Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglass. Julie,
Speaker 1: you're familiar with the Seven Deadly Sins? Right? Oh yeah, yeah, gluttony,
Speaker 1: I'm all over that. Well, well there's more than just glatton. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's there's there's a loss, there's gluttony, there's greed, there's sloped,
Speaker 1: there's rat there's envy, and then that the queen of
Speaker 1: the Seven Deadly Sins, Pride, the queen so called by
Speaker 1: Pope St. Gregory, right, yeah, who largely popularized this, this
Speaker 1: list of seven deadly sins, drawing on older did traditions. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean you look back to like the Book of Proverbs.
Speaker 1: You have King Solomon dealing with like seven deadly is
Speaker 1: in a sense. Uh so there's an older tradition there.
Speaker 1: But Gregory is really the popular really popularized these these
Speaker 1: seven deadly sins. So we're thinking, hey, let's examine these.
Speaker 1: We're all into talking about science meets human experience, philosophy
Speaker 1: and science kind of duke it out. What's going on
Speaker 1: with various parts of the human experience. So let's uh,
Speaker 1: we've decided we're gonna tackle each of these seven deadly sins,
Speaker 1: and uh, just in case we get slothful and don't finish,
Speaker 1: we figured, let's let's start with a big one. Let's
Speaker 1: go and tackle the the mother of of sins, Pride,
Speaker 1: which I have to say, I was a little bit
Speaker 1: surprised that this is considered the mother pride. I mean
Speaker 1: that doesn't you know, pride coming before the fall? Though? Right's?
Speaker 1: I mean, I I instantly think back to uh to
Speaker 1: to the divine comedy, uh, Dante's Inferno at all. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. There's you know, you have all these these
Speaker 1: various circles and uh bulges in um in in Dante's
Speaker 1: Hell that they did shot various punishments. So there's like,
Speaker 1: you know, like the lustful or punished in one way
Speaker 1: and then their heretics in another, and and it goes
Speaker 1: all the way down to where at the very bottom
Speaker 1: you have say himself and various betrayers and deceivers. They're
Speaker 1: frozen in this lake. So but but it's what's interesting
Speaker 1: is that there's not really a particular circle in hell
Speaker 1: that's devoted to the prideful, because there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of pride going on in hell. Do you encounter prideful
Speaker 1: individuals at various levels? For instance, there's Farranata. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty proud heretic that you encount. There's a thief
Speaker 1: by the name of Vanni of Fusie. There's this really
Speaker 1: awesome part where he is essentially so prideful. Uh. He's
Speaker 1: in Hell and he's basically giving God the finger. But
Speaker 1: it's not the finger. It's this Italian thing called the
Speaker 1: figs where oh is this this modern thing too? Uh,
Speaker 1: there's just a Italian term that I know. Well, it's
Speaker 1: where you you take your thumb, you make a fist
Speaker 1: and then stick your thumb up through your middle and
Speaker 1: the index finger, and then you kind of and then
Speaker 1: with the with your knuckles facing out, you kind of
Speaker 1: like shake your fist and then ideally you do this
Speaker 1: on both hands, like like like our friend the thief
Speaker 1: in Dante's Inferno and he has shakes them at the
Speaker 1: heaven doing this right now. Yeah, So, um, I'm always
Speaker 1: mindful that there's there's actually apparently in Um in twelve,
Speaker 1: the citizens of the Storia Um fixed two of these
Speaker 1: figs on on this marble tower and aim them at Florence.
Speaker 1: So you had like whole buildings making figs at other cities.
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing. If if memory starts right, I believe
Speaker 1: that figs have a phallic Yes, it's a very phallic thing.
Speaker 1: It's you know, masculine female. You know, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't really have to use your imagination all that much
Speaker 1: to see if you're looking down, if you've done this
Speaker 1: and you're looking down at your hands right now, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna be like, that's a little creepy looking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: um so uh so you have various prideful individuals, and
Speaker 1: pride is a part of all these other sins and
Speaker 1: and Dante sell though. If you travel up to the
Speaker 1: Mount of Purgatory, which is the focus of the second
Speaker 1: volume in the Divine Comedy, in Purgatory, you have the
Speaker 1: Mount of Purgatory, which is this mountain that connects Earth
Speaker 1: to Heaven. And if you are not you're not bad enough,
Speaker 1: say to wind up in hell, but you still have
Speaker 1: some work to do. You still got some some rough
Speaker 1: corners to buff out before you can actually walk through
Speaker 1: the pearly gates. Then you need to go through purgatory.
Speaker 1: And purgatory is this mountain with these various terraces, and
Speaker 1: on each terrace, if you start out at the bottom,
Speaker 1: you have seven ps um on your forehead, these seven marks,
Speaker 1: and as you travel through each terrace, you work off
Speaker 1: one of these marks until you're you're pure enough to
Speaker 1: actually enter the earthly paradise and ascent. So the first
Speaker 1: level that you have to go through on the amount
Speaker 1: of purgatory deals with pride. And so you have you
Speaker 1: have individuals walking around on this terrace carrying heavy rocks
Speaker 1: in their backs, so the weights forcing them to walk slowly,
Speaker 1: their bodies are bent low to the ground. So that
Speaker 1: is probably the most direct way that pride itself is
Speaker 1: dealt with in the divine con me though it it
Speaker 1: pops up time and time again as a as part
Speaker 1: and parcel to other major sins like I mean, Satan himself,
Speaker 1: the great Deceiver, the great center. Uh you know, it's
Speaker 1: his fall is all about pride. Well, yeah, and from
Speaker 1: what I read to you about la Viathan, the snake
Speaker 1: is the spirit of pride right and actually is masquerading
Speaker 1: as the Holy Ghost and might enter someone and displace
Speaker 1: This is my interpretation God is the center, right, so
Speaker 1: you're replacing God with yourself as the center. Is that
Speaker 1: perhaps this is why it's the queen of all sins
Speaker 1: and and certainly outside of the Christian tradition, you see
Speaker 1: pride show up the major downfall in human nature, for
Speaker 1: instance the wheel of life and Tibetan beauty Buddhism the
Speaker 1: wheel of sensara. You see these various realms in which
Speaker 1: the human may become reincarnated, the various states of being.
Speaker 1: So there's like an animal realm, there's a human realm,
Speaker 1: there's their their hell realms, and then there are these
Speaker 1: these up realms of existence, including the data realm. And
Speaker 1: this is like the realm of the gods where these
Speaker 1: mighty beings do their thing. But they're so consumed by
Speaker 1: ego and they're so blind to the suffering of others
Speaker 1: that even though they're long lived, when they die, they're
Speaker 1: often reincarnated into the lower realms. And to say that
Speaker 1: the hell realms, because their lives ended up having such
Speaker 1: nasty results and were so charmatically awful. So just for
Speaker 1: being a little bit puffed up, well they were more
Speaker 1: than a little bit puffed up. They were they had
Speaker 1: godlike pride and that was their their fault. And then
Speaker 1: of course the other thing is that the baton Buddhism especially,
Speaker 1: it's all about finding that balance, that equanimity. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the human realm is the this, this desired realm, because
Speaker 1: this is the room from which you can actually achieve
Speaker 1: liberation and rise above all the other rooms, and a
Speaker 1: rise above the cycle of endless rebirth and death, where
Speaker 1: the individuals spiraling through all these different cycles of of
Speaker 1: outrageous pride and outrageous to spare, outrageous violence and just
Speaker 1: pure like animal existence eventually rises above all that through
Speaker 1: liberation and the than the noble eightfold path. All right,
Speaker 1: So that's the way that you would achieve this, right right, Um.
Speaker 1: And that's the philosophical side. But let's look at the
Speaker 1: science side of pride, because it turns out there is
Speaker 1: a scientific part when you're talking about pride in the
Speaker 1: human being. So it turns out that pride is actually
Speaker 1: an adaptive virtue. Um. And this is from Discover Magazines
Speaker 1: article I didn't send, it was my brain. Um. They
Speaker 1: say that most of us perceive ourselves is slightly smarter, smarter, funnier,
Speaker 1: more talented, and better looking than average. These rose colored
Speaker 1: glasses are apparently important to mental health, the psychological immune
Speaker 1: system that protects us from despair. This is from Julian
Speaker 1: Paul Keenan, and he's the director of Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory
Speaker 1: and Professor of Psychology at Montclair State University in New
Speaker 1: Jersey and um, So, apparently this is something that we
Speaker 1: need as social animals in order to bolster ourselves. And
Speaker 1: they actually have found that we start expressing pride as
Speaker 1: early as two and a half years old and by
Speaker 1: age four able to recognize it. So we sort of
Speaker 1: points to something being hardwired in ourselves to be able
Speaker 1: to negotiate the social contract that we all um entered into. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because that's the thing about pride, it's it's
Speaker 1: you need to have pride in what you do. Like
Speaker 1: nobody wants to be around somebody who who doesn't believe
Speaker 1: in their own ability. Like like nobody wants to hire
Speaker 1: somebody who who isn't going to say, yeah, I'm great
Speaker 1: at what I do and you should hire me. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just well right, And we'll talk about that. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about how the in terms of group think, people
Speaker 1: are looking really as pride as a marker in someone,
Speaker 1: and not only that, humility isn't always what it's cracked
Speaker 1: up to be. And we'll talk about with that in
Speaker 1: a little bit um, but I did want to point
Speaker 1: out that there seems to be some sort of uni
Speaker 1: versality when it comes to pride. Um. It looks like this.
Speaker 1: It's a slight smile ahead, tilt with hands on the
Speaker 1: hips or or your hands raised high and Dr Tracy
Speaker 1: and David Matsumoto, psychologists at San Francisco State, analyzed spontaneous
Speaker 1: responses to winning or losing a judo match during the
Speaker 1: two thousand and four Olympic and Paralympic Games, and they
Speaker 1: found that expressions of pride after a victory were similar
Speaker 1: for athletes from thirty seven nations, including for fifty three
Speaker 1: blind competitors, many of them who were blind from birth.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that this isn't just a simple
Speaker 1: act of imitation. In other words, we see one another
Speaker 1: do it. It's not learned behavior. It's it's actually something
Speaker 1: that's emerging. Yeah, cue exactly, there's something going on in
Speaker 1: our brains that is pulling the puppet strings of expression
Speaker 1: for pride. All right, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna get back to all of this,
Speaker 1: So hanging there for one second and back. Obviously, there
Speaker 1: are two sort of branches of pride. There's the sort
Speaker 1: of authentic pride, uh, where yeah, you want to be
Speaker 1: prideful about stuff that you're good at, you want to
Speaker 1: believe in yourself, you want to have enough optimism to
Speaker 1: carry out your your daily life. But then there's this
Speaker 1: realm of hubris where you're just vain and prideful to
Speaker 1: an annoying or just destructive extent. Yeah, that's more in
Speaker 1: the category of narcissism and someone who is very arrogant,
Speaker 1: kind of like jerk jerk pride. I guess you could say, yeah,
Speaker 1: very much like this sinful like I'm Satan, I'm great,
Speaker 1: uh kind of pride or the or the data pride,
Speaker 1: you know, where the where you have these beings that
Speaker 1: are just enormously powerful and just do not care about
Speaker 1: the suffering going around around them. Yeah. Right, So I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's the problem with pride, right. I think
Speaker 1: there's the private empowers versus the private blinds, the private wounds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and let's talk about some of the Psychology about pride
Speaker 1: in society. UM. There was a study on sixty two
Speaker 1: undergraduates who took tests that were supposedly measuring their spatial
Speaker 1: i Q, and really the patterns that were flashed before
Speaker 1: them were going way too fast that they couldn't actually
Speaker 1: um perform on this test. That wasn't the point. The
Speaker 1: point is that afterwards the researchers took all of them
Speaker 1: aside or some of them not, and gave them feedback
Speaker 1: on how they did. And so they gave them They
Speaker 1: either didn't give them any feedback at all, or they
Speaker 1: said with little or no expression, you did very well,
Speaker 1: or they completely gushed and said you did great. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course again this they took this test and
Speaker 1: it was it wasn't really about the results of it,
Speaker 1: because I couldn't really finish it. But they didn't know that.
Speaker 1: The participants then sat down in a group to solve
Speaker 1: similar puzzles so that researchers could assess their behavior based
Speaker 1: on the feedback that they had given them, and they
Speaker 1: found that the puffed up, prideful students were perceived as
Speaker 1: being both more dominant and more likable than those who
Speaker 1: didn't get a seal of approval from the researchers, and
Speaker 1: they were really surp pries about that because they thought
Speaker 1: that the other students would be considered boastful or um,
Speaker 1: just arrogant. They didn't realize that this was a big
Speaker 1: social component that those people were actually looked up to
Speaker 1: because they had pride and it also had there's something
Speaker 1: to stay here to about the power of positive reinforcement,
Speaker 1: you know, like build up. Uh, certainly the people that
Speaker 1: work for you and the people around you, you know,
Speaker 1: because that puts him in a better position to excel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's a sort of a sidebar on that experiment.
Speaker 1: So that's psychology of pride in society. But let's talk
Speaker 1: about psychology of pride in your own self, Yes, in
Speaker 1: the individual. And this is where the research of Julian
Speaker 1: Paul Keenan is particularly interesting. Um. He's a director of
Speaker 1: Cognitive neuro Imagining Laboratory and professor of psychology at Montclair
Speaker 1: State University in New Jersey, New joycey uh And, and
Speaker 1: as his title implies, he's done a lot of work
Speaker 1: peering inside the brain and seeing what's actually happening in
Speaker 1: moments of pride. Yeah, he did. He got into uh
Speaker 1: into people's brains because what he started to realize is
Speaker 1: that this is a quote for him, those who see
Speaker 1: themselves as they truly are not so funny, a bad driver,
Speaker 1: overweight have a greater chance of being diagnosed with clinical depression.
Speaker 1: So he wanted to take this premise of people who
Speaker 1: are a little bit more self aware and see what
Speaker 1: was going on in their brains right, and he found
Speaker 1: that it actually there's actually less mental energy typically involved
Speaker 1: in puffing ourselves up then trrying ourselves down. Even though
Speaker 1: they're they're they're they're very similar on a neurological level,
Speaker 1: like they're both actions are tied to two more or
Speaker 1: less the same region of the brain. In particular, Keenan
Speaker 1: was interested in the m PFC and this is brain
Speaker 1: train just behind the forehead, and this is what helps
Speaker 1: shape awareness of self right. And he used a magnetic
Speaker 1: field called transcreanial magnetic stimulation uh TMS. We've actually talked
Speaker 1: about this before, applied to this ALPA volunteers, and it
Speaker 1: temporarily scrambled the signals in this area of the brain,
Speaker 1: selectively shutting off this region of the brain which I
Speaker 1: neglected to say what mPFC stands for it is the
Speaker 1: medial prefrontal cortex. So he has this means to briefly
Speaker 1: shut off the mPFC and his volunteers, UH switches them off,
Speaker 1: and then he watches as the normal everyday arrogance melts
Speaker 1: away from these individuals. And apparently it's not a pretty site. No. No,
Speaker 1: they see themselves as they really are, without glossing over
Speaker 1: negative characteristics. Um so. And I think it's fascinating that
Speaker 1: the whole TMS transcaranial magnetic stimulation, that you can sit
Speaker 1: there with a magnet and actually manipulate that part of
Speaker 1: the brain. Is just on a side note, very creepy
Speaker 1: to me. Um But there's a study by Haidihikohikishi of
Speaker 1: the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Japan and researchers
Speaker 1: as volunteers to imagine themselves winning a prize or truncing
Speaker 1: an opponent while their brain things were being scanned, and
Speaker 1: they showed less activation and brain regions associated with introspection
Speaker 1: and self conscious thought than people induced to feel negative
Speaker 1: emotions like shame or embarrassment. So the conclusion is that,
Speaker 1: as you had did before, we accept positive feedback about
Speaker 1: ourselves readily right, there's less energy. We just go okay me,
Speaker 1: except that rather than compared with something like guilt or embarrassment,
Speaker 1: which is the brain really contends to go over a
Speaker 1: little bit more. Another thing to come out of Keenan's
Speaker 1: work that I thought was interesting was that he pointed
Speaker 1: out that self deprecation and self deceptive pride. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: both located in the same region of the brain, Like
Speaker 1: it's that and they both serve the same purpose, and
Speaker 1: that is to advance in society, which makes it, you know,
Speaker 1: makes sense. One person may say they're being really self
Speaker 1: deprecating because they're they're sort of fishing for for boost
Speaker 1: me ups there, They're they're looking for sympathy or like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: you did fine, You're really not not that bad at
Speaker 1: this thing that you you know, you're you're harping about,
Speaker 1: versus the person who is, uh, who is just unrealistically
Speaker 1: pumping themselves up because they're they're trying to make others
Speaker 1: believe in this boastful reality that they're puting forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it was really interesting in that the unctious
Speaker 1: ingratiating behavior, this this humility is masquerading really like it's
Speaker 1: the difference. Like if one person was saying like, man,
Speaker 1: I am so beautiful, and people were like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you are beautiful. You keep talking about it. I'm buying
Speaker 1: into it now. And then the other person is saying, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I'm so not beautiful, and then people are like, oh no,
Speaker 1: you are beautiful. Like it's similar results of like in
Speaker 1: terms of other people's what other people are saying and
Speaker 1: or thinking about you, or I'm not as beautiful as
Speaker 1: you are. You know what I'm saying, like ingratiating yourself
Speaker 1: in that way, which is really interesting and it's really
Speaker 1: I find that fascinating that using the same TMS he
Speaker 1: was able to detect that and effectively study something that,
Speaker 1: for the longest was was really not studied all that
Speaker 1: much because it was sort of considered in the same
Speaker 1: way that there's not a particular region and Andte's inferno,
Speaker 1: there's not a particular circle that's just devoted to pride.
Speaker 1: It was just thought that it was too elusive, that
Speaker 1: it was just too it was too everywhere and nowhere
Speaker 1: to really succinctly study. Well, it's not as you know, sexy,
Speaker 1: as anger or fear people, right, they didn't think that
Speaker 1: there was much to it, but in fact it's really
Speaker 1: uh part and personal of the way that we interact
Speaker 1: with one another and the way that we're perceived. And
Speaker 1: I do, I do really find it very interesting that um,
Speaker 1: you can see this taking place in the brain, you know,
Speaker 1: when he is um, when Keenan is manipulating that one
Speaker 1: area about self awareness and how all that just melts
Speaker 1: away and someone can see themselves for for who they are,
Speaker 1: which you know, we've brought this up before, but like wow,
Speaker 1: I mean that that makes me think about how again
Speaker 1: how much we constructed in reality and how much of
Speaker 1: our brains really inform who we are, our personalities. So
Speaker 1: the science kind of falls in line with some of
Speaker 1: what we kind of already knew about pride in that
Speaker 1: there's there's both ay, a light and a dark side
Speaker 1: to pride. There is a there's a balanced level of
Speaker 1: pride that allows us to to to go about our
Speaker 1: daily lives and our professional lives and our personal lives
Speaker 1: in a reasonable manner. And then there's a cases where
Speaker 1: there's there's not enough pride, where one is more prone
Speaker 1: to depression and uh, and then there's a there's overwhelming pride.
Speaker 1: There's just pure hubrist where the individual is just violently
Speaker 1: strutting forth like a peacock through life like a peacock
Speaker 1: and a china shop. Yeah yeah, And I really like
Speaker 1: this idea of it being therapeutic too though, sort of
Speaker 1: a you know, fake it till you make it thing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and and to think back, you know, to
Speaker 1: on these these example like you see writings of you know,
Speaker 1: individuals like Saint Didditict who compares the pride and humility
Speaker 1: to Jacob's ladder, this dream vision of this ladder that
Speaker 1: allows one to reach Heaven and God and the idea
Speaker 1: that um any like any kind of pride is a
Speaker 1: step down the letter of the ladder, and then a
Speaker 1: humility step of humility is a step up the ladder.
Speaker 1: But then you have you know, you've had other people
Speaker 1: and out that pride is really kind of a it's
Speaker 1: almost kind of like a safety feature, uh with other
Speaker 1: sins Like if you were enjoying food and it it
Speaker 1: might it seem to be uh that you're going down
Speaker 1: the road to gluttony. Well, then pride should should cut
Speaker 1: in at some point and stop you and be like, whoa,
Speaker 1: I should as as great as his food. Is I
Speaker 1: also I am kind of prideful about how I look,
Speaker 1: so I should maybe hold off so that I don't
Speaker 1: ruin that with excessive burger eating. I see a book
Speaker 1: in here like how to make a Seven Stans Work
Speaker 1: for You? Well by Lamb. Well no, well they're those
Speaker 1: books already exist. That they're one is called the Satanic
Speaker 1: Bible by Anton LaVey. But because then because the whole
Speaker 1: thing I read it in like in high school. But
Speaker 1: like a lot of that is like him Anton LaVey
Speaker 1: arguing it's like all these seven deadly sins, they're really
Speaker 1: seven deadly virtues because they're all great and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing. There's certainly an argument to be
Speaker 1: made for any of these sins, like at what point
Speaker 1: is it is it really something that hurts us? And
Speaker 1: at what point is it just a part of who
Speaker 1: we are? And is it more hurtful to ignore it? Um?
Speaker 1: Which is I That's gonna be a topic that's gonna
Speaker 1: continue to come up as we examine each of these
Speaker 1: uh so called sins from the standpoint of science, just
Speaker 1: right in psychology and all that. Next up and the
Speaker 1: next wepisview I believe it, since that's the second look,
Speaker 1: all right, well, well tell us what you think. What
Speaker 1: do you think about pride, how it factors into your
Speaker 1: daily life, and how it factors into the various competing
Speaker 1: world views in the world around around us? Do you
Speaker 1: do you agree with St Benedict? Do you agree with
Speaker 1: Anton LaVey? Let us know. You can find us on
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