Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brained behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. So
Speaker 1: today we have David Brooks on the podcast. Brooks is
Speaker 1: an op ed columnist for The New York Times and
Speaker 1: appears regularly on PBS News Hour, MPR's All Been Considered
Speaker 1: and NBCs Meet the Press. He teaches at Yale University
Speaker 1: and is a member of the American Academy of Arts
Speaker 1: and Sciences. He's the best selling author of a number
Speaker 1: of books, including The Social Animal, The Hidden Sources of Love,
Speaker 1: Character and Achievement, The New Upper Class and How They
Speaker 1: Got There, The Road to Character, and most recently, The
Speaker 1: Second Mountain, The Quest for a Moral Life. David, great
Speaker 1: chat with you today, Great to be with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting book, and it's interesting kind of watch
Speaker 1: The evolution of David Brooks by reading David Brooks's books
Speaker 1: and succession, I feel like everyone they tried, I tried
Speaker 1: to get I realized, Look, you only realize these things
Speaker 1: looking backwards. But I've written about the same territory, but
Speaker 1: sort of one level down each time. So my first
Speaker 1: book was Bobo's in Paradise, about consumption, really, and then
Speaker 1: was about settlement patterns. My second book then about emotion,
Speaker 1: and then about character, and now sort of more spiritual stuff.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what what's the next level down,
Speaker 1: maybe sports or something, the mental level of human existence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might need like a break from such high level
Speaker 1: spiritual stuff. Your next book might be like Before the
Speaker 1: Mountain exactly wrote to hedonism. Well, so I was going
Speaker 1: to ask you how this book differs from The Road
Speaker 1: to Character. I mean, I know it differs, but I
Speaker 1: wanted you to maybe explain to the audience a little bit.
Speaker 1: There are two ways that differs. One, it's much more personal.
Speaker 1: This is a book about the things that happened to
Speaker 1: me in the last six years of my life which
Speaker 1: were transformative in how I look at the world, and
Speaker 1: so it's that and it's much more about relationships. And Second,
Speaker 1: the Road to Character was really built and imprisoned by
Speaker 1: the culture of individualism, which is I think the culture
Speaker 1: of our time and the culture I was living in.
Speaker 1: And so the theory of character building in the Road
Speaker 1: to character is that it's all about internal drama. You
Speaker 1: identify your own weaknesses and then you slowly learn to
Speaker 1: master those weaknesses. So it's like going to the gym,
Speaker 1: and you build muscles to be more honest, to be
Speaker 1: more courageous. In Dwight Eisenhower, who was in that book,
Speaker 1: it's about he had a terrible temper, so every day
Speaker 1: he did inner work to build his temper. And so
Speaker 1: the theory was very individualistic, and I've since come to
Speaker 1: believe that character is not really built that way because
Speaker 1: none of us have enough motivation to do it. And
Speaker 1: then the desire to be good is or the knowledge
Speaker 1: of what is good is plentiful, but the desire to
Speaker 1: actually do it is scarce, and you've got to focus
Speaker 1: on the desire. And so the theory now is that
Speaker 1: you fall in love with things, let's say a child,
Speaker 1: a cause, or a profession, and you make promises to
Speaker 1: the things you love, and then your character is forged
Speaker 1: as you sort of live up to your promises. So
Speaker 1: character swarms by our commitment to others, not so much
Speaker 1: by our drama within ourselves. Yeah. So the subtext there
Speaker 1: is that choose your commitments very wisely, because couldn't you
Speaker 1: commit to certain things that are going to build that
Speaker 1: are going to like not build good character, Like I
Speaker 1: can be community eating steaks every night, right, I mean
Speaker 1: fifteen or sixteen hundred years ago, Saint Augustine says, be
Speaker 1: careful what you love, because you become what you love.
Speaker 1: And more recently, David Foster Wallace in that famous Kenyan
Speaker 1: commencement said if you love money, you'll always feel poor.
Speaker 1: If you love power, you'll always feel powerless. He said,
Speaker 1: there are no atheis life. We're all worshiping something, So
Speaker 1: careful what you worship. And I do think that is
Speaker 1: true in the theory of this book, and it really
Speaker 1: comes out of the teaching I was doing, which is
Speaker 1: that most of us make four big commendments in life
Speaker 1: to a estous and family, to vocation, to a philosophy
Speaker 1: or faith, into a community, and the fulfillment of our
Speaker 1: lives depends on how well we make and then execute
Speaker 1: on those kinds of commitments. Be right, and we'll go
Speaker 1: through those later in the podcast, but before we get
Speaker 1: to those specific commitments, you talk about some crises that
Speaker 1: we're going through. You actually say they're interrelated. And when
Speaker 1: talking about these crises, can you talk about how things
Speaker 1: have changed in our society since you wrote your last book,
Speaker 1: or even since you wrote your first book. There's been
Speaker 1: some dramatic shifts like you wouldn't necessarily have identified these
Speaker 1: four interrelated crises when you wrote your first book. Is
Speaker 1: that right? Right? Well, we've gotten to know a lot
Speaker 1: of America a lot better, and America is in some
Speaker 1: ways economically richer, it's socially worse, and so over the
Speaker 1: last since nineteen ninety nine, the suicide rate has gone
Speaker 1: up by thirty percent. The teenage suicide rate, by some measures,
Speaker 1: has gone up by as much as seventy percent. Depression
Speaker 1: rates are up, mental health problems are up. Every campus
Speaker 1: I go to, the mental health facilities are swamped, and
Speaker 1: so there's been some crisis of disconnection. I think that
Speaker 1: was not evidence in the nineteen ninety decline in social capital,
Speaker 1: and of course that's a gradual process, but general narrative
Speaker 1: I would tell was in the fifties and forties because
Speaker 1: we had to fight the war and combat the depression.
Speaker 1: We had a very communal culture, We're all in this together,
Speaker 1: and around about nineteen sixty two we decided that was
Speaker 1: too stifling. We worried about conformity, and it was too
Speaker 1: racist and too sexist. So we got rid of that
Speaker 1: communal culture and we developed a culture that says, I'm
Speaker 1: free to be myself. This is sort of the Carl
Speaker 1: Rogers world. I want to self actualize, I want to
Speaker 1: unleash my inner spirit. And that was good and necessary
Speaker 1: for a time, but we've taken as the extreme and
Speaker 1: as a result, we've gone disconnected from each other, and
Speaker 1: the effects are visible in our depression rates are also
Speaker 1: very visible in our politics, in the levels of distrust, alienation,
Speaker 1: and hostility. So can you talk about these four crises
Speaker 1: that you identify. One you touched on with a suicide.
Speaker 1: It seems to be linked to loneliness, But can you
Speaker 1: mention the other the others? Yeah, Well, for example, others
Speaker 1: are levels of distrust. If you ask people a generation go,
Speaker 1: do you trust the institutions of your society? Seventy or
Speaker 1: eighty percent said yes, I do, And now it's down
Speaker 1: to twenty two percent. If you ask the generation to go,
Speaker 1: do you trust your neighbors a majority? Fifty or sixty percent?
Speaker 1: So theeah the people around here are basically trustworthy. Now
Speaker 1: that's thirty three percent and nineteen percent of millennials. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting the younger you go, trust and institutions declined
Speaker 1: basically seventies eighties, and then around two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: you know, financial crisis of rock War in two spurts.
Speaker 1: But the distrust of each other, that's purely generational. If
Speaker 1: you're a boomer, you have pretty high trust in people
Speaker 1: around you. If you're a millennial, much lower, and gen
Speaker 1: Z much lower. Still, the younger yougo, the more distrusting
Speaker 1: you are, and so you get that crisis. And then
Speaker 1: to me, one I see in my day job political
Speaker 1: is the crisis of tribalism. And I've heard the psychologists
Speaker 1: have this phrase. The hardest thing to cure is the
Speaker 1: patient's attempt to self cure. And when you're left naked
Speaker 1: and alone, you do what your evolutionary roots tell you
Speaker 1: to do, which is you revert to tribe. And tribe
Speaker 1: seems like community, it seems like a way to attach
Speaker 1: to people, but it's really the opposite of community. Communities
Speaker 1: based on a mutual affection for a cause or a
Speaker 1: place or something, but tribalism is based on a mutual
Speaker 1: hatred of another. You both hate the same things, and
Speaker 1: so it's always friend enemy us them, zero sum scarcity mentality,
Speaker 1: erect walls, build barriers, and tribalism is basically the world
Speaker 1: I live in when I cover politics. Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: certainly do. List You're deep in the swamp, you know,
Speaker 1: of just so fast inted with this article you wrote
Speaker 1: a couple of months. I believe on you know, You're like,
Speaker 1: I'm open to reparations. Yeah, I'm like, wait, David Books
Speaker 1: just said that, you know, like this kind of hardened
Speaker 1: conservative stance, I mean, is that's not you? You know,
Speaker 1: it seems like you're really trying to listen to as
Speaker 1: many perspective as possible. At least that's my perception. You
Speaker 1: would you agree with that? Yeah? I hope. So. You know,
Speaker 1: I've always been more of a Burkiy and Alley, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Edmund Burke, Alexander Hamilton conservative. Yeah, and that's not the
Speaker 1: kind that would put me in the moderate conservative camp
Speaker 1: these days, But or maybe twenty years ago, I would
Speaker 1: have been the moderate conservative camp. Now it's like the
Speaker 1: Republican Party is unrecognizable to me. So I'm just politically homeless.
Speaker 1: And then that reparations column. I've just been traveling around
Speaker 1: the country for really two or three years, trying to
Speaker 1: find people who I call weavers, who are building community
Speaker 1: on local levels, for people who are just really sensational
Speaker 1: relationship And in the course of that, you just spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time just on the racial divide in
Speaker 1: this country, and it really began to feel like a
Speaker 1: make or break moment where we either show a gesture
Speaker 1: of historic recognition and respect or we don't. And so
Speaker 1: I have still qualms about the practical aspects of doing reparations,
Speaker 1: like how ex that thing you do it? But I
Speaker 1: think it's necessary to think in unexpected ways, given where
Speaker 1: we are, to think in unexpected ways and maybe listen
Speaker 1: to as wide perspectives as possible in the issue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so kudos to you. I gave you kudos when you
Speaker 1: wrote that for being open. Now I haven't made my
Speaker 1: own mind up on these complex issues, but I think
Speaker 1: the important thing these days is to at least have
Speaker 1: these discussions in a complex, respectful manner. Yeah, are you
Speaker 1: a member of the Headerdox Academy. By the way. Now
Speaker 1: I'm going to speak at their conference in Okay a
Speaker 1: few weeks, but I am consider myself as an admirer okay,
Speaker 1: potentially a member. So okay, this is something I try
Speaker 1: to reconcile in reading your book. So, well, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of things, and so I thought we could
Speaker 1: dive into some nuances here. You describe your life as
Speaker 1: a quote border stalker, and I thought that was neat.
Speaker 1: I identify as a border stalker too, in the sense,
Speaker 1: let's be clear what a border of stalker is. It
Speaker 1: sounds a little shady, to be honest. So for our audience,
Speaker 1: he has nothing to do with being a stalker, you know,
Speaker 1: but could you please describe a little bit that it is.
Speaker 1: Because I resonated with that description, Yeah, and really thought
Speaker 1: about that, Like the guy who hears in the windows
Speaker 1: say o loud. I was like, wait a minute, let's
Speaker 1: be clear to the audience what we're talking about. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The phrase I got from a friend of mine named
Speaker 1: Mako Fujimori, who's a painter. But he he is Japanese,
Speaker 1: but he's also American, so he grew up a bit
Speaker 1: in Japan, but a lot in America. But he goes
Speaker 1: back to Japan and he does a He uses Japanese
Speaker 1: artistic techniques to create incredibly beautiful beatings, and so he
Speaker 1: sort of lives between the Japanese culture and the American culture.
Speaker 1: And I weirdly, when I was writing the book, found
Speaker 1: realized how much I I'm never quite in one camp.
Speaker 1: I'm sort of a journalist, but I'm a little more.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty academic y for a journalist. I'm sort of
Speaker 1: a conservative, but I'm pretty left ring for a conservative.
Speaker 1: I'm sort of a Jew, but I have polls to
Speaker 1: Christian thought. And so a phrase, another phrase that appeals
Speaker 1: to me is from a gun named Richard Rohrer, and
Speaker 1: he says, you want to be on the edge of inside.
Speaker 1: And so in any group, there are people who are
Speaker 1: right at the core of the group and they serve
Speaker 1: a useful function. But there are also people who are
Speaker 1: inside the group but sort of on the outer edge
Speaker 1: of it. And he says that's where creativity happens because
Speaker 1: you can see more clearly outside the group, you have
Speaker 1: more exchange across borders, and it's just a creative place
Speaker 1: to be on the edge of inside. So I love that,
Speaker 1: and I agree as a creativity researcher, I would say
Speaker 1: the empirical evidence confirms that or suggests that's true. So
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to reconcile is how can you live
Speaker 1: a fiercely committed to life and be a boristalker at
Speaker 1: the same time. That is a very good question, which
Speaker 1: nobody has ever asked me before. You know, I think
Speaker 1: partly it's you don't decide to become a border stalker.
Speaker 1: You just find yourself in this spot. I didn't decide
Speaker 1: to become sort of on the edge of conservatism. It's
Speaker 1: just where the social group happened to fit around me.
Speaker 1: And so I do think I'm for example, you know,
Speaker 1: I decided I want to become a writer at seven,
Speaker 1: at age seven, and it's been fifty years since, and
Speaker 1: I've written pretty much every day, maybe two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty days in all those years. So I think I've
Speaker 1: proven I'm reasonably committed to being a writer. It was
Speaker 1: never quite there what kind of writer I would be,
Speaker 1: whether journalists, fiction plays, whatever. I have different ambitions at times,
Speaker 1: and I just happen to find myself really admiring the
Speaker 1: non fiction of the nineteen fifties, and there was people
Speaker 1: like Jane Jacobs and did people all Sell and other
Speaker 1: people like that William White. They wrote sort of high.
Speaker 1: It would be a little high journalism, but it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be quite rigorous enough to be academic. And I just
Speaker 1: like that style, and I really write in their style
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. So that makes me a little bit
Speaker 1: of a border stalker, but doesn't mean that I'm less
Speaker 1: committed to writing than I've always been. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: can see how that applies to like the general demeanor
Speaker 1: of writing. But you talk about the second mound in life,
Speaker 1: of the committed life of either a vacation spouse and family, philosopher,
Speaker 1: faith or committee. By the way, are these ores or
Speaker 1: these ends? Is the second mound life? Okay? Either? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people, what I'm really trying to
Speaker 1: use commitment is a way to really combat individualism. And
Speaker 1: so in marriage, for example, there's a guy, a great
Speaker 1: sociologist you I think, all at Northwestern who says that
Speaker 1: the model of marriage that's prevalent today is sort of
Speaker 1: the expressive marriage, where two partners are sort of helping
Speaker 1: each other on their life plan. But it's they're not
Speaker 1: really totally They're not a one flush union as the
Speaker 1: old religions would say. It's sort of two individual projects
Speaker 1: that are done side by side with intertwines. And I
Speaker 1: think that's not a very great model for marriage. And
Speaker 1: this is obvious scenario where I've had my own problems
Speaker 1: and through divorce. But I do think marriage survives when
Speaker 1: you each partner throws themselves wholeheartedly into it and sort
Speaker 1: of loses ego, loses individualism and sacrifice for the institution.
Speaker 1: And so to me, commitment is living for the institution
Speaker 1: rather than living for self. So I disagree with that,
Speaker 1: and I thought we could talk about that, okay. So
Speaker 1: I actually wrote a response to your column The Life
Speaker 1: in wal Calm. I wrote a response to that for
Speaker 1: Scientific American called there is no one way to live
Speaker 1: a good life. And I kind of argue that was
Speaker 1: like a false dichotomy because you say a sentence like
Speaker 1: there's always a tension between self and society, and I
Speaker 1: thought that was a false dichotomy as well. It seems
Speaker 1: to me, and you can tell me what you think,
Speaker 1: but it seems in all the research I've seen that
Speaker 1: a good integration of having a healthy self respect, having
Speaker 1: a healthy self actualization. So basically, the way I view
Speaker 1: it is that transcendence a healthy transcendence. You can have
Speaker 1: healthy transcendence, and you can have very like unhealthy transcendence.
Speaker 1: You can have like masochism. You can have like like
Speaker 1: the idea of surrendering yourself and leaving yourself behind is
Speaker 1: like sets you up for like a lot of psychological disorders,
Speaker 1: you know. In my opinion, it seems like the best
Speaker 1: way is to have a kind of relationship where you
Speaker 1: stand on a you know, we're transcendent, stands on a
Speaker 1: healthy bedrock of self actualization, like you know yourself, you
Speaker 1: know what you're bringing to the table, and you are
Speaker 1: helping each other learn and grow, each in their own direction.
Speaker 1: So I guess I didn't see it as either you know,
Speaker 1: because you opened up your article either you have this model,
Speaker 1: a good waye for you have this model. I didn't
Speaker 1: see it as an either or situation. So I'm excited
Speaker 1: to be able to talk to you about that today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I'd say two things. One is, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of these things are tensions, and there
Speaker 1: are tensions between competing goods, and I would say, in
Speaker 1: our culture, the main problem we have to worry about
Speaker 1: these days is narcissism and self obsession and the detached self.
Speaker 1: And so if we were living in the society probably
Speaker 1: you know, medieval, you know Britain, where no one was detached,
Speaker 1: then I'd probably be leaning the other way. So a
Speaker 1: lot of what I'm writing is in the context of
Speaker 1: the times we're in. The second thing I think i'd say,
Speaker 1: and I have this conversation with friends of mine and
Speaker 1: we differ. There's the phrase you have to love yourself
Speaker 1: before you can love others. Yes, And I think I
Speaker 1: disagree with that phrase. And I think you love first
Speaker 1: because someone loved you and gave you a model for
Speaker 1: how to love, probably your parents. And then the second
Speaker 1: you find yourself being worthy of love when you see
Speaker 1: yourself loving others. And so I think my worldview puts
Speaker 1: the relationship first. It's not that individuals form relationships, it's
Speaker 1: the relationships exist in the relationships form the individuals. I
Speaker 1: think that's how I put it. Cool, Well, thanks for
Speaker 1: offering that perspective. I guess I don't view it as
Speaker 1: a chicken or egg sort of thing like either. Again,
Speaker 1: I also Vieid as a Baltic ivy that like, either
Speaker 1: you know you and need to love yourself first, you
Speaker 1: love others. So I really take kind of like the
Speaker 1: Eric From, I'm a big fan of the humanistic approach.
Speaker 1: I'm a bit so like when you kind of talked
Speaker 1: to about Carders and Maslow and kind of a negative light,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, game on, you know, just let
Speaker 1: me explain my position and then I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: what you think. So, because the way I view it
Speaker 1: as like a very like The Art of Loving by
Speaker 1: Eric From is one of my favorite books, and that's
Speaker 1: my philosophy that I'm committed to, you know, in the language,
Speaker 1: in your language of your book, and in that philosophy
Speaker 1: doesn't view it as a chicken our egg sort of thing.
Speaker 1: It's a simultaneous thing. So love is love is love.
Speaker 1: So if you shine, if you have a readiness to love,
Speaker 1: you can have a readiness to hate. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people with a readiness to hate in this
Speaker 1: world today. Those people with a general readiness to hate
Speaker 1: tend to hate themselves as well as others. Those who
Speaker 1: tend to just have a general radiness to love, they
Speaker 1: just shine. The beam of love. They radiate love regardless
Speaker 1: of the stimulus. Maybe it's internal stimulus and they show
Speaker 1: themselves self compassion and acceptance, or it's others and they
Speaker 1: show others acceptance. And like our data set on the
Speaker 1: I've been doing some research on the light triad to
Speaker 1: kind of balance out the dark triad. In the psychological literature,
Speaker 1: we see that the light triad is strong, very very
Speaker 1: strong correlations between worldview of I offer others dignity a respect,
Speaker 1: and I, you know, don't use people as and means
Speaker 1: to an end, and I love myself not in a
Speaker 1: narcissistic way self love. See, I would argue that narcissistic
Speaker 1: love is not self love, Like that's not love, that's
Speaker 1: something else. So yeah, I just wanted to offer that
Speaker 1: perspective on the table. And it's interesting, well that, I
Speaker 1: mean the part about the sort of the triads that
Speaker 1: does resonate with me. But do you find I mean
Speaker 1: a couple of things more questions. Really, do you find
Speaker 1: people are consistent across contexts in how they manifest loving
Speaker 1: demeanor or hateful demeanor? Probably my is just my instinct,
Speaker 1: and the research is probably they are just the idea
Speaker 1: that people who hate hate themselves doesn't always ring true
Speaker 1: to me. And of course hate is sometimes a very
Speaker 1: useful emotion to have. It's it's a larger justice. So
Speaker 1: I just throw those out questions for you. No, and
Speaker 1: those are great questions because like you know, there is
Speaker 1: no obsolute here. Like I think the healthy integration of
Speaker 1: like anything can be valuable. So if you have aggression,
Speaker 1: let's not use the word. Hey, that's such a strong word,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, like hostility, it's perfectly a lot of
Speaker 1: people that score high on the way Try it may
Speaker 1: rightly so have hostility towards people who are damna doing
Speaker 1: like great injustices in this world, you know, or causing
Speaker 1: great injustices. It's okay to show that emotion, but you know,
Speaker 1: there's a healthy integration of that emotion. What we're what
Speaker 1: I think we're seeing so much in society today is
Speaker 1: this disintegration of like you know, people have runaway aggression,
Speaker 1: as Karl Rodgers put it, you know, they don't have
Speaker 1: the sort of like principled sort of aggression that's towards
Speaker 1: a common humanity sort of view. And we found people
Speaker 1: who score on the lay Try it have very transcendent
Speaker 1: values so even whilst why I don't know why I
Speaker 1: just said, whils not British. But even while I don't
Speaker 1: know why did that. But even while they may have
Speaker 1: rightly so you know, feel anger and for so many
Speaker 1: injustice in the world old, they still are always looking
Speaker 1: for that. They still have a fundamental faith in humanity.
Speaker 1: That was the third part of this. So I just
Speaker 1: told with the three things of the White Triad were one,
Speaker 1: and I can give you the test to take if
Speaker 1: you want to. I have it online if you want
Speaker 1: to take it and see your own White Triad score.
Speaker 1: But one is Kantinism, which is the opposite of Macavelianism,
Speaker 1: which was in the Dark Triad. So I you know,
Speaker 1: constant categorical imperative. I don't treat people as a means
Speaker 1: to an end. I treat peoples and in themselves. Another
Speaker 1: is humanism, you know, I treat individual I meet with
Speaker 1: dignity and worth and respect. And then faith in humanity
Speaker 1: is the third one, and we use like Helen Keller
Speaker 1: as an example. I mean, even as the Nazis were
Speaker 1: coming up to killer, she wrote in her diary, I
Speaker 1: still believe in despite this all that humans are fundamentally
Speaker 1: good and so yeah, I mean these three things, they
Speaker 1: still have this overall worldview despite this contextual sort of
Speaker 1: discontent with things. Yeah, I guess, well, the first thing
Speaker 1: that the curse means the Rogers and from we're writing
Speaker 1: at that moment when we were rebelling against the conformity
Speaker 1: of mid century twentieth century America, and so sometimes when
Speaker 1: I read them, I think they were part of that rebellion,
Speaker 1: which was probably a necessary one. But second, I think
Speaker 1: from the self esteem movement and the rising narcissism scores
Speaker 1: and rising faith in just that the oracle of all
Speaker 1: life will be inside oneself, I do think has left
Speaker 1: people morally inarticulate because they're always waiting for the golden
Speaker 1: oracle inside themselves to answer all their spiritual questions. And
Speaker 1: I would side more on the Victor Franco side that
Speaker 1: asking the question what's my passion or what do I
Speaker 1: want from life is generally the wrong way to approach life,
Speaker 1: and the better is to seek sources of wisdom outside oneself.
Speaker 1: What is life asking of me? And it is? Well,
Speaker 1: I guess I would side more on the people who
Speaker 1: think the Rogers methodology has led more to you know,
Speaker 1: a Christopher Lash called the culture of narcissism and all that.
Speaker 1: Again not necessarily because of what he said, but things
Speaker 1: get taken too far in the culture. That's just the
Speaker 1: way things go. Yeah, and I love that aspect of
Speaker 1: your book. And you know, this is the thing that's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting for me, like sitting back, because I
Speaker 1: am so on board with this call. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've been doing some research on you know, with colleague
Speaker 1: David Yaden. It depend on self transcendence and it's such
Speaker 1: a valuable you know, there's you're saying so many good things.
Speaker 1: I guess where I start to lose is when you
Speaker 1: start to pitot you say aside, like I thought you
Speaker 1: were a border stocker, you know, like don't be hypocritical.
Speaker 1: Now if you actually look at the writings of Carl Rogers,
Speaker 1: we need to make a distinction between self esteem and narcissism,
Speaker 1: and I guess you don't make that distinction, which like
Speaker 1: there's a very clear in the psychological literature they have
Speaker 1: very different correlates. Actually, self esteem is a great thing.
Speaker 1: Like if we just view it as as having self
Speaker 1: worth and a healthy sense of competence, that's it. That's
Speaker 1: all self esteem means narcissism is really what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: and I think conflicting that with self esteem is actually
Speaker 1: detrimental because you know, if anything, I think, you say,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with the world today, what's the crisis? It's
Speaker 1: funny I would say one of the big crisis is
Speaker 1: that people are losing their connection with themselves. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's a different way of framing it, like that's what
Speaker 1: real Carl Rodgers, you know, and Maslow and the humanistic psychologists.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of Roll May as well, or
Speaker 1: if you've read any of his writings, right like the
Speaker 1: way he would have framed it is real healthy, like
Speaker 1: surrendering yourself and giving to others just has to rest
Speaker 1: on a sense of basic self worth and competency for
Speaker 1: your own skills or else. That actually does lead to
Speaker 1: hostility and a lot of the aggression we see in
Speaker 1: the world today. You see a lot of people surrendering
Speaker 1: themselves in violent extremists, in colts and in the extreme
Speaker 1: far left and far right movements. You know, you have
Speaker 1: I think that's actually the problem is there's too much,
Speaker 1: as Mazwell would put it, I guess transcendence built on
Speaker 1: a shaky foundation. Right again, I would make ditinction on
Speaker 1: whether it's born out of love or born out of hate.
Speaker 1: But one final question, I think they really would have
Speaker 1: seen themselves intention May or Rogers. I think intension with
Speaker 1: a pray. There's yan old nibber, and it's really an
Speaker 1: assumption about what's what's essential to human nature, what kind
Speaker 1: of creatures are we? And Neighbor's argument was that were
Speaker 1: blendidly in that and deeply broken. And he thought one
Speaker 1: of the problems with the American foreign policy in the
Speaker 1: American life in general was what do you call the
Speaker 1: easy conscience of modern man, the unwillingness to face the
Speaker 1: essential sinful nature, which is not all sin. He was
Speaker 1: not like one of these Calvinists, so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of love there, but he's he said, the unwillingness to
Speaker 1: face sin and to build structures around sin was a
Speaker 1: key problem with American life. And I take him to
Speaker 1: be gesturing towards some of the many Rogers, et cetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I mean, I think you know
Speaker 1: so role May had this central concept, the dynamonic, which
Speaker 1: I loved. It's interesting you talk about that a little
Speaker 1: bit in your own book, but not in the did
Speaker 1: but you didn't mention. I was like, oh, I give
Speaker 1: my brother roll so credit because I'm a such a
Speaker 1: big fan of that concept in the way that he
Speaker 1: articulated it. As you know, humans have all these potentialities,
Speaker 1: it does not make sense to ask the question like
Speaker 1: what is deep down? What are we? The deep down thing?
Speaker 1: Doesn't really make sense considering it's all there. You know,
Speaker 1: over the course of human evolution, we can use our
Speaker 1: diamonic for the highest heights of creative expression or the
Speaker 1: greatest destructive aspects. So that's I guess where a free will.
Speaker 1: To what extent we have free will comes into play
Speaker 1: a consciousness, you know, we kind of try to direct
Speaker 1: it in one way or another. But the demonic is
Speaker 1: not the demon and he was very clear about that.
Speaker 1: He said none of these things by themselves, even aggression, hostility,
Speaker 1: like we put these things as categories. As is also
Speaker 1: a christ of the field of positi ecology. But I
Speaker 1: think that I don't like to absolutely classify certain psychological
Speaker 1: traits and things as like these are the positive ones
Speaker 1: and useing the negative ones. To me, it's all about
Speaker 1: the healthy integration as opposed to like I pick the
Speaker 1: team of transcendence or I picked the team of this.
Speaker 1: It's like I picked team wholeness. And you do use
Speaker 1: the frame I think, use the phrase whole person in there,
Speaker 1: and that was the central concept of the humanistic psychologist,
Speaker 1: was becoming a whole person. So I was excited when
Speaker 1: I believe you did use that phrase. Right, No, I
Speaker 1: agree with that. I just hear that phrase everywhere. Now,
Speaker 1: now what you said rings frankly with Jewish thought, which hmm,
Speaker 1: says there. You know that the quote evil impulses often
Speaker 1: drive us to do good, Like we might be greedy,
Speaker 1: but that causes us to buildings and great companies and
Speaker 1: you know, great foundations. And we may be lustful, but
Speaker 1: that causes us to have children. And so Jewish thought
Speaker 1: is much more. It's all mixed in. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: You know, there's also so much Christian thought in this book.
Speaker 1: I mean, like I want to actually quote Can I
Speaker 1: quote scripture on the psychology podcast? It would be thrown
Speaker 1: out of the profession, but you can try. Okay, give
Speaker 1: me more Why I find it because just one second,
Speaker 1: I'm actually working a paper, just while you're while you're
Speaker 1: looking for it, and one of the things that I
Speaker 1: find if you're reading about how to do relationships right
Speaker 1: or what's the purpose of life? Religious thinking? For most
Speaker 1: of Western history that was religious thinking. So there's just
Speaker 1: a lot of wisdom in theology, whether you believe in
Speaker 1: God or not. And sometimes I go to it simply
Speaker 1: as a wisdom literature, and I find a very valuable
Speaker 1: religions I don't actually believe in. There's just so much
Speaker 1: stored wisdom over the centuries. There's so much storied wisdom
Speaker 1: that you can pick from various religions even without the commitment.
Speaker 1: So again I keep going back, like, how do we
Speaker 1: reconcile the commitment idea with the export of I guess
Speaker 1: my way is not picking a team but saying that's
Speaker 1: the integration of the two. But hey, I'm going to
Speaker 1: read the conclusion of a paper by Roddy Bassett and
Speaker 1: Jennifer Albey. I think I'll really reckon I really resonate
Speaker 1: with you is publishing the Journal of Psychology and Theology
Speaker 1: Considering adaptive and maladaptive versions of what's called unmitigated communion. Now,
Speaker 1: this is very relevant to your work because the concept
Speaker 1: of unmitigated communion is the idea of self sacrifice, but
Speaker 1: losing yourself with self neglect, right, and some researchers have
Speaker 1: shown just how damaging that can be. But they I
Speaker 1: love this paper. And many people don't know about this
Speaker 1: paper because it was published such an obscure like Theology Journal.
Speaker 1: But when I discovered, I was like, I contact the authors, like,
Speaker 1: I need to do a study using your scale and
Speaker 1: expand this because this is brilliant. So I'm just going
Speaker 1: to read the conclusion of their paper. I think it's
Speaker 1: going to resonate with you and help like further this
Speaker 1: conversation we're having. So Previous research identified a number of
Speaker 1: negative effects on personal and relational wellbeing when individuals expressed
Speaker 1: a tendency to focus on the needs of others at
Speaker 1: the expense of their own needs, a style labeled you
Speaker 1: see or unmitigated communion. However, other work found that a
Speaker 1: willingness to forego immediate personal gain in order to promote
Speaker 1: the well being of a partner a relationship had positive
Speaker 1: relational effects, and Christian teachings generally affirm the value of
Speaker 1: sacrificial love. How can this discrepancy be resolved? Scripture suggests
Speaker 1: an answer, quote, if I give all I possess to
Speaker 1: the poor and give over my body to hardship. That
Speaker 1: I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Speaker 1: So that's from Corinthians thirteen three. Furthermore, the definition of
Speaker 1: love includes quote it is not self seeking means thirteen
Speaker 1: to five. So scripture teaches that our sacrificial behavior has
Speaker 1: value if it is driven by correct motivation. Our attempt
Speaker 1: to distinguish between self sacrifice that is motivated by concern
Speaker 1: for others versus self sacrifice as motivated by concern for
Speaker 1: self fits with this distinction. For the research could examine
Speaker 1: the personal, relational, and spiritual outcomes associated with with the
Speaker 1: unmitiated comedian self versusunmitigate mean other. So that the important
Speaker 1: thing here is that motivation matters. And I guess some
Speaker 1: nuance I'd like to add to your book and take
Speaker 1: it or leave it because I really like your message,
Speaker 1: And is that I think that it's important not You know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of children that grow up where
Speaker 1: are constantly told sacrifice yourself, sacrifice of and they grow
Speaker 1: up and end up on the psychotherapists couch, especially women.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a gender difference here where a lot
Speaker 1: of women just start to lose their sense of self
Speaker 1: or lose their sense of like, you know, who am
Speaker 1: I really And because I'm constantly been pressured to give
Speaker 1: to others, even to the sense that my own needs,
Speaker 1: I feel like are not valuable or worthy of expression.
Speaker 1: So I think that you're kind of like going against
Speaker 1: this important like pendulum swing that you're seeing in one direction.
Speaker 1: But I guess all I would say is, let's make
Speaker 1: sure we don't like move the pendulum too far in
Speaker 1: the other direction either, where we start to make people
Speaker 1: feel guilty for having what I call like healthy selfishness,
Speaker 1: which is just you know, like taking care of yourself
Speaker 1: and actualizing you know, it's okay to have talents and
Speaker 1: things and interests and motivations that differ from others. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I just throw all this out there, I think the
Speaker 1: very valid. In the course of writing this book, I wondered,
Speaker 1: is this a man's book. We certainly have known examples
Speaker 1: of women who've short of so totally given themselves over
Speaker 1: to family and other things, which is sacrificial, but have
Speaker 1: never and then they feel what about me? Whereas one
Speaker 1: of my time and we all feel like that, like
Speaker 1: I'm involved in a lot of different projects in my life,
Speaker 1: and in moments of self pity, always say, well when
Speaker 1: do I get to do what I want to do?
Speaker 1: And we all have that, and that's legitimate one question.
Speaker 1: One point the paper says something about self sacrificial activity
Speaker 1: for the basis of self. I understand, Yeah, let me
Speaker 1: unpack that. I would like to unpack that. So it
Speaker 1: turns out that there are a lot of people. So
Speaker 1: there's a thing called vulnerable narcissism, which has been distinguished
Speaker 1: from like grandiose narcissism. So grandiose narsism what we see,
Speaker 1: you know, which is the stereotypical, like the boastful, grandiose form,
Speaker 1: but there's a more vulnerable form where you feel shame,
Speaker 1: intense shame and self uncertainty about yourself. You feel like
Speaker 1: you're kind of rotten in the core. But you also
Speaker 1: kind of feel like, well, but I do of these
Speaker 1: grandiose visions, but I'm ashamed of having these grandiose visions.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of an introverted form of narcissism. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: you find that one of the major facets of vulnerable,
Speaker 1: not grandiose narsism, but vulnerable narcisism is what's called self
Speaker 1: enhancing self sacrifice that seems to be actually an indicator
Speaker 1: of vulnerable narcissism in the clinical literature, and that is
Speaker 1: like the kind of items on that are like I
Speaker 1: help others in order for me to feel good about myself.
Speaker 1: I help others in order to show what I'm a
Speaker 1: great person I am. And that's what they mean by
Speaker 1: the self motivations for unmitigated communion seem to be unhealthy,
Speaker 1: but the important thing is to enjoy it, to have
Speaker 1: the genuine sort of like the kind of items on
Speaker 1: the other scale, or like I help others because I
Speaker 1: want my own personal growth, or I genuinely like to
Speaker 1: see people flourish, or like I get some sort of
Speaker 1: not a compulsive aspect of it, but are really like
Speaker 1: I get great sort of enjoyment out of just helping people,
Speaker 1: and that seems to be healthy. So they distinguish between
Speaker 1: these two motivations, and I think that what's really interesting
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the developmental precursors. There's also
Speaker 1: genetic factors, but developmental precursors of vulnerable narcisism are we
Speaker 1: found in our own studies. The item as a child,
Speaker 1: I was told to constantly substitute my own needs for others.
Speaker 1: That was like one of the biggest markers of the
Speaker 1: development of vulner of narcisism. Now, I don't think you
Speaker 1: want to develop vulnerable narcissism in people, right right, right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then that rings you. I know people who I
Speaker 1: would put in that category, and it is Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 1: And as first as we're speaking, my first reaction is
Speaker 1: there's a lot of literature there. I got to learn.
Speaker 1: You have access to a lot of the journals that
Speaker 1: I'm not reading. I can hold you up. Second, I am,
Speaker 1: I am struck a little by It depends on what
Speaker 1: we're pushing against. And I guess I do you know,
Speaker 1: my last book, The Word Character, had had a lot
Speaker 1: of the research on narcissism and the rise of narcisism
Speaker 1: and just the rise of ego. And I do think
Speaker 1: there's a fair bit of data which I tend to
Speaker 1: be pushing against them. Maybe I'm just pushing against my
Speaker 1: own ego. No, no, no, I want to be clear
Speaker 1: that I'm so on bored with you about transcending ego.
Speaker 1: Do you see this as a valuable distinction, because I
Speaker 1: guess I do. Like there's one thing which is like
Speaker 1: transcending the ego, but the other thing is like I
Speaker 1: don't think we should need to transcend ourselves. So like
Speaker 1: self is not ego. I actually so the ego to
Speaker 1: me is that part of the self that is the
Speaker 1: defensive that holds the fortress up, Like I have to
Speaker 1: constantly be seen in myself, has to be seen in
Speaker 1: a positive light at all times. But the self is
Speaker 1: just simply, you know what, knowing yourself, knowing what's my personality?
Speaker 1: What is my order? Am I intro you know? Do
Speaker 1: am I dispositionally an introvert? Okay? Am I to really
Speaker 1: have great self insight about you know, what are my stress?
Speaker 1: Realistic understanding and my ability is you know, like understanding myself.
Speaker 1: To me, I would say that what you're arguing really
Speaker 1: against is the ego. And I'm so important with you
Speaker 1: David Brooks, like, don't get me wrong, don't get a
Speaker 1: twisted as they say, you know, yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: puts what I should have said. I think that's that's right.
Speaker 1: We've had so much I've spent so much of my
Speaker 1: time over the last fifteen years reading like Dan Economon
Speaker 1: and people like that so much thinking on cognition, and
Speaker 1: I think we've made great strides in understanding that, and
Speaker 1: I feel like we've had a long way to go,
Speaker 1: or maybe the literature out there, I just don't know
Speaker 1: it on understanding desire and where our desires come from.
Speaker 1: Like why is it that I either like scallops or
Speaker 1: I don't, but I can't control their like scallops? And
Speaker 1: that's a shallow but you know, in this book, I
Speaker 1: try to say there, and it's a metaphor. Obviously there
Speaker 1: are different types of this are in different seats of desire,
Speaker 1: And the ego is one, which is the desire to
Speaker 1: be better than others or appear better, you know that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And then the heart, which is the
Speaker 1: desire for relation and connection with one another. And then
Speaker 1: I do have a concept which is probably not accepted
Speaker 1: in the psychology, but it's useful from me. I think
Speaker 1: about a soul, which is the desire to lead a
Speaker 1: life of purpose and meeting. And I do think we
Speaker 1: live in a culture that encourages the ego desire, and frankly,
Speaker 1: we teach at universities that are about how to satisfy
Speaker 1: those desires. But the desires of the heart and soul
Speaker 1: that thinks we sort of have to figure out on
Speaker 1: our own. I totally agree with that. Yeah, that's such
Speaker 1: a good point. You talk about the nunciation moment and
Speaker 1: maybe think of how Gardner's notion of the crystallizing experience.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Have you come across that literature. No,
Speaker 1: I know I've read a bunch of Gardener, but I
Speaker 1: don't know that one. I know his work on the creativity,
Speaker 1: which i'd be interested here your thoughts on, but I
Speaker 1: don't know that I don't know that concept. Yeah, it's exactly.
Speaker 1: It's the nunciation moment. It's the same thing that you
Speaker 1: call the nunciation moment. He says, people have this crystallizing
Speaker 1: experience usually when they're young, where they make contact with
Speaker 1: the demean and they say, well, that's it, that's me,
Speaker 1: you know, that's what I want to do with my
Speaker 1: life going forward. And so I was really excited to
Speaker 1: see you kind of talk about that and quitar listeners
Speaker 1: a little bit, maybe unpack a little more, maybe how
Speaker 1: you see that and the importance of it for a
Speaker 1: committed life. Yeah, I mean, it's a very lucky thing
Speaker 1: to have happened. You know, I said earlier. I read
Speaker 1: a book when I was seven called Pattings in the
Speaker 1: Bear and decided while reading that book, I wanted to
Speaker 1: become a writer. So it was very fortunate to know
Speaker 1: pretty much early on just what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: My daughter, when she was five, she walked into an
Speaker 1: ice hockey rink and she just felt instantly at home.
Speaker 1: And now she's twenty five and she teaches ice hockey
Speaker 1: out in California, part of the Anaheim Duck's organization. And
Speaker 1: I quote in the book, I think Anny Dillard interviewed
Speaker 1: a painter and asked her why she became a painter,
Speaker 1: and she said, well, I just love the smell of paint.
Speaker 1: And so what happens is we have these aesthetic moments
Speaker 1: where something just seems beautiful and captivating. And sometimes it
Speaker 1: happens early in life. I wonder if it can happen later.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any samples of this where you just
Speaker 1: feel suddenly at home. And the big example I used
Speaker 1: in the book is the scientist EO. Wilson, whose folks
Speaker 1: were getting a divorce when he was seven, so they
Speaker 1: sent him away from his home and he stayed with
Speaker 1: a family he didn't know in Florida, and he'd never
Speaker 1: seen a large body of water before, and he was
Speaker 1: there on the Gulf and he saw a jellyfish and
Speaker 1: he saw a sting ray. And he was losing one
Speaker 1: world at back home, which was his family, but he
Speaker 1: found another world that just captivated him. And he estimated
Speaker 1: that children see animals at twice the size of adults,
Speaker 1: which seems very true to me. And he said, at
Speaker 1: that moment, a naturalist was born. I became a naturalist.
Speaker 1: I just was captivated by this world. And now he's
Speaker 1: in his eighties and he's still a naturalist. I'm so
Speaker 1: interested with that. Like you look at prodigies, you know,
Speaker 1: I've studied prodigies and ran about that, and I mean
Speaker 1: some of them at each two like discover, Like Gilliam
Speaker 1: Moss was a prodigy, and he as soon as he
Speaker 1: saw like you know, the cello, he's like, oh, that's me.
Speaker 1: Or like Jacqueline de Prey, like she just heard it
Speaker 1: on like a BBC Christmas recording or something and on
Speaker 1: the radio and she's like, Mommy, I want to play that.
Speaker 1: Isn't that interesting? Like there's got to be a genetic
Speaker 1: component to that. Right. Yeah, well that's why I said,
Speaker 1: like our desires, where do they come from? Yeah? Like
Speaker 1: why did this? Why did it happen that way? And
Speaker 1: I do think they're often I do think sometimes there
Speaker 1: are moments of loss or you've lost something and you
Speaker 1: find something new. I have a friend who's a minister
Speaker 1: to comment that. She said we were all missing something
Speaker 1: as children and as adults, were willing to give up
Speaker 1: a lot in order to get it. And somehow I
Speaker 1: think it's the moments of loss and moments of finding
Speaker 1: are often conjoined. I think that's that was quite quite
Speaker 1: a profound statement. So, yeah, just in our final minutes here,
Speaker 1: what can we do about this putical landscape? It just
Speaker 1: seems so relevant to the book. Like your book, you
Speaker 1: don't talk about politics much, but doesn't it seem like
Speaker 1: the answer to sole many of our problems is this
Speaker 1: form of transcendence, like this reframing of what we're on
Speaker 1: this earth for. Yeah, I mean I wrote it with
Speaker 1: political intent, and I do think that the diseases in
Speaker 1: our politics. We had this notion that frankly was spread
Speaker 1: a bit by the founders and ts Eliot put it,
Speaker 1: We imagine that we could create a society so well
Speaker 1: structured that people in it didn't have to be good,
Speaker 1: and capitalism is a bit based on that that if
Speaker 1: we're all selfish together, everything will worked out. And frankly,
Speaker 1: our theory of factions in our democracy, if we all
Speaker 1: pursue our self interest, then things will work out because
Speaker 1: we've balanced the machine. And I sort of think that's wrong,
Speaker 1: as frankly as a lot of the founders that if
Speaker 1: you don't have a bed of trusting relationships at the
Speaker 1: foundation of society, the market and the state will go haywire.
Speaker 1: And so I think there's plenty of evidence from social
Speaker 1: capital indicators that we don't have a bed rock of
Speaker 1: trusting relationships within communities and sometimes even within families, So
Speaker 1: then people react in harmful ways out of that sense
Speaker 1: of alienation and distrust. So I don't think you can
Speaker 1: solve our political problems from the top down. I do
Speaker 1: think you'd have to solve them from the relationship up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really good point. I saw a study that
Speaker 1: came out recently showing that if you have this control
Speaker 1: condition where you've experts and you have people listening and say,
Speaker 1: rate your trust of what they're saying and then another
Speaker 1: condition where you tell them if they're a publican or
Speaker 1: Democrat and then ask them to do their rating if
Speaker 1: they were a political party that was opposite of yours.
Speaker 1: Like you just didn't trust them like anything that they
Speaker 1: had to say, and even on like a non political matter, correct, no, correct,
Speaker 1: on their area of expertise they have spent their whole
Speaker 1: life studying. Isn't that deeply problematic? Yeah? And I you know,
Speaker 1: I was more conservative earlier in my life, and I
Speaker 1: was around conservative students, and I would always tell them,
Speaker 1: you may think your professors have political views that are wrong,
Speaker 1: but trust them on what they know. But this tendency
Speaker 1: was thinking, oh, they're all full of it, not on everything,
Speaker 1: but they actually really know some things. But it's hard
Speaker 1: to get that messages growth. It's weird how distrust bleeds bleeds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really does. I think that you really hit the
Speaker 1: nail on the head there with that as a real
Speaker 1: core core problem in our sidey. I mean, how can
Speaker 1: we I mean you do talk about how we can
Speaker 1: you know some things we can do? What do you
Speaker 1: call it? The relationist No, what's the word used? And
Speaker 1: the relationalism the relationalist manifesto Yeah, that's my attempt to
Speaker 1: summarize what is the ideological spine of the book, which
Speaker 1: is a sort of an attack on what I call hyperindividualism,
Speaker 1: which is sort of individualism taken to the extreme right.
Speaker 1: And you know, and I have this sort of this
Speaker 1: manifesto version. But the part that I'm proud of is
Speaker 1: where I have the human version. I've spent the last
Speaker 1: few years hanging around these people I call weavers, and
Speaker 1: they're just people who are sensational relationship and some of them,
Speaker 1: you know, have done you know. For example, one woman
Speaker 1: name Lisa Fitzpatrick was living in New Orleans and she
Speaker 1: was dripped. She was a healthcare executive. She was sitting
Speaker 1: in the passenger seat of a car. She saw two
Speaker 1: ten or eleven year old boys who looked terrified holding something.
Speaker 1: What they were holding was a gun, and they raised
Speaker 1: it and they shot her in the face. And she recovered,
Speaker 1: and what she remembered about the moment was not the gun,
Speaker 1: but the look of sheer terror on their faces. And
Speaker 1: this was a gang initiation ritual. They had to shoot
Speaker 1: somebody to be members of a gang. You know, there
Speaker 1: were only ten eleven and so she said, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not really the victim. I'm just collateral damage. Those boys
Speaker 1: are the victims of something here, and what can I
Speaker 1: do about it? And so she got out of healthcare
Speaker 1: industry and got into gang talking with gang members and
Speaker 1: she just builds relationship with young gang members to try
Speaker 1: to woo them to a better life. And I've been
Speaker 1: around so many of these people who just skills at relationships.
Speaker 1: They're just deeply relational, and they have an ethos which
Speaker 1: I really have come to admire, which is they have
Speaker 1: more motivation. They believe in deep mutuality. We're all equal,
Speaker 1: They're not better than anybody else, radical hospitality. They live
Speaker 1: in a way which is very inspiring. And most of
Speaker 1: us are not going to be as heroic as they are,
Speaker 1: but if we were a little like them, things would
Speaker 1: go better. I think. So, Yeah, it's very queer to
Speaker 1: me now. And then the parlance of psychology, you know
Speaker 1: I talked about unmitigated communion. Your book is really an
Speaker 1: argument against unmitigated agency. You can have unmitigated agency where
Speaker 1: you have more self expense of caring about others, and
Speaker 1: you can also have and you can also have a
Speaker 1: mitigated communion too much caring about others not self. So
Speaker 1: maybe our kind of end on this agreement here that
Speaker 1: like unmitigated anything maybe is not good for society. Do
Speaker 1: we both agree with that? I do agree with that.
Speaker 1: I do think a lot of truth can become wrong
Speaker 1: when you take them to the extreme. There was one
Speaker 1: thing that I realized that I wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: you about. So I wanted to just bring up the
Speaker 1: idea of marriage, because I've had some other guests on
Speaker 1: my podcast, like Wednesday Martin talking about this emerging Polyanori
Speaker 1: movement where you can have like commitments to multiple partners.
Speaker 1: And then you've also people like Bella de Paul who
Speaker 1: talks about, like you know, being single can have a
Speaker 1: lot of benefits and things. So I was just wondering
Speaker 1: how you if you came across those literatures and what
Speaker 1: you think of, like how you reconcile that with the
Speaker 1: benefits of marriage that you talk about. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: you know. I don't want to prescribe there's one way
Speaker 1: for everybody. I certainly don't want to say you have
Speaker 1: to be married to lead a good and fulfilled life.
Speaker 1: That's obviously not true because we know, I don't know,
Speaker 1: lots of people are single or it's right for them
Speaker 1: and they're leaving much happier lives. I guess my instinct,
Speaker 1: and this may just be unlettered prejudices that the historical
Speaker 1: record warns against it. And then just on the larger
Speaker 1: sense of marriage, this is actually refers back to a
Speaker 1: lot of what we've been saying. I try to apply
Speaker 1: three different lenses to making a marriage decision. And one
Speaker 1: is the straight up psychological lens. And as I tried
Speaker 1: to read as much literature as I could on this subject,
Speaker 1: and the shorthand answer I came away with, you can
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, is that go with kindness
Speaker 1: and avoid neuroticism. But then I thought there are two
Speaker 1: other lenses which are slightly different. The second is the
Speaker 1: moral lens. Do you really admire the person? And because
Speaker 1: love will come and go, but admiration is much more stable.
Speaker 1: And then the third was what kind of love do
Speaker 1: you have for the person? And there I went back
Speaker 1: to the old Greek trilogy. There's a gape. There's philia,
Speaker 1: which is friendship, and then there's arrows, which is passion.
Speaker 1: And if you only have arrows, that's not a marriage partner,
Speaker 1: that's a fling. And if you only have philia, that's
Speaker 1: a friendship, but it's not a marriage, and you should
Speaker 1: try to all three. So it was about trying to
Speaker 1: apply different lenses to that decision. But again, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be seen imposing one one view on the world.
Speaker 1: But I do think the general literature that I've read
Speaker 1: is that, in general, a happy marriage. And I would
Speaker 1: say this is in literature, but in my observation of life,
Speaker 1: the people of lifelong, happy marriages have won the lottery,
Speaker 1: They've won the golden ticket. Yeah, in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: for sure. There's some interesting nuances though about attachment styles.
Speaker 1: Is that you know, you actually find there are some
Speaker 1: pairings so secure attached people tend to be attracted as
Speaker 1: securely attached to people like no rare, but there's some
Speaker 1: interesting nuances in that avoidant males and anxious females. I
Speaker 1: know it may be a stereotype, but actually the research
Speaker 1: shows they make a good pairing. Like, yeah, so there's
Speaker 1: did you see that? Have you seen that? Meta analysis?
Speaker 1: Is it? Because they basically solve each other's Yes, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what the psychologists say in the discussion section, you know,
Speaker 1: like maybe we should just be open to you know,
Speaker 1: people have you know, even with polyamory, people are into
Speaker 1: all sorts of things these days. You know, I guess
Speaker 1: that you know, it can get a little political because
Speaker 1: I guess if you are more on the conservative side politically,
Speaker 1: you might be judgmental against some of these other alternative arrangements.
Speaker 1: But I personally, like, you know, even not saying what
Speaker 1: my political follition is because I don't think it's relevant.
Speaker 1: I just like to be non judgmental about things that
Speaker 1: work for people, if it works for them. Even like
Speaker 1: saying like we should avoid neurotic people, I mean that
Speaker 1: seems perhaps even maybe discriminatory against neurotic people, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Yeah, you know I hid that to
Speaker 1: a friend of mine. Yeah, what do I do? I'm
Speaker 1: the neurotic one, Yeah, exactly, Like what do you do?
Speaker 1: You know, like like forty percent of our listeners of
Speaker 1: this podcast maybe are you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say that people should avoid them, you know, as a
Speaker 1: dating partner. I guess you are right about if you
Speaker 1: average over all individual differences, and that's a big thing
Speaker 1: to do though, But if you do, you know, securely
Speaker 1: attached individuals do tend to report much less discord in
Speaker 1: their relationships, They're much happier, they have higher levels of life.
Speaker 1: That is true for sure, but that does you know
Speaker 1: that averaging over everyone thing also can be problematic and
Speaker 1: not recognizing that there are individual differences that can work
Speaker 1: for people. Yeah. I would say one of the main
Speaker 1: conclusions I've run from my life as a reporters that
Speaker 1: we over lump. And I've been very guilty of that,
Speaker 1: and especially early in my career and probably still so.
Speaker 1: Like you go to a rally, say a Trump rally,
Speaker 1: and you think, oh, I have a certain stereotype of
Speaker 1: who a Trump voter is, and then you start interviewing
Speaker 1: people at the rally and it turns out to be
Speaker 1: a lesbian, viker, vegan woman who works in finance. People
Speaker 1: are crossing all your category and that's sort of the Norman.
Speaker 1: You meet people who just cross all your stereotype. Having
Speaker 1: said that, I think if one of my kids decided
Speaker 1: to enter a polyamorous relationship, I would say, well, I
Speaker 1: would put up. I wouldn't say that's a terrible thing
Speaker 1: to do. I would say, be careful. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of psychological trickiness to that. Yeah, there's enough psychological trickiness
Speaker 1: with one partner, but it doesn't mean I can't work
Speaker 1: for people for sure. Yeah, there have obviously been a
Speaker 1: lot of polygamous society centers in history. Do you mean polyamorous?
Speaker 1: There's a difference in polyamoral. Yeah, you know, is having
Speaker 1: a specifically male having multiple female parts. But is just
Speaker 1: anyone having committed multiple partners? Yeah, right, Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of there's I mean, the polyamory movement is growing, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure they're making the case, you know, like
Speaker 1: I said, I had Wednesday morn on my podcast making
Speaker 1: the case that there could be a lot of great
Speaker 1: benefits from that arrangement. There's all sorts of alternative arrangements
Speaker 1: popping up these days, David. Yeah, I've am working on
Speaker 1: a piece long term called what's the Nuclear Family Mistake?
Speaker 1: We've asked too much of it? Oh, that's so funny.
Speaker 1: Like I love how you you really do go back
Speaker 1: and you know you have these fluid boundaries of whether
Speaker 1: or not you are absolutely right about something or not. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for chatting with me, Tony David. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've learned a time I really appreciated. Thank you. And
Speaker 1: also I want to thank you for your humility. You
Speaker 1: know in this during the course of this conversation you
Speaker 1: did live live by your principles there so I'm respectful
Speaker 1: of the literature that I don't know about won't want
Speaker 1: to learn. Thanks David, Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
Speaker 1: you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please
Speaker 1: add a rading and review of the Psychology Podcast on iTunes.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the podcast,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.