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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: here we are with Part three of Tears. I think

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Speaker 1: we have an interruption between parts two and three, but

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Speaker 1: but here we are to conclude the series. That's right. So, uh,

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Speaker 1: as with our past episodes where we've kind of just

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Speaker 1: we've done part one in part two and then a

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Speaker 1: part three and maybe more, Uh, this one is gonna

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Speaker 1: there's gonna be a lot of catching up on things

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Speaker 1: that we we've discussed a little bit on previous episodes.

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Speaker 1: There's gonna be some new stuff. It's uh, I'm not

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Speaker 1: saying it's disorganized, but it's gonna be. Um. Just what

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Speaker 1: are you getting at, Rob, It's it's more or it's

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Speaker 1: more organic. It's like we we are we're exploring and

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Speaker 1: reporting back almost in real time. Okay, it's so um.

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Speaker 1: You know. On one area I wanted to start with,

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Speaker 1: I just wanted to share this little bit that I

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Speaker 1: read in Adult Crying from two thousand and one by

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Speaker 1: Nico Van Harringen, and and in it, the author here

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Speaker 1: is just sharing just a couple of tidbits about how

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Speaker 1: ancient society has thought about tears. Quote. In antique science,

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Speaker 1: it was believed that tears came from the heart Egyptians

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Speaker 1: about fifteen hundred BC, the brain, and this they attribute

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Speaker 1: to Hippocrates from the fifth and fourth centuries b C.

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Speaker 1: Or glands at the punka lachrymalice uh attributed to Galen

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Speaker 1: in the second century. See. However, after Stinson described the

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Speaker 1: tear ducks and the main lachrymal gland in sixteen sixty two,

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Speaker 1: it was accepted that tears originated there. Yeah, there are

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Speaker 1: a ton of great beliefs from the ancient world about

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Speaker 1: the the anatomical origins of tears. Ideas about like when

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Speaker 1: you're feeling a swelling of emotion that makes a bunch

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Speaker 1: of vapors condensed in your heart and then they rise

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Speaker 1: up to your head and have to leak out through

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Speaker 1: your eyes. That's a good one, um. But I particularly

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Speaker 1: like the idea of Galen that the tears come from

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Speaker 1: the punk toa in the eyelids, these little holes uh,

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Speaker 1: which are actually the holes through which tears drain out

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Speaker 1: of the eyes, Because this is the same misconception that

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Speaker 1: I had before I started reading about the anatomy of

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Speaker 1: the eye and the tear ducks. Remember in part one

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Speaker 1: we talked about how the tears are actually secreted by

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Speaker 1: the lachrymal gland, which is above the eye, sort of

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Speaker 1: above the eye, into the outside and then they drain

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Speaker 1: away through these punkeda eventually into the lachrymal sack and

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Speaker 1: the and the tear ducks in the nasal cavity through

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Speaker 1: those are located on the inside of the eyes. And

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Speaker 1: apparently I haven't tried to look in my own eyes,

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Speaker 1: but I have seen images of this. Apparently you can

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Speaker 1: actually see your own punk to laccry malice, the little

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Speaker 1: holes in your eyelids that tears drain away through, if

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Speaker 1: you look really close. I believe I've I've I've spotted

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Speaker 1: mind before. Yeah, But but looking at them and thinking

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Speaker 1: this is where the tears come from. It's like if

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Speaker 1: you were to look at a bathtub and say, oh,

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Speaker 1: this hole in the bottom, this is from which the

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Speaker 1: waters rise and fill the tub for my bath But

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Speaker 1: of course, if that is how you're filling your bathtub,

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Speaker 1: something is wrong. You should not get into that tub. Oh.

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Speaker 1: Revisiting our theme of the tear ducks being the sewer

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Speaker 1: of the eye. Yeah. Now, as far as tears emerging

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Speaker 1: from the brain, I really love that idea too, because because,

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Speaker 1: on one hand, it is it's kind of correct in

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Speaker 1: a sense when you're talking about emotional tears, especially, But

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Speaker 1: the idea that's like tears are in some level like

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Speaker 1: brain juice, I think that's lovely, especially when we're talking

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Speaker 1: about how tears are generally seen as a as a

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Speaker 1: kind of pure immission of the body. But if we

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Speaker 1: were to think of them as is the leakings of

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Speaker 1: of an emotional brain or an enraged brain or what

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Speaker 1: have you, Uh, it paints a different picture. Now, one

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Speaker 1: interesting thing we have heard back from a couple of

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Speaker 1: listeners about is, uh, we we've gotten some resistance to

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Speaker 1: the idea we discussed in previous episodes that humans are

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Speaker 1: the only animals that are known to cry tears as

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Speaker 1: an emotional response to shed liquid out of their lachrymal

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Speaker 1: glands in response to emotions, which we want to be

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Speaker 1: very clear, is not the same as saying that other

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Speaker 1: animals don't feel emotions. It's just that tears are a

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Speaker 1: particular behavioral anatomical response to emotions that appears to only

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Speaker 1: be present in Homo sapiens. Other animals can have all

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Speaker 1: kinds of complex emotions that we maybe couldn't even begin

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Speaker 1: to fathom. They just don't particularly seem to have this

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Speaker 1: response to liquid coming out of the eyes as a result.

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Speaker 1: Um And and it turns out that this conviction that

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Speaker 1: animals must shed emotional tears of some kind does seem

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Speaker 1: to be It does seem to go pretty pretty far

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Speaker 1: back with people making case reports here and there. I

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Speaker 1: was reading an article that I'm definitely gonna return to

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Speaker 1: in this episode that was by uh by ad Finger Hoots,

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Speaker 1: who is a Dutch psychologist who's a researcher on tears,

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Speaker 1: who we've mentioned in the previous episodes and we'll come

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Speaker 1: back to again today and Lauren em Bilsma in Emotion

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Speaker 1: Review in TwixT and they discussed the idea of emotional

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Speaker 1: tears in non human animals. They say that there have

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Speaker 1: been reports of emotional tearfulness in horses and lions. This

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Speaker 1: goes back to plenty of the Elder Uh in crocodiles.

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Speaker 1: This goes back to Alien, who was a who wrote

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Speaker 1: in the second centuries. I think UH too like Shakespeare's

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Speaker 1: talking about how dear can weep emotionally. Of course, reports

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Speaker 1: of elephants crying emotional tears, this is something we can

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Speaker 1: come back to in a minute, uh, guerrillas and so forth.

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Speaker 1: But despite these case reports, they say that the best

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Speaker 1: systematic studies that that involved surveys of veterinarians, zookeepers, and

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Speaker 1: other professionals who work with animals on a regular basis

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Speaker 1: or in a scientific capacity, has essentially yielded no evidence

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Speaker 1: at all of emotional tears in any animal species other

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Speaker 1: than humans. So it really does seem to be a

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Speaker 1: uniquely human trade. But it is fun to look in

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Speaker 1: to it to to to answer the question why have

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Speaker 1: we come to believe or or say that certain animals

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Speaker 1: shed tears? Right, So let's start with the idea of

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Speaker 1: of crocodile tears, because yeah, this is this is a

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Speaker 1: fun one because it touches on croc biology, folk belief,

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Speaker 1: and of course alligator persons in the bog and fog um.

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Speaker 1: I also wonder if part of it comes from from

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Speaker 1: a Western bias against non spontaneous weeping, which I'll get

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Speaker 1: into a little bit later, and I think I've touched

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Speaker 1: on in previous episodes um a Western bias against it

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Speaker 1: in their own culture, but also how it is utilized

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Speaker 1: in other cultures. The idea that tears on purpose cannot

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Speaker 1: be real tears. Um and And as well discuss this

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Speaker 1: does not seem to be the case. But anyway, the

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Speaker 1: idea of the crocodile here is that a crocodile sheds

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Speaker 1: false tears for the prey it has just killed. And

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Speaker 1: this tends to depict something sinister about the crocodile and

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Speaker 1: something dubliquitous about the human you're talking about, because generally

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Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about, like, oh, that politicians shedding

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Speaker 1: crocodile tears, this person shedding crocodile tears, which is to say,

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Speaker 1: they're putting on a false face of emotion, they're intentionally

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Speaker 1: being emotional, or even if maybe in some literal cases

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Speaker 1: they're literally shedding tears, and you doubt the authenticity of

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Speaker 1: those tears. Yeah, And the idea of crocodile tears as

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Speaker 1: something that's sort of like called out by the peep

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Speaker 1: by the writers of natural histories and regarded in some

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Speaker 1: way as evil or suspect does go back further than

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Speaker 1: the idea of crocodile tears as a specific case of hypocrisy.

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Speaker 1: I was real. There's a section about the history of

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Speaker 1: the concept of crocodile tears in at fingerhoots book Why

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Speaker 1: Only Humans Weep, Unraveling the Mysteries of Tears. This is

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Speaker 1: from Oxford University Press. So Fingerhoots is tracing this idea

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Speaker 1: and he mentions a writer, a bishop, a Christian bishop

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Speaker 1: named sat Asterius, who is writing around the r. Four hundred,

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Speaker 1: who wrote that quote crocodiles mourn over the human heads

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Speaker 1: they devour and weep not from repentance, but because heads

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Speaker 1: have no edible flesh. Uh. And so I like that.

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Speaker 1: That's not quite yet to the idea of hypocrisy, but

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Speaker 1: it is saying something about like the I don't know,

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Speaker 1: the crocodile is so greedy and so cruel that even

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Speaker 1: when it's got a human head in its mouth, it's

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Speaker 1: not satisfied. It's just like this is not good enough meat.

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Speaker 1: This is just so depressing. This head is is garbage.

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Speaker 1: Now in terms of of actually observing crocodiles, and you know,

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Speaker 1: and the eyes of the crocodile. Uh. So, yes, crocodiles

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Speaker 1: do have non emotional tears because they do have to

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Speaker 1: keep their eyes lubricated, and apparently if they've been out

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Speaker 1: of the water for a spell, these tears may be

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Speaker 1: more noticeable and may uh you know, and maybe and

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Speaker 1: may be observed while the animal is feeding, if it

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Speaker 1: is then feeding or messing around with with some sort

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Speaker 1: of a carcass on the shore. I was looking around

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Speaker 1: in a two thousand six study at the University of

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Speaker 1: Florida found that there does seem to be something to

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Speaker 1: these observations and it but into by that, I mean

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Speaker 1: that people may have observed crocodiles appearing to shed tears that,

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Speaker 1: to be clear, are not emotional tears. But it may

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Speaker 1: be just due to warm air forced through the sinuses

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Speaker 1: during feeding pushing out more liquid. Okay, so this would

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Speaker 1: just be like a to the extent that this could

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Speaker 1: actually be something you would observe. It's just a sort

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Speaker 1: of coincidental byproduct of what the animal is doing with

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Speaker 1: its head while it's eating. Yeah, it's like if you're

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Speaker 1: observing certain varieties of of of the iguanas that that

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Speaker 1: swim in in salt water and then they're blasting salt

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Speaker 1: out of their face when they're on the as they

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Speaker 1: do when they're on the shore, Like that is not

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Speaker 1: emotional crying. It's it's it's you can also say that's

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Speaker 1: not even crying, that's a step beyond. But yeah, we

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Speaker 1: we can't take this, uh anatomical process and say that

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Speaker 1: this is this might be some sort of an emotional outpouring,

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Speaker 1: that it has anything to do with what's going on

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Speaker 1: with human emotional tears. Though many years later this did

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Speaker 1: develop into the idea that that is the origin of

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Speaker 1: the expression crocodile tears. Now that the crocodile will will

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Speaker 1: sort of weep false tears as a way of eliciting

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Speaker 1: sympathy from a victim or like luring someone close to

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Speaker 1: them and then uh, and then it will bite them

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Speaker 1: and weep while it's eating them. Imagine if that was

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Speaker 1: an adaptive trait. I don't think that would work. We

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Speaker 1: see a crocodile crying and we're like, oh ah, a

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Speaker 1: little buddy, he's sad about it. Clearly we can't lash out, um,

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Speaker 1: but you you know, don't lash out at crocodiles anyway.

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Speaker 1: But the other major animal that you sometimes see discussions

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Speaker 1: about regarding their their potential tears, uh, these involve the elephant,

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Speaker 1: and we actually heard from at least one listener I

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Speaker 1: think more than one who wrote in on the topic

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Speaker 1: of elephants allegedly shedding emotional tears. And the thing is,

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Speaker 1: you do see this still make the rounds on say

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Speaker 1: social media. And part of this is, you know, elephants

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Speaker 1: are sometimes in in tough situations and they do, uh,

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Speaker 1: they do seem to have have, you know, fairly complex

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Speaker 1: emotional lives. So we're not denying that that elephants have emotions. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And and when we're looking at some of these scenarios,

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Speaker 1: you know, we want elephants to be able to cry

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Speaker 1: to a certain extent, like we we knowing that they

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Speaker 1: have emotions, we want to give them human tears. And

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Speaker 1: you have various accounts that make the rounds on the

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Speaker 1: internet about them shedding emotional tears, like look at this

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Speaker 1: baby elephant. It's in a tough spot, it's shedding tears.

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Speaker 1: Look at this mother elephant. Uh, something horrible happened. She

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Speaker 1: is she is shedding tears. She is a displaying emotion

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Speaker 1: and we can connect with it. Well. I mean again,

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Speaker 1: I think this might be actually illustrative of something about

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Speaker 1: the importance of tears as a social signal between humans

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Speaker 1: that we we have this instinct that says, if if

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Speaker 1: an animal is experiencing real important emotions, they must be

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Speaker 1: capable of shedding tears, which again, it that does not

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Speaker 1: follow at all, Like, you know, an animal could have

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Speaker 1: perfect it could have stronger emotions than humans do and

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Speaker 1: just not have this behavioral response to them. Absolutely, so

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Speaker 1: we are not denying elephants complex emotional states, but we

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Speaker 1: will denied in tear ducts because that's exactly what evolution

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Speaker 1: has denied them. Uh And and this is where it

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Speaker 1: gets really fascinating. I was not familiar with this or

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Speaker 1: I had, you know, one of these things I maybe

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Speaker 1: read in the past, and it didn't really like, you know,

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Speaker 1: strike to strike a chord with me. But facts are facts.

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Speaker 1: Not only do they lack tear ducts, they actually lack

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Speaker 1: all of the plumbing associated with mammalian tears. So no glands,

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Speaker 1: no ducks, no canals, nothing interesting. Yeah, they retain mucus glands,

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Speaker 1: but nothing else. So one theory as to why why

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Speaker 1: this is the case is that they seem to have

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Speaker 1: evolved through a semi aquatic past and lost their tier

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Speaker 1: systems during that time, much like modern pinnipeds lacked tear

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Speaker 1: glands and tier ducts. Oh, this is funny. So there

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Speaker 1: may sort of be an aquatic ape equivalent of the

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Speaker 1: the elephant. Uh, the elephants evolutionary ancestor the sort of

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Speaker 1: a life more based in waiting around in the water, right, Okay,

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Speaker 1: but it's doing the opposite of what you know, we

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Speaker 1: got to do that in the previous episode about the

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Speaker 1: hypothesis that that human tears and our ability to shed

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Speaker 1: emotional tears are somehow connected to a supposed aquatic eight past. Well,

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Speaker 1: here's a creature, uh with with what seems to be

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Speaker 1: at least semi aquatic past, and it lost the ability

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Speaker 1: to shed years like other mammals do during the transformation. Interesting,

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Speaker 1: this is, so what is going on with elephant eyes? Okay?

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Speaker 1: So with the elephants. So the thing is you still

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Speaker 1: your eyes still need to be moist That's that's the

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Speaker 1: important thing here. You can't know you can't do without it.

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Speaker 1: So with the elephant, other glands around the eye were

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Speaker 1: essentially repurposed through evolution to provide moisture to the eye.

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Speaker 1: So there's a third eyelid gland um we've talked about

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Speaker 1: third eyelids before. You know, this is like you have

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Speaker 1: the eyelid one and two are the ones that we

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Speaker 1: have the top and the bottom, But then a lot

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Speaker 1: of animals have a have a third as well that

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Speaker 1: is involved. So the third island gland was an accessory

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Speaker 1: gland repurpose. The third eyelid gland is found on other

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Speaker 1: animals as well, but in the elephant it's extremely well

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Speaker 1: developed to make up what for what was lost. And

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Speaker 1: there are also some other tier cocktail differences with the

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Speaker 1: elephant tiers as well due to these changes. So you

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Speaker 1: can so scientists have been able to like look at

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Speaker 1: the substance of the of of the the moisture the

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Speaker 1: liquid in an elephant's eye, and they can they can

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Speaker 1: see that while the actual chemical makeup of it is

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Speaker 1: a little different from what you would find in in

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Speaker 1: you know, typical mammalian tears. Okay, so despite their different

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Speaker 1: ocular anatomy, they've got some kind of liquid, uh combination

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Speaker 1: of like mucus and and and oils and some kind

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Speaker 1: of liquid that maybe on and around the eye and

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Speaker 1: that's just sort of hanging out there now. If they

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Speaker 1: don't have tear ducks through which these things would be

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Speaker 1: draining away. Where does the liquid go ah, And that

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Speaker 1: is where a lot of these observations of elephant tears

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Speaker 1: come from. Um they end up look like they're crying

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Speaker 1: because of the Again, their eyes don't have drainage canals.

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Speaker 1: Their eyes just fill up and then it streams down

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Speaker 1: the face. Sometimes there's even a foam due to the

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Speaker 1: accumulation of sivum and mucus. And this is fascinating too,

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Speaker 1: because this reminds me of of my son's issues with

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Speaker 1: his tear ducks. Having like that was that was the

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Speaker 1: reason his his eyes would well up with tears so easily,

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Speaker 1: not because he was emotional or or anything. It's just

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Speaker 1: the drainage was was messed up, uh, so he would

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Speaker 1: his eyes would well with tears just by virtue of

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Speaker 1: not having a good drainage system in place until it

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Speaker 1: was corrected with a tube. So if it's just common

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Speaker 1: for elephants to have sort of liquid mucus, various things

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Speaker 1: sort of dripping out of their eyes as a standard

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Speaker 1: feature of of what's going on with their ocular anatomy.

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Speaker 1: And then you pair that with elephants sometimes being in

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Speaker 1: situations where they appear to be experiencing emotions, probably are

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Speaker 1: experiencing something that you could call emotions, and you you

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Speaker 1: pair those two things together and you think, oh, the

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Speaker 1: elephant is weeping because of its situation. Absolutely yeah, So

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Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating. I love how this, how this turns

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Speaker 1: what we think about regarding the million tears on its head,

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Speaker 1: And of course it plays into our our our tendency

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Speaker 1: to want to see human emotions, not only human emotions,

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Speaker 1: but but human anatomy and other creatures. Uh. And if

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Speaker 1: anyone wants to learn more about this, I have to

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Speaker 1: say that Rachel Warner has a great post on this

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Speaker 1: at why Animals Do the Thing dot com. It's it's

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Speaker 1: well sided and well written. I highly recommended all right

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Speaker 1: well to come back to the subject of human tears

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Speaker 1: and the evolutionary explanation for why liquid comes out of

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Speaker 1: our eyes when we're experiencing strong emotions. Why this unique

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Speaker 1: behavioral reaction that humans have to their own emotional states

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Speaker 1: and to the emotional states of others. I wanted to

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Speaker 1: come back to to this author I've mentioned several times now,

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Speaker 1: the Dutch psychologist add Finger hoots Um, and one thing

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Speaker 1: I wanted to start off with, was so there's a

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Speaker 1: paper I said it a few minutes ago as a

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Speaker 1: resource for the claim about other animals in the systematic

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Speaker 1: surveys of veterinarians and zookeepers and stuff, uh, not not

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Speaker 1: showing emotional tears. That same paper published an emotional review

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Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen by Vinger Hoots and Lauren in Bilsma.

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Speaker 1: That's a good or because they review a bunch of

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Speaker 1: the different sort of findings about human tears and and

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Speaker 1: their uniqueness all in the same place, and that they

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Speaker 1: argue that crying should be considered a unique human behavior

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Speaker 1: that quote obeys the laws of operant conditioning and is

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Speaker 1: under the influence of biological, psychological, and social factors. It

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Speaker 1: is not merely a reflex symptom. It is a complex

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Speaker 1: behavior that appears to have that have has some kind

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Speaker 1: of biological genetic precedent, and then is strongly influenced in

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Speaker 1: its expression by situational factors, both psychological and social. And

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Speaker 1: they point out some other interesting facts that sort of

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Speaker 1: helps solidify the question of the question we're looking at here. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And one of these goes like this, So, okay, acoustical

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Speaker 1: crying the sound of baby makes is obviously an attachment

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Speaker 1: behavior that maintains the proximity of the parent. I think

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Speaker 1: this is pretty clear that this is the main function

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Speaker 1: of a baby crying, that the crying of a baby

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Speaker 1: draws the parent near to provide care, protection, and feeding.

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Speaker 1: And this kind of thing is necessary for helpless human

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Speaker 1: infants because human infants can do essentially nothing for themselves.

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Speaker 1: They are uh, they are all. They're exceptionally helpless as

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Speaker 1: far as young animals go. Now, at some point we

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Speaker 1: know that newborn babies cannot yet shed tears. But at

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Speaker 1: a certain point point, tears leaking out of the eyes

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Speaker 1: become a standard part of the crying repertoire. So when

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Speaker 1: when babies are displaying this attachment behavior, this uh, this

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Speaker 1: acoustical crying in order to summon the care of a parent,

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Speaker 1: it starts incorporating tears as part of that behavioral repertoire.

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Speaker 1: And then the interesting fact is that as people get older,

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Speaker 1: tears could be seen too in some ways replace acoustical crying.

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Speaker 1: So as we age, as we get older, people tend

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Speaker 1: to cry less frequently, and when they do cry, they

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Speaker 1: don't display the acoustical wailing properties of crying as much

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Speaker 1: as babies do. Instead, they just shed the tears, And

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Speaker 1: that's an interesting fact as well. Why are tears retained

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Speaker 1: into adulthood in a way that the wailing of a

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Speaker 1: baby is usually not. Another interesting developmental fact about the

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Speaker 1: role of crying is the effect of physical pain on

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Speaker 1: the tear response. So the authors here right that quote.

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Speaker 1: Until adolescence, physical pain is a very important trigger of tears,

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Speaker 1: but for adults and the elderly it no longer plays

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Speaker 1: a significant role. However, feelings of loss and powerlessness seem

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Speaker 1: to remain important for crying throughout the lifespan. So when

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Speaker 1: when children get physically hurt, when they're feeling physical pain

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Speaker 1: they scuffed their knee or something, crying is a very

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Speaker 1: common response that mostly goes away in adulthood. Adults rarely

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Speaker 1: cry as a result of physical pain and instead maintain

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Speaker 1: specifically emotional pain feelings of loss and powerlessness or helplessness

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Speaker 1: as the primary triggers of emotional tears. It's this interesting.

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Speaker 1: I thinking about about times that I've been hurt, uh

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Speaker 1: physically hurt as a as a as an adult. Like

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Speaker 1: the one example that I can remember where I was

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Speaker 1: hurt and I really had to choke back tears. Was

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Speaker 1: when um, I was with my my son at the

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Speaker 1: time was very young, and he was he was looking

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Speaker 1: into a cooler full of ice cream at a store,

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Speaker 1: you know, in public place, and I leaned over to

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Speaker 1: look in as well, right above him, and then he

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Speaker 1: excitedly hopped up and like did a like a leaping

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Speaker 1: head butt into my lower jaw, like just like a

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Speaker 1: like a child upper cut and uh and and and

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Speaker 1: it really really hurt for a seconds, like you know,

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Speaker 1: it's like being punched, um with with an uppercut and uh.

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Speaker 1: And I like I had to walk away for just

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Speaker 1: a second, like not out of the store, but just

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Speaker 1: a few feet away, and I felt like I felt

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Speaker 1: like tears of of of associated with the pain. But

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Speaker 1: of course that's a more complex situation there, because it's

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Speaker 1: like you're you're there with your son, you're in a

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Speaker 1: public place. I'm guessing there might be some level of

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Speaker 1: like like maybe I'm trying to you know, on some level,

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Speaker 1: it's like my pain needs to be related to the child,

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Speaker 1: who otherwise is not going to understand what happened, because

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Speaker 1: I think, you know, I don't think he'd really even

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Speaker 1: picked up as much language at that point. Uh so, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's the only time I can think of where

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Speaker 1: it's like a physical pain plus uh something that that

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Speaker 1: provoked tears. Yeah, and it's not the adults never cry

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Speaker 1: tears in a response to physical pain. It's just dramatically

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Speaker 1: less frequent than it is for children. Yeah. Yeah, with

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Speaker 1: with young children, Oh, it's like it's everything, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's the skin, knee, it's the uh, the bump toe

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Speaker 1: or but then weirdly, the thing I always found amazing

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Speaker 1: is that it was it was it wasn't like clockwork

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Speaker 1: like a child would also just like sometimes they would

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Speaker 1: would slightly fall over, you know, they were in the

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Speaker 1: in the wrong mood, then the tears would flow and

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Speaker 1: they need to be comforted. But other times they'd be

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Speaker 1: into playing something and they'll take a fall that would

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Speaker 1: just just lay out an adult for the rest of

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Speaker 1: the day, and they just pop right back up and

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Speaker 1: there they don't care. There's no emotional response in those situations. Well,

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Speaker 1: I kind of can't help but immediately go to thoughts

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Speaker 1: about um, helplessness versus agency in those different situations and

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Speaker 1: and where the situations where as a kid, I remember

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Speaker 1: sort of like popping right back up after an injury,

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Speaker 1: or the times when I'm sort of like really engaged

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Speaker 1: in a task and I can continue it, you know,

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Speaker 1: like I don't feel like I've got to stop. But

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Speaker 1: when you feel like you're hurt in a way that

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Speaker 1: makes you want to stop doing what you're doing, that's

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Speaker 1: when the tears would come on. It would seem yeh.

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Speaker 1: But and and that may tie into the idea of like, Okay,

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Speaker 1: now that I'm no longer in activation mode, but I'm

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Speaker 1: in sort of like receiving career mode. Okay, it's time

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Speaker 1: to cry because I need I need a parent, I

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Speaker 1: need comfort, I need help. So I guess here is

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Speaker 1: a good place to come back and briefly describe a

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Speaker 1: few more of the hypotheses that have been offered over

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Speaker 1: the years about possible evolutionary explanations for emotional tears in

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Speaker 1: humans um In previous episodes, we discussed a handful of

430
00:24:21,280 --> 00:24:24,520
Speaker 1: these that were probably we we judged on the wrong track,

431
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:29,119
Speaker 1: like the smoke from Funeral pyres Idea, which which seemed

432
00:24:29,119 --> 00:24:31,680
Speaker 1: to lack a lack of coherent mechanism for how that

433
00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:35,800
Speaker 1: would become a genetic behavior or um or talking about

434
00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:39,440
Speaker 1: the detoxification hypothesis, which had a number of strong arguments

435
00:24:39,440 --> 00:24:43,119
Speaker 1: against it. In the previous episode, we at least concluded,

436
00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:46,200
Speaker 1: or at least I remember saying, I'm pretty well convinced

437
00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:52,000
Speaker 1: that whatever the intra personal function of crying, maybe and

438
00:24:52,040 --> 00:24:54,600
Speaker 1: it may have some functions like that, I think I

439
00:24:54,600 --> 00:24:59,560
Speaker 1: think I'm probably convinced that the primary evolutionary justification for

440
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:03,720
Speaker 1: a adult crying of emotional tears is interpersonal. Is A

441
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:06,680
Speaker 1: is a social signal of some kind that is supposed

442
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:09,359
Speaker 1: to have an effect on other people around you, maybe

443
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 1: too illicit caregiving from them, uh, to get them to

444
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:16,720
Speaker 1: help you, maybe to neutralize aggression, things like that. But anyway,

445
00:25:16,840 --> 00:25:19,320
Speaker 1: I wanted to sketch a few more of these, uh,

446
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:23,199
Speaker 1: these hypotheses, uh and uh. A note that most of

447
00:25:23,200 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 1: what I'm about to say here comes from summaries of

448
00:25:25,600 --> 00:25:28,199
Speaker 1: these views that are that are in that book by

449
00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:31,439
Speaker 1: ad vingerhoods Why Only Humans Weep? So, so this is

450
00:25:31,520 --> 00:25:34,840
Speaker 1: his take on these different hypotheses, including some of his

451
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:38,399
Speaker 1: criticisms of them. So one idea that this one was

452
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 1: actually kind of interesting, even though there are pretty strong

453
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:44,280
Speaker 1: arguments against it, is the idea of crying as a

454
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 1: mucous defense. So around the year nineteen sixty, the British

455
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:54,199
Speaker 1: American anthropologist Ashley Montague argued that tears began as a

456
00:25:54,240 --> 00:25:59,399
Speaker 1: mechanism to protect against the dehydration of an infant's airways

457
00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 1: during stress vocalizations. And it would go something like this,

458
00:26:04,040 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 1: a baby needs something. The baby begins to scream and

459
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:10,440
Speaker 1: wail for help. It wants a parent, and this causes

460
00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:13,680
Speaker 1: a lot of rapid inhalation and exhalation through the nose

461
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 1: and mouth, and this rapid airflow could potentially dry out

462
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:20,880
Speaker 1: the protective layers of mucus that are present in places

463
00:26:20,880 --> 00:26:23,960
Speaker 1: like the nasal cavity. Now, we don't often stop to

464
00:26:24,040 --> 00:26:27,520
Speaker 1: appreciate our mucus, but your nasal mucus is a wonderful,

465
00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:30,960
Speaker 1: beautiful thing. It is a wonderful biological adaptation that is

466
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:35,200
Speaker 1: extremely important. It protects the body against you know, irritating

467
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:38,200
Speaker 1: contaminants like dust and things. But it also very importantly

468
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:41,480
Speaker 1: protects the body against infection. That the mucus in your

469
00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:45,440
Speaker 1: nose is a major first line of defense against pathogens

470
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:49,880
Speaker 1: entering the body and infecting you. And so under montague hypothesis,

471
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:53,080
Speaker 1: the tears that drain into the nasal passage through the

472
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:57,200
Speaker 1: tear ducts help keep this passage from drying out, especially

473
00:26:57,280 --> 00:27:00,199
Speaker 1: during times of heightened air flow like the scream and

474
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:05,720
Speaker 1: whaling that would accompany a child's vocal distress signals. UH.

475
00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:07,880
Speaker 1: This is further backed up by the idea that tears

476
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:13,160
Speaker 1: also contain a natural enzyme called lysisyme, which has antibacterial properties,

477
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:16,520
Speaker 1: which would seemingly provide further evidence that the shedding of

478
00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: tears during distress vocalizations may be helping to protect the

479
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:25,439
Speaker 1: body from infection. So interesting idea, But Fingerhoots has several

480
00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:30,760
Speaker 1: arguments against this hypothesis that that I think are worth considering. Uh.

481
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:32,680
Speaker 1: First of all, he says, you know, well, babies don't

482
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 1: shed tears for the first several weeks of their life.

483
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: As we discussed in a previous episode, this would be

484
00:27:38,119 --> 00:27:40,679
Speaker 1: at a time when the would probably be the most vulnerable.

485
00:27:41,320 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 1: Another big strike against it is that we don't see

486
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:49,520
Speaker 1: a tear response in in reaction to other activities, especially

487
00:27:49,560 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: like exercise that caused rapid inhalation and exhalation, which could

488
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: potentially dry out this mucus and sometimes does dry it

489
00:27:56,760 --> 00:27:58,560
Speaker 1: out if you go out, you know, running in the cold,

490
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:01,720
Speaker 1: like your your airways can get very dry. Oh man,

491
00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:04,440
Speaker 1: can you imagine what tennis shoe commercials would be like

492
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:08,840
Speaker 1: if if if the rapid tear shedding was part of exercise. Yeah,

493
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:12,000
Speaker 1: that's hilarious. So well, I mean, one thing, Nike commercials

494
00:28:12,000 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: and all this, why is it that athletic shoe commercials

495
00:28:14,280 --> 00:28:16,920
Speaker 1: are always so wet? I mean, I understand it is

496
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:20,280
Speaker 1: true that people sweat when they exercise, but like those

497
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:23,400
Speaker 1: commercials really want to show you the moisture. They're always showing,

498
00:28:23,520 --> 00:28:26,760
Speaker 1: like like beads dripping off of people's elbows and things,

499
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, I know

500
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:30,840
Speaker 1: they want to drive home the physical exertion and uh,

501
00:28:31,600 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: I don't know, probably the sexiness of glistening bodies. Yeah maybe.

502
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 1: And I know, you know, water catches the light. It's

503
00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 1: maybe it's just more interesting to shoot. Looks good in

504
00:28:40,280 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 1: slow motion. Yeah, I can see that. But anyway, I

505
00:28:43,160 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: think that's a pretty big strike against this hypothesis. You

506
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 1: would kind of think that if it worked like this,

507
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 1: other activities that could cause drying out of the mucus

508
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:55,440
Speaker 1: membranes and the nose would also elicit tears, and it

509
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,840
Speaker 1: just doesn't work that way. Also, why would other mammals

510
00:28:58,840 --> 00:29:01,800
Speaker 1: not have a similar addup take ation so interesting? But

511
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:05,360
Speaker 1: I think some pretty strong strikes against it. Um. So

512
00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:08,920
Speaker 1: there's another hypothesis of fingerhoods talks about, which is the

513
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 1: idea of crying as a sort of a way for

514
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:16,960
Speaker 1: adults to temporarily become a child. This one is attributed

515
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 1: to a Dutch ethologist named friends Um. Oh, I should

516
00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:22,640
Speaker 1: have looked up how to pronounce this r o e s.

517
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:26,360
Speaker 1: That mightbe rose or russ maybe um. But it goes

518
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: like this. So most adult mammals seem to be born

519
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:35,560
Speaker 1: with genetically determined instinctual tendencies to react to physical markers

520
00:29:35,600 --> 00:29:40,400
Speaker 1: of infancy with nurturing behaviors and with reduced aggression. You know,

521
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:45,400
Speaker 1: why do we have such a deep biological reaction to

522
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:49,960
Speaker 1: things that are cute? And why does cuteness almost perfectly

523
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 1: correspond to the characteristics of infancy? Uh. These are the

524
00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 1: things that are sometimes called the infant schema, things like

525
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: having a large head, having a large, low lying eyes

526
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:06,040
Speaker 1: on that head, having bulging cheeks. You can look for

527
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:10,160
Speaker 1: this and everything from cute cartoon characters to stuffed animals

528
00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 1: almost anything and everything that is supposed to be cute

529
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 1: in some way mimics babies or mimics infants of other

530
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:21,960
Speaker 1: closely related mammal species. And this is even true of

531
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 1: like inanimate objects like um, inanimate objects that people find

532
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 1: cute tend to be small and tend too maybe in

533
00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:33,240
Speaker 1: some way look kind of helpless like a baby. Yeah, yeah,

534
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:37,000
Speaker 1: this reminds me of how especially in inanimate but I

535
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 1: think you see this in Western animation as well. There's

536
00:30:39,640 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 1: this tendency when something is being super cute, sometimes the

537
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:45,880
Speaker 1: the the eyes are made to just well with tears,

538
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 1: like they're just vibrating with moisture. Very good observation. And

539
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:52,960
Speaker 1: I think that's uh some significant support for, at least

540
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 1: in part, this idea, because it seems that there is

541
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:59,240
Speaker 1: so obviously there are these infant schema. Things that that

542
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:02,240
Speaker 1: look like babies in one way or another tend to

543
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:06,960
Speaker 1: just powerfully trigger us to reduce aggression, to increase care

544
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: and nurturing behaviors, to make us say all and want

545
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:12,400
Speaker 1: to approach and take care of whatever that thing is,

546
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:15,040
Speaker 1: even if it's like a like a little like inanimate

547
00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 1: chair that's just kind of you know, cute and stubby

548
00:31:17,560 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 1: in some way incredibly powerful instinct. But anyway, so there

549
00:31:21,320 --> 00:31:23,920
Speaker 1: are elements of this infant schema that are based not

550
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:29,520
Speaker 1: only on static physical appearance but in behavior. So here

551
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 1: I want to read directly from Fingerhoots as he describes

552
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:38,720
Speaker 1: this quote. Juvenile birds and primates sometimes behave like helpless newborns,

553
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:44,640
Speaker 1: particularly in begging situations. For example, a young hungry sparrow

554
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 1: with a well developed ability to fly, may, in the

555
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 1: presence of a parent, helplessly shake its wings, imitating the

556
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:56,720
Speaker 1: poorly coordinated wing movements of newly hatched offspring to support

557
00:31:56,840 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 1: it's begging for food. And then he also writes uh quote.

558
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 1: In chimpanzees, the pout face, which is the typical expression

559
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:08,600
Speaker 1: of youngsters when separated from their mother, can be observed

560
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:12,840
Speaker 1: in older animals when they are begging. If juveniles that

561
00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:15,720
Speaker 1: behave in this way receive more food and support than

562
00:32:15,760 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 1: those that do not display such behavior, this imitation will

563
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:22,560
Speaker 1: increase their fitness and thus has the potential to become

564
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 1: part of the behavioral repertoire of a species even beyond

565
00:32:26,080 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 1: its infancy. So in given all this, h Rose or

566
00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:35,120
Speaker 1: Russ argued that human crying, including the shedding of liquid

567
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:38,800
Speaker 1: from the eyes was selected by evolution for this reason

568
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:42,240
Speaker 1: because it made the faces of juveniles and then even

569
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:48,680
Speaker 1: adults resemble more closely the faces of helpless newborn infants.

570
00:32:48,760 --> 00:32:51,920
Speaker 1: And we are we're just strongly programmed to react to

571
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 1: the faces of helpless newborn infants with nurturing, caring behaviors,

572
00:32:56,080 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 1: such as, say, giving things to them or not responding

573
00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 1: to them with aggression, and so under this hypothesis, crying

574
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:05,880
Speaker 1: even an adults is a way of triggering sort of

575
00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 1: the neural cuteness alarm in our heads to turning us

576
00:33:09,760 --> 00:33:13,040
Speaker 1: into infant caregivers, even when the person crying is not

577
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 1: actually an infant um. And this is summarized with with

578
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 1: a number of different ways that that uh, the moistening

579
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 1: of the eyes with tears could make someone more closely

580
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 1: resemble a newborn. These points would include, and this is

581
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:30,239
Speaker 1: from from Fingerhood summary here quote the moistening of the

582
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:33,080
Speaker 1: face which may remind us of the faces of newborn's

583
00:33:33,120 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: wet with amniotic fluid, the uncoordinated, almost spasmodic respiration, which

584
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:41,760
Speaker 1: is similar to the initial respiratory efforts of a newborn.

585
00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:46,200
Speaker 1: The correspondence of the acoustical aspects of human crying to

586
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:50,480
Speaker 1: the separation or distress calls of other animals, the closed eyes,

587
00:33:50,560 --> 00:33:53,680
Speaker 1: the wrinkled skin around the eyes, the spotted coloration of

588
00:33:53,720 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 1: the facial skin, and the open mouth, all of which

589
00:33:56,320 --> 00:34:01,320
Speaker 1: are typical crying expressions shared with newborns. So this could

590
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 1: have some arguments against it. For example, it still wouldn't

591
00:34:03,680 --> 00:34:07,479
Speaker 1: explain why emotional tears would be unique to humans as

592
00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:10,920
Speaker 1: opposed to say, other primates, but it could be partially

593
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:13,960
Speaker 1: on the right track. Now, I want to go lightly

594
00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:17,440
Speaker 1: over a couple more that he mentions. One is the

595
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:22,520
Speaker 1: idea of crying as a symbolic representation of suffering. This

596
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:27,200
Speaker 1: one has attributed to the Spanish optomologist one marube Uh,

597
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:31,160
Speaker 1: though The Fingerhoots notes that the American neuroscientist Robert Provine

598
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:34,480
Speaker 1: has offered a similar explanation. And here the idea is

599
00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 1: that crying is a social signal of emotional pain that

600
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:42,000
Speaker 1: is adapted from the reflex tear response that comes from

601
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 1: certain types of physical pain. And this would have some

602
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:48,920
Speaker 1: precedent and animal behavior, because animals seem to have evolutionarily

603
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:53,440
Speaker 1: developed social signals uh to one another that are based

604
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:57,360
Speaker 1: on the appearance of behaviors that are originally not for signaling.

605
00:34:57,760 --> 00:35:01,040
Speaker 1: For example, the idea that the social signal of anger

606
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:06,440
Speaker 1: represented by bared teeth maybe based on originally non communicative

607
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: eating behaviors. So maybe the idea is, you know, originally

608
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:13,800
Speaker 1: an animal that looks like it is intently like gnawing

609
00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:15,799
Speaker 1: on a bone or eating or something, you don't want

610
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:18,279
Speaker 1: to like approach that animal and try to mess with

611
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:20,279
Speaker 1: it because you know you're getting in between it and

612
00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 1: its food. Maybe you could sort of like re like

613
00:35:24,200 --> 00:35:27,400
Speaker 1: play on that instinct by showing your teeth to another

614
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:29,800
Speaker 1: animal even while you're not eating this saying like I

615
00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:33,759
Speaker 1: am you know, don't mess with me right now. Or similarly,

616
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:37,440
Speaker 1: like the the social signal of disgust maybe based on

617
00:35:37,480 --> 00:35:43,040
Speaker 1: originally non communicative rejection behaviors like vomiting or spitting out food.

618
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:45,839
Speaker 1: Are are the faces we make that others can see

619
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:49,240
Speaker 1: when we're disgusted by something kind of look like spitting

620
00:35:49,239 --> 00:35:53,320
Speaker 1: out faces or vomiting faces, And under this hypothesis, tears

621
00:35:53,360 --> 00:35:56,359
Speaker 1: could maybe be similar. Maybe what was originally a reflective

622
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: secretion of liquid in the eyes in response to physical

623
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:02,400
Speaker 1: irritation of the eyes, some kind of pain or irritation

624
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:06,319
Speaker 1: came to be a useful signal of pain to other

625
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: members of our species. It was it was useful in

626
00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 1: a survival sense to know when somebody else was in

627
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:16,000
Speaker 1: pain and may need help. And this could become abstracted

628
00:36:16,040 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 1: to types of pain other than physical irritation of the eyes,

629
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 1: specifically emotional pain. Than there's another hypothesis that fingerhoots mentions

630
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:34,360
Speaker 1: that is attributed to a science writer named Chip Walter,

631
00:36:34,600 --> 00:36:38,759
Speaker 1: who argues that crying maybe a an important part of

632
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: social bonding development in the history of the human species.

633
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:45,280
Speaker 1: It might be a sort of honest signal of genuine

634
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:49,400
Speaker 1: need due to what could be called a handicapping principle. Basically,

635
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:52,600
Speaker 1: the fact that, uh, you know that you would make

636
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:57,359
Speaker 1: really loud noises of helplessness and risk drawing predators nearby

637
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:01,680
Speaker 1: means you must really need help. Um. Honestly, I was

638
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:04,320
Speaker 1: a little fuzzy on how this mechanism was was supposed

639
00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 1: to work, But then the next one I found interesting,

640
00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:09,360
Speaker 1: and this ties into something we talked about in a

641
00:37:09,360 --> 00:37:14,239
Speaker 1: previous episode, the hypothesis that the emotional tears and adults

642
00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:18,320
Speaker 1: are an honest appeasement signal. Uh. And this is traced

643
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:22,200
Speaker 1: back to the Israeli evolutionary biologist or In Hassan, who

644
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:26,560
Speaker 1: argued that, hey, tears blur our vision, and by blurring

645
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 1: our vision, they make it difficult for us to be

646
00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:33,719
Speaker 1: at peak fighting fitness. And so if it's more difficult

647
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:36,719
Speaker 1: to enact violence or aggression while your eyes are full

648
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 1: of tears, Hassan would argue that tears are adaptive because

649
00:37:41,239 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: they are an honest signal of decreased capacity for violence.

650
00:37:45,680 --> 00:37:48,080
Speaker 1: Kind of like a dog rolling on its back and

651
00:37:48,160 --> 00:37:50,640
Speaker 1: showing you its belly. It's like, Hey, I'm I'm putting

652
00:37:50,640 --> 00:37:54,359
Speaker 1: myself in a really vulnerable situation. Don't hurt me. It's

653
00:37:54,360 --> 00:37:57,320
Speaker 1: a kind of hard to fake white flag of surrender

654
00:37:57,680 --> 00:38:00,799
Speaker 1: signaling I am currently helpless and we'll not harm you.

655
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:04,279
Speaker 1: Please help me, or at least please don't hurt me. So,

656
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 1: under this hypothesis, tears would be adaptive because they help

657
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:11,480
Speaker 1: facilitate social trust. Now, whether or not this is truly

658
00:38:11,520 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 1: a primary factor in the evolutionary of tears, this Hassen

659
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 1: hassened white flag of surrender hypothesis, I do think it

660
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:21,080
Speaker 1: picks up on something that we were talking about earlier

661
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 1: that I think seems almost undeniable, which is that tears

662
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:29,800
Speaker 1: are strongly strongly linked with helplessness as a condition. Studies

663
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:33,200
Speaker 1: that look into, you know, cases like when do adults

664
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:36,920
Speaker 1: actually cry? These studies tend to find that the adults

665
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: often report the kinds of situations in which they're most

666
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:42,640
Speaker 1: likely to cry are ones which, in some way or

667
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:45,920
Speaker 1: other they feel helpless or feel a lack of control.

668
00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 1: Of course, as we talked about earlier, the role of

669
00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:51,880
Speaker 1: crying in infants, both acoustical crying, you know, vocal crying

670
00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 1: and tearful crying is quite literally a signal of helplessness.

671
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:59,400
Speaker 1: It is because the infant is literally helpless and cannot

672
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 1: do anything for itself and is requesting that a parent

673
00:39:02,640 --> 00:39:04,880
Speaker 1: come to help them. And so I do feel like

674
00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:08,120
Speaker 1: this is probably a pretty strong factor to consider when

675
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:11,600
Speaker 1: evaluating these different hypotheses, which you know, individual ones we've

676
00:39:11,640 --> 00:39:14,080
Speaker 1: just talked about may or may not be correct to

677
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:17,720
Speaker 1: varying degrees, But I do think that in adults, tearful

678
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:22,440
Speaker 1: crying is very strongly linked to helplessness and probably serves

679
00:39:22,480 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 1: some important social signal of helplessness. And and the signals

680
00:39:27,160 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 1: of helplessness could take multiple forms. They could elicit assistance

681
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 1: and social supports. You know, I am currently helpless and

682
00:39:33,719 --> 00:39:37,440
Speaker 1: need care, or they could neutralize aggression. I am currently

683
00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 1: helpless and can't represent a threat to you. Please don't

684
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:43,360
Speaker 1: hurt me. Uh And And I think this is interesting

685
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 1: because you can even see this in negative reactions to crying,

686
00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:51,720
Speaker 1: Like when are the situations when people are the least

687
00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:56,360
Speaker 1: tolerant of other people crying. It's in situations where you

688
00:39:56,400 --> 00:40:00,600
Speaker 1: would be the least tolerant of somebody being helpless. It's

689
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 1: when somebody is supposed to be useful and responsible and

690
00:40:04,520 --> 00:40:08,400
Speaker 1: say like the workplace or in the military or something that,

691
00:40:08,560 --> 00:40:11,640
Speaker 1: like people would react really negatively to seeing somebody else

692
00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:15,560
Speaker 1: burst into tears, which I mean, I do have to

693
00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 1: mention I think that I think that's ultimately pretty crappy, Like,

694
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:21,720
Speaker 1: no matter what the situation is, like, if if someone

695
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 1: is having emotional tears, like there's something going on, be

696
00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:29,719
Speaker 1: it be it actual feelings of helpful, helpful helplessness, or

697
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:33,640
Speaker 1: or they are you know, they're engaging their mirror neurons,

698
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:37,560
Speaker 1: uh with within with someone else's situation, or perhaps there's

699
00:40:37,560 --> 00:40:42,279
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, emotional imbalance going on there,

700
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: Like there's something something is occurring and to say like, oh,

701
00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:48,200
Speaker 1: you know, don't cry. You know, people don't cry in

702
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:50,320
Speaker 1: this scenario. There's no crying in baseball or whatever the

703
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:54,160
Speaker 1: trope happens to be. Um, I don't think that does

704
00:40:54,200 --> 00:40:56,839
Speaker 1: any good. Right, Well, it's in situations where people are

705
00:40:56,960 --> 00:41:00,480
Speaker 1: less concerned for others well being and more just concerned

706
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:02,440
Speaker 1: with what can you do for me right now? I

707
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:06,640
Speaker 1: need you to be like useful and functional? Right It's

708
00:41:06,680 --> 00:41:08,799
Speaker 1: it's when people are sort of looking at you in

709
00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 1: a more transactional way and just saying like, hey, I

710
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:12,919
Speaker 1: just need you to be on the ball. I don't

711
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:16,320
Speaker 1: really care what you're dealing with, right which it reminds

712
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:20,040
Speaker 1: me of an old Upright Citizens Brigade sketch. Uh. We've

713
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: probably mentioned this in the show before the Bucket of Truth?

714
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:26,080
Speaker 1: Do you ever? Do you remember this from the The

715
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:27,920
Speaker 1: idea was that if there's this bucket, and if you

716
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:30,359
Speaker 1: look into the Bucket of Truth, you will you will

717
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 1: confront uh the unmitigated truth of the universe, and it

718
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:37,560
Speaker 1: will overwhelm you and then you will be unable to

719
00:41:37,600 --> 00:41:42,359
Speaker 1: stop wailing and weeping. And this would occur to most

720
00:41:42,400 --> 00:41:44,440
Speaker 1: of the characters in the skit but then they have

721
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: these these uh, these bits where I think they were

722
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:49,920
Speaker 1: going out in public and doing this like this uncontrolled

723
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:53,040
Speaker 1: weeping and uh and and screaming, as if they had

724
00:41:53,080 --> 00:41:55,560
Speaker 1: looked into the bucket of truth. But at least in

725
00:41:55,600 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 1: one of the skits who was while carrying out some

726
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:00,960
Speaker 1: other mundane task, which was always always struck me as

727
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:03,400
Speaker 1: an interesting juxtaposition. And I couldn't really say why. And

728
00:42:03,400 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 1: perhaps this is that the idea that if you are

729
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:10,400
Speaker 1: fully engaging in emotional tears, that this this is generally

730
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:12,800
Speaker 1: the focus of what you're doing. You're generally not doing

731
00:42:12,840 --> 00:42:16,200
Speaker 1: something else. You're not like, you know, mailing envelopes or

732
00:42:16,200 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 1: whatever happens to be the case. Right, And you know,

733
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:22,400
Speaker 1: I think we can probably all say from experience that

734
00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:26,759
Speaker 1: we're usually not at our most functional and and efficient

735
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:31,320
Speaker 1: while we're crying. Yeah, unless unless you're composing poetry maybe,

736
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,240
Speaker 1: or or a beautiful song. There's so many great songs

737
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:37,760
Speaker 1: about crying. Oh no, I'd say even they're like, while

738
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 1: you're crying, you're not in composition mode. It's only reflecting

739
00:42:41,200 --> 00:42:44,160
Speaker 1: upon those feelings later that you're really good at writing

740
00:42:44,160 --> 00:42:47,080
Speaker 1: about them. Okay, if you try to write about if

741
00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:49,759
Speaker 1: you ever tried to write about strong emotions while you're

742
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 1: currently feeling them, I find it just doesn't work. Like

743
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 1: you can't really there's not much to say about them

744
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 1: while you're feeling them. It's only thinking back on them

745
00:42:58,560 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 1: later that you can talk out them. Well, that's true,

746
00:43:01,640 --> 00:43:04,200
Speaker 1: I mean, the best you know, if if you, I

747
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:06,239
Speaker 1: guess it would would do you tend to defeat it

748
00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 1: if you got into a good writing mode, because you

749
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:10,120
Speaker 1: would get into the flow state, and then you're you're

750
00:43:10,200 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 1: kind of removed from whatever emotional state might have provoked it. Um,

751
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 1: at least moved from the experience of those emotions and

752
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:21,080
Speaker 1: put in a place where you can reflect on them. Yeah,

753
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:24,239
Speaker 1: but obviously looking into a truth bucket is a different matter.

754
00:43:25,280 --> 00:43:26,680
Speaker 1: I guess you just have to roll with it at

755
00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 1: that point. Well, anyway to round out my thoughts about

756
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:34,040
Speaker 1: helplessness as as a factor in tears, um, While I

757
00:43:34,080 --> 00:43:37,280
Speaker 1: am pretty strongly convinced that helplessness is a major part

758
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:41,960
Speaker 1: of whatever would be the ultimate primary evolutionary explanation for them,

759
00:43:42,160 --> 00:43:46,799
Speaker 1: helplessness obviously doesn't explain every case of tears, or at

760
00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 1: least it it seems difficult to like you can imagine

761
00:43:50,360 --> 00:43:54,000
Speaker 1: realistic crying scenarios where it is difficult to see how

762
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:58,520
Speaker 1: helplessness is relevant. Not impossible, but difficult. Just to think

763
00:43:58,520 --> 00:44:02,760
Speaker 1: of a very very light example, Um, you know, okay,

764
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 1: what's a comment? What's a moment in a movie that

765
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:07,880
Speaker 1: often makes you cry? I think about like, some of

766
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:10,400
Speaker 1: the moments in movies that made me cry the most

767
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:15,239
Speaker 1: are when a character who you didn't know if you

768
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:20,080
Speaker 1: could depend on in fact comes through. So for example,

769
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: at the end of Star Wars, when Han Solo appears

770
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:25,600
Speaker 1: in the Millennium Falcon, you know, like that moment where

771
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:28,319
Speaker 1: he you thought he's left and gone off on his own,

772
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:31,759
Speaker 1: but he returns to to help his friends. That those

773
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: are like the moments that kind of like get the

774
00:44:33,680 --> 00:44:36,200
Speaker 1: tears welling up in my eyes, and it's hard to

775
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:39,799
Speaker 1: see how that really relates to helplessness. Maybe you can

776
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:42,520
Speaker 1: make a kind of very abstract argument has something to

777
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:45,319
Speaker 1: do with like needing the help of others. I'm not

778
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:49,239
Speaker 1: sure I when I think about it, it's often like

779
00:44:49,320 --> 00:44:52,120
Speaker 1: really tragic moments in films, or you know that the

780
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:56,359
Speaker 1: death of a protagonist, uh, like you know, the death

781
00:44:56,360 --> 00:45:00,080
Speaker 1: of a key character in in the mission, uh, general

782
00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:04,400
Speaker 1: he opens up the water works for me, you know,

783
00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:06,560
Speaker 1: very you know these kind of these kind of moments

784
00:45:06,560 --> 00:45:12,120
Speaker 1: are Oh, I remember watching The Untouchables and uh and

785
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:15,200
Speaker 1: the part where Sean Connery's character dies. I remember that

786
00:45:15,239 --> 00:45:17,239
Speaker 1: being like real emotional when I was young. Also, that

787
00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:19,080
Speaker 1: movie is super bloody. I don't know why I was

788
00:45:19,120 --> 00:45:22,120
Speaker 1: watching that as a kid. But oh, there there was

789
00:45:22,160 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 1: another one that came to Oh, what's the name, what's

790
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:28,200
Speaker 1: the name of that actor who plays the who plays

791
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:33,480
Speaker 1: the assassin for um for Capone in the Dragon Dragon

792
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:37,239
Speaker 1: Billy Dragon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's in. He's in the

793
00:45:37,239 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 1: movie Vamp as well. He often played a very good lizard,

794
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:46,440
Speaker 1: e kind of reptilian. Yeah, bad dude, bad dude in

795
00:45:46,480 --> 00:45:51,040
Speaker 1: that film. Um not the actor. I also remember as

796
00:45:51,080 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 1: a as a young child watching Romancing the Stone. Again,

797
00:45:54,680 --> 00:45:56,480
Speaker 1: I don't know why I was watching Romancing Stone. I

798
00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:58,520
Speaker 1: think it was probably too young for it, but I

799
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:02,319
Speaker 1: remember crying when the villain died because it was like,

800
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:05,439
Speaker 1: or appeared to die weirdly enough. I think it's got

801
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:10,319
Speaker 1: his hand bit by by a crocodilian. Uh, a bit off,

802
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:12,920
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a captain hook moment. And I

803
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:14,920
Speaker 1: was and I think the part of that was it

804
00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:17,560
Speaker 1: was just it was sort of violent and and terrifying,

805
00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:20,759
Speaker 1: and therefore that was my emotional response to that. And

806
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:22,920
Speaker 1: I remember an adult that was there comforted me and

807
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:25,720
Speaker 1: it's like, no, look he's okay, he's back to ata

808
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:28,640
Speaker 1: the heroes, um, And then I think he died again.

809
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:31,279
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're willing to get really abstract and

810
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:33,440
Speaker 1: stretch it around, I think you can come up with

811
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 1: helplessness or powerless explanations for a lot of these, even

812
00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 1: so called tears of joy or things and movies and

813
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:41,320
Speaker 1: so forth. Like I think about, you know, the tears

814
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:45,759
Speaker 1: of joy, like a parent experiences observing their child do

815
00:46:45,880 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 1: something for the first time. I mean, you could argue

816
00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 1: that maybe that has something to do with like feelings

817
00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:53,799
Speaker 1: of being overwhelmed by the unstoppable passage of time, right,

818
00:46:54,080 --> 00:46:56,800
Speaker 1: you know, time is just like beyond your control and

819
00:46:56,800 --> 00:47:00,239
Speaker 1: and you're seeing that development or or just general really

820
00:47:00,280 --> 00:47:03,799
Speaker 1: being overwhelmed by positive emotions. Maybe just the fact that

821
00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:06,399
Speaker 1: you are overwhelmed puts you in a in a sort

822
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:10,040
Speaker 1: of strange state of powerlessness or helplessness, even though the

823
00:47:10,080 --> 00:47:13,560
Speaker 1: feelings are good. Yeah, yeah, I should say that as

824
00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 1: far as uh, evolutionary hypotheses about crying. Go. I know

825
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 1: ad Fingerhoots himself has sort of advocated the idea that

826
00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:25,239
Speaker 1: maybe adult emotional tears serve a kind of purpose that

827
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:28,920
Speaker 1: is similar to what would be done with vocal crying

828
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:32,280
Speaker 1: by babies eliciting is the social signal trying to elicit

829
00:47:32,320 --> 00:47:36,279
Speaker 1: attachment behaviors and and care from others, but that there

830
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 1: may be a specific advantage for humans in the shedding

831
00:47:39,640 --> 00:47:44,359
Speaker 1: of tears instead of say, loud vocal wailing and situations

832
00:47:44,360 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: where you need to be more subtle and directed, maybe

833
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 1: you need to signal signal these strong emotional states in

834
00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:54,720
Speaker 1: the need for help with just say, like one closely

835
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:57,960
Speaker 1: related person, instead of making loud noises and drawing the

836
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:01,920
Speaker 1: attention of everyone and everything, maybe even local predators and stuff.

837
00:48:02,280 --> 00:48:03,839
Speaker 1: So I don't know what I think about that, But

838
00:48:04,160 --> 00:48:08,120
Speaker 1: also an interesting idea, maybe tearful crying is a is

839
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:12,640
Speaker 1: a more targeted way of displaying this infantile helplessness that

840
00:48:12,640 --> 00:48:22,919
Speaker 1: that elicits care responses. So at this point I thought

841
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:25,600
Speaker 1: we might take a lot of what we've discussed here

842
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:29,280
Speaker 1: and take it into the realm of mythology and religion,

843
00:48:30,080 --> 00:48:33,239
Speaker 1: because it just gives us another vantage point from which

844
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:36,040
Speaker 1: to try and figure all of this out. Now, in

845
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:38,719
Speaker 1: past episodes, you know, when we get into the realm

846
00:48:38,719 --> 00:48:41,840
Speaker 1: of mythology and religion were often a lot more specific.

847
00:48:42,520 --> 00:48:45,480
Speaker 1: For instance, the idea of saying that dog carrying a

848
00:48:45,520 --> 00:48:48,600
Speaker 1: flaming stick. When you start looking for explanations to that,

849
00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:50,800
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have as many cultures to to

850
00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:53,920
Speaker 1: to go to you you who have perhaps more of

851
00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:56,520
Speaker 1: a riddle as to why this is a thing. But

852
00:48:56,680 --> 00:48:59,960
Speaker 1: when it comes to weeping in mythology and religion, when

853
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:03,719
Speaker 1: it comes to God's weeping, humans weeping demi, gods and

854
00:49:03,760 --> 00:49:06,239
Speaker 1: heroes weeping like a lot of it. I guess it's

855
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:08,680
Speaker 1: kind of obvious. You know, we are humans, we weep,

856
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 1: We create these uh these these these uh these beings

857
00:49:13,120 --> 00:49:15,239
Speaker 1: that are important to us, and of course they are

858
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:17,359
Speaker 1: going to weep, and they keep the humans in our

859
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 1: story and the human like entities in our stories they

860
00:49:19,719 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 1: are going to weep as well. And um and on

861
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 1: a certain level, you know, it might not even seem

862
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:28,160
Speaker 1: that fruitful to really examine the scenario much beyond that,

863
00:49:28,680 --> 00:49:30,840
Speaker 1: but but I still think it's interesting to to go

864
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:32,520
Speaker 1: into at least some of it and also look at

865
00:49:32,560 --> 00:49:35,720
Speaker 1: some of the broader themes. So we've discussed the importance

866
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:38,840
Speaker 1: of water in both life itself and then the sorts

867
00:49:38,840 --> 00:49:42,200
Speaker 1: of myth cycles that humans build up about themselves in

868
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:46,440
Speaker 1: their origins. Life depends on the water. Life is water, uh.

869
00:49:46,480 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 1: And one of the key aspects of tears is that

870
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 1: they can They tend to run clear or clearer than

871
00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:55,080
Speaker 1: anything else that's gonna secrete from a human being. Uh.

872
00:49:55,120 --> 00:49:58,360
Speaker 1: They are like water. They are our body producing water.

873
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:02,200
Speaker 1: And so in mythology especially, this is enough to connect

874
00:50:02,239 --> 00:50:05,040
Speaker 1: the tears of mortals, but especially the tears of demi

875
00:50:05,120 --> 00:50:09,200
Speaker 1: gods and gods, with the rain, with oceans, with rivers

876
00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:11,720
Speaker 1: and floods. All of these, of course are our bodies

877
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:14,799
Speaker 1: of water that play heavily into myth cycles as well.

878
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:19,040
Speaker 1: I was reading about some of this in Pangian Flood Myths,

879
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:22,960
Speaker 1: Gondwana Myths and Beyond by Michael eve Vitzel, and the

880
00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:26,320
Speaker 1: author points out the various tropes one finds in various

881
00:50:26,320 --> 00:50:29,840
Speaker 1: religions concerning floods. Now. To be clear, there are floods

882
00:50:29,840 --> 00:50:33,400
Speaker 1: in myth that are connected to urine, to blood, to

883
00:50:33,520 --> 00:50:37,719
Speaker 1: the to the spilt belly contents of a monster to

884
00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:41,840
Speaker 1: whale vomit. But one also finds various accounts where tears

885
00:50:42,160 --> 00:50:45,920
Speaker 1: generate floodwaters or rains, and they might be the tears

886
00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:50,920
Speaker 1: of gods or monsters, or from atoms, tears of repentance,

887
00:50:51,239 --> 00:50:54,000
Speaker 1: this would be Adam, isn't Adam and Eve? And also

888
00:50:54,040 --> 00:50:56,880
Speaker 1: from the tears of grieving lovers, and there seem to

889
00:50:56,920 --> 00:51:00,160
Speaker 1: be just numerous examples of these. Going back to an

890
00:51:00,200 --> 00:51:02,239
Speaker 1: episode we did a long time ago, causes me to

891
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:04,880
Speaker 1: think about the tears of Ray and Egyptian mythology, you know,

892
00:51:04,920 --> 00:51:07,960
Speaker 1: the tears of the sun god Ray sort of falling

893
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:10,840
Speaker 1: to the ground and I believe becoming bees, the bees

894
00:51:10,880 --> 00:51:13,279
Speaker 1: that would be used for for bee keeping, the making

895
00:51:13,280 --> 00:51:16,279
Speaker 1: of wax and honey in ancient Egypt. Yeah. Yeah, And

896
00:51:16,320 --> 00:51:19,480
Speaker 1: indeed we do see life emerging from various bodily secretions

897
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:23,840
Speaker 1: across the global mythic landscape, including blood certainly, but also

898
00:51:23,880 --> 00:51:28,600
Speaker 1: including tears. According to twentieth century folk loreist Stiff Thompson

899
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 1: in his book The Folk Tale, it's part of the

900
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:34,800
Speaker 1: broader miraculous birth of the hero trope that one finds

901
00:51:34,840 --> 00:51:38,360
Speaker 1: just throughout and throughout North American tribal beliefs. They are

902
00:51:38,440 --> 00:51:42,480
Speaker 1: numerous examples of it, pregnancy caused by rain or caused

903
00:51:42,480 --> 00:51:46,440
Speaker 1: by food, emergence from a dead mother, from the ground,

904
00:51:46,560 --> 00:51:48,759
Speaker 1: or from a jug, but also the birth of a

905
00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:51,640
Speaker 1: child from a clot of blood, from a splinter wound,

906
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:55,319
Speaker 1: quote from tears, or from other secretions of the body.

907
00:51:55,400 --> 00:51:59,160
Speaker 1: And then interestingly enough, he also mentions, uh that that

908
00:51:59,320 --> 00:52:02,560
Speaker 1: most frequently, uh, this is from mucus of the nose,

909
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 1: again in North American tribal beliefs. I found that interesting.

910
00:52:07,880 --> 00:52:11,799
Speaker 1: We often don't think about the divine nature of the mucus.

911
00:52:11,800 --> 00:52:14,880
Speaker 1: But oh man, I was just reading actually in um

912
00:52:15,120 --> 00:52:18,120
Speaker 1: Tales from a Chinese studio, there's a there's a wonderful

913
00:52:18,719 --> 00:52:22,160
Speaker 1: little story that pops up so suitably weird, in which

914
00:52:22,560 --> 00:52:26,520
Speaker 1: an individual's hanging out in his study and uh and he,

915
00:52:26,960 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of a Chinese scholar, and he

916
00:52:30,080 --> 00:52:34,080
Speaker 1: sneezes three times. Each time he sneezes, he sneezes out

917
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:37,520
Speaker 1: a small creature, and then one of the creature eats

918
00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:40,040
Speaker 1: the other eats another one and gets a little bigger,

919
00:52:40,080 --> 00:52:42,959
Speaker 1: and then that creature eats the remaining creature. Uh and

920
00:52:42,840 --> 00:52:46,120
Speaker 1: and and finally you just have one like larger creature

921
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:49,839
Speaker 1: that is formed of these different mucus beings, and then

922
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:53,759
Speaker 1: it begins crawling up the individual's leg and then once

923
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:56,440
Speaker 1: it gets to like the side of his torso it

924
00:52:56,560 --> 00:52:59,239
Speaker 1: like attaches to his body and becomes a part of

925
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:01,279
Speaker 1: him and just mains there and you can sort of

926
00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:04,560
Speaker 1: see the remnants of its eyes and its mouth. Wow,

927
00:53:04,680 --> 00:53:08,359
Speaker 1: that's body horror. Yeah, yeah, it's really good. And then

928
00:53:08,400 --> 00:53:10,720
Speaker 1: of course it is the nature in those the stories.

929
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:13,480
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, yep, that happened. Uh. At the end,

930
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:21,160
Speaker 1: I love it, And the local governor made a report. Yes, yes, uh.

931
00:53:21,239 --> 00:53:24,839
Speaker 1: Now speaking of Chinese stories, Uh, there is a did

932
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:27,600
Speaker 1: run across a very minor Chinese myth. I almost I

933
00:53:27,880 --> 00:53:30,400
Speaker 1: hesitated to include it because it's it's ultimately kind of mundane,

934
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:32,960
Speaker 1: but I think it's also illustrative of how of how

935
00:53:33,160 --> 00:53:35,440
Speaker 1: tears and stories of tears can factor in. It is

936
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:38,920
Speaker 1: just about every level of our explaining the world. So

937
00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:42,240
Speaker 1: there's the story in Chinese mythology related by Yang and

938
00:53:42,239 --> 00:53:45,120
Speaker 1: in Turner in the Handbook of Chinese Mythology, in which

939
00:53:45,160 --> 00:53:49,080
Speaker 1: the demi god Emperor Shoon dies and his wives grieve

940
00:53:49,280 --> 00:53:52,000
Speaker 1: for him by weeping and ripping out their hair, and

941
00:53:52,040 --> 00:53:56,160
Speaker 1: the tears splatter on the bamboo, giving rise to a

942
00:53:56,280 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 1: variety of speckled bamboo. Oh. Interesting natural ideological myth having

943
00:54:01,719 --> 00:54:04,840
Speaker 1: to do with tears. Yeah. Now, as far as h is,

944
00:54:04,920 --> 00:54:07,520
Speaker 1: tears as the tears of God's go uh you know,

945
00:54:07,600 --> 00:54:10,560
Speaker 1: God's being largely human and conception, of course they're going

946
00:54:10,640 --> 00:54:14,040
Speaker 1: to cry tears. And it's interesting how their tears are

947
00:54:14,120 --> 00:54:18,120
Speaker 1: basically just super natural amplifications of the roles that human

948
00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:22,880
Speaker 1: tears play in in many situations. For instance, in Greek tradition,

949
00:54:23,160 --> 00:54:26,319
Speaker 1: Eos weeps over the death of her son nm Non,

950
00:54:26,719 --> 00:54:29,680
Speaker 1: who dies of the hands of Achilles. In the Trojan War,

951
00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:34,360
Speaker 1: Zeus is moved by these tears and grants mem Non immortality,

952
00:54:34,800 --> 00:54:37,720
Speaker 1: and then the tears of Theos the dawn are also

953
00:54:37,719 --> 00:54:41,279
Speaker 1: associated with the morning. Do now, I thought we might

954
00:54:41,280 --> 00:54:44,799
Speaker 1: turn to Judeo Christian traditions here and consider the Book

955
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:48,480
Speaker 1: of Jeremiah. Uh So, Jeremiah is often known as the

956
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:52,160
Speaker 1: weeping Prophet, but some interpret these tears is not only

957
00:54:52,200 --> 00:54:54,960
Speaker 1: being the tears of Jeremiah, but also the tears of God.

958
00:54:55,480 --> 00:54:57,640
Speaker 1: And I was reading about this in the Tears of

959
00:54:57,680 --> 00:55:00,760
Speaker 1: God in the Book of Jeremiah by David A. Boss Worth.

960
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:05,120
Speaker 1: This was published in the Journal Biblica in and the

961
00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:09,320
Speaker 1: author makes a connection between this weeping. This idea of

962
00:55:09,320 --> 00:55:13,160
Speaker 1: of one weeping uh with God to God and then

963
00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:16,560
Speaker 1: the tears of of God being part of this scenario

964
00:55:16,960 --> 00:55:20,279
Speaker 1: makes a connection between this and attachment theory, which we've

965
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:23,719
Speaker 1: been we just discussed earlier. Um So in this the

966
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:28,840
Speaker 1: desired response to tears is empathy and support. Quote. Prayers

967
00:55:28,880 --> 00:55:33,080
Speaker 1: often express a desire for proximity to the parent, like deity,

968
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:37,080
Speaker 1: who provides a sense of security through superior power and wisdom.

969
00:55:37,120 --> 00:55:41,920
Speaker 1: In distress, the deity offers help and divine absence provokes anxiety.

970
00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:46,040
Speaker 1: Weeping enters into this relationship when people at prayer hope

971
00:55:46,080 --> 00:55:51,040
Speaker 1: that tears may motivate divine aid. Oh interesting, Yeah, So

972
00:55:51,080 --> 00:55:53,640
Speaker 1: the idea here is Jeremiah. It would follow is drawing

973
00:55:54,120 --> 00:55:57,239
Speaker 1: is is drawing on the parent child bond when he

974
00:55:57,320 --> 00:55:59,960
Speaker 1: is weeping. And you know this this ties in well

975
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:04,600
Speaker 1: with the analysis of God beings in various religions and

976
00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:07,880
Speaker 1: myths as being a kind of sky parent. You know,

977
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:11,400
Speaker 1: the idea of the parent extrapolated into the supernatural realm,

978
00:56:11,520 --> 00:56:14,120
Speaker 1: especially coming back to the helplessness theme. I mean, you

979
00:56:14,120 --> 00:56:16,920
Speaker 1: can think about multiple levels of helplessness. That you can

980
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:21,480
Speaker 1: be in a situation where you are helpless on your own,

981
00:56:21,600 --> 00:56:25,160
Speaker 1: but maybe somebody else could intervene and alleviate the situation.

982
00:56:25,200 --> 00:56:27,120
Speaker 1: But there are also ways in which you could be

983
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:30,960
Speaker 1: helpless in a way that cannot possibly be alleviated. Like

984
00:56:31,400 --> 00:56:33,359
Speaker 1: I say, when a loved one has died. It's not

985
00:56:33,400 --> 00:56:35,719
Speaker 1: like somebody can come and help you in order in

986
00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:39,400
Speaker 1: like bringing them back from the dead or something. They

987
00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:42,680
Speaker 1: might be off able to offer you comfort, but they

988
00:56:42,719 --> 00:56:45,920
Speaker 1: can't actually fix what you know, the cause of your pain.

989
00:56:46,600 --> 00:56:48,640
Speaker 1: And here though, if you think about the idea of

990
00:56:48,680 --> 00:56:52,640
Speaker 1: being able to appeal to a supernatural parent who's all powerful,

991
00:56:53,360 --> 00:56:57,000
Speaker 1: they could have the ability to actually fix things that

992
00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:01,280
Speaker 1: go even beyond the powers of other people to help you. Yeah. Yeah,

993
00:57:01,360 --> 00:57:03,960
Speaker 1: And so like when in Jeremiah we see this, for instance,

994
00:57:04,040 --> 00:57:07,399
Speaker 1: Jeremiah nine one. This is the King James version. Oh

995
00:57:07,520 --> 00:57:10,400
Speaker 1: that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain

996
00:57:10,440 --> 00:57:12,840
Speaker 1: of tears, that I might weep day and night for

997
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:15,880
Speaker 1: the slain of the daughter of my people. Now, the

998
00:57:15,880 --> 00:57:18,240
Speaker 1: Hebrew God was not the first to weep, of course,

999
00:57:18,240 --> 00:57:21,960
Speaker 1: so the author points out that several laments from ancient

1000
00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:26,400
Speaker 1: Mesopotamia depict deities weeping over their cities. He points to

1001
00:57:26,520 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 1: the era Do lament, which describes the weeping of the

1002
00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:32,600
Speaker 1: god Inky for the city of Aradu. This is in

1003
00:57:32,720 --> 00:57:37,480
Speaker 1: modern day Iraq. Quote Aradus, a lord stayed outside his

1004
00:57:37,560 --> 00:57:40,400
Speaker 1: city as if it were an alien city. He wept

1005
00:57:40,440 --> 00:57:44,280
Speaker 1: bitter tears. Father Inky stayed outside his city as if

1006
00:57:44,320 --> 00:57:47,360
Speaker 1: it were an alien city. He wept bitter tears for

1007
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:50,440
Speaker 1: the sake of his harmed city. He wept bitter tears.

1008
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:54,120
Speaker 1: Bosworth also shares a couple of other examples featuring female

1009
00:57:54,160 --> 00:57:57,960
Speaker 1: deities weeping for their cities. But but Mesotamia and God's

1010
00:57:57,960 --> 00:58:00,720
Speaker 1: also wept for each other. In the epic of Gilgamesh

1011
00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:03,360
Speaker 1: we see examples of this. Ishtar weeps over the death

1012
00:58:03,360 --> 00:58:05,960
Speaker 1: of the bowl of Heaven and in other epics to

1013
00:58:06,160 --> 00:58:09,919
Speaker 1: gods weep over a great flood, and uh In Lil

1014
00:58:10,000 --> 00:58:13,120
Speaker 1: weeps quote over the misery of the gods and then

1015
00:58:13,200 --> 00:58:16,000
Speaker 1: makes humans do their work. I was still just thinking

1016
00:58:16,000 --> 00:58:19,280
Speaker 1: about this. Uh this passage you read from the Eridu lament,

1017
00:58:19,760 --> 00:58:23,480
Speaker 1: which is interesting because it it includes the idea of

1018
00:58:23,480 --> 00:58:27,120
Speaker 1: weeping as a result of separation outside the city, as

1019
00:58:27,160 --> 00:58:30,040
Speaker 1: if it were an alien city. Yeah. So again that

1020
00:58:30,160 --> 00:58:32,959
Speaker 1: role of like the being unable to sort of bring

1021
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:39,080
Speaker 1: the parent and child together, like the separation causes the weeping. Yeah. Now.

1022
00:58:39,120 --> 00:58:43,400
Speaker 1: Bosworth also touches on Egyptian weeping gods. Isis weeps for

1023
00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:46,959
Speaker 1: her son Horace and her husband of Cyrus. So in short,

1024
00:58:47,000 --> 00:58:50,600
Speaker 1: there there's just a plethora of weeping deities in the region,

1025
00:58:50,640 --> 00:58:53,400
Speaker 1: predating the Hebrew god. So it stands to reason that

1026
00:58:53,440 --> 00:58:56,840
Speaker 1: this god too would weep as part of its relationship

1027
00:58:56,960 --> 00:58:59,440
Speaker 1: with its people, with its children or what have you.

1028
00:59:00,560 --> 00:59:04,120
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, he also points to an Yugurritic text from Yugurrit,

1029
00:59:04,240 --> 00:59:08,080
Speaker 1: an ancient ports city in northern Syria, that discusses the

1030
00:59:08,080 --> 00:59:11,040
Speaker 1: brain is the source of tears. Quote, son, do not cry,

1031
00:59:11,080 --> 00:59:13,920
Speaker 1: Do not shed tears from me. Spend not the flow

1032
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:16,240
Speaker 1: of your eyes, nor the brains of your head with

1033
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:20,000
Speaker 1: your tears, the brains of your head. That's great. Yeah,

1034
00:59:20,480 --> 00:59:22,680
Speaker 1: this is an interesting thing. Also that a lot of

1035
00:59:22,720 --> 00:59:26,120
Speaker 1: sayings about tears talk about them as if there's a

1036
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:30,360
Speaker 1: kind of economy involved, Like spending tears is like spending money,

1037
00:59:30,480 --> 00:59:33,080
Speaker 1: like you have a like you have a you know,

1038
00:59:33,120 --> 00:59:35,480
Speaker 1: a sort of finite supply of them, and you shouldn't

1039
00:59:35,560 --> 00:59:39,280
Speaker 1: spend them on this or that. Yeah, and I guess

1040
00:59:39,320 --> 00:59:40,920
Speaker 1: you know a lot of that is connecting. I mean,

1041
00:59:40,960 --> 00:59:43,120
Speaker 1: on one hand, uh, you know, there's the idea of

1042
00:59:43,160 --> 00:59:47,480
Speaker 1: crying oneself out, that after an emotional outburst, there will become,

1043
00:59:47,520 --> 00:59:49,120
Speaker 1: there will come and d do it. You'll at least

1044
00:59:49,120 --> 00:59:51,760
Speaker 1: be exhausted with it for the time being. And also

1045
00:59:51,800 --> 00:59:55,080
Speaker 1: the idea that you can only I mean, how much emotion,

1046
00:59:55,120 --> 00:59:57,400
Speaker 1: how much empathy do we have to go around? How

1047
00:59:57,520 --> 01:00:01,600
Speaker 1: much empathy can we have? Uh for you know, for

1048
01:00:01,600 --> 01:00:04,480
Speaker 1: for those around us and those outside of our our

1049
01:00:04,520 --> 01:00:07,240
Speaker 1: sort of sphere of community. Uh. You know, I guess

1050
01:00:07,280 --> 01:00:10,440
Speaker 1: it ties into those various discussions, But it begins it

1051
01:00:10,440 --> 01:00:13,680
Speaker 1: gets complicated, right, because again we have this strong connection

1052
01:00:13,760 --> 01:00:18,760
Speaker 1: between this, this physical response and the idea of of

1053
01:00:18,880 --> 01:00:22,320
Speaker 1: human emotion and human empathy and suffering. Uh. And you know,

1054
01:00:22,360 --> 01:00:25,920
Speaker 1: all these these these ultimately kind of lofty human concepts

1055
01:00:25,920 --> 01:00:31,000
Speaker 1: that are then further further complicated by by human culture,

1056
01:00:31,120 --> 01:00:34,600
Speaker 1: human religion, human mythology, and and more. Well. Yeah, and

1057
01:00:34,640 --> 01:00:39,120
Speaker 1: this raises another really interesting question about the purpose of tears,

1058
01:00:39,160 --> 01:00:41,520
Speaker 1: because you can think about tears on the other side

1059
01:00:41,560 --> 01:00:44,280
Speaker 1: of the equation, right, Like, it seems very clear that

1060
01:00:44,440 --> 01:00:48,680
Speaker 1: tears have something to do with a person who is

1061
01:00:48,800 --> 01:00:51,200
Speaker 1: helpless or feels themselves to be in some kind of

1062
01:00:51,280 --> 01:00:54,880
Speaker 1: state of helplessness or powerlessness trying to elicit care from others.

1063
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:57,120
Speaker 1: But tears come on the other side to write, like,

1064
01:00:57,160 --> 01:01:00,360
Speaker 1: you have empathetic tears when you witness somebody else in

1065
01:01:00,400 --> 01:01:03,880
Speaker 1: a state of in a state of helplessness or uh,

1066
01:01:04,080 --> 01:01:06,960
Speaker 1: going through loss or something like that. So so clearly

1067
01:01:07,000 --> 01:01:11,040
Speaker 1: there's this more complex response that's bound up in in

1068
01:01:11,120 --> 01:01:14,680
Speaker 1: witnessing the pain or struggles of others, or even people

1069
01:01:14,760 --> 01:01:18,000
Speaker 1: weeping when they're helping other people, a kind of mirroring

1070
01:01:18,120 --> 01:01:21,040
Speaker 1: behavior there. Yeah, and in this I want to come

1071
01:01:21,080 --> 01:01:23,800
Speaker 1: back to a book I mentioned, Holy Tears Weeping in

1072
01:01:23,800 --> 01:01:27,480
Speaker 1: the Religious Imagination by Patton and Holly or edited by

1073
01:01:27,480 --> 01:01:30,640
Speaker 1: Patton and Holly, which is another one of these books.

1074
01:01:30,640 --> 01:01:33,160
Speaker 1: If you want more on this topic, Uh, this is

1075
01:01:33,160 --> 01:01:34,640
Speaker 1: a good one to pick up. But it goes into

1076
01:01:34,640 --> 01:01:37,800
Speaker 1: a great, great deal more detail than we're getting into here.

1077
01:01:38,600 --> 01:01:41,320
Speaker 1: But but in that, uh, one thing that struck me

1078
01:01:41,360 --> 01:01:43,520
Speaker 1: reading that is that, yeah, there's not just one way

1079
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:47,440
Speaker 1: of interpreting how weeping factors into religious tradition. Uh. And

1080
01:01:47,600 --> 01:01:48,840
Speaker 1: and one of the big ones here is you can

1081
01:01:48,960 --> 01:01:53,400
Speaker 1: roughly divide actual ritualized weeping by worshippers into two categories,

1082
01:01:53,600 --> 01:01:59,120
Speaker 1: spontaneous weeping and non spontaneous weeping. The difference being that

1083
01:01:59,240 --> 01:02:01,920
Speaker 1: certain religious settings might cause one, of course to be

1084
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:05,960
Speaker 1: overcome by grief or emotion and commenced to weep spontaneously.

1085
01:02:06,520 --> 01:02:08,680
Speaker 1: But then there are plenty of cultures in which weeping

1086
01:02:08,680 --> 01:02:11,360
Speaker 1: at say, a funeral is not merely okay, it's not

1087
01:02:11,440 --> 01:02:15,040
Speaker 1: merely permitted as just this kind of random emotional or

1088
01:02:15,040 --> 01:02:18,240
Speaker 1: even expected emotional outbursts that could occur, but it is

1089
01:02:18,280 --> 01:02:23,280
Speaker 1: also right and proper and even in some cases expected. Plus,

1090
01:02:23,520 --> 01:02:27,400
Speaker 1: While funerary weeping might largely feel like an individual experience

1091
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:32,080
Speaker 1: and many cultures, uh, both for us and all of us,

1092
01:02:32,440 --> 01:02:34,320
Speaker 1: but there are plenty of cultures where it is seen

1093
01:02:34,400 --> 01:02:37,680
Speaker 1: as a communal outpouring and one that is less about

1094
01:02:37,800 --> 01:02:41,360
Speaker 1: us and more about the community or about the spirits

1095
01:02:41,360 --> 01:02:44,000
Speaker 1: of the dead. Uh. You know it. It gets into

1096
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:47,960
Speaker 1: these ideas of of signaling that I'm i'm i'm I'm

1097
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:51,480
Speaker 1: communicating with my community, and I'm even perhaps attempting to

1098
01:02:51,480 --> 01:02:54,919
Speaker 1: communicate with those who have passed on or to draw

1099
01:02:54,920 --> 01:02:58,560
Speaker 1: in on some of these ideas of appealing to deities, uh,

1100
01:02:58,720 --> 01:03:02,640
Speaker 1: speaking to them, speaking you know, cosmologically uh. And and

1101
01:03:02,880 --> 01:03:05,120
Speaker 1: in that, you know, you get into this divide of

1102
01:03:05,440 --> 01:03:10,080
Speaker 1: social versus existential protest. That's that's how the authors who

1103
01:03:10,120 --> 01:03:12,600
Speaker 1: refer to it, well, yeah, that a crying could be

1104
01:03:12,680 --> 01:03:16,320
Speaker 1: explicitly performative a performance in a way that you know,

1105
01:03:16,400 --> 01:03:19,440
Speaker 1: sometimes people would hear that and say, oh, performative crying.

1106
01:03:19,480 --> 01:03:22,920
Speaker 1: That means it's like fake or something. But I mean

1107
01:03:23,200 --> 01:03:25,600
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be any more fake than say, getting up

1108
01:03:25,680 --> 01:03:27,840
Speaker 1: in front of in front of a crowd and saying

1109
01:03:27,960 --> 01:03:31,000
Speaker 1: something about your remembrances of a lost loved one would

1110
01:03:31,000 --> 01:03:35,120
Speaker 1: be like because that is explicitly performing for other people

1111
01:03:35,160 --> 01:03:37,640
Speaker 1: on purpose. Does that mean what you're saying isn't true

1112
01:03:38,160 --> 01:03:40,120
Speaker 1: or that the feelings aren't real? Well, no, I mean

1113
01:03:40,200 --> 01:03:43,800
Speaker 1: it's just a it's a way of viewing what you're

1114
01:03:43,840 --> 01:03:46,920
Speaker 1: doing as a display for other people for them to

1115
01:03:47,040 --> 01:03:51,200
Speaker 1: experience as well and also engage in its social bonding. Um,

1116
01:03:51,600 --> 01:03:54,240
Speaker 1: the fact that someone would cry in order to be

1117
01:03:54,400 --> 01:03:57,240
Speaker 1: seen crying and heard crying by other people around them

1118
01:03:57,560 --> 01:04:00,200
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that the crying is in some way

1119
01:04:00,240 --> 01:04:04,760
Speaker 1: manipulative or false. Right, Yeah, so we have this private

1120
01:04:05,160 --> 01:04:10,560
Speaker 1: versus public divide, spontaneous versus non spontaneous um and so

1121
01:04:10,560 --> 01:04:12,880
Speaker 1: so again coming back to the idea of like crocodile tears,

1122
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:16,720
Speaker 1: I feel like that uh is I mean not to say,

1123
01:04:16,800 --> 01:04:20,080
Speaker 1: I guess there couldn't be a situation where someone's tears

1124
01:04:20,120 --> 01:04:25,000
Speaker 1: are are are are inauthentic. But for the most part,

1125
01:04:25,400 --> 01:04:26,960
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like if their tears going on,

1126
01:04:27,000 --> 01:04:29,200
Speaker 1: there's some sort of an emotional response going on. There's

1127
01:04:29,240 --> 01:04:32,040
Speaker 1: some there's some sort of emotional situation, you know, and

1128
01:04:32,080 --> 01:04:35,000
Speaker 1: maybe it's an actor summoning some sort of uh you know,

1129
01:04:35,120 --> 01:04:38,520
Speaker 1: past or or you know, somehow tapping into their their

1130
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:42,760
Speaker 1: their emotional catalog to reproduce the physical act of of

1131
01:04:42,920 --> 01:04:45,640
Speaker 1: of weeping. Perhaps you know, if it's a paid more ner,

1132
01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:48,480
Speaker 1: for example, at a at a funeral, then in that case,

1133
01:04:48,760 --> 01:04:51,120
Speaker 1: you know, they are weeping for the dead, and they're

1134
01:04:51,200 --> 01:04:55,360
Speaker 1: they're they're connecting with the expectations of of this religious

1135
01:04:55,480 --> 01:04:58,520
Speaker 1: right and perhaps their own experiences. But it's not like

1136
01:04:58,600 --> 01:05:01,360
Speaker 1: there is not an emotional core word of what's happening. Well,

1137
01:05:01,360 --> 01:05:03,000
Speaker 1: I don't know that this may be a difference in

1138
01:05:03,000 --> 01:05:05,000
Speaker 1: our experience of how the term is used. I mean,

1139
01:05:05,040 --> 01:05:07,840
Speaker 1: I don't think I would ever applied the term crocodile

1140
01:05:07,880 --> 01:05:10,800
Speaker 1: tears to somebody who was like mourning at a funeral,

1141
01:05:10,840 --> 01:05:13,400
Speaker 1: even if they were doing so in a performative way.

1142
01:05:13,440 --> 01:05:16,680
Speaker 1: It seems like I most often encounter that phrase used

1143
01:05:16,720 --> 01:05:23,080
Speaker 1: to describe perceived false uh sort of weeping by someone

1144
01:05:23,160 --> 01:05:28,280
Speaker 1: who has caused the very harm they are allegedly weeping over. Okay, Well,

1145
01:05:28,280 --> 01:05:29,920
Speaker 1: I was just thinking imagining the same thing, like what

1146
01:05:29,960 --> 01:05:34,320
Speaker 1: if Jack the Ripper went to a funeral, right, yeah, okay?

1147
01:05:34,680 --> 01:05:36,720
Speaker 1: Or what if Jack the Ripper. What if Jack the

1148
01:05:36,800 --> 01:05:41,480
Speaker 1: Ripper got caught and then cried in court saying like,

1149
01:05:41,520 --> 01:05:46,120
Speaker 1: oh please don't punish me, I'm so remorseful for my actions. Uh,

1150
01:05:46,160 --> 01:05:49,040
Speaker 1: And people would say like, yeah, how remorseful are you really?

1151
01:05:49,080 --> 01:05:53,160
Speaker 1: Are you just trying to manipulate us by by crying. Well,

1152
01:05:53,240 --> 01:05:55,000
Speaker 1: I mean, if you put me in a difficult position

1153
01:05:55,040 --> 01:05:58,400
Speaker 1: of defending Jack the Ripper, if I'm gonna say say that, no,

1154
01:05:58,520 --> 01:06:00,360
Speaker 1: their tears. Absolutely, And I don't know that's a more

1155
01:06:00,440 --> 01:06:03,400
Speaker 1: complex situation right when we're getting into uh, you know,

1156
01:06:03,640 --> 01:06:07,280
Speaker 1: to what degree do we afford uh these kind of

1157
01:06:07,280 --> 01:06:11,800
Speaker 1: emotional states to UH, to two criminals, to convicted criminals,

1158
01:06:11,800 --> 01:06:15,720
Speaker 1: and so forth. But I guess the counter question is,

1159
01:06:15,720 --> 01:06:19,320
Speaker 1: is there a situation where the individual in that scenario

1160
01:06:20,080 --> 01:06:24,800
Speaker 1: is absolutely feeling no emotional state to produce those tears, Like,

1161
01:06:24,880 --> 01:06:28,400
Speaker 1: even if they're they're ultimately only feeling sorry for themselves,

1162
01:06:28,680 --> 01:06:32,200
Speaker 1: it's still an emotional outpouring. Uh. It's not a situation

1163
01:06:32,240 --> 01:06:35,160
Speaker 1: of like the crocodile has no emotion and therefore it's

1164
01:06:35,200 --> 01:06:38,200
Speaker 1: tears or not to be trusted. Perhaps the emotions are misplaced,

1165
01:06:39,000 --> 01:06:40,880
Speaker 1: or at least that is the argument. That's the argument

1166
01:06:40,880 --> 01:06:42,560
Speaker 1: that could be made. I mean, ultimately, I guess who

1167
01:06:42,760 --> 01:06:45,920
Speaker 1: knows what's going on within the mind of the accused

1168
01:06:45,920 --> 01:06:49,360
Speaker 1: in this situation. But but it's certainly not a situation

1169
01:06:49,440 --> 01:06:52,920
Speaker 1: of of the crocodile. Well, I wouldn't blame a crocodile

1170
01:06:53,000 --> 01:06:57,040
Speaker 1: for reading heads, But but they're so they're so unsatisfying,

1171
01:06:57,080 --> 01:07:01,160
Speaker 1: there's so little meat, so crunchy. I gotta say, Actually,

1172
01:07:01,160 --> 01:07:04,040
Speaker 1: while we were reading about crocodile tears, I came across

1173
01:07:04,040 --> 01:07:06,520
Speaker 1: the thing that really did make me feel super sad

1174
01:07:06,560 --> 01:07:09,240
Speaker 1: for crocodiles. And it was. It was also in that

1175
01:07:09,640 --> 01:07:12,479
Speaker 1: the Fingerhoots book with the section about the history of

1176
01:07:12,480 --> 01:07:15,880
Speaker 1: of the concept of crocodile tears uh And he's talking

1177
01:07:15,920 --> 01:07:19,640
Speaker 1: about a book called on the Nature of Animals by

1178
01:07:19,760 --> 01:07:23,200
Speaker 1: a Roman author from the second and third century named

1179
01:07:23,840 --> 01:07:28,040
Speaker 1: alien or Alienus, who does describe weeping in crocodiles, but

1180
01:07:28,080 --> 01:07:30,400
Speaker 1: not in the context of of any kind of like

1181
01:07:30,920 --> 01:07:34,960
Speaker 1: hypocrisy or anything like that. Instead, he talks about he

1182
01:07:35,000 --> 01:07:38,680
Speaker 1: claims there is an Egyptian city called Edfou also known

1183
01:07:38,720 --> 01:07:43,360
Speaker 1: as Appanopolis, where where people catch crocodiles out of the

1184
01:07:43,480 --> 01:07:46,280
Speaker 1: river and then they hang them up on trees and

1185
01:07:46,320 --> 01:07:49,560
Speaker 1: just beat them. They beat them with like whips and stuff,

1186
01:07:49,600 --> 01:07:52,040
Speaker 1: and the crocodiles cry. And when I read that, I

1187
01:07:52,120 --> 01:07:55,800
Speaker 1: was like, oh, buddy's that's that's yeah, that's not good.

1188
01:07:56,440 --> 01:07:59,360
Speaker 1: Don't beat those crocodiles. If you take anything away from

1189
01:07:59,360 --> 01:08:02,560
Speaker 1: this this pod Guest episode, it's don't be don't be

1190
01:08:02,600 --> 01:08:07,360
Speaker 1: cruel to crocodilians, of course not yeah. Also don't be

1191
01:08:07,400 --> 01:08:09,840
Speaker 1: like you know, I mean, don't be super nice as

1192
01:08:09,880 --> 01:08:12,440
Speaker 1: in like feeding them, because that's also being mean to

1193
01:08:12,520 --> 01:08:16,160
Speaker 1: crocodiles if you're you're feeding them. Human food and leading

1194
01:08:16,200 --> 01:08:19,360
Speaker 1: them to associate humans with food, whether or not it

1195
01:08:19,400 --> 01:08:21,719
Speaker 1: looks like they're crying. Just leave them alone, leave them alone,

1196
01:08:21,800 --> 01:08:23,840
Speaker 1: let them do the their thing, You do your thing.

1197
01:08:24,400 --> 01:08:27,280
Speaker 1: Let's keep the distance, all right, We're gonna go and

1198
01:08:27,320 --> 01:08:30,680
Speaker 1: close this episode out here. Obviously we'd love to hear

1199
01:08:30,720 --> 01:08:34,200
Speaker 1: from everyone out there about tears and uh, certainly the

1200
01:08:34,240 --> 01:08:37,920
Speaker 1: various hypotheses that we discussed here today and the religious connotations,

1201
01:08:38,520 --> 01:08:40,800
Speaker 1: and I know we've we've already heard from a lot

1202
01:08:40,840 --> 01:08:43,400
Speaker 1: of people, so we're gonna be talking about some of

1203
01:08:43,439 --> 01:08:46,240
Speaker 1: this in future listener Mail installments. I know we've already

1204
01:08:46,280 --> 01:08:49,960
Speaker 1: heard from someone saying, Hey, how about done, how about

1205
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:53,519
Speaker 1: the frem and uh, what's their deal with crying? So, uh,

1206
01:08:53,720 --> 01:08:56,880
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that specifically, probably on the next listener

1207
01:08:56,920 --> 01:08:59,600
Speaker 1: Mail episode. In the meantime, if you would like to

1208
01:08:59,680 --> 01:09:01,519
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

1209
01:09:01,520 --> 01:09:04,559
Speaker 1: Our core episodes air on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the

1210
01:09:04,600 --> 01:09:07,839
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed artifact on Wednesday,

1211
01:09:07,880 --> 01:09:10,280
Speaker 1: rerun on the weekend listener Mail on Monday, and then

1212
01:09:10,280 --> 01:09:12,519
Speaker 1: on Friday we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time

1213
01:09:12,560 --> 01:09:15,920
Speaker 1: to set aside most of the serious contemplation and just

1214
01:09:16,000 --> 01:09:19,040
Speaker 1: focus in on a weird move you. Thanks as always

1215
01:09:19,040 --> 01:09:23,040
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

1216
01:09:23,040 --> 01:09:25,120
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

1217
01:09:25,160 --> 01:09:27,439
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for

1218
01:09:27,479 --> 01:09:29,640
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us

1219
01:09:29,640 --> 01:09:40,160
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1220
01:09:40,280 --> 01:09:42,759
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

1221
01:09:43,120 --> 01:09:45,439
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart

1222
01:09:45,479 --> 01:09:48,240
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your

1223
01:09:48,240 --> 01:10:04,840
Speaker 1: favorite shows. Two proper charles