenting let's say
Speaker 1: then we would ask, well, what kind of society would
Speaker 1: they make for themselves? You know, just like you might ask,
Speaker 1: you know, what kind of body are you innately pre
Speaker 1: wired to make? You know, you're born with certain genetic
Speaker 1: predispositions to diabetes, towards a certain height, towards whatever. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the environment is very important. You know, if I starve
Speaker 1: you and you're a child, you won't be as tall,
Speaker 1: and you'll have other risk for diabetes and so forth
Speaker 1: altered risk for diabetes. So the environment is crucial. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's some sense in which your body is
Speaker 1: programmed to be a certain kind of body based on
Speaker 1: the genes that you were born with. Well, the same
Speaker 1: argument might be, I do make is with respect to societies.
Speaker 1: You know what kind of society is innately part of
Speaker 1: our human nature. So the experiment that I would love
Speaker 1: to do is to you know, love to do so
Speaker 1: to speak is to you know, take a group of
Speaker 1: people and abandon them on an Now, obviously you can't
Speaker 1: do that. It's but a monarchs of the reality TV show. Yes,
Speaker 1: And in fact, I talk about some of those examples
Speaker 1: of you know, survivor type situations that and you know,
Speaker 1: this has been called the forbidden experiment because we're not
Speaker 1: the first people to think about it. Herodotus talks about
Speaker 1: an Egyptian pharaoh that was wondering what was the kind
Speaker 1: of language we were innately pre wired, you know, was
Speaker 1: Egyptian the language we just had to speak? And so
Speaker 1: he contried the experiment of taking some babies and as
Speaker 1: signing them to the care of a mute shepherd up
Speaker 1: in the mountains, to just see what kind of language
Speaker 1: would these babies speak when they grew up. And you know,
Speaker 1: multiple monarchs have tried this, are said to have tried
Speaker 1: this over the centuries. But obviously it's a cruel and
Speaker 1: brutal and unethical experiment. It's the forbidden experiment. So the
Speaker 1: experiment is forbidden to us. So what can we do instead?
Speaker 1: So well, what I did is I look systematic, systematically broadly,
Speaker 1: and then I chose selectively examples that are in the
Speaker 1: book of different kinds of circumstances in which we were
Speaker 1: trying to see if you throw a bunch of people
Speaker 1: together and they're left to their druthers, what kind of
Speaker 1: social order do they make. So the second chapter of
Speaker 1: the book begins with shipwrecks. Unintentional communities groups of people
Speaker 1: who have been stranded on an island, are in a
Speaker 1: coast and are tasked with making some social order. And
Speaker 1: between fifteen hundred and nineteen hundred I was able to
Speaker 1: find twenty cases which at least nineteen people had been
Speaker 1: stranded for at least two months unintentionally. You know, they
Speaker 1: didn't set out to do this. They were thrown on
Speaker 1: this island. And then I got all the records I
Speaker 1: could about them, and the archaeological excavations of the rec sites,
Speaker 1: and try to make some inferences about what kind of
Speaker 1: social order did they make? And then the next chapter
Speaker 1: considers intentional communities. You know, people who like set out deliberately,
Speaker 1: maybe like we were talking about earlier, you know, our
Speaker 1: utopian inklings. They set out, you know, to set up communes,
Speaker 1: you know, utopian communes. And people have been doing this
Speaker 1: since at least Roman times, you know, have been saying
Speaker 1: this society is screwed up. You know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go make my own society. And I look at those examples.
Speaker 1: I look at the Pitcairn mutiny on the Bounty and
Speaker 1: the Pitcairn pitcare and settlement. I look at colonies or
Speaker 1: groups of scientists who have self isolated on the South Pole.
Speaker 1: You know who, you know, they have to live together
Speaker 1: for ten months. You know, what kind of social order
Speaker 1: do they make? What kind of networks do those scientists make?
Speaker 1: Some of those pictures are in the book. I look
Speaker 1: at Kubutz's I look at a variety of examples of that.
Speaker 1: And then in the fourth chapter I talk about artificial societies,
Speaker 1: And here I use some of our own work, looking
Speaker 1: at online communities, for example virtual you know, like Second
Speaker 1: Life and World of Warcraft, stuff like that, but also
Speaker 1: some experiments we've been doing in my laboratory over the
Speaker 1: last ten years, in which we've written this software that
Speaker 1: allows us to create temporary artificial societies of real people.
Speaker 1: Over twenty thousand research subjects have come through our lab,
Speaker 1: have been dropped into this little world and various worlds,
Speaker 1: and we've experimented with you know what happens when you
Speaker 1: put people in an unequal society versus an equal one.
Speaker 1: We give them real money, and some people are made
Speaker 1: rich and poor, and we vary the Gini coefficient and
Speaker 1: so forth. And after I'm looking at all of this,
Speaker 1: the argument that I make is that actually the variation
Speaker 1: is extremely small. The kind of social order that we
Speaker 1: make occupy is a tiny fraction of the parameter space.
Speaker 1: You know, Like if you imagine parameterizing this space of
Speaker 1: all kinds of social order, you might get you think
Speaker 1: that actually people have many different ways of living, but
Speaker 1: they do not, in fact have many different ways of
Speaker 1: living socially. So the question is how and why did
Speaker 1: that come to pass? So culture is not infinitely valuable,
Speaker 1: is that what you're saying? To one degree, some elements are,
Speaker 1: you know, for example adornment patterns of adornment, but some
Speaker 1: elements are not. So every culture we go to we
Speaker 1: find love and friendship, and I look at the cross
Speaker 1: cultural evidence for these things, and cooperation for instance, to
Speaker 1: differing degrees within a certain range, and so on. Every
Speaker 1: culture we go to we find teaching and learning. So
Speaker 1: these are why these items belong, I think in the
Speaker 1: social street. When we go to every culture, we find
Speaker 1: the capacity for religion everywhere, But of course we don't
Speaker 1: find the same religion everywhere. So that's how I try
Speaker 1: to get at, you know, the underlying core features. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: this idea about you know, is there a universal human
Speaker 1: culture is another topic that anthropologists have been thinking about
Speaker 1: for at least a century, and I review some of
Speaker 1: that in the book as well. And there is a
Speaker 1: kind of a sense in which if you could itemize,
Speaker 1: like we mentioned adornment, so you can talk about all
Speaker 1: the patterns of adornment and all the patterns of subsistence,
Speaker 1: and all the patterns of political organization, and all the
Speaker 1: patterns of you know, magical thinking. And you make a
Speaker 1: long list of religion, and you know, do you have
Speaker 1: many gods or a poltheistic or monotheistic? And you array
Speaker 1: all of these traits and you and look at all
Speaker 1: the combinations of these traits. There are more combinations than
Speaker 1: there are stars in the universe, truly, and yet when
Speaker 1: you anthropologists fan out across the globe, they don't find
Speaker 1: every possible combination. You only find a small subset of
Speaker 1: the combinations. And once again, I think this is for
Speaker 1: evolutionary reasons. That's fascinating. I was really happy that you
Speaker 1: brought into the artificial communities discussion a discussion of the
Speaker 1: time machine, because that was like my favorite book growing
Speaker 1: up as a kid, and I used to write different.
Speaker 1: I used to be in a cretive writing as a kid,
Speaker 1: and I used to write different alterations of that in
Speaker 1: different universes of that. So how like that social arrangement, Like,
Speaker 1: do you think that's like a fair representation of like
Speaker 1: how human nature would react? Like is that actually like
Speaker 1: I know it's science fiction, but well, I mean I
Speaker 1: used I look at science fiction as well as a
Speaker 1: source of ideas for different types of social arrangements. And
Speaker 1: there's a sort of I actually had. I had written
Speaker 1: a whole chapter on that, and that got cut down
Speaker 1: to a few pages. The book was this book was
Speaker 1: like twice as long as it is now originally if
Speaker 1: you can believe it, I do believe it. Trusts me
Speaker 1: writing a book. Yeah, yeah, it's really hard to get
Speaker 1: it shorter. And it's you know, it's it's one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty or one hundred and twenty five thousand words
Speaker 1: and it was originally like two hundred thousand words and
Speaker 1: my editor just you know, had a conniption. God bless her, Tracy.
Speaker 1: I would have written, as my editor is, Tracy Bhard.
Speaker 1: But as Mark Twain said, right, I would have written
Speaker 1: shorter book, but I didn't have the time. I think
Speaker 1: he said I would have written a shorter letter, but
Speaker 1: I didn't have the time. But anyway, so it's hard
Speaker 1: to get things down. So anyway, I had a long,
Speaker 1: long section on science fiction, which I love science fiction,
Speaker 1: and usually usually the one of the very common tropes
Speaker 1: in science fiction is that, you know, when they're trying
Speaker 1: to make a creepy social arrangement, they have us live
Speaker 1: socially like insects, right, So that's considered to be really
Speaker 1: creepy and no mammal lives, you know, And part of
Speaker 1: the reason, of course, is all the use social Insects
Speaker 1: are clones, so we have a different challenge of living
Speaker 1: socially because we're all genetically different, whereas you know, the
Speaker 1: termites and the wasps and the bees and the ants,
Speaker 1: they're clones, so that is different. Anyway, So I look
Speaker 1: at science fiction, I look at a time machine, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, extraordinary levels of hierarchy in that society, and yeah,
Speaker 1: too much, right that we have mild hierarchy we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier. So anyhow, well, it'd be amazing to
Speaker 1: see if humans last that long, as I don't think
Speaker 1: that's in our future. No, I think you want us
Speaker 1: to be cannibalizing each other. You want to no, no, know.
Speaker 1: What I was saying is like, you know, I forget
Speaker 1: the date that he went in the future, but humans
Speaker 1: still in years? Yeah, I'm saying, will Homo sapience still
Speaker 1: be there in a hundred That's all I'm saying. I
Speaker 1: think if we're not, if we don't nuke ourselves, or
Speaker 1: we don't we don't have a kind of machine intelligence,
Speaker 1: it's possible. Of course, this is total speculation. It's possible
Speaker 1: that a million years from now the world will be
Speaker 1: populated by sentient machines and we will either be dead
Speaker 1: or enslaved, and and those machines will think about us
Speaker 1: the way we think about you know, single cell organisms,
Speaker 1: as being a kind of transitional phase in the distant
Speaker 1: past before we now have this sort of ascendant species
Speaker 1: on the planet. And those machines will think of us as,
Speaker 1: you know, as sort of the necessary transitional step before
Speaker 1: we get to the higher are you know, more perfect
Speaker 1: kind of arrangement. Well, I would hope that the machines
Speaker 1: would have, you know, teach in their history classes in
Speaker 1: high school the fact that we're the ones that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we created them, yes we did, and but
Speaker 1: then but then you know, now they're there, and you know,
Speaker 1: like if chimpanzees could speak or think, good point, they
Speaker 1: might say, you know, our ancestors gave rise to these humans.
Speaker 1: Isn't that terrific? It's such a good point. Do you
Speaker 1: think that the chimpanzees would that are in our cages
Speaker 1: or whose habitat we are destroying, would be so grateful
Speaker 1: for having, you know, given rise to us. No, so, now,
Speaker 1: of course there's more volition in them. I mean, these
Speaker 1: are very speculative ideas. But if those don't happen, if
Speaker 1: we don't have nukes, we don't kill ourselves this way
Speaker 1: or some other way globally, and if we don't give
Speaker 1: rise to these machines, I think that our species will
Speaker 1: continue to evolve, but we will be about as different
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand years from now from us now as
Speaker 1: we are now from one hundred thousand years ago. Homo
Speaker 1: sapien sapiens. And that's the prediction I'm going to make.
Speaker 1: And anyone who proves me wrong can come back and
Speaker 1: let me go. Well, you know, maybe in our lifetime
Speaker 1: zone will create a time machine. Who knows exactly doubt
Speaker 1: that it's unlikely. Thought of a good segue to what
Speaker 1: you were just talking about, because you do, you know,
Speaker 1: just to be a bit more hopeful about how we
Speaker 1: treat other primates. You do have a whole section your
Speaker 1: book on primate friendships I thought was very touching. I
Speaker 1: thought maybe you could talk about elephant friendships a little bit.
Speaker 1: One of the I mean, the book looks at length
Speaker 1: at social order in other social mammals, and one of
Speaker 1: the sort of the meta arguments that I try to
Speaker 1: make in the book is that is that if we
Speaker 1: can share the capacity for friendship with elephants, we can
Speaker 1: share it with each other. In fact, the paradoxically, the
Speaker 1: more similar we are to these other animals, the greater
Speaker 1: and deeper our understanding of our own common humanity can be.
Speaker 1: You know, we are all human beings, and we share
Speaker 1: these deep and fundamental qualities all of us with each other.
Speaker 1: And the proof of that is actually the fact that,
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, if we're similar to elephants,
Speaker 1: we must be similar to each other. And these elephants,
Speaker 1: you know, which have been beautifully studied by Cynthia Moss
Speaker 1: and Joyce Poole, two of the leading ethologists of elephants,
Speaker 1: whose work who I really admire also Sherman de Silva,
Speaker 1: who's a young ethologist, a young elephant expert who I
Speaker 1: hope to collaborate with, who's done some amazing work with
Speaker 1: the elephants in Sri Lanka. You know, these elephants. Sort
Speaker 1: of studying or looking at elephants can give us paradoxically
Speaker 1: insights into ourselves. So the book has had a long
Speaker 1: exploration of elephant society, of chimpanzee society, of orca and
Speaker 1: dolphin society. I have a great admiration for the ethologists
Speaker 1: that study cetaceans. I mean, I think I have problems
Speaker 1: with data collection. Imagine if your research has to take place,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're study of the social organization that
Speaker 1: has to take place, you know, like you would have
Speaker 1: to work, you know, in the cold and underwater to
Speaker 1: observe your subjects Now, ethologists who study Wales like Hal
Speaker 1: Whitehead or David Lusseau, whose work I also greatly admire,
Speaker 1: who mapped the networks of these animals and study their
Speaker 1: communication patterns and so forth. You know, do that anyway.
Speaker 1: So the point though is is that it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: look at at these animals and how they interact with
Speaker 1: each other. But furthermore, it's also interesting that our relationships
Speaker 1: to social animals is rather different than our relationships to
Speaker 1: non social animals, and so there's a there's there's an
Speaker 1: interesting history of examples of human animal friendships, typically between
Speaker 1: humans and animals that themselves live socially or at least
Speaker 1: in groups. So a lot of the creatures that we befriend.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's an Jane Goodall's relationship with David Graybeard,
Speaker 1: the first chimpanzee that befriended her, and she speaks of
Speaker 1: him as our friend, or our relationships with even with
Speaker 1: our pets, you know, dogs and horses for example, are
Speaker 1: herd animals now cats as usual as a special exception,
Speaker 1: you know. But anyway, I don't want to push it
Speaker 1: too far, but the point is that we we have
Speaker 1: a capacity for friendship that we even sometimes apply across
Speaker 1: species to our pets. Yeah, and it's a very it's
Speaker 1: a very good point. And really it's nice to kind
Speaker 1: of like shift our perspective. Zoom out. You know, we
Speaker 1: can use you zoom in in your book, and you
Speaker 1: also zoom out is constant. I feel like you're constantly
Speaker 1: going back and forth. You know, it's really cool. So
Speaker 1: let's zoom. Let's loom out again to humans and our
Speaker 1: natural and social laws. You know, you make the argument,
Speaker 1: well a lot of people made this argument, but you
Speaker 1: emphasize that our evolution has shaped not just our bodies
Speaker 1: and minds, but also our societies. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think about like how we've how we've designed our society,
Speaker 1: and how we justify various aspects of our manifestation. I
Speaker 1: should say, justify various manifestations of our human nature. You know,
Speaker 1: one question you ask the world is how is God
Speaker 1: to be justified in the face of all the evil
Speaker 1: in the world? World? You know, how do you answer that?
Speaker 1: How do you answer that question? Well, I'm not a theologian,
Speaker 1: but I refer I make use to some of these
Speaker 1: struggles that the theologians have had. So that's what is
Speaker 1: known as the problem of theodicy. How has God to
Speaker 1: be vindicated or justified in the face of the manifest
Speaker 1: evil and suffering in the world. And I'm not a panegloss, right,
Speaker 1: I'm not a Pollyanna, you know, thinking this is the
Speaker 1: best of all possible worlds. And you know, because I'm
Speaker 1: fully aware that every century is replete with horrors. You know,
Speaker 1: we've had the Inquisition, and we've had pagrums, and we've
Speaker 1: had the Holocaust, and we've had you know, horrible leaders,
Speaker 1: and we've had Paul Pott and you know, and and
Speaker 1: and the Rwanda genocide. And I mean, it's just awful.
Speaker 1: We are also awful, we humans. We're awful to each other.
Speaker 1: We are vile and full of hatred and propensity to
Speaker 1: violence and everything else. So I'm well aware of all
Speaker 1: of this. So in theology, this is seen as a
Speaker 1: problem of theodicy. How can a beneficent god or omniscient
Speaker 1: or omnipotent god possibly permits such suffering or evil? And
Speaker 1: the theologians struggle with this. It's a kind of branch
Speaker 1: of theology. But I see Blueprint as a work of socioticy.
Speaker 1: It's a vindication of our way of being social despite
Speaker 1: all the failings of our living socially, How are we
Speaker 1: to come to understand the good in human society despite
Speaker 1: the bad? And another analogy might be by reference to
Speaker 1: this Japanese philosophy and esthetic known as wabi sabi, which
Speaker 1: is to see this aesthetic. You know, in Western aesthetics,
Speaker 1: we might value symmetry and perfection. But there's a branch
Speaker 1: of Japanese aesthetics that sees imperfection is very beautiful. So
Speaker 1: that a pot that has a little crack in it,
Speaker 1: or a bent tree, for example, or especially natural phenomena,
Speaker 1: or you know, a cobblestone streak, that's beautiful because it's imperfect. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a kind of beauty to a cobblestone street. So
Speaker 1: that's the argument I would make about society. I think
Speaker 1: I think society is beautiful and full of beautiful things
Speaker 1: like love and cooperation and friendship and teaching, despite its imperfections.
Speaker 1: In fact, in some ways maybe those things are even
Speaker 1: more beautiful or more perfect given are imperfections. So I
Speaker 1: see this as a work of sociotsy. It's a vindication
Speaker 1: of our confidence in the good of society despite its failings.
Speaker 1: It's very hopeful. Yeah, you believe in humanity, and that's
Speaker 1: why you scored high on my late Triad scale, where
Speaker 1: one of the fastest is literally faith in humanity. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, my mother was a She was originally trained
Speaker 1: as a physical chemist. She died when I was twenty
Speaker 1: five and I was forty seven, And I tell some
Speaker 1: stories about her in the book here and there, and
Speaker 1: she went back to school in the nineteen seventies. She
Speaker 1: got her was working on her PhD in physical chemistry
Speaker 1: at Yale in the sixties, and she went back to
Speaker 1: school to Howard University in Washington, d c. To get
Speaker 1: a PhD in clinical psychology in the seventies. So while
Speaker 1: she was training before she died, she would use us
Speaker 1: children as guinea pigs. So I took the Thematic apperception test,
Speaker 1: I took the MMBI, I took all the risk intelligence tests,
Speaker 1: I the ror shark test. I had every damn test
Speaker 1: administered to me during my preteen years that you can imagine.
Speaker 1: And I acquired from that a kind of healthy respect
Speaker 1: and amusement for an amusement by these tests. So when
Speaker 1: you said would you like to take my test, I'm like, yes,
Speaker 1: I would love to take your test. And so I did.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't know what it means exactly,
Speaker 1: but you know I was happy to do it. It It
Speaker 1: just confirms the sort of spirit that underlies your book. OK, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know this not a hypocrit. No, you're not a hypocrite.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get your thoughts about something because I
Speaker 1: wanted to circle back. I feel like I left something
Speaker 1: unsaid and I wanted to bring it up and get
Speaker 1: your thoughts, you know, because I can tend to be,
Speaker 1: you know, have this sort of very hopeful spirit, and
Speaker 1: then you know, I'll talk to someone who's like, you know,
Speaker 1: really really suffering right now, like maybe maybe they are
Speaker 1: part like a part of like an oppress group or
Speaker 1: like a group that like it might be rightly so
Speaker 1: to actually hate the app particular out group. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I don't
Speaker 1: believe in in collective justice. That's what the Nazis did.
Speaker 1: You know, one member of a Cretan village would kill,
Speaker 1: would kill, you know, a Nazi, and then the Nazis
Speaker 1: would come in and wipe out the village as kind
Speaker 1: of collective punishment. If you if you believe in collective justice,
Speaker 1: you are not doing justice, right. So I don't think
Speaker 1: that that you can blame one person for the sins
Speaker 1: of another. I mean, that's not justice. It's something else.
Speaker 1: It might be public policy. You know, we might want
Speaker 1: to do that anyway, but I don't think that is
Speaker 1: a kind of justice. I mean, we think one of
Speaker 1: your children if another child, uh, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think any children should be spank I'm using physiness hypothetical.
Speaker 1: You know, we customarily think of punishment redounding to the
Speaker 1: individuals who committed the delect. You know, we don't punish
Speaker 1: one person for the actions of another. So I have
Speaker 1: like this viseral hatred for like Nazis for instance, you know,
Speaker 1: and so would you say a better would you make
Speaker 1: the case that I should get rid of that hate
Speaker 1: for that out that particular out group, or like you know,
Speaker 1: like white supremacists, like don't instill in me a great
Speaker 1: feeling of love? Are you saying I should have more
Speaker 1: like I should? What do you think I should do? Well?
Speaker 1: So all, there's a distinction between words and deeds. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying you need to like these people
Speaker 1: or respect them, even you can avoid them, ignore them,
Speaker 1: and so forth. I think that when you do something,
Speaker 1: you know, when you touch another person in some way,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, hit them or kill them for example,
Speaker 1: we have well understood procedures that are philosophically grounded and
Speaker 1: evolutionarily shaped for punishment. So I think you could hold
Speaker 1: people responsible for their beliefs you know, you can say
Speaker 1: you have a for example, think about the people who
Speaker 1: are posted to vaccination, think about the anti vaxxers. You know,
Speaker 1: we can say you have a set of beliefs which
Speaker 1: are dangerous to yourself and to others, and you know,
Speaker 1: let's try to talk to you to persuade you to
Speaker 1: change your mind about your beliefs. So I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you're prohibited from having disliking people who or even hateful feelings. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think it's okay. I don't think it's healthy. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's necessary to have those hateful feelings. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at one of my favorite examples,
Speaker 1: there was the study by neuroscientists at MIT about ten
Speaker 1: years ago, I should look it up again, in which
Speaker 1: they did MRI scans of Buddhist monks and they showed
Speaker 1: that certain parts of the brain I can't remember which
Speaker 1: parts right now were hyper developed and there were certain
Speaker 1: brain patterns. Maybe they did EG studies, I don't remember
Speaker 1: right now what they did exactly, But the just was
Speaker 1: that the brains of these monks were different than you
Speaker 1: and me. But that wasn't what was interesting to me.
Speaker 1: What was interesting to me is. They interviewed the monks.
Speaker 1: They interviewed the monks, and one of the monks told
Speaker 1: the following story, which I still remember now. I read
Speaker 1: this ten or twenty years ago, whenever it was, and
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about it ever since. So they talk
Speaker 1: about how does this monk do this? And the monk said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm constantly renarrating the world around me. And
Speaker 1: he said, for example, let's say you're driving in traffic
Speaker 1: and a person cuts in front of you. Now, you
Speaker 1: and I might say that person's an asshole, right, But
Speaker 1: what the monk does is the monk says, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe that person his wife is in the car and
Speaker 1: she's delivering a baby, and he's racing to the hospital
Speaker 1: to get the baby to the hospital, and he said,
Speaker 1: it wonderful that the new life is about to be
Speaker 1: brought into the planet, and totally renarrates the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And he's not doing it for the sake of that person.
Speaker 1: He's doing it for himself, for his own experience of
Speaker 1: the world. Now, I think it does also when you
Speaker 1: do that, it does create positive externalities. I think you're
Speaker 1: more likely to be able to reach a better world.
Speaker 1: And again, I'm not naive. I'm not saying we shouldn't
Speaker 1: crush the Nazis, right, I mean, I'm not saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, people who who wish to you know, who
Speaker 1: set out to kill us, we must defend ourselves. But
Speaker 1: I am saying that, you know, I think we need
Speaker 1: to judge people. I don't think we do ourselves any
Speaker 1: favors by forming group level hatreds. You know, now there
Speaker 1: are I don't want to be. You know, if you
Speaker 1: want to form individual level dislikes, that's fine, and if
Speaker 1: you want to form group level dislikes, that's okay. It
Speaker 1: might not be great for you or our society. But
Speaker 1: if you want to form group level hatreds, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's good for you, and I don't think that's
Speaker 1: good for our society. So thanks for offering that perspective.
Speaker 1: I'm really truly trying to wrap my head around all
Speaker 1: the implications of what you just said, and thank you
Speaker 1: for stimulating my brain. I just want to just think
Speaker 1: this through. So there's great power in the collective more
Speaker 1: so than just the individual. Like, let's say that there's
Speaker 1: like a real social inequality that a particular group like
Speaker 1: you know, is like we really want to address this
Speaker 1: because people who are like us, you know, like like
Speaker 1: racism maybe one example. So couldn't one make the argument that,
Speaker 1: like there is power in the collective of people coming
Speaker 1: together to fight systemic racism, Like would that be an
Speaker 1: exact like what would you say to that? I'm just curious.
Speaker 1: I think that's great. I mean, I think and I
Speaker 1: talk about civil rights movement in the in the book,
Speaker 1: and I talk about how the in fact our capacity
Speaker 1: for collective action, which is ingrained in us, can be
Speaker 1: harnessed as a force for both good and evil. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, and create You can create witch hunts and
Speaker 1: you know, in mobs by groupiness, or you can create
Speaker 1: you know, a positive change in society. You know, groups
Speaker 1: are very powerful. And our capacity to form these groups
Speaker 1: and to suspend our individuality, which is also an interesting trait,
Speaker 1: you know, as you probably use you well, now, I'm
Speaker 1: sure we can deindividuate when we're in groups, right, we
Speaker 1: can lose ourselves in the group and surrender our own
Speaker 1: agency to the will of the group. And that's how
Speaker 1: mobs form, and riots and panics and all kinds of
Speaker 1: other well understood a well known I won't say they're
Speaker 1: totally well understood phenomena. So absolutely groups can be a
Speaker 1: force for good. But you know, we can also get
Speaker 1: genocide from groups, right, we get the Hutus and the
Speaker 1: Tutsis manas occurring each other. So so the question is
Speaker 1: how to harness those powers effectively? And you know, I
Speaker 1: think that, I think that, I don't. I mean, my
Speaker 1: book is not a work of politics, Like I don't
Speaker 1: go into specifically how that might be done, but I
Speaker 1: do certainly explore the undercurrents for how that might be now.
Speaker 1: And the question of racism in our society, I think
Speaker 1: racism has been present. It's again a manifestation of in
Speaker 1: group bias. It's been present in every single society and
Speaker 1: every single group since time immemorial. And it's really depressing.
Speaker 1: It sucks, it sucks, And we're not the only society.
Speaker 1: In fact, if anything, we are one of the best
Speaker 1: societies in addressing issues of racism. We have a you know,
Speaker 1: we have our own distinctive history of course with slavery,
Speaker 1: and but you know there's been slavery again since time immemorial.
Speaker 1: Have enslaved other groups, you know, in every continent in
Speaker 1: every century. So and we slave other animals, other primates. Well,
Speaker 1: that's another question. I know I can stick with humans,
Speaker 1: you know, which is very important. But so I think
Speaker 1: the challenges are real. I think we need to work
Speaker 1: together to address them. I think there we are equipped
Speaker 1: with equalities that we can use to make political changes
Speaker 1: in our society. And I would highlight our capacity for
Speaker 1: recognizing our common humanity. I think to the extent that
Speaker 1: we can see that we are all human beings, that
Speaker 1: we have this shared humanity, it provides us a very
Speaker 1: powerful lever for positive social change and for and actually
Speaker 1: for improvements in our society. I'm right there with you
Speaker 1: on this idea of common humanity. I think that your
Speaker 1: book does lays out that case really persuasively, and it's
Speaker 1: an important message in this day and age. You know.
Speaker 1: I also am a big fan of loving kindness like
Speaker 1: Buddhist meditation, and I try to practice it even on
Speaker 1: my enemies. So I think that's kind of one of
Speaker 1: the points you're trying to make there, of just recognizing
Speaker 1: the common humanity even if I want to, you know it,
Speaker 1: like I don't have to like accept bullying, you know,
Speaker 1: like I don't have to just you know, I can
Speaker 1: still loving kindness for the person and also try to
Speaker 1: make healthy changes so that I am not being hurt
Speaker 1: and you can incarcrate them if they hurt you. Right,
Speaker 1: not they say mean things to you, but if they
Speaker 1: hurt you, yes, I think that's well understood kind of.
Speaker 1: I hope that we make that clear. Yes. So I
Speaker 1: want to end today on two quotes of yours from
Speaker 1: your book that I think kind of sum up a
Speaker 1: lot of what we talked about today. Quote, we are
Speaker 1: primed for conflict and hatred, but also for love, friendship,
Speaker 1: and cooperation. If anything, modern societies are just a patina
Speaker 1: of civilization on top of this evolutionary bootprint. And then
Speaker 1: you say we should be humble in the face of
Speaker 1: temptations to engineer society in opposition to our instincts. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: we do not need to exercise any such authority in
Speaker 1: order to have a good life. The arc of our
Speaker 1: evolutionary history is alw but it bends towards goodness. So
Speaker 1: thank you for shining spotlight on the human potential for goodness.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. I had a
Speaker 1: really good time talking to you. Me too, Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to the Psychology podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 1: at thus Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast
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