Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. A production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios has to works. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're going to be looking
Speaker 1: at a subject that that I started thinking about in
Speaker 1: terms of a broader question, and the question is this,
Speaker 1: are there unexplored frontiers in understanding what human emotions are?
Speaker 1: When you think about human emotions, that that is something
Speaker 1: that's studied by psychology and sometimes by neuroscience. But it
Speaker 1: seems like territory where we just assume we've got all
Speaker 1: the basics down right. We know what all we know happy, sad,
Speaker 1: we know contempt, we know disgust. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: broad range of basic emotions, and we just think it's
Speaker 1: intuitive that, yeah, we we've got names for all of them,
Speaker 1: we understand basically what they are, we've felt them before.
Speaker 1: But there is of course something that we all know
Speaker 1: that that there is a a feeling understanding gap that
Speaker 1: we can feel things without necessarily understanding what they are
Speaker 1: or why we're feeling them. It's why we're sometimes like
Speaker 1: surprised by our own emotions, Like when you discover without
Speaker 1: realizing it, that you've been falling in love with someone,
Speaker 1: or you discover without realizing it that someone actually really
Speaker 1: gets on your nerves and you know it's finally all
Speaker 1: coming into focus, or you know, all kinds of feelings
Speaker 1: like that that you can feel for a long time
Speaker 1: before you have any kind of cognitive awareness or ability
Speaker 1: to describe or put a name to it. And it
Speaker 1: makes you wonder if there are whole emotional states that
Speaker 1: we go through. We feel them, but we don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have a language for them, or or an understanding of
Speaker 1: their relationship to external stimuli and the symptoms they produce
Speaker 1: in the body and the mind. Yeah, there's a great
Speaker 1: deal of complexity to this because on one hand, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just the awareness of self being able to enter
Speaker 1: at least into moments of awareness, moments of self awareness.
Speaker 1: And then there's of course this idea of being aware
Speaker 1: of your awareness and how that changes your ability to
Speaker 1: self reflect and you know, varying degrees of awareness as well.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, I was I was thinking a
Speaker 1: little bit on this, and I feel like, to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, it's kind of like transparent anatomical overlays that
Speaker 1: you'll find in like an anatomy book, you know, where
Speaker 1: like the base is the skeleton, and then you have
Speaker 1: like a transparent overlay that then puts um I don't know,
Speaker 1: the circulatory system, and then you you know, add other
Speaker 1: systems or muscular layers on top of that. You're getting
Speaker 1: very tool album art on me, right, right, I know
Speaker 1: your mind. Obviously this has also been a explored in
Speaker 1: in tool album art as well, yes, by the excellence
Speaker 1: of the excellent visionary artist Alex Gray, of course. But
Speaker 1: there is actually something pretty interesting about that art, which
Speaker 1: is that it layers real anatomical strata of things you
Speaker 1: would see like muscles and blood, vessels, nerves and all that,
Speaker 1: with other things that are non physical. They're you know,
Speaker 1: abstracted layers on sort of concepts of the soul on
Speaker 1: top of the body and another transparent overlay, right. And
Speaker 1: so I can't help but think about that in terms
Speaker 1: of feelings, language, and awareness, because there's certainly the experience
Speaker 1: of an emotional state that we have, and then there's
Speaker 1: another transparent page that we can put on top of that,
Speaker 1: representing like a person shaped word cloud that provides a
Speaker 1: definition and an analysis as well of what I'm feeling,
Speaker 1: though perhaps uh, you know, we also needed a second
Speaker 1: overlay to really have captured that second part, you know
Speaker 1: what that what our culture is saying about what we
Speaker 1: think we're feeling and how we should feel about it.
Speaker 1: And then on top of all of this, we have
Speaker 1: awareness and the awareness of awareness, and the knowledge that
Speaker 1: this entire page is going to turn that this state,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, if it is going to be fleeting,
Speaker 1: no matter how much we want it to last forever
Speaker 1: or how much we dread that it will last forever.
Speaker 1: And I think it can sometimes go something like this, Right,
Speaker 1: I feel something, and then my language gives that feeling
Speaker 1: a name, say sadness, And then my culture tells me
Speaker 1: that say sadness, that sadness that I'm feeling is inappropriate
Speaker 1: for my gender or inappropriate for a given situation, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and um. And then I yearn for other labeled emotional
Speaker 1: states and somehow this uh, this linguistic tag does not
Speaker 1: summon the emotion I want. It doesn't generated out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and then I'm sad and ashamed for being sad. Um.
Speaker 1: So basically the short of it is, there's there's this
Speaker 1: relationship between how we label our emotions and the emotions
Speaker 1: we feel. Uh. And also it does that thing that
Speaker 1: that language does. Right, We're able to tag something for
Speaker 1: further study. We're able to take something that is difficult
Speaker 1: to explain, we put a single label on it, and
Speaker 1: then we can discuss that label in comparison to other subjects,
Speaker 1: other examples, etcetera. Well, Yeah, once you name something, you
Speaker 1: can start to figure out what it is and what
Speaker 1: it is not. Uh. If you didn't have a name
Speaker 1: for the thing, it's a lot harder to start trying
Speaker 1: to describe the characteristics it does or doesn't possess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like as a as a parent, I have encountered this.
Speaker 1: You know, where my son is feeling something and either
Speaker 1: you know, he doesn't have the self awareness and self
Speaker 1: reflection to really think about it yet, or or perhaps
Speaker 1: he doesn't even have a good word, a good description
Speaker 1: for what it is he's feeling, and you have to
Speaker 1: sort of try and try and walk them through what
Speaker 1: they're feeling and try to get them to identify it
Speaker 1: so that you can discuss it so you can get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of it to whatever extent you can.
Speaker 1: I think that naming of things, especially naming of internal
Speaker 1: states can have tremendous and often well tremendous positive and
Speaker 1: negative power. One example of positive power I think of
Speaker 1: is I'm not going to say who, but just somebody
Speaker 1: I know. At one point when they became aware of
Speaker 1: the cycle logical concept of rumination, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: process of repeatedly going over cycles of negative thoughts in
Speaker 1: your mind and entertaining worst possible scenarios. Just becoming aware
Speaker 1: that that was a concept that was already known of
Speaker 1: and had a name had a lot of power for
Speaker 1: this person to help them overcome when it was affecting them,
Speaker 1: because suddenly they didn't just think, oh, I'm doing this
Speaker 1: terrible thing again. They thought, I'm ruminating. This is a
Speaker 1: psychological symptom that's negative, and they felt it was easier
Speaker 1: to break out of the cycle after knowing the word
Speaker 1: for it exactly. And it come back to sadness for example,
Speaker 1: like it's one thing that's to realize I am feeling sad,
Speaker 1: but then language allows us then to focus in on
Speaker 1: more specific versions of that, saying, you know, not only
Speaker 1: am I feeling sadness, perhaps I'm feeling the particular sadness
Speaker 1: of loss or rejection or homesickness or defeat or alienation um.
Speaker 1: And and then we can we we can better utilize
Speaker 1: our our own minds and even uh resources, either in
Speaker 1: the community or in just sort of the the general
Speaker 1: human um in a world around us, to try and
Speaker 1: figure out how we should react uh and or solve
Speaker 1: the situation at hand. Yeah, exactly. I mean that makes
Speaker 1: me think of another thing you're sort of alluding to there,
Speaker 1: which is that when you have a name for an
Speaker 1: internal state, that helps you find other people who also
Speaker 1: experience the internal state because you sort of have a
Speaker 1: common search term or something that you can use to
Speaker 1: get together and figure out Oh okay, and you can
Speaker 1: compare your experiences with others uh. And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: again this cuts both ways. I'd say overall, is probably
Speaker 1: a positive thing to have names for internal states like this,
Speaker 1: because it can help people find solidarity get advice from
Speaker 1: other people who feel the same way they do. But
Speaker 1: it can also lead to you know, people finding one
Speaker 1: another based on like anger based or you know, negative
Speaker 1: internal states and and building a kind of negative solidarity
Speaker 1: of stoking one another's bad emotions, right, or what happens
Speaker 1: when you have a legitimate emotional state, but the terminology
Speaker 1: end up using to describe it is is not helpful, say,
Speaker 1: say that you end up using like say, highly religious
Speaker 1: terminology to describe these things that in some cases may
Speaker 1: not provide a lot of tools for dealing with it.
Speaker 1: Like what if you broadly categorize various emotional states as
Speaker 1: being sinful? Um, well, then that means that you're only
Speaker 1: ways of really addressing whatever you're feeling lie within the
Speaker 1: religious doctrine that you are in which you're classifying everything,
Speaker 1: uh and limits you in that respect. Or believing that
Speaker 1: say a state like depression or something consists of having
Speaker 1: a demon which you know you can certainly understand why
Speaker 1: it could feel that way. And yet on the other side,
Speaker 1: there are examples of personifying negative emotional states that can
Speaker 1: be liberating, you know, being able to say, personify one's
Speaker 1: fear and then reject it. So it's it's it's certainly
Speaker 1: when you're talking about human emotional states and our awareness
Speaker 1: of them and our dealings with them, there's a great
Speaker 1: deal of complexity here. There's not necessarily a one size
Speaker 1: fits all. We're not going to be able to unwrap
Speaker 1: all of these questions today, but we will discuss an
Speaker 1: emotional state that has largely gone unnamed, at least in
Speaker 1: the English language. Yeah, at least if this group of
Speaker 1: researchers that we're gonna be talking about today are onto something.
Speaker 1: So I came to this topic today of of emotions
Speaker 1: that we don't yet have names for, by reading an
Speaker 1: article and eon by the psychological anthropologist Alan Fisk, who
Speaker 1: is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: And in this article, Fisk summarizes a bunch of research
Speaker 1: that's been going on in the past few years of
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of which he's been a co
Speaker 1: author on um, which he believes identifies an extremely imp hortoned,
Speaker 1: everyday emotion, not something unusual, but something we all know,
Speaker 1: we feel all the time, that's incredibly important to our lives,
Speaker 1: that's been with us all along, but that he argues,
Speaker 1: has not been recognized as distinct and unified as an
Speaker 1: emotion in itself, and instead has been called a lot
Speaker 1: of kind of other things in its different facets. And
Speaker 1: the term he uses for this emotion is karma muta
Speaker 1: k a m A m u t A. So what
Speaker 1: exactly is karma muda? As Fisk would argue the term
Speaker 1: karmamuda comes from ancient Sanskrit, in which it means moved
Speaker 1: by love. So this emotion of karma muda is a
Speaker 1: social emotion, and Fisk describes it as an emotion evoked
Speaker 1: by the sudden intensification of communal sharing. Now, this doesn't
Speaker 1: just mean sharing in the sense of like sharing your
Speaker 1: toys or sharing your kitcat bar, or you know, sharing
Speaker 1: the payout from the bank ice uh, though all of
Speaker 1: those could probably be moments that would evoke karmamuda. But
Speaker 1: this is a broader sense of sharing. This is what
Speaker 1: Alan Fisk has called another work communal sharing relationships, and
Speaker 1: that's briefly defined in one of his papers as relationships
Speaker 1: quote in which participants feel that in some distinctive way
Speaker 1: they are equivalent, belong together, care for and trust each other.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like a strengthening of social bonds
Speaker 1: and a signaling of trust and mutual caring. This is
Speaker 1: why you do trust falls at your place to work, right,
Speaker 1: you know you would think that this makes me think
Speaker 1: of a funny thing I kind of want to come
Speaker 1: back to and later in the episode, which is like
Speaker 1: ways that if this is truly a unified emotional experience
Speaker 1: in the way they're describing ways that it is definitely
Speaker 1: exploited in in like in business and in media. One
Speaker 1: thing that I know you and I have talked about
Speaker 1: before is all the things that love to tell you
Speaker 1: they're your family, but are not your family, like your
Speaker 1: workplace that says like we're a family, and it's like,
Speaker 1: I understand that can be a nice thing to say,
Speaker 1: like you're trying to say, you know, you should feel
Speaker 1: belonging here, but you know, people actually have families that
Speaker 1: are families. Or you know, if Olive Garden says when
Speaker 1: you're here your family, that there's something in common there.
Speaker 1: They're trying to do something to you. What is that
Speaker 1: thing they're trying to do. Yeah, they they they're they're
Speaker 1: co operting the idea of family. Or and here's another one.
Speaker 1: The Sawe family that Shank saw Massacre um UH series
Speaker 1: franchise will sometimes pull that one out and they're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe maybe it is, but probably not.
Speaker 1: Oh no, Drayton's being manipulative. One he says that he's
Speaker 1: trying to turn leather Face into a bitter old woman
Speaker 1: hater like he is, but okay, okay, okay. So there
Speaker 1: there are lots of separate emotional states that we recognize
Speaker 1: that Fisk argues actually all share the features of this
Speaker 1: one unified thing that he's proposing, this unified state of
Speaker 1: kama muta, and so different examples of words people use
Speaker 1: for this thing that he actually says is all the
Speaker 1: same thing is being moved, being touched, team pride, patriotism,
Speaker 1: being touched by the spirit burning in the bosom, the
Speaker 1: fields like that, or he says also when evoked by memory,
Speaker 1: it's nostalgia. So that's a lot of ground to cover.
Speaker 1: I feel, for instance, I feel nostalgic when I think
Speaker 1: about movies from I feel a sense of communal belonging,
Speaker 1: when I am saying church, where I'm in a yoga class,
Speaker 1: and when I'm hugging my wife and child, I feel
Speaker 1: something that I might describe as his loved belonging or
Speaker 1: to some extent, you know, structural completeness. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of different scenarios here that he's saying
Speaker 1: are all going to evoke this one emotion he's talking about.
Speaker 1: So maybe we should drill down into the details of
Speaker 1: how he describes this emotion and it's emptoms in order
Speaker 1: to understand better what exactly it is he's talking about.
Speaker 1: All right, let's roll through it. Well, wait, no, maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a break first, and then when we
Speaker 1: come back, we can we can look at the features
Speaker 1: he lists. All right, we're back. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: karma muta, and we're gonna begin to roll into the
Speaker 1: six features that occur together in this broad categorization of
Speaker 1: emotional states rights, as argued by the anthropologist Allent Fisk.
Speaker 1: So there's been a bunch of studies on this. We
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at a few of the studies individually
Speaker 1: and in a moment here, But just to start off
Speaker 1: at the top level, what are the main takeaways? Fisk
Speaker 1: argues that karmamuta is described by six features that occur together,
Speaker 1: and he says, so, first of all, it's evoked by
Speaker 1: quote the sudden intensification of communal sharing and again sharing
Speaker 1: this not just like sharing materials, but this thing that
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, Situations where participants feel in some distinctive
Speaker 1: way that their equivalent belong together, care for and trust
Speaker 1: each other. Broadly, situations that we describe as examples of
Speaker 1: love and to a certain extent, you could you could
Speaker 1: think of this as a you can think of communion
Speaker 1: as an example of this, right um, or you could
Speaker 1: think of a potluck dinner as an example of this.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. I guess one of the
Speaker 1: things is that it has to spark that feeling right
Speaker 1: for it to be real. You could have an overly
Speaker 1: ritualized version of anything that is then devoid of the
Speaker 1: emotional residence. It makes me think of the Eddie Izzard
Speaker 1: joke about us singing Hollelujah and the Anglican Church. No,
Speaker 1: no offense to Anglicans. You know, I have great love
Speaker 1: for the Anglicans, but you know he's got this whole
Speaker 1: bit about them singing hu. I think the point he
Speaker 1: makes is a good one, which is that like something
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be an overwhelming outpouring of spontaneous joy, can,
Speaker 1: if ritualized in a certain kind of way, become rather drab. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point because on the other end of it, um,
Speaker 1: when people come together in song like that is a
Speaker 1: that is a great way to potentially feel this shared
Speaker 1: emotional state. Absolutely, because we're becoming one voice. Okay, so
Speaker 1: it's evoked by this sudden moment of communal sharing where
Speaker 1: you feel a belonging, a trust, and a love with
Speaker 1: other people. But the next point he says is that
Speaker 1: it very crucially, this emotion is brief. He says, it
Speaker 1: typically lasts less than a minute or two, though it
Speaker 1: can keep repeating in rapid succession, so like you'll get
Speaker 1: a burst of it. It's less than a minute or
Speaker 1: two long. You can do it again, but it's not
Speaker 1: something that you know, lasts all day. And I think
Speaker 1: this is one thing that, uh, that makes it very
Speaker 1: important here. It's distinct from love itself the way Fisk
Speaker 1: describes it. Uh. Fisk says, the important distinction is that
Speaker 1: love is an enduring sentiment. It's more like a kind
Speaker 1: of like semi permanent state of affairs that sticks with you,
Speaker 1: but beyond the moment to moment. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: always important to remember that the love endears even as
Speaker 1: a variety of emotions play out. Uh. Not to say
Speaker 1: that love is impervious to fleeting emotional states, but it
Speaker 1: does not inherently vanish when happiness stades or anger seeps in, etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the really interesting and special things
Speaker 1: about love right, that you can like love somebody even
Speaker 1: when you're angry at them or something like that. But
Speaker 1: but in contrast to that, he says, karma muta is
Speaker 1: this intense, momentary flare up of emotion that occurs when
Speaker 1: love is shared. So when something happens that signals that
Speaker 1: the sharing of love has intensified. And again, this love
Speaker 1: can be between two people. It can be between a
Speaker 1: deer and a dog, It can be between it. Seriously,
Speaker 1: you know all these videos on the Internet of like
Speaker 1: a deer and a dog playing together. In fisks terms,
Speaker 1: these are pure karma muta porn. We're we're just watching
Speaker 1: these moments of like of social reciprocal trust and ending
Speaker 1: between you know, species that you might not expect or something.
Speaker 1: Or it can be not even that personal. It can
Speaker 1: be between a large group of people who feel solidarity
Speaker 1: and common purpose. A big thing that features into this
Speaker 1: is the invocation of common muda and political context, like
Speaker 1: say in a demonstration or a march, people will often
Speaker 1: feel the exact same symptoms were about to get into
Speaker 1: that that are described as typical of karma muda. This
Speaker 1: you know, burning in the bosom for for a feeling
Speaker 1: of togetherness with all these people who share a common purpose.
Speaker 1: Now on the detail of it being fleeting, uh, I
Speaker 1: wonder if it is fleeting, because like other emotional states,
Speaker 1: it kind of eludes awareness. I always come back to
Speaker 1: the Cormick McCarthy quote. I think this was from all
Speaker 1: the Pretty Horses, Uh, that goes quote. If you want
Speaker 1: to see it, you have to see it on its
Speaker 1: own ground. If you catch it, you lose it. And
Speaker 1: where it goes there's no coming back from not even
Speaker 1: God can bring it back. And the metaphor that he's
Speaker 1: exploring here is that have a snow flake that you
Speaker 1: cannot catch the snowflake. You can only experience it in
Speaker 1: the moment, and you can't catch or keep it. And
Speaker 1: that's often what it feels like with happiness. Right You're
Speaker 1: feeling good, then you think, hey, I'm feeling good, and
Speaker 1: then you then it begins to run away. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, don't look directly at the happening happiness, or
Speaker 1: you will scare it. Uh. Yeah, I think that's a
Speaker 1: really good point. I mean, one of the things is
Speaker 1: that I don't think you can improve a moment of
Speaker 1: happiness by examining it, but I do think by examining
Speaker 1: happiness generally, maybe that can be a good thing. Like
Speaker 1: if if you try to look at any individual moment
Speaker 1: and become analytical about it, it undercuts the emotional power
Speaker 1: of it. But maybe it is good to have a
Speaker 1: pre existing uh understanding or awareness of emotional states that
Speaker 1: come from examining previous versions of that emotion. Oh. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think understanding the fleeting nature of happiness is key
Speaker 1: to being able to have a healthy relationship with happiness. Um,
Speaker 1: Like you, you don't get happy by by thinking about
Speaker 1: wanting to be happy, right, But I also don't want
Speaker 1: to make it. I don't want to imply, though, that
Speaker 1: happiness is disrupted by awareness that you would necessarily just
Speaker 1: remain on this happiness high if you weren't able to
Speaker 1: then to self reflect on it, because I don't think
Speaker 1: that's the case. I get the impression that these bursts
Speaker 1: of common mouta, if we're going to to use that
Speaker 1: that term, um, they are supposed to be bursts. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: like all emotions, I mean, all these emotions are fleeting.
Speaker 1: That's what makes again these individual emotions different than these
Speaker 1: longer sentiments or states that we hold in our minds.
Speaker 1: Like love, right, I mean it comes back to sensory
Speaker 1: information as well. It's like when you taste of strawberry,
Speaker 1: you're not happy for six years straight. Following the year
Speaker 1: it's a burst of flavor, a burst of understanding, And
Speaker 1: you know, it makes sense to that our emotional states
Speaker 1: would would follow similar patterns. Okay, what of the next
Speaker 1: four characteristics. So we've got that it's evoked by the
Speaker 1: sudden communal sharing. We've got that it is brief and fleeting. Uh.
Speaker 1: The next thing is, of course, that it feels good.
Speaker 1: This emotion is inherently pleasurable, and people seek whenever, whenever
Speaker 1: they're able to repeat it, they want to keep having
Speaker 1: it over and over right, And if you can monetize it,
Speaker 1: all the better, right, No, all the more evil. Um So,
Speaker 1: So it feels good. It's naturally pleasurable, even though, and
Speaker 1: though there's a thing that it's often part of a
Speaker 1: bitter sweet kind of feeling, something that we do have
Speaker 1: a name for, that it feels good even when being
Speaker 1: kind of in the near proximity to or the context
Speaker 1: of recognizable negative emotions like sadness. Yeah, we've talked about
Speaker 1: this in the show before in context to say, nostalgia. Um,
Speaker 1: there's something else we talked about recently. They're being like
Speaker 1: the bitter sweet aspect to it. Um was it? Oh
Speaker 1: it was thankfulness? Oh yes, of course gratitude. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: there's a sense of it is a vulnerability to these moments, uh,
Speaker 1: such as like embracing family members, Like there is like
Speaker 1: this sort of hyper like meta feeling, like all the
Speaker 1: all the possibilities, all the potential potential and an actual
Speaker 1: past and future, joys and sadness and tragedies all just
Speaker 1: bundled up into a single snap of the finger. You know,
Speaker 1: you kind of feel all of that at once, which
Speaker 1: can be overwhelming. Like imagine if that didn't that wasn't
Speaker 1: just a burst, that would be I mean, if it
Speaker 1: can be overwhelming even as a burst of emotion. Okay.
Speaker 1: The next thing that the research has found here is
Speaker 1: that kamamuda is accompanied by a very consistent, characteristic set
Speaker 1: of physical sensations in the body and physical symptoms and behaviors.
Speaker 1: So one is a warm, fuzzy feeling in the center
Speaker 1: of the chest. Another is is tearing up of course
Speaker 1: is crying moistenus in the eyes. Another is being choked
Speaker 1: up lump in the throat, which often goes along with
Speaker 1: the tears in the eyes. Another is chills or goose bumps. Uh.
Speaker 1: One is a smile or putting, putting a palm on
Speaker 1: the chest. And one is the expression, especially in English
Speaker 1: of awe. Yeah. Ah is a big one because when
Speaker 1: we when we we we coup awe at the side
Speaker 1: of a kitten, we are we're generally inviting those among
Speaker 1: us to share in this moment with us, or we
Speaker 1: are you know, we're signaling solidarity with you when we
Speaker 1: with the kitten, with the kitten or the you know,
Speaker 1: whatever the cute embodiment happens to be. That's a good point.
Speaker 1: We should come back to that in a minute, because
Speaker 1: I feel like cuteness doesn't fit into this framework quite
Speaker 1: as obviously as most of the other things that trigger
Speaker 1: it do. But I think there might be good reasons,
Speaker 1: and I think you're definitely onto something there. Uh. So
Speaker 1: the next thing is that it actually is a motivating emotion.
Speaker 1: It motivates devotion, and Fisk says, uh compassion to communal sharing,
Speaker 1: also known as loving kindness. So it generally like what
Speaker 1: these studies have found. One of the studies I was
Speaker 1: looking at so is if you show people video of
Speaker 1: two people having like a communal sharing experience that causes
Speaker 1: this emotion in the viewer, the viewer also feels an
Speaker 1: increased sense of community with the two characters, these these
Speaker 1: other characters being observed. And then another one is that
Speaker 1: there are common types of expressions across many languages that
Speaker 1: that basically translate to something like this. It means like
Speaker 1: being moved in its various translations, or being touched in
Speaker 1: in various translations. Like that all often refers to something
Speaker 1: having to do with this idea. So I want to say,
Speaker 1: at first glance, in reading about this, I resonate strongly
Speaker 1: like I know exactly what he's talking about. But I
Speaker 1: don't know if it is that we needed a new
Speaker 1: term for it. Maybe we did. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: I'm decided on that issue or not, But I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what term you would use otherwise, Maybe you could
Speaker 1: just try to lump it under one of these sort
Speaker 1: of capturing it pre existing things like like feeling moved
Speaker 1: or something that might be kind of broader than than
Speaker 1: what exactly this is talking about. But this, this experience,
Speaker 1: in all of the aspects of it that he lists
Speaker 1: feel absolutely real in my own experience, Oh absolutely, the
Speaker 1: the the, the emotional experience is certainly real. Any disagreement
Speaker 1: we have is just about like, to to what extent
Speaker 1: this categorization is useful, To what extent we can actually
Speaker 1: group all of these things under this big umbrella of
Speaker 1: Kama muda. Yeah, I think I'm undecided about that, but
Speaker 1: we can explore it more as we go on. By
Speaker 1: the way, none of this is to be confused with
Speaker 1: the Mooda scale. The Mooda scale, yes, which any anyone
Speaker 1: out there who is a pro wrestling fan might be
Speaker 1: familiar with. Mooda scale is an unofficial means of measuring
Speaker 1: how much blood a pro wrestler has bled via blading
Speaker 1: or juicing. That's when a professional wrestler will intentionally cut
Speaker 1: their forehead with a razor or sometimes there is more
Speaker 1: like a hard juicing technique where it's by actually bumping
Speaker 1: into something, but they will intentionally usually uh cut themselves
Speaker 1: on the forehead. The blood will flow, the blood will
Speaker 1: mix with with sweat and create quite a visual display
Speaker 1: of a bloody face or crimson mask. Is it's sometimes
Speaker 1: called I feel like this is not something you're supposed
Speaker 1: to do in the main circuits right um or it's
Speaker 1: not done as much these days, certainly in modern pro
Speaker 1: wrestling companies like mainstream pro wrestling companies, because of course,
Speaker 1: there are a number of objections one can make to
Speaker 1: intentionally bleeding all over the place, right, But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, it is a highly physical performance and therefore
Speaker 1: people will get busted open accidentally, and sometimes the show
Speaker 1: goes on just bite a little blood. Now is the
Speaker 1: Muda scale named after? Does it come from Sanskrit? No,
Speaker 1: it comes basically it's of Japanese origin because it's referring
Speaker 1: to a pro wrestler, legendary pro wrestler out of Japan
Speaker 1: by the name of Keji Muto, who would also perform,
Speaker 1: especially in the United States, has the Great Muda, And
Speaker 1: it's referring in particular to a nineteen nine New Japan
Speaker 1: Pro Wrestling match with Hiroshi has in which Muda blades
Speaker 1: and just gets a really brilliant crimson mask all over
Speaker 1: his face. His face is just covered in blood and
Speaker 1: so a lot of like Kane, Yeah, it does have
Speaker 1: that kind of It reminds one a lot of various um,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, face painting, Uh scenarios, but it has
Speaker 1: such an impact on pro wrestling fans of that time
Speaker 1: period they kind of decided this would be the starting
Speaker 1: point for considerations of any blade job. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: where is it on the MOODA scale like a three
Speaker 1: here of four? Does it go beyond the type of
Speaker 1: blood letting that that Muda shows off in this match? Um?
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's different from Karma Muda. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I think the given scenario, like this match,
Speaker 1: you could have the performer themselves feeling a sense of
Speaker 1: Karma Muda. You could have the audience viewing this spectacle, uh,
Speaker 1: certainly feeling this communal sense of Karma muda. You know,
Speaker 1: you're all a part of this big sporting event. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a almost a you know, it's not quite patriotism,
Speaker 1: but like a unity of love for the performance or
Speaker 1: for one of the two or both performers. Oh. I
Speaker 1: think it's absolutely there in fan communities of things, you know,
Speaker 1: people feel a solidarity with their fellow fans based on
Speaker 1: their shared interests. There's an there's an inference of kind
Speaker 1: of like shared values and common cause, even if that
Speaker 1: might not necessarily be the case, kind of feels that way, right,
Speaker 1: Like when if you're a pro wrestling fan, if you
Speaker 1: knew what the Muda scale was, you knew who the
Speaker 1: great Muda uh is, then perhaps when I mentioned it,
Speaker 1: you al too a little bit of that. You felt
Speaker 1: this connection to me and you knew that we we
Speaker 1: shared something in this uh, this brotherhood of blood. All right,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a break, but
Speaker 1: when we come back, we will jump back in to
Speaker 1: the karma muta. Than alright, we're back. I figured we
Speaker 1: should just take a brief glance and a few of
Speaker 1: the studies out there in UH, in the journals about
Speaker 1: karma muda, this this emerging idea of this this unifying
Speaker 1: emotion based on the intensification of communal sharing. So the
Speaker 1: first one is that I wanted to bring up is
Speaker 1: by fist at all in Emotion Review published in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen called the Sudden Devotion, Emotion and Karma Muda and
Speaker 1: the Cultural Practices whose function is to evoke it? And
Speaker 1: this paper UH briefly just it argues that quote, cultures
Speaker 1: have evolved diverse practices, institutions, roles, narratives, arts, and artifacts
Speaker 1: whose core function is to evoke karma muda. And it
Speaker 1: also argues that karma muda quote mediates much of human sociality. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I think this is probably right, right, I mean
Speaker 1: whether whether or not like the term is the right
Speaker 1: term to use. A huge amount of media and culture
Speaker 1: and art is based on this. It's like watching people
Speaker 1: in the act of this sudden intensification of communal emotion
Speaker 1: and bonding. Yeah. Like, I'm reminded of the very Super
Speaker 1: Bowl ads that come out, like the really emotionally manipulative
Speaker 1: ones that have like animals coming together, people in their pets, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Um and and yeah, it brings people together, perhaps in
Speaker 1: the you know, so you can sell a product to them,
Speaker 1: but still the the the images themselves, the idea of
Speaker 1: the story, the music, it all comes together to create this, uh,
Speaker 1: this shared feeling. Now, this paper in particular does specifically
Speaker 1: mention cuteness as one of these cultural models. And we
Speaker 1: certainly discussed cuteness on our our podcast in the past,
Speaker 1: especially as it concerns monsters and the cutification of formally
Speaker 1: horrifying monsters. Yeah, this is an interesting question, like why
Speaker 1: does cuteness seem to evoke all the same psychological and
Speaker 1: physiological symptoms as comma muda brought on by more traditional stimuli,
Speaker 1: which would include either like communal sharing between one person
Speaker 1: and another, communal sharing between observed others. Um just to
Speaker 1: go quickly to another paper and then we can come
Speaker 1: back to this. Because this has to do with cuteness.
Speaker 1: There's this other one called too cute for Words. Cuteness
Speaker 1: evokes the heartwarming emotion of comma muda, published in Frontiers
Speaker 1: and Psychology in twenty nineteen, and the authors they're hypothesized
Speaker 1: the cuteness is a type of stimulus that makes people
Speaker 1: feel an automatic sense of communal sharing with the cute
Speaker 1: entity just based on the aesthetics of cuteness alone. It's
Speaker 1: it's in line with some of the biological theory about
Speaker 1: the nature of cuteness, which says that cuteness is a
Speaker 1: series of visual skima designed to make adults feel like
Speaker 1: obligated to take care of the cute thing and to
Speaker 1: watch out for its best interests. So the cute face
Speaker 1: asks you for help without any words, and you just
Speaker 1: feel compelled to comply, And it's the assumption of that relationship.
Speaker 1: They hypothesize that that provides the kamma muda link here
Speaker 1: that's why cuteness feels in a way communal. The latest
Speaker 1: cultural example of this, I think would be the child
Speaker 1: m a k a. Baby Yoda from the television series
Speaker 1: The Mandalorian, which spoilers please, yes, now you have you
Speaker 1: haven't been on the internet, so I don't know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. It's impossible to avoid the spoiler that
Speaker 1: there is there is a creature that is unofficially called
Speaker 1: baby Yoda in the show. Um, it is never called
Speaker 1: that in the show, just called the child or the
Speaker 1: asset and um, and yeah, you look at it, and
Speaker 1: it really, uh, it really pulls out your heart strings.
Speaker 1: It's really it is really cute. And uh it shares
Speaker 1: us some screen time with none other than Werner Herzog,
Speaker 1: the acclaimed German director and occasional actor, also very cute
Speaker 1: wealth uh more, well, no, he's he's menacing. Let's let's
Speaker 1: make no too. Let's not lie about that for awhelming
Speaker 1: and collective murder. But but he I think he explained
Speaker 1: it well via Indie Wire when he's talking about sharing
Speaker 1: screen time with with the child, he said, it is
Speaker 1: a phenomenal technological achievement. But beyond the technological achievement. It's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: And apparently, when he learned that they were going to
Speaker 1: shoot alternate takes of these scenes in case they wanted
Speaker 1: to replace the puppet um child with a c g
Speaker 1: I child, he reportedly told them, quote, you are cowards.
Speaker 1: Leave it an ultimately. But but yes, um, the child
Speaker 1: is very cute and the show is is terrific as well.
Speaker 1: But to come back to that that paper, uh, the
Speaker 1: sudden devotion emotion Um. This is what they had to
Speaker 1: say about cuteness in karma muda quote. The fact that cuteness, vulnerability,
Speaker 1: and need evoke karmamuta makes sense given our assumption that
Speaker 1: the phylogenetic source of karmamuta is maternal bonding to newborns.
Speaker 1: The generativity of human karmamuta makes it flexibly adaptive. This
Speaker 1: explains why karmamuta occurs in response to babies, kittens, marriage
Speaker 1: proposals and weddings, rituals of solidarity, religious moments of union
Speaker 1: with divinities, homecomings and reunions, the kindness of strangers, sentimental
Speaker 1: narratives and cinema, addiction, recovery groups, keen spirit, moments in
Speaker 1: war and sports, oratory marketing, choral singing, making and listening
Speaker 1: to music, dancing, rowing, and so forth. I see it though,
Speaker 1: I see it. Yeah, there is this through line and
Speaker 1: like all those things they mentioned that I would not
Speaker 1: have unified in my mind before, but now it's it
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. This concept is interesting to me
Speaker 1: because there is something I feel that's similar when something
Speaker 1: is very cute versus when I have like a moment
Speaker 1: of personal love and connection, versus when I'm I'm part
Speaker 1: of like a political moment that feels positive and significant
Speaker 1: with many other people. Like, those things seem so different.
Speaker 1: What would be unified between them? Why are there these
Speaker 1: similar sensations in the body and kind of feelings in
Speaker 1: the brain. Well, there's a way to bring these together, Joe,
Speaker 1: and that is a baby Yoda. Obviously it's got my vote.
Speaker 1: That thing is going to be used to sell the
Speaker 1: world's awful ast atrocity. How baby Yoda is a holy,
Speaker 1: blameless creature. Okay, to look briefly at another paper that
Speaker 1: Fisk was involved in. Another one is Fisk at all?
Speaker 1: In Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture in seen called the
Speaker 1: best love story of all time, Overcoming all obstacles to
Speaker 1: be reunited evoking Kama Muda and basically here they just
Speaker 1: point out that if you go back through the history
Speaker 1: of literature, one of the most common types of stories
Speaker 1: is that beloved people are separated and then they have
Speaker 1: to overcome overwhelming obstacles in order to get back together. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the ram the Ramayana right there at
Speaker 1: the story of rob and Sita separated and then brought
Speaker 1: back together following military conquest and adventure. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's there all through ancient literature, you know, the novels
Speaker 1: of the Greco Roman period. You have tons of stuff
Speaker 1: like this. But then to go into like you know,
Speaker 1: modern manipulative cuteness cinema, I just think about how much
Speaker 1: of a sucker I've always been for stories of people
Speaker 1: being reunited with lost pet. It's just an undefendable weakness.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was a kid, the end of
Speaker 1: the movie Homeward Bound. You remember that movie. I wasn't
Speaker 1: a huge fan of my sisters loved it and would
Speaker 1: watch it over and over again, you know, I saw
Speaker 1: multiple times because I was a kid when it was
Speaker 1: out and big and out on video. I think it
Speaker 1: was a good thing for parents or teachers to put
Speaker 1: on you know, uh, and it just destroyed me, like
Speaker 1: this sudden upwelling of uncontrollable happiness and tears at the
Speaker 1: scene spoiler alert where this fictional trio of pets two
Speaker 1: dogs and a cat you know, after a great journey,
Speaker 1: are reunited with their fictional humans. There is an excellent
Speaker 1: Futurama episode title Jurassic Bark that evokes the same sort
Speaker 1: of feeling in me every time I really watch it,
Speaker 1: even though it is it is you know, it is
Speaker 1: a comedy as a farce, and despite the fact that
Speaker 1: it expressly dodges such a reunion, like the reunion between
Speaker 1: the human and the dog does not occur, but it
Speaker 1: has such a bitter sweet ending where it is it
Speaker 1: is shown that the the the reunion wanted to happen,
Speaker 1: I guess you could say. And another weird example of
Speaker 1: this uh that and I know you've seen this is
Speaker 1: um uh And this one probably works due mainly to
Speaker 1: the musical choice, but the ending of the Simpsons episode
Speaker 1: Radioactive Man, in which the director returns to Hollywood after
Speaker 1: this grueling experience of filming on location in Springfield where everybody,
Speaker 1: the politicians, the townspeople, they're all taking advantage of these
Speaker 1: poor Hollywood types. And then he comes back and he's
Speaker 1: welcomed back into Hollywood with open arms. And then the
Speaker 1: Bill Withers classic lean on Me begins playing. Uh, and
Speaker 1: then they you know, they pan out and it it
Speaker 1: it's it's a satirical moment, but clearly they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're playing with this idea of you know, of
Speaker 1: of Hollywood versus small town morality, etcetera. But since they're
Speaker 1: playing lean on Me, it gets me every time, Like
Speaker 1: it makes me feel all the fields. Despite the satirical
Speaker 1: nature of the content, that song is like the perfect
Speaker 1: karma muta song. It is, yeah, lean on Me when
Speaker 1: you're not strong. Yeah, it's it's about trust and depending
Speaker 1: on each other. Yeah, it's just pure, uncut common mood. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I would also say there seem to be major
Speaker 1: genres of internet media that are based entirely on exploiting
Speaker 1: people's desire to feel common mooda like emotions at the
Speaker 1: push of a button over and over again. It's like
Speaker 1: your you know, your cocaine button in the rat cage,
Speaker 1: except it's karma muda, you know, the the upworthy style
Speaker 1: of stuff. The video is titled like he almost kicked
Speaker 1: a turtle into the trash compactor, but what happens next
Speaker 1: will melt your heart. Yeah, and you want to click
Speaker 1: because yeah, I'm like, okay, I'm I want to have
Speaker 1: my heart melted. Let's do it. Yeah. But this kind
Speaker 1: of content is incredibly potent for virality. You know, when
Speaker 1: there are these like studies about what kind of content
Speaker 1: actually goes viral. Uh, there's a reason that these media
Speaker 1: companies went for content like that, because that stuff hits
Speaker 1: the button. I mean, I think because of our negative
Speaker 1: view of virality, we often tend to think of like
Speaker 1: kind of nasty memes as being the most viral content.
Speaker 1: But this karma muda exploitation video stuff is hugely viral. Yeah.
Speaker 1: To come back to the corna McCarthy quote about about
Speaker 1: the snowflake and the fleeting nature of the feeling. Uh,
Speaker 1: one solution is, oh, well, well, it's all right, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of snowflakes in the air. I will
Speaker 1: just run around all day catching them and do nothing else,
Speaker 1: just to get that hit after hit after hit of
Speaker 1: good old fashioned common motive feeling. Uh. So, Luckily, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a there's a machine in my hand with
Speaker 1: a program that is designed to do nothing but just
Speaker 1: keep clicking. Yeah. I mean, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe there are downsides that I'm not thinking of.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's better that people keep watching
Speaker 1: stuff like that they go down some horrible radicalizing YouTube
Speaker 1: trail or something and end up a member of the
Speaker 1: anti human Front or whatever, anti human but pro baby
Speaker 1: Yoda where you end up in landing. I guess yeah, okay, okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: next study just quickly. This is one called Moment to
Speaker 1: moment changes and feeling moved match changes in closeness, tears,
Speaker 1: goose bumps, and warmth time series analysis, published in eighteen
Speaker 1: by Schubert at All. This study looked at the moment
Speaker 1: went to moments sensations like body sensations of people experiencing
Speaker 1: what the researchers believed to be karma muda, as evoked
Speaker 1: by video clips showing scenes meant to display these intense
Speaker 1: communal sharing relationships, these moments when these relationships intensify and uh.
Speaker 1: The study found strong and consistent cross correlations between clips
Speaker 1: that people scored with karma muda associated words like moved
Speaker 1: or touched distinct from clips that were judged as merely
Speaker 1: happy or sad. This is like a separate thing than
Speaker 1: being happy or sad, and that the Kama Muda clips
Speaker 1: were associated with this with moment to moment physiological symptoms
Speaker 1: or sensations of tears or moisteness in the eyes, goose
Speaker 1: bumps or chills, and feelings of warmth in the center
Speaker 1: of the chest. So again back to what we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, there were a couple of studies that
Speaker 1: looked at a cross cultural analyzes basically like is there
Speaker 1: a similar thing going on across different languages and cultures.
Speaker 1: There was one study that looked at UH the United States, Norway, China, Israel,
Speaker 1: and Portugal published in the Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology
Speaker 1: in teen by Cibit at all Uh, and this just
Speaker 1: generally did find that there was there was a lot
Speaker 1: of consistency across the different cultures. And then there was
Speaker 1: another one published in the journal Emotion in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: by zike Field at all UH looking at nineteen different
Speaker 1: nations across fifteen different languages, three thousand five dred and
Speaker 1: forty two participants to see if there was consistency about
Speaker 1: which types of experiences evoked karmamoda like emotions h to
Speaker 1: read from their abstract quote. Our results are congruent with
Speaker 1: theory and previous findings showing that karma muda is a
Speaker 1: distinct positive social relational emotion that is evoked by experiencing
Speaker 1: or observing a sudden intensification of communal sharing. It is
Speaker 1: commonly accompanied by a warm feeling in the chest, moist
Speaker 1: eyes or tears, chills or pilo erection, feeling choked up
Speaker 1: or having a lump in the throat, buoyancy, and a zilaration.
Speaker 1: It motivates affective devotion and moral commitment to communal sharing.
Speaker 1: While we observed some variations across cultures, these five facets
Speaker 1: of karma muda are highly correlated in every sample, supporting
Speaker 1: the validity of the construct in the measure. So it
Speaker 1: looks like this is, at least according to this research
Speaker 1: we're looking at so far, this is a pretty universal
Speaker 1: emotion and that we might have some different words for
Speaker 1: it across different cultures, but there's something pretty consistent going
Speaker 1: on about like what types of things we can see
Speaker 1: or be a part of, and what kinds of feelings
Speaker 1: it gives throughout the body, and what kind of behaviors
Speaker 1: it triggers in us afterwards. So what do we learn
Speaker 1: by naming and characterizing an emotion? We sort of started
Speaker 1: off by talking about this a bit. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I have to say that this my initial reaction to
Speaker 1: this topic, not being familiar with the the particular concept,
Speaker 1: with the named concept of karma muta, my initial response
Speaker 1: was what good does this dois? Why do we need this? Uh?
Speaker 1: Be and and uh you know, And I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: to say that I was completely biased against it, but
Speaker 1: because I'm but the thing is, I'm clearly already experiencing
Speaker 1: these emotional states, right, but for more nuanced reasons, with
Speaker 1: more nuanced terminology, do I really need to catch all
Speaker 1: Sanskrit term to refer to them? Uh? And uh And
Speaker 1: That's been something I'm just trying to to figure out now. Now.
Speaker 1: Certainly I'm not opposed to bringing in Sanskrit terms or
Speaker 1: Sanskrit Loan words or or you know, words from say
Speaker 1: Hindu or Buddhist u Um religion, you know, because I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of times these are very useful terms,
Speaker 1: such as things like say Brahmin and sam Sara. I
Speaker 1: think these can be incredibly helpful and and they certainly
Speaker 1: stem from a language and a culture that devoted a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of mental energy to contemplating psychological and metaphysical concepts.
Speaker 1: But in this particular instance, does kama muta like really
Speaker 1: help us out? I could not help. But but think
Speaker 1: about another case in which we have reached out to
Speaker 1: another language for a term that we have they were
Speaker 1: lacking in English to describe an emotional, very specific emotional state,
Speaker 1: and that is the German concept of schadenfreude, which is
Speaker 1: the pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune. Like,
Speaker 1: we don't have a specific term for it, like a
Speaker 1: single word for it in English, but in German, uh,
Speaker 1: they have it and and it is kind of useful
Speaker 1: I think, to be able to take schadenfreude out of
Speaker 1: the German language and then use it as a way
Speaker 1: to reflect on how we're feeling about things in our life. Well,
Speaker 1: the fact that we now have a loan word for
Speaker 1: it in English, I think that makes it much easier
Speaker 1: for us to recognize when it's happening, to say, I
Speaker 1: am feeling schadenfreude and not something more useful like actual sympathy.
Speaker 1: To be able to draw a line between sympathy and
Speaker 1: schadenfreuda despite the fact that they are very they're very connected, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the kind of the flip side of
Speaker 1: the coin. Um, you know, we can this gives us
Speaker 1: again the power to label, to discuss it, to pull
Speaker 1: it aside and UH and even then lean into the
Speaker 1: more positive UH side of the coin, to lean into sympathy.
Speaker 1: But that brings us back to karmamuta because instead of
Speaker 1: going from broad to specific, as we're feeling with with schadenfreuda,
Speaker 1: how about how does karma mouda help us? How does
Speaker 1: it help us to be able to go instead of
Speaker 1: from the large too small, to go from the small
Speaker 1: to the large. Well, I mean, I think one thing,
Speaker 1: if they're on the right track. I mean, obviously these
Speaker 1: researchers could could maybe be wrong about this, but you know,
Speaker 1: it looks like there's a body of research building up
Speaker 1: here that's pretty supportive of the idea that this is
Speaker 1: actually a fairly consistent phenomenon across cultures. There are these
Speaker 1: like things linking all these disparate UH phenomena, and there
Speaker 1: are of course plenty of emotional states that are broad,
Speaker 1: like happiness is extremely broad the situations that cause happiness
Speaker 1: or or you know, you can't list them all, right,
Speaker 1: But then again, nobody's coming along and saying, Hey, I
Speaker 1: want to tell you about this new concept. It's called happiness.
Speaker 1: The only one thing that did come to mind that
Speaker 1: reminded me a little bit about this though, um is
Speaker 1: via a say, partial understanding of serotonin or media overuse
Speaker 1: of serotonin, the discussion of serantonin serotonin, we end up
Speaker 1: reminding ourselves of neurotransmitters in regard to any given emotional state,
Speaker 1: you know where, So what do you mean. I'm saying like,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna come along and have to explain to you
Speaker 1: what happiness is. But at some point in your life someone,
Speaker 1: like much later someone might have come along and said, hey,
Speaker 1: let me talk to you about that happiness and what
Speaker 1: you're and let me tell you about serotonin's role and
Speaker 1: how you're feeling. Are you saying like giving you a
Speaker 1: good explanation of serotonin's role or oversimplified oversimplified version, which
Speaker 1: I think is the version that we often encounter, uh,
Speaker 1: certainly just in the media at large, and perhaps we
Speaker 1: encounter for the first time, combined with sort of they
Speaker 1: need more serotonin than I can be happy, right yeah.
Speaker 1: Or it's also just kind of like when you first
Speaker 1: hear about it, you may have it. You will probably
Speaker 1: have an incomplete understanding of it, and that may also
Speaker 1: lean into this this understanding of it. So on one level,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a making something familiar new again with
Speaker 1: new terminology. I wonder if karma mutas kind of it
Speaker 1: kind of provides that it kind of takes this sort
Speaker 1: of broad you know, area of the fields. It gives
Speaker 1: them a new term, and then ultimately it does allow
Speaker 1: us to to potentially analyze it a new to think
Speaker 1: of it in a new light without actually recategorizing it
Speaker 1: is something drastically different. I mean, I think again, if
Speaker 1: the researchers are on the right track here, I think
Speaker 1: one thing that could be useful about it is that
Speaker 1: you when you identify a phenomenon where a bunch of
Speaker 1: things that previously looked unrelated are actually very related, new
Speaker 1: cause and effect relationships occur to you as possible, and
Speaker 1: you can start testing for them. So, for example, one
Speaker 1: thing that that seems to come out of this is
Speaker 1: that uh karma muda seems to at least in some
Speaker 1: of this research motivate a sense of increased community with
Speaker 1: the objects of whatever you're watching. So if you watch
Speaker 1: a you know, video of two people having this this
Speaker 1: moment that makes you feel the karma muda, you feel
Speaker 1: increased community. You don't just feel the fields in your
Speaker 1: chest and all that. You feel increased community with the
Speaker 1: people in the video. And I think another potential way
Speaker 1: to look at this in a positive way would be
Speaker 1: when you don't understand what's bringing people together. Say you
Speaker 1: turn on the news and there are some protesters and
Speaker 1: you don't agree with what they're protesting about, or you're
Speaker 1: on the other side if they're protest and you need
Speaker 1: to understand them. Or if you, like me, are not
Speaker 1: a like team sports person and you find everyone else
Speaker 1: in your city is obsessed with the local soccer team
Speaker 1: um or let's say you're not a religious person and
Speaker 1: you see footage or you see friends and family engaging
Speaker 1: in a religious experience. We're going to church and and
Speaker 1: you and maybe you don't completely understand what they're doing.
Speaker 1: But if you if you define it all under a
Speaker 1: kamma muta, you can look to the examples of comma
Speaker 1: muta that you do engage with and then potentially have
Speaker 1: a better understanding, or at least some understanding of why
Speaker 1: people are united in protest here, why people are in
Speaker 1: a house of worship here, or why people are all
Speaker 1: wearing the same color and going to a colisseum here.
Speaker 1: Right to understand that. You know, you might not get
Speaker 1: what people like about sports, but there's some similarity in
Speaker 1: the feelings in the body and the pleasure that pervades
Speaker 1: your brain when you experience cute kitten videos that other
Speaker 1: people do when they're part of a team sports thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything is baby Yoda. Basically, that's the thing to drive home.
Speaker 1: If you don't understand it, just remind yourself that's baby
Speaker 1: Yoda to you. All right, So there you have it.
Speaker 1: Karma muta. Obviously, we would love to hear from everybody
Speaker 1: about this because this concerns a broad categorization of human
Speaker 1: emotion that we can all relate to. Uh, So, hit
Speaker 1: us up with your examples, your thoughts, your contemplation on
Speaker 1: what we've discussed here. Does the term karma muta? Does
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