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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,

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Speaker 1: you're familiar with the Seven Deadly Sins? Right? Oh yeah, yeah, gluttony,

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Speaker 1: I'm all over that. Well, well there's more than just glatton. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's there's there's a loss, there's gluttony, there's greed, there's sloped,

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Speaker 1: there's rat there's envy, and then that the queen of

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Speaker 1: the Seven Deadly Sins, Pride, the queen so called by

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Speaker 1: Pope St. Gregory, right, yeah, who largely popularized this, this

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Speaker 1: list of seven deadly sins, drawing on older did traditions. Uh,

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Speaker 1: I mean you look back to like the Book of Proverbs.

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Speaker 1: You have King Solomon dealing with like seven deadly is

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Speaker 1: in a sense. Uh so there's an older tradition there.

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Speaker 1: But Gregory is really the popular really popularized these these

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Speaker 1: seven deadly sins. So we're thinking, hey, let's examine these.

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Speaker 1: We're all into talking about science meets human experience, philosophy

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Speaker 1: and science kind of duke it out. What's going on

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Speaker 1: with various parts of the human experience. So let's uh,

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Speaker 1: we've decided we're gonna tackle each of these seven deadly sins,

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Speaker 1: and uh, just in case we get slothful and don't finish,

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Speaker 1: we figured, let's let's start with a big one. Let's

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Speaker 1: go and tackle the the mother of of sins, Pride,

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Speaker 1: which I have to say, I was a little bit

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Speaker 1: surprised that this is considered the mother pride. I mean

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Speaker 1: that doesn't you know, pride coming before the fall? Though? Right's?

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Speaker 1: I mean, I I instantly think back to uh to

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Speaker 1: to the divine comedy, uh, Dante's Inferno at all. And uh,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting. There's you know, you have all these these

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Speaker 1: various circles and uh bulges in um in in Dante's

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Speaker 1: Hell that they did shot various punishments. So there's like,

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Speaker 1: you know, like the lustful or punished in one way

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Speaker 1: and then their heretics in another, and and it goes

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Speaker 1: all the way down to where at the very bottom

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Speaker 1: you have say himself and various betrayers and deceivers. They're

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Speaker 1: frozen in this lake. So but but it's what's interesting

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Speaker 1: is that there's not really a particular circle in hell

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Speaker 1: that's devoted to the prideful, because there's there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of pride going on in hell. Do you encounter prideful

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Speaker 1: individuals at various levels? For instance, there's Farranata. Uh, it's

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Speaker 1: a pretty proud heretic that you encount. There's a thief

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Speaker 1: by the name of Vanni of Fusie. There's this really

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Speaker 1: awesome part where he is essentially so prideful. Uh. He's

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Speaker 1: in Hell and he's basically giving God the finger. But

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Speaker 1: it's not the finger. It's this Italian thing called the

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Speaker 1: figs where oh is this this modern thing too? Uh,

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Speaker 1: there's just a Italian term that I know. Well, it's

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Speaker 1: where you you take your thumb, you make a fist

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Speaker 1: and then stick your thumb up through your middle and

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Speaker 1: the index finger, and then you kind of and then

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Speaker 1: with the with your knuckles facing out, you kind of

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Speaker 1: like shake your fist and then ideally you do this

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Speaker 1: on both hands, like like like our friend the thief

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Speaker 1: in Dante's Inferno and he has shakes them at the

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Speaker 1: heaven doing this right now. Yeah, So, um, I'm always

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Speaker 1: mindful that there's there's actually apparently in Um in twelve,

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Speaker 1: the citizens of the Storia Um fixed two of these

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Speaker 1: figs on on this marble tower and aim them at Florence.

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Speaker 1: So you had like whole buildings making figs at other cities.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing. If if memory starts right, I believe

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Speaker 1: that figs have a phallic Yes, it's a very phallic thing.

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Speaker 1: It's you know, masculine female. You know, you know, you

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Speaker 1: don't really have to use your imagination all that much

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Speaker 1: to see if you're looking down, if you've done this

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Speaker 1: and you're looking down at your hands right now, and

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Speaker 1: you're gonna be like, that's a little creepy looking. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: um so uh so you have various prideful individuals, and

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Speaker 1: pride is a part of all these other sins and

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Speaker 1: and Dante sell though. If you travel up to the

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Speaker 1: Mount of Purgatory, which is the focus of the second

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Speaker 1: volume in the Divine Comedy, in Purgatory, you have the

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Speaker 1: Mount of Purgatory, which is this mountain that connects Earth

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Speaker 1: to Heaven. And if you are not you're not bad enough,

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Speaker 1: say to wind up in hell, but you still have

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Speaker 1: some work to do. You still got some some rough

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Speaker 1: corners to buff out before you can actually walk through

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Speaker 1: the pearly gates. Then you need to go through purgatory.

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Speaker 1: And purgatory is this mountain with these various terraces, and

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Speaker 1: on each terrace, if you start out at the bottom,

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Speaker 1: you have seven ps um on your forehead, these seven marks,

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Speaker 1: and as you travel through each terrace, you work off

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Speaker 1: one of these marks until you're you're pure enough to

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Speaker 1: actually enter the earthly paradise and ascent. So the first

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Speaker 1: level that you have to go through on the amount

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Speaker 1: of purgatory deals with pride. And so you have you

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Speaker 1: have individuals walking around on this terrace carrying heavy rocks

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Speaker 1: in their backs, so the weights forcing them to walk slowly,

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Speaker 1: their bodies are bent low to the ground. So that

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Speaker 1: is probably the most direct way that pride itself is

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Speaker 1: dealt with in the divine con me though it it

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Speaker 1: pops up time and time again as a as part

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Speaker 1: and parcel to other major sins like I mean, Satan himself,

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Speaker 1: the great Deceiver, the great center. Uh you know, it's

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Speaker 1: his fall is all about pride. Well, yeah, and from

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Speaker 1: what I read to you about la Viathan, the snake

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Speaker 1: is the spirit of pride right and actually is masquerading

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Speaker 1: as the Holy Ghost and might enter someone and displace

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Speaker 1: This is my interpretation God is the center, right, so

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Speaker 1: you're replacing God with yourself as the center. Is that

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Speaker 1: perhaps this is why it's the queen of all sins

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Speaker 1: and and certainly outside of the Christian tradition, you see

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Speaker 1: pride show up the major downfall in human nature, for

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Speaker 1: instance the wheel of life and Tibetan beauty Buddhism the

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Speaker 1: wheel of sensara. You see these various realms in which

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Speaker 1: the human may become reincarnated, the various states of being.

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Speaker 1: So there's like an animal realm, there's a human realm,

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Speaker 1: there's their their hell realms, and then there are these

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Speaker 1: these up realms of existence, including the data realm. And

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Speaker 1: this is like the realm of the gods where these

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Speaker 1: mighty beings do their thing. But they're so consumed by

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Speaker 1: ego and they're so blind to the suffering of others

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Speaker 1: that even though they're long lived, when they die, they're

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Speaker 1: often reincarnated into the lower realms. And to say that

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Speaker 1: the hell realms, because their lives ended up having such

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Speaker 1: nasty results and were so charmatically awful. So just for

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Speaker 1: being a little bit puffed up, well they were more

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Speaker 1: than a little bit puffed up. They were they had

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Speaker 1: godlike pride and that was their their fault. And then

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Speaker 1: of course the other thing is that the baton Buddhism especially,

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Speaker 1: it's all about finding that balance, that equanimity. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: the human realm is the this, this desired realm, because

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Speaker 1: this is the room from which you can actually achieve

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Speaker 1: liberation and rise above all the other rooms, and a

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Speaker 1: rise above the cycle of endless rebirth and death, where

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Speaker 1: the individuals spiraling through all these different cycles of of

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Speaker 1: outrageous pride and outrageous to spare, outrageous violence and just

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Speaker 1: pure like animal existence eventually rises above all that through

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Speaker 1: liberation and the than the noble eightfold path. All right,

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Speaker 1: So that's the way that you would achieve this, right right, Um.

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Speaker 1: And that's the philosophical side. But let's look at the

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Speaker 1: science side of pride, because it turns out there is

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Speaker 1: a scientific part when you're talking about pride in the

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Speaker 1: human being. So it turns out that pride is actually

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Speaker 1: an adaptive virtue. Um. And this is from Discover Magazines

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Speaker 1: article I didn't send, it was my brain. Um. They

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Speaker 1: say that most of us perceive ourselves is slightly smarter, smarter, funnier,

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Speaker 1: more talented, and better looking than average. These rose colored

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Speaker 1: glasses are apparently important to mental health, the psychological immune

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Speaker 1: system that protects us from despair. This is from Julian

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Speaker 1: Paul Keenan, and he's the director of Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory

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Speaker 1: and Professor of Psychology at Montclair State University in New

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Speaker 1: Jersey and um, So, apparently this is something that we

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Speaker 1: need as social animals in order to bolster ourselves. And

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Speaker 1: they actually have found that we start expressing pride as

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Speaker 1: early as two and a half years old and by

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Speaker 1: age four able to recognize it. So we sort of

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Speaker 1: points to something being hardwired in ourselves to be able

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Speaker 1: to negotiate the social contract that we all um entered into. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, because that's the thing about pride, it's it's

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Speaker 1: you need to have pride in what you do. Like

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Speaker 1: nobody wants to be around somebody who who doesn't believe

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Speaker 1: in their own ability. Like like nobody wants to hire

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Speaker 1: somebody who who isn't going to say, yeah, I'm great

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Speaker 1: at what I do and you should hire me. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's just well right, And we'll talk about that. We'll

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Speaker 1: talk about how the in terms of group think, people

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Speaker 1: are looking really as pride as a marker in someone,

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Speaker 1: and not only that, humility isn't always what it's cracked

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Speaker 1: up to be. And we'll talk about with that in

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Speaker 1: a little bit um, but I did want to point

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Speaker 1: out that there seems to be some sort of uni

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Speaker 1: versality when it comes to pride. Um. It looks like this.

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Speaker 1: It's a slight smile ahead, tilt with hands on the

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Speaker 1: hips or or your hands raised high and Dr Tracy

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Speaker 1: and David Matsumoto, psychologists at San Francisco State, analyzed spontaneous

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Speaker 1: responses to winning or losing a judo match during the

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Speaker 1: two thousand and four Olympic and Paralympic Games, and they

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Speaker 1: found that expressions of pride after a victory were similar

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Speaker 1: for athletes from thirty seven nations, including for fifty three

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Speaker 1: blind competitors, many of them who were blind from birth.

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Speaker 1: So the idea is that this isn't just a simple

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Speaker 1: act of imitation. In other words, we see one another

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Speaker 1: do it. It's not learned behavior. It's it's actually something

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Speaker 1: that's emerging. Yeah, cue exactly, there's something going on in

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Speaker 1: our brains that is pulling the puppet strings of expression

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Speaker 1: for pride. All right, we're gonna take a quick break

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Speaker 1: and then we're gonna get back to all of this,

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Speaker 1: So hanging there for one second and back. Obviously, there

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Speaker 1: are two sort of branches of pride. There's the sort

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Speaker 1: of authentic pride, uh, where yeah, you want to be

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Speaker 1: prideful about stuff that you're good at, you want to

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Speaker 1: believe in yourself, you want to have enough optimism to

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Speaker 1: carry out your your daily life. But then there's this

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Speaker 1: realm of hubris where you're just vain and prideful to

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Speaker 1: an annoying or just destructive extent. Yeah, that's more in

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Speaker 1: the category of narcissism and someone who is very arrogant,

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Speaker 1: kind of like jerk jerk pride. I guess you could say, yeah,

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Speaker 1: very much like this sinful like I'm Satan, I'm great,

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Speaker 1: uh kind of pride or the or the data pride,

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Speaker 1: you know, where the where you have these beings that

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Speaker 1: are just enormously powerful and just do not care about

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Speaker 1: the suffering going around around them. Yeah. Right, So I

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Speaker 1: mean that's that's the problem with pride, right. I think

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Speaker 1: there's the private empowers versus the private blinds, the private wounds. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and let's talk about some of the Psychology about pride

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Speaker 1: in society. UM. There was a study on sixty two

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Speaker 1: undergraduates who took tests that were supposedly measuring their spatial

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Speaker 1: i Q, and really the patterns that were flashed before

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Speaker 1: them were going way too fast that they couldn't actually

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Speaker 1: um perform on this test. That wasn't the point. The

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Speaker 1: point is that afterwards the researchers took all of them

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Speaker 1: aside or some of them not, and gave them feedback

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Speaker 1: on how they did. And so they gave them They

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Speaker 1: either didn't give them any feedback at all, or they

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Speaker 1: said with little or no expression, you did very well,

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Speaker 1: or they completely gushed and said you did great. Um.

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Speaker 1: And of course again this they took this test and

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Speaker 1: it was it wasn't really about the results of it,

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Speaker 1: because I couldn't really finish it. But they didn't know that.

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Speaker 1: The participants then sat down in a group to solve

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Speaker 1: similar puzzles so that researchers could assess their behavior based

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Speaker 1: on the feedback that they had given them, and they

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Speaker 1: found that the puffed up, prideful students were perceived as

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Speaker 1: being both more dominant and more likable than those who

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Speaker 1: didn't get a seal of approval from the researchers, and

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Speaker 1: they were really surp pries about that because they thought

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Speaker 1: that the other students would be considered boastful or um,

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Speaker 1: just arrogant. They didn't realize that this was a big

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Speaker 1: social component that those people were actually looked up to

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Speaker 1: because they had pride and it also had there's something

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Speaker 1: to stay here to about the power of positive reinforcement,

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Speaker 1: you know, like build up. Uh, certainly the people that

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Speaker 1: work for you and the people around you, you know,

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Speaker 1: because that puts him in a better position to excel. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's a sort of a sidebar on that experiment.

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Speaker 1: So that's psychology of pride in society. But let's talk

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Speaker 1: about psychology of pride in your own self, Yes, in

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Speaker 1: the individual. And this is where the research of Julian

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Speaker 1: Paul Keenan is particularly interesting. Um. He's a director of

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Speaker 1: Cognitive neuro Imagining Laboratory and professor of psychology at Montclair

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Speaker 1: State University in New Jersey, New joycey uh And, and

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Speaker 1: as his title implies, he's done a lot of work

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Speaker 1: peering inside the brain and seeing what's actually happening in

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Speaker 1: moments of pride. Yeah, he did. He got into uh

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Speaker 1: into people's brains because what he started to realize is

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Speaker 1: that this is a quote for him, those who see

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Speaker 1: themselves as they truly are not so funny, a bad driver,

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Speaker 1: overweight have a greater chance of being diagnosed with clinical depression.

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Speaker 1: So he wanted to take this premise of people who

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Speaker 1: was going on in their brains right, and he found

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Speaker 1: that it actually there's actually less mental energy typically involved

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Speaker 1: in puffing ourselves up then trrying ourselves down. Even though

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Speaker 1: they're they're they're they're very similar on a neurological level,

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Speaker 1: like they're both actions are tied to two more or

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Speaker 1: less the same region of the brain. In particular, Keenan

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Speaker 1: train just behind the forehead, and this is what helps

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Speaker 1: shape awareness of self right. And he used a magnetic

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Speaker 1: field called transcreanial magnetic stimulation uh TMS. We've actually talked

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Speaker 1: about this before, applied to this ALPA volunteers, and it

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Speaker 1: temporarily scrambled the signals in this area of the brain,

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Speaker 1: selectively shutting off this region of the brain which I

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Speaker 1: neglected to say what mPFC stands for it is the

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Speaker 1: medial prefrontal cortex. So he has this means to briefly

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Speaker 1: shut off the mPFC and his volunteers, UH switches them off,

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Speaker 1: and then he watches as the normal everyday arrogance melts

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Speaker 1: away from these individuals. And apparently it's not a pretty site. No. No,

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Speaker 1: they see themselves as they really are, without glossing over

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Speaker 1: negative characteristics. Um so. And I think it's fascinating that

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Speaker 1: the whole TMS transcaranial magnetic stimulation, that you can sit

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Speaker 1: there with a magnet and actually manipulate that part of

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Speaker 1: the brain. Is just on a side note, very creepy

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Speaker 1: to me. Um But there's a study by Haidihikohikishi of

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Speaker 1: the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Japan and researchers

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Speaker 1: as volunteers to imagine themselves winning a prize or truncing

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Speaker 1: an opponent while their brain things were being scanned, and

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Speaker 1: they showed less activation and brain regions associated with introspection

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Speaker 1: and self conscious thought than people induced to feel negative

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Speaker 1: emotions like shame or embarrassment. So the conclusion is that,

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Speaker 1: as you had did before, we accept positive feedback about

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Speaker 1: ourselves readily right, there's less energy. We just go okay me,

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Speaker 1: except that rather than compared with something like guilt or embarrassment,

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Speaker 1: which is the brain really contends to go over a

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Speaker 1: little bit more. Another thing to come out of Keenan's

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Speaker 1: work that I thought was interesting was that he pointed

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Speaker 1: out that self deprecation and self deceptive pride. Yeah, they're

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Speaker 1: both located in the same region of the brain, Like

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Speaker 1: it's that and they both serve the same purpose, and

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Speaker 1: that is to advance in society, which makes it, you know,

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Speaker 1: makes sense. One person may say they're being really self

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Speaker 1: deprecating because they're they're sort of fishing for for boost

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Speaker 1: me ups there, They're they're looking for sympathy or like, oh, no,

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Speaker 1: you did fine, You're really not not that bad at

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Speaker 1: this thing that you you know, you're you're harping about,

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Speaker 1: versus the person who is, uh, who is just unrealistically

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Speaker 1: pumping themselves up because they're they're trying to make others

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Speaker 1: believe in this boastful reality that they're puting forth. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I thought it was really interesting in that the unctious

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Speaker 1: ingratiating behavior, this this humility is masquerading really like it's

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Speaker 1: the difference. Like if one person was saying like, man,

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Speaker 1: I am so beautiful, and people were like, yeah, okay,

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Speaker 1: you are beautiful. You keep talking about it. I'm buying

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Speaker 1: into it now. And then the other person is saying, oh, man,

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Speaker 1: I'm so not beautiful, and then people are like, oh no,

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Speaker 1: you are beautiful. Like it's similar results of like in

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Speaker 1: terms of other people's what other people are saying and

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Speaker 1: or thinking about you, or I'm not as beautiful as

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Speaker 1: you are. You know what I'm saying, like ingratiating yourself

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Speaker 1: in that way, which is really interesting and it's really

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Speaker 1: I find that fascinating that using the same TMS he

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Speaker 1: was able to detect that and effectively study something that,

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Speaker 1: for the longest was was really not studied all that

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Speaker 1: much because it was sort of considered in the same

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Speaker 1: way that there's not a particular region and Andte's inferno,

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Speaker 1: there's not a particular circle that's just devoted to pride.

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Speaker 1: It was just thought that it was too elusive, that

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Speaker 1: it was just too it was too everywhere and nowhere

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Speaker 1: to really succinctly study. Well, it's not as you know, sexy,

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Speaker 1: as anger or fear people, right, they didn't think that

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Speaker 1: there was much to it, but in fact it's really

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Speaker 1: uh part and personal of the way that we interact

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Speaker 1: with one another and the way that we're perceived. And

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Speaker 1: I do, I do really find it very interesting that um,

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Speaker 1: you can see this taking place in the brain, you know,

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Speaker 1: when he is um, when Keenan is manipulating that one

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Speaker 1: area about self awareness and how all that just melts

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Speaker 1: away and someone can see themselves for for who they are,

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Speaker 1: which you know, we've brought this up before, but like wow,

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Speaker 1: I mean that that makes me think about how again

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Speaker 1: how much we constructed in reality and how much of

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Speaker 1: our brains really inform who we are, our personalities. So

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Speaker 1: the science kind of falls in line with some of

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Speaker 1: what we kind of already knew about pride in that

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Speaker 1: there's there's both ay, a light and a dark side

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Speaker 1: to pride. There is a there's a balanced level of

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Speaker 1: pride that allows us to to to go about our

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Speaker 1: daily lives and our professional lives and our personal lives

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Speaker 1: in a reasonable manner. And then there's a cases where

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Speaker 1: there's there's not enough pride, where one is more prone

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Speaker 1: to depression and uh, and then there's a there's overwhelming pride.

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Speaker 1: There's just pure hubrist where the individual is just violently

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Speaker 1: strutting forth like a peacock through life like a peacock

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Speaker 1: and a china shop. Yeah yeah, And I really like

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Speaker 1: this idea of it being therapeutic too though, sort of

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Speaker 1: a you know, fake it till you make it thing, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, and and to think back, you know, to

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Speaker 1: on these these example like you see writings of you know,

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Speaker 1: individuals like Saint Didditict who compares the pride and humility

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Speaker 1: to Jacob's ladder, this dream vision of this ladder that

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Speaker 1: allows one to reach Heaven and God and the idea

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Speaker 1: that um any like any kind of pride is a

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Speaker 1: step down the letter of the ladder, and then a

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Speaker 1: humility step of humility is a step up the ladder.

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Speaker 1: But then you have you know, you've had other people

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Speaker 1: and out that pride is really kind of a it's

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Speaker 1: almost kind of like a safety feature, uh with other

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Speaker 1: sins Like if you were enjoying food and it it

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Speaker 1: might it seem to be uh that you're going down

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Speaker 1: the road to gluttony. Well, then pride should should cut

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Speaker 1: in at some point and stop you and be like, whoa,

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Speaker 1: I should as as great as his food. Is I

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Speaker 1: also I am kind of prideful about how I look,

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Speaker 1: so I should maybe hold off so that I don't

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Speaker 1: ruin that with excessive burger eating. I see a book

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Speaker 1: in here like how to make a Seven Stans Work

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Speaker 1: for You? Well by Lamb. Well no, well they're those

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Speaker 1: books already exist. That they're one is called the Satanic

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Speaker 1: Bible by Anton LaVey. But because then because the whole

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Speaker 1: thing I read it in like in high school. But

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Speaker 1: like a lot of that is like him Anton LaVey

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Speaker 1: arguing it's like all these seven deadly sins, they're really

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Speaker 1: seven deadly virtues because they're all great and blah blah blah.

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Speaker 1: And that's the thing. There's certainly an argument to be

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Speaker 1: made for any of these sins, like at what point

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Speaker 1: is it is it really something that hurts us? And

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Speaker 1: at what point is it just a part of who

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Speaker 1: we are? And is it more hurtful to ignore it? Um?

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Speaker 1: Which is I That's gonna be a topic that's gonna

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Speaker 1: continue to come up as we examine each of these

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Speaker 1: uh so called sins from the standpoint of science, just

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Speaker 1: right in psychology and all that. Next up and the

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Speaker 1: next wepisview I believe it, since that's the second look,

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Speaker 1: all right, well, well tell us what you think. What

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Speaker 1: do you think about pride, how it factors into your

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Speaker 1: daily life, and how it factors into the various competing

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Speaker 1: world views in the world around around us? Do you

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Speaker 1: do you agree with St Benedict? Do you agree with

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Speaker 1: Anton LaVey? Let us know. You can find us on

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Speaker 1: Twitter and Facebook. On Facebook we are Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: Your Mind, and on Twitter we are Below the Mind,

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Speaker 1: and you can also drop us a note at Below

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Speaker 1: the Mind at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check

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