Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest. He 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 today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have Mark Manson on the podcast. His
Speaker 1: blog markmanson dot net attracts more than two million readers
Speaker 1: per month. Mark is the New York Times International best
Speaker 1: selling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck,
Speaker 1: with over six million in sales in the US alone,
Speaker 1: and his latest book is called Everything Is Fucked, a
Speaker 1: book about hope. Mark. So great to chat with you today.
Speaker 1: Good to be back, Ben. Yeah, like, I know that
Speaker 1: whenever I talk to you like it gives me an
Speaker 1: excuse to say that word fuck. I always here to help.
Speaker 1: I know how it is for you academics. So well,
Speaker 1: I'm here. I'm here, I'm here to help. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. I try to not use that
Speaker 1: word too much in my podcast because it's a kid
Speaker 1: friendly show. But it seems like you somehow write it
Speaker 1: in a way where you can't not use the word
Speaker 1: in that context. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of shows they'll
Speaker 1: they'll do like everything it's f or everything's blank, but
Speaker 1: you know it doesn't have the same effect, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: everything is beeped is like, yeah, it doesn't pack the
Speaker 1: same punch, that's for sure. Well, this one is definitely
Speaker 1: going to be rated explicit on iTunes. So we already
Speaker 1: within the first two minutes have made that assurance, you know, excellent.
Speaker 1: So I do want to ask you, you know, like
Speaker 1: you talk about this uncomfortable truth that kind of pervades everything,
Speaker 1: Like can you say, like how you would define it?
Speaker 1: People have defined it in different ways about the human history,
Speaker 1: how do you frame that? I framed it so to
Speaker 1: give kind of a more academic background of the uncomfortable truth.
Speaker 1: It's it's I've been greatly inspired by Ernest Becker's book
Speaker 1: Denial of Death and this idea that there's kind of
Speaker 1: this pervading terror of our own existence that underlies all
Speaker 1: human motivation. And it's for me the way I describe
Speaker 1: the uncomfortable truth in the book is a little bit
Speaker 1: more from like kind of a cosmic scale. It's not
Speaker 1: so much that we're going to die. It's more that
Speaker 1: knowing how big the universe is and how insignificant all
Speaker 1: of our individual actions are in the scale, like in
Speaker 1: compared to the scale of the universe. It's really really
Speaker 1: difficult for anybody who is, like, if you're being rational
Speaker 1: about it, to assume that your actions or your life
Speaker 1: has any meaning or significance. What's so ever? And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we all you know, my a
Speaker 1: friend of mine joked, he was like, oh, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: like your stone dorm room conversation. And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we all have that conversation at some point,
Speaker 1: that realization that like, you know, oh my god, my
Speaker 1: life is so tiny and insignificant and it's terrifying, but
Speaker 1: we don't really talk about it, and we spend a
Speaker 1: lot of our life avoiding that fact. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to start the book by just getting that front and center. Essentially. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does frame the whole book and the whole notion
Speaker 1: that everything is fucked. I can't help with the giggle
Speaker 1: every time you say the F word, though, Like, have
Speaker 1: you noticed that like, I'm not there yet where I
Speaker 1: can say it, you know, without giggling. I don't know
Speaker 1: who that is about my cultural conditioning that's doing that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Becker talked about that. He put it as
Speaker 1: the rumble of panic, and it always really resonated with me,
Speaker 1: like the rumble of panic that underlies everything we do.
Speaker 1: He was so dramatic. I love it. It's so dramatic,
Speaker 1: but brilliant, quite brilliant. I don't understand why everything that is. Like,
Speaker 1: whenever someone starts talking about like literally the most deep
Speaker 1: or like the deepest, most profound existential issues, someone always
Speaker 1: is like, oh, that sounds like just pot speaking or
Speaker 1: something like why do people find why is there a
Speaker 1: human need to kind of reduce or just like do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? It seems like it really
Speaker 1: people want to cheapen the most profound things in life
Speaker 1: so that they maybe that's so that they don't have
Speaker 1: to think about it themselves. Yeah, it's funny because I
Speaker 1: noticed that when I was handing out, you know, giving
Speaker 1: this the draft to some of my friends, like that
Speaker 1: a lot of people made that joke and is that
Speaker 1: a defense mechanism? Yeah, it bugged me a little bit
Speaker 1: and I bugs me. It bugs me. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: send that to you. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't really
Speaker 1: think about it too much, but I think, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: you're right, like that is another form of avoidance, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like you don't have to you know, this section
Speaker 1: about the Uncomfortable Truth, one of the things I say
Speaker 1: is that this is a book that argues against nihilism.
Speaker 1: But to argue against nihilism, you must start at nihilism.
Speaker 1: And I think it's just that is such an uncomfortable thing,
Speaker 1: especially for people I guess who have struggled with things
Speaker 1: like depression and that. Yeah, it's a defense mechanism. A
Speaker 1: way to avoid that is to just make light of it,
Speaker 1: just be like, oh, yeah, you know, it's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're smoking pot, dude. Yeah, well, you definitely face a
Speaker 1: head on. And I assume you didn't write your whole
Speaker 1: book while you were under the influence of marijuana. So
Speaker 1: so you said some of these profound things, and it's
Speaker 1: possible to say them and think about them not under
Speaker 1: the influence of narcotics. So your book is quite interesting.
Speaker 1: It's two parts, and you know, you kind of like
Speaker 1: not bait and switch that's not the right word, but like,
Speaker 1: like you read the first half and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: these are the things that hope is important in the
Speaker 1: world today all hope is lost everything. Fuck, here's the
Speaker 1: three things you know that we need for hope. And
Speaker 1: then there's like the second part that's kind of kind
Speaker 1: of like the reveal of what the book is really about.
Speaker 1: And I didn't I didn't honestly see it coming, Like
Speaker 1: I like didn't see it coming, and I and in
Speaker 1: this interview, I'm almost remiss to even talk about it
Speaker 1: because like I don't want to, like it's like giving
Speaker 1: the way a plot line of like the Avengers endgame, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's first talk about the first half and then
Speaker 1: if to reward the listeners who are still listening by
Speaker 1: the time we get to it, then we will do
Speaker 1: the grand reveal. Okay, but still hopefully what their interest
Speaker 1: or appetite bet at metaphors whatever to get them to
Speaker 1: really want to listen to read the book. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you say we're a culture in need of hope. So
Speaker 1: this is like in the beginning, like you make that statement,
Speaker 1: why are we to culture in need of hope? Why
Speaker 1: is that? Well, I became very interested. I think, like everybody,
Speaker 1: the events of twenty sixteen kind of shift me a
Speaker 1: little bit. But it's funny, it's not just you know,
Speaker 1: it's not Trump, like I'm not a Trump fan, but
Speaker 1: for me, it went much beyond the election itself. I
Speaker 1: think twenty sixteen felt like it broke our culture, like
Speaker 1: just the Internet, the clickbait, the fake news, the all
Speaker 1: the cyber warfare going on. It feels like that year
Speaker 1: was very much a turning point in terms of our
Speaker 1: cultural trust in each other and in media and in
Speaker 1: our institutions. And that really really troubled me. And so
Speaker 1: I started doing a lot of research on, you know,
Speaker 1: why that was happening. And one of the things I
Speaker 1: came across that I found very interesting was something that's
Speaker 1: called the Easterland paradox, which is that they find that
Speaker 1: wealthier countries and even wealthier neighborhoods or cities have greater
Speaker 1: amounts of suicide, mental health issues, depression, anxiety, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so it just it got me thinking
Speaker 1: about this idea of like, why is it if things
Speaker 1: are so like we live at the best moment of
Speaker 1: human history all sorts of measurements, yet it's by you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of statistical measurements were angrier and more upset
Speaker 1: and more despondent than ever before. And then you go online,
Speaker 1: you go on Twitter for ten minutes and it seems
Speaker 1: like everybody is just angry, constantly about everything. So that
Speaker 1: was my starting point. It's like, what how do you
Speaker 1: describe this? And one of the interesting conclusions I came
Speaker 1: to or it's it's and it's actually something I think
Speaker 1: the seam to leave argued and anti fragile is that
Speaker 1: he said that basically, the better things get, the more
Speaker 1: difficult it is to be optimistic for the future because
Speaker 1: you have more to lose. Yeah, A, because you have
Speaker 1: more to lose, and B because there is it becomes
Speaker 1: the definition of improvement itself becomes more complicated, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's like if you're a subsistence society, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're like I don't know, Kenya or something, it's like,
Speaker 1: improvement's very simple. It's like, get people out of poverty,
Speaker 1: make sure people stop dying of disease. But like once
Speaker 1: you're Sweden or Japan, you know, or Canada, like it's
Speaker 1: actually very complicated to know what improvement is. It's a
Speaker 1: very contentious, complicated discussion, and that makes it difficult for
Speaker 1: people to have this hopeful outlook for the future or
Speaker 1: this optimistic vision of the future. And so that fascinated me,
Speaker 1: and it made me feel like that there seems to
Speaker 1: be something in the zeitgeist right now or around that.
Speaker 1: I think there's something about the Internet that complicates people's
Speaker 1: visions of hope, makes it difficult for them to know
Speaker 1: what the hope for, complicates it in ways that it
Speaker 1: wasn't complicated in previous generations, and so I wanted to
Speaker 1: explore that. Yeah, I had Stephen Pinker on my podcast
Speaker 1: a couple months ago and we talked about this, and
Speaker 1: of course he's been banging that drum for a while
Speaker 1: that like the world is good, you know, like yeah,
Speaker 1: everything's good, you know, like everybody calmed the fuck down.
Speaker 1: But that does little, as I said to him, you
Speaker 1: know on the podcast, like okay, like yeah, like statistically
Speaker 1: on average, you know, like that is like little assurance
Speaker 1: to those who are like really the bottom of like
Speaker 1: you know, of structural systems and things, well not even
Speaker 1: to the bottom. So I I it's interesting, I address
Speaker 1: Pinker in chapter one, and I need to like like
Speaker 1: put a PREEMPTI by saying like, I'm a total pinker fanboy.
Speaker 1: I love his books, yeah, and I think they're great,
Speaker 1: but I was very frustrated when I read Enlightenment Now
Speaker 1: because I felt like he kind of just brushed aside
Speaker 1: the questions of human well being and you know, like
Speaker 1: emotional well being. I should say, he focuses very much
Speaker 1: on material and physical well being, and in the one
Speaker 1: chapter that he kind of talked about in that book,
Speaker 1: he very briefly. I think he had maybe in a
Speaker 1: five hundred page book. He had like three paragraphs that
Speaker 1: pointed out that, you know, yes, anxiety and depression are
Speaker 1: becoming larger issues. But then he said, well, if the
Speaker 1: price that we pay for living longer and being healthier
Speaker 1: is that we're more anxious, then that's probably worth it.
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, yeah, you know, it reminds me
Speaker 1: of the Big Lebowski. It's like, you're not wrong, Walter,
Speaker 1: You're just an asshole, because it's that's great solace for
Speaker 1: the person who's like like depressed and suicidal. And it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, if that's the price you were going to pay,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, there are a lot of like,
Speaker 1: you know, rich soccer moms and successful lawyers who are
Speaker 1: like really in bad places. And the worst thing about it,
Speaker 1: I think is is that a lot of people. And
Speaker 1: I know I experienced this myself because I've had I
Speaker 1: come from a very privileged background, and i'm very you know,
Speaker 1: I have a very successful career. But when I go
Speaker 1: through those episodes where I feel depressed or I come
Speaker 1: close to the uncomfortable truth as I write it, it
Speaker 1: creates this sense you feel guilty about it. You're like,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with me? Like everything's great? Why do I
Speaker 1: feel this way? And so in some sense it's it's
Speaker 1: like again, it complicates. It's so interesting. You're like, I'm privileged,
Speaker 1: I should have no right to be sad exactly. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's so interesting. Yeah, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people do feel that way for sure. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: I compare Pinker in my book. I call him, you know,
Speaker 1: like that your uncle who who's always wagging his finger
Speaker 1: and saying when I was your age, you know, things
Speaker 1: were much worse. And it's like, well, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't make me feel any better about my issues, right, right, So, yes,
Speaker 1: that's cool. And so this is the paradox of progress,
Speaker 1: is what you refer to in your book. So let's
Speaker 1: move on to self control because I thought that was
Speaker 1: a really interesting framing of it, a little bit different
Speaker 1: than I see in the psychological literature. But who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe the psychological literature is wrong. Maybe you're right, like
Speaker 1: you know, like I really want to really get my
Speaker 1: head around this. You argue it's mostly an emotional like
Speaker 1: a failure of self control is mostly, in your view,
Speaker 1: an emotion issue. Is that right? Yes, yes, because it's
Speaker 1: essentially our The chapter is called self control is an Illusion,
Speaker 1: and I basically make the argument that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of the research shows that where our actions are primarily
Speaker 1: motivated by our emotions and then our rational part of
Speaker 1: our brain just justifies it afterwards. And the argument I
Speaker 1: make is essentially that the feeling of self control is
Speaker 1: an illusion when our two brains are aligned, our emotional
Speaker 1: brain and our rational brain and or you know, commomon
Speaker 1: system one system too, and it's but the problem is
Speaker 1: when they get unaligned, where it's like I want to
Speaker 1: I like rationally know I should go to the gym today,
Speaker 1: or I should like not eat this cake for breakfast,
Speaker 1: but I'm sitting there shoveling my face. That's when that
Speaker 1: illusion of self control breaks down and it becomes very
Speaker 1: stressful and difficult for people. And the argument I make
Speaker 1: is that when self control breaks down consistently enough, it
Speaker 1: harms our ability to maintain hope. So it's like, if
Speaker 1: my hope for myself is that I get healthy this year,
Speaker 1: yet I'm sitting there shoveling my face every morning, it
Speaker 1: destroys that vision of hope and then you know, brings
Speaker 1: me back to despair essentially. Yeah, that's so interesting, Like
Speaker 1: you're getting in your own way of your own potential
Speaker 1: for hope. But like in a way you're saying, like
Speaker 1: we don't realize just how much we get in our
Speaker 1: own way of you know, like we always look outward
Speaker 1: for hope, right. I feel like that's like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: default is like I'm looking for hope, but like we
Speaker 1: don't realize the things we do ourselves. Yes, Like you're
Speaker 1: limited there by doing that in the morning. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you never go to the gym you want to be
Speaker 1: hopeful that you're going to lose weight, like yeah, or
Speaker 1: or even the people who you know, it's people who like,
Speaker 1: let's say you believe deeply in some sort of political
Speaker 1: like environmentalism or something, and it's like you draw a
Speaker 1: lot of hope from environ like the environmental movement, yet
Speaker 1: you can't bring yourself to actually like get out the
Speaker 1: door and go do something. You know, it makes it
Speaker 1: difficult for us to maintain that vision. Like it's not.
Speaker 1: It makes it difficult to experience that sense of fulfillment,
Speaker 1: you know, to achieve that meaning that we want in
Speaker 1: our lives. We feel disempowered, we feel out of control
Speaker 1: of our life. I mean. One thing that's fun about
Speaker 1: not being an academic is that I get to put
Speaker 1: my own creative spin on a lot of concepts and
Speaker 1: I'm not held to my feet, aren't held to the
Speaker 1: fire of like, okay, go verify this, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, and I I don't think I
Speaker 1: would be great at that. I think, you know, my
Speaker 1: strength as as a as a writer and as a thinker,
Speaker 1: I think is these creative coming up with creative ways
Speaker 1: to view a lot of these concepts and see how
Speaker 1: they might relate to each other. So that's one of them,
Speaker 1: for sure. It's cool, Yeah, it's definitely coul Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean self control researchers. I mean, it's hotly debated. You know,
Speaker 1: the whole idea of like is it like a muscle,
Speaker 1: you know, like ego depletion. You know, the more we
Speaker 1: try to restrain ourselves, we then eventually like cave and
Speaker 1: like fivefold. You know, Oh I went on the diet
Speaker 1: for two days, I'm a good person. I'm now going
Speaker 1: to eat five hundred cookies at once, and then you like,
Speaker 1: it's like eventually cave the more we exert the self
Speaker 1: control and that you know, so in a lot of ways, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is there is a strong emotional component for sure,
Speaker 1: and there's also a cognitive component of like people who
Speaker 1: have really good self control do seem to be good
Speaker 1: though using their what you call the thinking mind to
Speaker 1: like override the emotional mind. So you see, So I
Speaker 1: do see it differently. I mean I see that as
Speaker 1: kind of just another remix of ego depletion. The point
Speaker 1: that I make is that people with you know, a
Speaker 1: person that you and I would look at and say, like, wow,
Speaker 1: that person has incredible self discipline. My argument is is
Speaker 1: that the reason they seem to have that self discipline
Speaker 1: is that there is some sort of emotional satisfaction that
Speaker 1: they're deriving from it. Like the reason it's hard for
Speaker 1: me to stop eating cake is that there's too much
Speaker 1: emotional satisfaction from it. You know. It's like you can,
Speaker 1: you can will yourself to go to the gym for
Speaker 1: a week or maybe a month, but until you start
Speaker 1: enjoying it, until you experience the emotional benefits of it,
Speaker 1: it never until you engage the emotional brain, is what
Speaker 1: you're saying, exactly exactly. And so like all the people
Speaker 1: I know who are just like machines, you know, up
Speaker 1: at five am and doing pull ups and shit, it's
Speaker 1: like they'd love it, like some sick part you know
Speaker 1: that guy exactly. You don't want to mess with that. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. We're going to talk very fondly of him.
Speaker 1: It's funny. So I actually referenced him in the book
Speaker 1: and Ye and I and I mentioned because he is
Speaker 1: this whole thing. So actually he's a great example because
Speaker 1: he is this whole thing about He said that when
Speaker 1: he was in Iraq, and this I touched on this
Speaker 1: later in the book, to this idea of like narratives
Speaker 1: constructing meaning with our narratives. He was in Iraq and
Speaker 1: he said that the story he would tell himself when
Speaker 1: he was out there was that if he got up
Speaker 1: at four am, he had an advantage over the enemy,
Speaker 1: and so that motivated him to get up at four am,
Speaker 1: you know. So like that's a perfect example of leveraging
Speaker 1: your your emotional brain to like build discipline for yourself.
Speaker 1: And the amazing thing about him is that when he
Speaker 1: came home, he's still that narrative still works for him.
Speaker 1: So it's like he still gets up at and is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm up like two hours before everybody else, Like this
Speaker 1: is why I'm going to kick their ass, and it's
Speaker 1: like that's It's it's the emotional benefit of that narrative
Speaker 1: that is like keeps him doing it. So it's funny.
Speaker 1: I explained that in the book and then I reference
Speaker 1: him and I when I was sitting there like explaining,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, even though this narrative is totally
Speaker 1: untrue because I wrote that, I'm like, oh God, I
Speaker 1: hope he doesn't kick my ass. Yes, yeah, you gotta
Speaker 1: really be careful because he'll kick your asset like while
Speaker 1: you're still sleeping, like five point thirty in the morning exactly.
Speaker 1: I'll be going I would be just going to bed
Speaker 1: and it'll be getting up. He'll be getting up, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I mean he's up while everyone else
Speaker 1: in the world is sleeping. So it's like, yeah, okay, cool.
Speaker 1: It's just such an interesting twist. And I'm like, so
Speaker 1: should I completely flip the way I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: it because I wrote a tweet that got a lot
Speaker 1: of like, so it's got to be true like about
Speaker 1: it six months ago I said, like one of the
Speaker 1: greatest realizations of me is that I don't have to
Speaker 1: be a sleep to my emotion, Like I'm allowed to
Speaker 1: like listen to the signals and say no, I'm good.
Speaker 1: And you know that got a lot of like sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And I'm paraphrasing myself, so I think it
Speaker 1: was more eloquent what I actually wrote than what I
Speaker 1: just said. But anyway, is that at odds with what
Speaker 1: you're saying? Is it? Like are you almost saying like
Speaker 1: it's not that we should like really train ourselves to
Speaker 1: not be so like there's one view where I'm saying, like,
Speaker 1: don't be so reactive to what your emotions are telling you,
Speaker 1: Like and have the freedom to choose what you want
Speaker 1: to act on and what you don't. But are you
Speaker 1: saying like almost retrain Maybe we can synthesize both views.
Speaker 1: Retrain your emotional brain to make it more likely you'll
Speaker 1: do the things you want to do, but for the
Speaker 1: things we don't want to do, like learn to put
Speaker 1: that space through mindfulness? Like, is that an integration of
Speaker 1: both of our views? I think so, Like, I don't
Speaker 1: think we are contradictory pooh. I mean, one thing I
Speaker 1: talk about in the book is that I think ultimately
Speaker 1: the job of our the logical side of our brain
Speaker 1: is to a challenge our emotional impulses, and exactly like
Speaker 1: you said, is to feel it and say, like, that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily destiny. It's just because I feel something doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's necessarily destiny. But I don't think that goes
Speaker 1: like that is that is necessary but not sufficient for
Speaker 1: behavioral change, For long term behavioral change, I think the
Speaker 1: second step is that you then need to construct some
Speaker 1: sort of meaning around that emotion that will produce what
Speaker 1: that will change how you feel about a situation going
Speaker 1: into the future. So the silly analogy that I use
Speaker 1: is that you know, you have two brains. They're bad
Speaker 1: at talking to each other, and you have to because
Speaker 1: they speak different languages, and you have to, like, you
Speaker 1: have to train yourself to translate each one to the other.
Speaker 1: So to go back to the to the gym. You know,
Speaker 1: the gym example, since it's just such a simple and
Speaker 1: ubiquitous example. It's you know, if I if I wake
Speaker 1: up and I really don't like going, the job of
Speaker 1: my thinking brain is to start kind of bargaining and
Speaker 1: trying on different stories of meaning for my feeling brain.
Speaker 1: So I might say, like, so, if the story I'm
Speaker 1: telling myself is like, you know, I'm a worthless piece
Speaker 1: of crap if I don't go work out, that's not
Speaker 1: going to inspire a whole lot of motivation, or at
Speaker 1: least for me, some people it might. But then maybe
Speaker 1: if I'm like, well, how about this, how about you
Speaker 1: just put your shoes on and just go there and
Speaker 1: just walk on a treadmill like that's easy, anybody can
Speaker 1: do that. How does that feel? And then my feeling
Speaker 1: brain might be like, oh, well, yeah, that actually that
Speaker 1: feels all right. And then so then you do that,
Speaker 1: and then once you're actually at the gym, and you're like, well, crap,
Speaker 1: there's all these weights everywhere. I might as well like
Speaker 1: pick something up. It becomes much easier. And so there's
Speaker 1: like this interplay that happens between both sides of our brains,
Speaker 1: and it's about like learning how to just communicate with
Speaker 1: yourself almost like that effectively integrate, integrate both brains. Wow, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: I like it. So you have a you found some
Speaker 1: of Newton's unpublished writings on emotions, and no, I've never
Speaker 1: seen those before. I didn't know that he. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize he had any emotions himself. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a very thinking kind of guy. He was. But
Speaker 1: let's talk about one. For every action, there's an equal
Speaker 1: and opposite emotional reaction. So what does that mean is
Speaker 1: that basically it's, without going too deep into it, that
Speaker 1: basically it's it's emotions are results of experiences, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's perceived experiences, you know. So it's anything that
Speaker 1: you feel it's because of some perception or some experience
Speaker 1: that's occurred to you. So it's kind of just a
Speaker 1: simple to kind of give context to the whole Newton thing.
Speaker 1: I've always I've been I've long been very, very fascinated
Speaker 1: with Newton, and I've wanted to write about him for
Speaker 1: a long time because, you know, for how brilliant he was,
Speaker 1: he was just such an emotionally like miserable, awful person,
Speaker 1: and he also just had this incredibly traumatic childhood and upbringing,
Speaker 1: and and I just thought I always found that like
Speaker 1: so fascinating about it about him, and so I wrote
Speaker 1: kind of a playful one of the chapters in the
Speaker 1: book is like it's historical fiction, it's I call him
Speaker 1: Emo Newton. So you know, like the real Newton was
Speaker 1: abandoned by his parents and was abused and bullied as
Speaker 1: a child growing up, and it was an outcast, and
Speaker 1: he just became this very miserable, unhappy kid. And I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, he's like he's like an emo kid,
Speaker 1: you know. He's like he's like this kid he like
Speaker 1: puts on makeup and like wears black trench coats and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So I kind of reimagined him as
Speaker 1: this this emo version of himself who becomes obsessed with
Speaker 1: calculating and chronically and like finding ways to measure objectively
Speaker 1: all human behavior, and then he comes up with Newton's
Speaker 1: Laws of Emotion, and oh I just got it. I
Speaker 1: just got it. I didn't realize that. Yeah, the email
Speaker 1: part of the emotion. That's so clever. That's clever. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so then the three laws are I kind of
Speaker 1: use as a basis, you know. So in chapter two
Speaker 1: about self control, I talk about how self control is
Speaker 1: a perception, that it's a perceptual experience that we have
Speaker 1: when our two brains are aligned, when when we when
Speaker 1: we're able to align our thoughts with our emotions. And
Speaker 1: then chapter three is kind of using the Newton's Laws
Speaker 1: of emotion to explain the mechanics of our emotional brain,
Speaker 1: like what causes us to feel things and too, you know,
Speaker 1: why trauma messes us up, and where our values come
Speaker 1: from and things like that. Yeah. You, in fact, you
Speaker 1: define growth as re prior the reprioritization of one's values
Speaker 1: hierarchy in an optimal way. I thought that was a
Speaker 1: really clever definition of growth. Yeah. Yeah, so that what
Speaker 1: would I say? I would say, that's that's certainly an
Speaker 1: indication that you're growing. Yeah, for sure, how would you
Speaker 1: define that? Oh? Youves me? Well, I mean, do we
Speaker 1: need another podcast? Yeah? Yeah, I think, and we need
Speaker 1: to be under the influence of marijuana. Now I'm joking
Speaker 1: on joking, everybody, calmed down, Calm down, mom, Mom, I
Speaker 1: know you listen to my podcast. Calm down, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's focus on you. So. Yeah, the reprioritization of one's
Speaker 1: value Hrking Octaway. It's very clever. I would say, that's, yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely one indication of growth. I think there are multiple indications. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know. I think another indication is is that you're
Speaker 1: making some sort of contribution to in some way outside
Speaker 1: of yourself, you know. Yeah, but it doesn't have the
Speaker 1: necessarily be like like gandhi. You know, like people put
Speaker 1: so much pressure on people, like I see like crazy
Speaker 1: shit on the internet that I just like, no, that
Speaker 1: can't be right, Like they're like the only wife that's
Speaker 1: worth in the colte Einstein, right, And I never said it,
Speaker 1: but they'll say, like, you know, the only life worth living,
Speaker 1: the only life worth living is the one where you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, always giving to others or whatever. It's like,
Speaker 1: that's I don't know about that, Like do we really
Speaker 1: want to like do we really want to just a
Speaker 1: priori like judge what a life worth living is or not?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean like that just doesn't feel
Speaker 1: right to me. But anyway, so yeah, so let's let's
Speaker 1: move on. Let's talk about identity. So Newton's thoughts on
Speaker 1: identity that that we're unpublished or emo emo Newton. H Yeah,
Speaker 1: your identity will stay your identity until a new experience
Speaker 1: acts against it. So can you give an example of that?
Speaker 1: So basically our emotion. So here's kind of the step
Speaker 1: by step summary of what I talk about. Is that
Speaker 1: experiences happen, and then based on how much pain that
Speaker 1: experience causes or how much pain that experience alleviates, we
Speaker 1: will have a positive or negative emotional reaction to it.
Speaker 1: And then from there, it's if those emotions persist over
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time, we construct a narrative around
Speaker 1: them to justify them. So it's like if I'm let's
Speaker 1: say I'm a kid and I'm just I'm being beat
Speaker 1: up and abused, at some point, my thinking brain has
Speaker 1: to step in and create a narrative that justifies that
Speaker 1: those feelings of pain, and usually typically very young children,
Speaker 1: the narrative they construct is that I'm a horrible person
Speaker 1: and I deserve this. These narratives are always around, constructed
Speaker 1: around deserving what you deserve, what you don't deserve. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The fairy tales are very much about that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the cautionary tales, as they say. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: these narratives kind of start accumulating like a ball yarn,
Speaker 1: you know, throughout our lives, and it's like the earlier
Speaker 1: the narrative was put in, it's like deep or inside
Speaker 1: the ball yarn. The more you have to unspool it
Speaker 1: to kind of get to it. And it's that ball
Speaker 1: of yarn that that network of narratives that we construct
Speaker 1: about ourselves and what we deserve, what we don't deserve
Speaker 1: is what I call our identity. It's our self definition
Speaker 1: and it's uh, and then we we psychologically I think
Speaker 1: it's called self preservation our self shit, I don't remember,
Speaker 1: but there's there's some there's some model out there that
Speaker 1: that talks about how we seek to that identity then
Speaker 1: also becomes something that we protect and try to keep
Speaker 1: coherent through future experiences, so it biases our our perceptions
Speaker 1: and our impulses and stuff going into the future. It's
Speaker 1: basically my my take on I guess you could almost
Speaker 1: call it like just development, you know, psychological development, but
Speaker 1: with a lot of focus on emotions and narratives. But
Speaker 1: give me like a concrete example of like, so my
Speaker 1: identity is X, and I really think it's my identity
Speaker 1: until and then give me an example of experience that
Speaker 1: acts against it. Like I just want to really wrap
Speaker 1: my head around that. So, for instance, you know, a
Speaker 1: huge component of my identity is that I'm a writer
Speaker 1: and an author. And I could even say that I
Speaker 1: am a big part of my identities that I'm a
Speaker 1: successful author. Now let's say this book comes out and
Speaker 1: sells like twenty copies and everybody hates it. You still
Speaker 1: wrote a best selling book though before, Yes, but that
Speaker 1: will conflict with my identity. It'll cause a lot of
Speaker 1: internal dissonance in terms of how I understand myself because
Speaker 1: it's like right now I'm like, yeah, I'm big mister
Speaker 1: bestselling author, and then it's like next book comes out bombs.
Speaker 1: Then that creates a lot of dissonance that I have
Speaker 1: to sort out. It'll create a lot of negative emotions
Speaker 1: that I need to sort out and like rewrite new
Speaker 1: narratives for. You could just avoid that by just never
Speaker 1: writing another book ever again, and just you would assure
Speaker 1: yourself that you die a best selling author. Well that's
Speaker 1: you know, we call that the JD. Salinger strategy. You know,
Speaker 1: My preferred approach is to just try to not adopt
Speaker 1: that identity in the first place. It's like, it's just
Speaker 1: something that and this kind of comes from my my
Speaker 1: Buddhist background, but it's I try to hold and I
Speaker 1: think I talk about this in subtle art, is like
Speaker 1: always hold your identity lightly, you know. So it's like
Speaker 1: I write books, and those books have sometimes performed well,
Speaker 1: but that's not necessarily who I am. And so it's
Speaker 1: like the lighter I hold that, the less susceptible I
Speaker 1: am to just being bulldozed over by the world. I
Speaker 1: really like that I have Buddhist in clinicians as well,
Speaker 1: so I really resonate with that. And even the way
Speaker 1: you talked about narcissism, and you correct to identify, but
Speaker 1: you didn't call by the psychological clinical names vulnerable and grandiose,
Speaker 1: but you still point out there's this fragile form of narcissm,
Speaker 1: this more grandiose form. You say, they both are similar
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, you know, kind of stem
Speaker 1: like they're both unnecessary, you know, you know, like if
Speaker 1: you always like go around the world thinking you're like
Speaker 1: the greatest, You're bound to have a blow to your
Speaker 1: ego at some point that'll make you fall way down.
Speaker 1: But if you always walk around saying you're vulnerable and
Speaker 1: deserving a special attention, you're bound to constantly be disappointed
Speaker 1: as well. Right, So yeah, yeah, they're both. Whether you
Speaker 1: think you're better than everybody, are worse than everybody, you're
Speaker 1: still assuming that you're different than everybody. That's right, I
Speaker 1: love it. Okay, Well let's move on. Well, okay before
Speaker 1: we get to part two. One more question before part two?
Speaker 1: How do you start your own religion? So, so basically
Speaker 1: do we just sum it all up by saying sell
Speaker 1: hope to the hopeless? Like that's like the tey thing, right,
Speaker 1: I think there's deminally step one, Yeah, going to like
Speaker 1: piss off someone like are there gonna be like religious
Speaker 1: like zalats no, like gurus or whatever? Reader book like,
Speaker 1: don't say my secret? Don't you know like you're gonna
Speaker 1: you're gonna hurt business for me? Well, I think I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe the most to use your research, Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: the most extreme dark triads would have thought through their
Speaker 1: methods enough to have that reaction. But I think I
Speaker 1: think most kind of like cultish religious tendencies. Like I
Speaker 1: guess part of the argument I make in that chapter
Speaker 1: is that it's cultish tendencies are like a natural part
Speaker 1: of our nature, and it's not you know, people like
Speaker 1: like David Koresh or whoever. Like, it's not that they're
Speaker 1: not these super evil, bad geniuses, as much as we
Speaker 1: want to believe that. It's it's this cultish tendency exists
Speaker 1: within all of us, and are our religiosity are our
Speaker 1: tendency towards religious behavior is pretty ubiquitous, and it's not
Speaker 1: it's not just limited to like the traditional religions. You know,
Speaker 1: one thing I found super interesting when I was researching
Speaker 1: this book was that And this is just totally a
Speaker 1: connection I kind of made on myself. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've seen any research explicitly talk about this, but you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's seeing the data about how the world is becoming
Speaker 1: less religious and how fewer people are going to church
Speaker 1: and more people are atheists or agnostic, and what's a
Speaker 1: hold on this second? Let me go in the other room. Sure, well,
Speaker 1: I'm getting like a am I getting a tour of
Speaker 1: your house right now. No, I'm in the Bahamas, dude,
Speaker 1: whats right now? Life is crazy? Will Smith or something?
Speaker 1: I am? Can I not edit edited out that whole
Speaker 1: interlude from the interviews. Do whatever you want, man, it's
Speaker 1: your show. So religiosity, so well, you know, one thing
Speaker 1: I can't. Yeah, and my research is, you know, religiosity
Speaker 1: has been declining for decades now, and I one thing
Speaker 1: I find fascinating is that during this even though fewer
Speaker 1: people are going to church that ever before, I think
Speaker 1: as a culture, our approaches to politics is becoming much
Speaker 1: more religious, our approach to corporations. If you look at
Speaker 1: brands like Apple and Nike, it's like it's they're almost
Speaker 1: intentionally poking at kind of the religious responses among their consumers.
Speaker 1: Celebrity culture is becoming much more religious. So I think
Speaker 1: it's there's a weird It's not that religiosity is disappearing.
Speaker 1: There's there's like a weird transfer going on where instead
Speaker 1: of worshiping God, we're finding all these other things to
Speaker 1: be worshiping. Yeah yeah, not just worshiping, but just paying
Speaker 1: attention to like distractions and things. Yeah. Cool, So let's
Speaker 1: open the Pandora's box. Of part two of your book.
Speaker 1: You see what I did there? Okay, Yeah it was
Speaker 1: that nice. Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong. But
Speaker 1: like I don't want to like say, things are even
Speaker 1: more clever than even you meant them to be. But
Speaker 1: like I thought it was really clever that like hope
Speaker 1: is fucked like analogous to the idea that God is dead?
Speaker 1: Is that right? Did I make that connection? Correct? Did you?
Speaker 1: Did you think about that? Like Nich's pronouncement God is
Speaker 1: dead is analogous to like you coming off your mountain
Speaker 1: and saying, my realization here in part two is actually
Speaker 1: hope is actually fucked. Yeah, I guess you could say that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think that was conscious, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: funny that now in your marketing materials. Okay, i'll send
Speaker 1: you your commission check the new Niche the new you
Speaker 1: know that's like that's like the modern day announcement, you know. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so it's funny because so I put that together. But
Speaker 1: I will tell you so, the whole last chapter of
Speaker 1: part one is almost like an ode to Nietzsche. And
Speaker 1: that wasn't intended at all when I started writing the book. Initially,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to write like a small section about
Speaker 1: him talking about like the God is Dead thing. And
Speaker 1: it was funny. When I started researching him, I just
Speaker 1: became so fucking I don't know what it was, but
Speaker 1: it was I just got sucked away and like fell
Speaker 1: in love with the guy. Like I read a bunch
Speaker 1: of biographies by him, and then read a bunch of
Speaker 1: his books, and I found him so relevant and insightful
Speaker 1: for what I feel the world is going through today.
Speaker 1: And so I ended up that whole chapter is basically
Speaker 1: kind of about him, about his ideas and then also
Speaker 1: just applying them to the world today. But maybe that's
Speaker 1: why he resonated with me so much. Maybe I was
Speaker 1: having my own God is Dead moment. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that you did have a God is Dead moment. And
Speaker 1: there's such a contrast to you know, kind of like
Speaker 1: it's almost like you had hope in Hope in part one.
Speaker 1: You're like, you know, hope is lost, and you know,
Speaker 1: here's like the ways that we can genuinely restore hope.
Speaker 1: But then you're like, you know no, what, you know what, No,
Speaker 1: it's you know what, like that's worthless project. You know,
Speaker 1: I take it back, I give up hope and hope.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit why hope is destructive
Speaker 1: and this and now the second part of this interview
Speaker 1: is going to have a different tone. Sure. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that I did so I open up
Speaker 1: the book with a Holocaust story, and I did I
Speaker 1: did that for a few reasons. One is I just
Speaker 1: I feel like, culturally the Holocaust is like the most
Speaker 1: kind of universally acknowledged evil thing that has happened in
Speaker 1: Western culture in the last one hundred years, two hundred years.
Speaker 1: And second, I did that because I also wanted to,
Speaker 1: you know, for people who watch twenty cable news all
Speaker 1: day or sit on Twitter all day, like I think
Speaker 1: it was useful to be like, hey, wake up call,
Speaker 1: Shit's not that bad. Here is it getting, This is
Speaker 1: how it could be, this is how it's been in
Speaker 1: the past, This is how bad it's been in the past.
Speaker 1: And so I, you know, World War two stories, Holocaust
Speaker 1: stories are there there as a writer, They're always great
Speaker 1: because it's it's one of the few things, few major
Speaker 1: things in our history that we seem to be unanimous about.
Speaker 1: And of course I write it as you know the
Speaker 1: classic you know, Nazis are awful and evil and good
Speaker 1: guys win, you know, so I write it as a classic,
Speaker 1: you know, good guys win over evil, and I tell
Speaker 1: a story about a guy who was able to maintain
Speaker 1: hope and like against impossible odds, the Big Switcher ruer.
Speaker 1: I guess, as you would say, the grand reveal that
Speaker 1: comes in chapter five is that I make the point
Speaker 1: that it's hope is not didn't just help the Allies
Speaker 1: when World War Two. Hope is also the reason that
Speaker 1: the Nazis tried to create a pure race. Hope is
Speaker 1: the reason why Communists tried to foment a worldwide revolution.
Speaker 1: Hope is not necessarily good. I would actually say hope
Speaker 1: is neutral, and it's like the thing I compare it
Speaker 1: to is love. Is that we tend to always assume
Speaker 1: that love is good. But love can also be the
Speaker 1: most painful and damaging thing in our life. It can
Speaker 1: be the best thing in our life, most rewarding thing
Speaker 1: in our life, but it can also be the most
Speaker 1: painful and damaging thing in our life. And I think
Speaker 1: hope is the same thing on a cultural scale. Hope
Speaker 1: is It's necessary, It's kind of it is a fundamental
Speaker 1: part of our psychological mechanism. But it's also if we're
Speaker 1: not careful, it can be incredibly destructive. And the paradox
Speaker 1: that I point out is that hope, ultimately, even though
Speaker 1: we all when things get fucked, we always look for hope.
Speaker 1: I point out that hope needs something to be fucked.
Speaker 1: If nothing was fucked, we would have to create something
Speaker 1: being fucked in order to maintain our hope. And so
Speaker 1: in that sense, hope necessitates some form of destruction or contradiction.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a quote, there's a quote I think
Speaker 1: I actually use this quote in a subtle art. There's
Speaker 1: a quote I love, and I think it comes from
Speaker 1: a Spanish artist, and he said that when the human
Speaker 1: mind is presented with no problems, it sets about creating
Speaker 1: them for itself or something like that. And so then
Speaker 1: that that kind of leads in the part too. It's like,
Speaker 1: all right, if hope necessitates some degree of conflict and destruction,
Speaker 1: what is the least destructive or damaging form of hope? Well,
Speaker 1: this is so interesting because in a way, we were saying, think,
Speaker 1: the moment we feel content, all hope is lost. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: Like basically that's what you're saying. That's like the ergo,
Speaker 1: you know, if you finish the proof, the math proof,
Speaker 1: that's what you're saying. It's such an interesting way of
Speaker 1: thinking about everything. It really is Buddhist. It really is
Speaker 1: Buddhist at the end of the day. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like being versus doing right being like just like finding
Speaker 1: contentment in the current moment is good enough, Like you
Speaker 1: don't like in a way like if hope is it's
Speaker 1: tricky because you don't want to say if hope is lost,
Speaker 1: then that's an indication that things are good, no, because
Speaker 1: that doesn't follow logically either, because like there are obviously
Speaker 1: people living in squalor, right, Like, there are people who
Speaker 1: like cope is something that would keep them going to
Speaker 1: want to be able to get out of bed. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, let's say you're in a war torn society.
Speaker 1: People are dying all around you. Like, certainly you don't
Speaker 1: want hope to be lost in that situation, right, But
Speaker 1: what's interesting is is my argument is that hope is
Speaker 1: much easier easier to find in those situations. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: if you're living in squalor, it's a very simple question
Speaker 1: what the hope for to not be in squalor? You know,
Speaker 1: it's to get enough food to eat, get enough money
Speaker 1: to go somewhere better. When everything is comfortable, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're sitting in a recliner with five hundred channels
Speaker 1: with air conditioning on, with you know, a simple service
Speaker 1: sector job, with your phone that has more information on
Speaker 1: it than humanity's ever known. It's actually very very difficult
Speaker 1: to know what the hope for and you actually have
Speaker 1: to go find it yourself. And the problem is is
Speaker 1: that the destructive aspect of hope is extremely subtle. You know, hope.
Speaker 1: It's again, it's like love. Love feels so good that
Speaker 1: when you start dating that awful person, you don't realize,
Speaker 1: you justify everything to yourself. You don't realize what you're
Speaker 1: doing because it feels so good. And it's I think
Speaker 1: it's the same thing with hope. I think it's we
Speaker 1: get so swept up and this vision of a better world,
Speaker 1: a better life, that we aren't aware of the destructive
Speaker 1: underbelly of our hopes. And so when society becomes very
Speaker 1: comfortable and everything becomes convenient, and we become responsible for
Speaker 1: finding hope ourselves, I think we get led into some
Speaker 1: very dangerous and very dark places without realizing it. It's
Speaker 1: a really, really, really thought folking idea, and I love
Speaker 1: those kinds of ideas because then it was really cool
Speaker 1: to read your book, and I definitely had lots of
Speaker 1: moments of like, huh, do I need to flip the
Speaker 1: script of how I've been thinking about things? So, so
Speaker 1: thank you. I just want to thank you first of all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what a good book should do, right, that's the goal. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So you talk about the one rule for life, well,
Speaker 1: people love rules and said there's only one role than
Speaker 1: the people love that even more so, what is the
Speaker 1: one role for life? I zeroed in on Kant's formula
Speaker 1: of humanity and I was, actually I was. I was
Speaker 1: super happy to see it featured in your research. And
Speaker 1: it's funny too, because it's you know, some of the
Speaker 1: people that I know who are have read philosophy or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, Kant's moral philosophy is it's kind of a
Speaker 1: joke in some circles, and he definitely I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot of aspects of it that are unreasonable or
Speaker 1: a little bit ridiculous. But I was in kind of
Speaker 1: a dark place a couple of years ago. I guess
Speaker 1: I guess you could say I didn't know what the
Speaker 1: hope for. Part of the inspiration of this book is,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what the hope for and I started
Speaker 1: we depressed. We depressed. Yeah, subtle. Okay, So selling like
Speaker 1: three million copies of your book, like I can't even imagine.
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine that. First of all, Like don't
Speaker 1: First of all, public service announcement. I'm not complaining about anything.
Speaker 1: I'm totally grateful. It's been incredible. I wouldn't take a
Speaker 1: single second back. But you know, one thing that I
Speaker 1: told some people is that, you know, I spent pretty
Speaker 1: much my entire adult life wanting to be a best
Speaker 1: selling author and working towards that. Like it was my dream.
Speaker 1: It was the thing that got me up in the morning.
Speaker 1: It was and in my mind, it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to write books, and over the course of
Speaker 1: like twenty years of really hard work, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to knock out some of these goals and achieve
Speaker 1: these things, and you know, by the time I'm fifty
Speaker 1: or sixty, I'm going to have like a really successful
Speaker 1: writing career, and in subtle art comes out and it's
Speaker 1: like all of those goals are accomplished within two months,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's like the things that I've been
Speaker 1: dreaming that I'm like, Okay, this is going to define
Speaker 1: my life for that for decades, They're done, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think lost. Yeah, but people, So here's one
Speaker 1: thing that people never talk about is that the most
Speaker 1: surefire away to have no dreams is to accomplish them.
Speaker 1: Like people don't realize that. And it's funny because I
Speaker 1: went through this like very malayic, and again it was
Speaker 1: one of those things that I was feeling depressed and
Speaker 1: the whole time, I'm like, what the fuck is wrong
Speaker 1: with me? Like I'm not right. This is supposed to
Speaker 1: be the best moment of my life, Like why why
Speaker 1: am I sitting around and pajamas playing Zelda twelve hours
Speaker 1: a day? Like Zelda? Oh dude, we should talk about that,
Speaker 1: and we should talk about that another time. Podcast. Can
Speaker 1: we do a podcast just on on Zelda? Son Zelda?
Speaker 1: So yeah, and it was I think I spent the
Speaker 1: better part of a year just kind of spun out,
Speaker 1: not and not knowing why. And then eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm friends with with an of people in the startup
Speaker 1: world here in New York. And it was funny because
Speaker 1: I started kind of talking to some friends about this,
Speaker 1: about what I was feeling, what was going on, and
Speaker 1: my startup friends were like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: You know, they're like, that's normal, right, Like that happens
Speaker 1: to everybody. You know. You've got this company, you work
Speaker 1: like eighty hours a week for six years, and then
Speaker 1: you exit make a bunch of money. And you know,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine who's had a couple successful exits,
Speaker 1: he told me, he's like, yeah, nothing is worse. He's like,
Speaker 1: nothing makes me more depressed than like exiting a company
Speaker 1: that I put all of my hopes and dreams in
Speaker 1: for years and years and years. So I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's so crazy, Like that's and so that that's actually
Speaker 1: you know. And then that, combined with all the twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen stuff, it got me thinking about like, what is
Speaker 1: it this hope, this mechanism inside of us that we
Speaker 1: need something, some vision of the future that we can
Speaker 1: look forward to. So anyway, one of the things during
Speaker 1: that period were the things that kind of pulled me
Speaker 1: out of it. Reading Philosophy again. I hadn't read it,
Speaker 1: really read it since college. I'd always been really interested
Speaker 1: in consort, but I had never really like dived into it.
Speaker 1: Did you understand it? Do you really understand like Critique
Speaker 1: of pure Reason? I maybe understood half of it. It's
Speaker 1: really rigorous. It's oh, it's insanely rigorous. I love Kann
Speaker 1: Like that was actually a very surprising thing, is that
Speaker 1: I found a lot of joy in the just, the
Speaker 1: beauty and the precision of his thinking. And then I
Speaker 1: read the Groundworks to Metaphysics and Morals and where he
Speaker 1: introduces the categorical imperative and the formula of humanity, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's tons of criticisms of his moral philosophy.
Speaker 1: But like when you're just reading that little book it's
Speaker 1: like about one hundred pages, the logic within it feels
Speaker 1: so air tight, Like it's so air tight, and you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: this guy has like nailed it. It was a really
Speaker 1: revolutive story experience for me. And then the Formula of
Speaker 1: Humanity in particular because I've written you know, so as
Speaker 1: you know my background years and years ago. Like the
Speaker 1: first thing I wrote about was like dating relationships, basically
Speaker 1: social interactions. And one of the things that I've written
Speaker 1: about forever is acting unconditionally, you know, not treating people
Speaker 1: in a transactional manner, not being manipulative, enforcing strong boundaries,
Speaker 1: uncompromising honesty. And so when I got to the part
Speaker 1: about CONT's formula humanity, I mean, it's like he basically
Speaker 1: summed up five years of my dating, relationship, social interaction
Speaker 1: writing in like a single sentence. And I was like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, man, this guy's legit. It cont is legit.
Speaker 1: But it was it was so inspiring for me. It
Speaker 1: was really really inspiring for me. Something similar happen to
Speaker 1: me too. It's so funny, really well, we're yeah, when
Speaker 1: we're trying to think of what's the opposite of the
Speaker 1: dark triad and what's the opposite of Machiavelianism, and then
Speaker 1: my colleague Davity and like, wait, that's continism. Then it
Speaker 1: was like it just snapped into place, you know, because Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so cool that you resonate with that. I resonate
Speaker 1: with that, Like I wonder what that says about us
Speaker 1: or people resonate with that. I hope it's a good
Speaker 1: thing that I think. Like what I love about it too,
Speaker 1: the whole means and ends thing, Like it just seems
Speaker 1: like such a fundamental like it doesn't seem arbitrary. It
Speaker 1: seems like if you were able to dig into a
Speaker 1: brain and see how it like thinks about other humans,
Speaker 1: you would be able to like parse out, you know,
Speaker 1: what a means looks like and what an end's looks like.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like such a fundamental part of
Speaker 1: our cognitive process. And I think he talked about that
Speaker 1: in Critique of Pure Reason, how it's like everything we
Speaker 1: think in sequences. It's like this leads to this, leads
Speaker 1: to this, and and so Kant very rationally decided that
Speaker 1: the basis of morality is to never have never have
Speaker 1: a human only be a link in that causal chain,
Speaker 1: always have them be the end of the causal chain.
Speaker 1: And it's just so elegant and profound and logical that
Speaker 1: I found a lot of inspiration in it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I not to be like really nerdy, but I was
Speaker 1: familiar with it as his second formulation of his categorical imperative.
Speaker 1: Does he actually did you come up with the phrase
Speaker 1: his formula humanity? Does he use the phrase formula of humanity?
Speaker 1: He does? That's so cool. He does. It's he doesn't
Speaker 1: use it exactly formula of humanity. But I think he
Speaker 1: calls it it's like the formulation of human ends or
Speaker 1: something like that. But I think it got kind of
Speaker 1: summarized as formula humanity since then. I love it. I love,
Speaker 1: I love I'm gonna prefer it. I'm going to totally
Speaker 1: at cocktail. PRIs referred to it as his form of
Speaker 1: humanity now as opposed to his second formulation of this
Speaker 1: categorical imperative. It's a little bit catchier. Yeah, Like in
Speaker 1: our scientific paper on the Dwight Verse Dark Triad, we
Speaker 1: refer to it, you know, as the second blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: But I was like, man, what should we just called
Speaker 1: it the form of humanity? That would make a sexier paper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So will you tell me how I can grow up? Yeah? So,
Speaker 1: one thing I've been interested in for a long time
Speaker 1: has been I would actually think, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: my my gateway drug to psychology was developmental psychology. Like
Speaker 1: reading about Pig and Colberg and those guys, and Robert
Speaker 1: Keegan in particular, is like, I find those models so fascinating.
Speaker 1: I have no idea how much empirical data they have
Speaker 1: behind them, or how strong or flimsy that data is,
Speaker 1: but I've just always found it incredibly fascinating and I've
Speaker 1: just kind of it's been something I've stuffed, kind of
Speaker 1: stuff I've read for fun on and off over the years.
Speaker 1: And one thing that I found, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of commonalities that people have in stages in terms
Speaker 1: of like how they think about themselves, how they construct
Speaker 1: their own identity, how they relate that identity to the world,
Speaker 1: and then how they kind of understand the world itself.
Speaker 1: And it was interesting because the formula of humanity, I realized,
Speaker 1: was if you look at like Colberg's theories of moral development,
Speaker 1: it's the formula of humanity is kind of the endpoint that,
Speaker 1: you know, if you think about it, like a young child.
Speaker 1: Pretty much all the young children are like little narcissist tyrants.
Speaker 1: They're all like me, me, me, they have no conception
Speaker 1: of other children, and you have to teach them both,
Speaker 1: you know, through rewards, but also through punishments, you know,
Speaker 1: to share, to consider others to and then as they
Speaker 1: grow older to that are society at large or they're
Speaker 1: you know, understand that there are consequences for their actions
Speaker 1: and all this stuff. And I just kind of you know,
Speaker 1: in all the developmental reading that I did, I saw
Speaker 1: that there was kind of an arrow pointing towards an
Speaker 1: understanding of self and other in terms of the formula
Speaker 1: of humanity, of never treating oneself as merely a means,
Speaker 1: only as an ends, and never treating others merely as
Speaker 1: a means. And that was just just an excite, really
Speaker 1: exciting connection I made myself, or you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's somebody else's made it somewhere, but and so fuck it.
Speaker 1: It's my book. This is how, this is how I'm
Speaker 1: the fighting growth. It's great. No, it's really good. It's good.
Speaker 1: And I like the idea of like also saying like
Speaker 1: not turing your own self, you know, like being kind
Speaker 1: to yourself and like unconditionally loving yourself in a certain
Speaker 1: sense what you're saying, yeah, but doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: condone everything about it. That's what's interesting too, is that
Speaker 1: if you look at things that you know you would
Speaker 1: call unhealthy, you know, something like say alcoholism or or
Speaker 1: even lying to yourself, those are situations where you're treating
Speaker 1: yourself as a means to some other end. So something
Speaker 1: like you know, addiction, like substance abuse, you're treating yourself
Speaker 1: as a means to the end of you know, blind,
Speaker 1: pointless pleasure. You're harming your identity and your physical body
Speaker 1: for the sake of experiencing some kind of synthetic form
Speaker 1: of pleasure. And as you know, consohole thing was he
Speaker 1: said that it's happiness doesn't matter. You know, it's happiness
Speaker 1: is besides the point. Is what he would say is
Speaker 1: he said that it's about it's acting in such a
Speaker 1: way that you promote greater consciousness, greater ration consciousness. And
Speaker 1: so to do things that harm your rational consciousness, that
Speaker 1: harm your identity, that harm your physical body in pursuit
Speaker 1: of empty pleasure is like almost by definition, treating yourself.
Speaker 1: Then No, it's a it's a really brilliant connection. No,
Speaker 1: I see it. I can see it so clearly. So cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like what a great like just principle, just like for
Speaker 1: everything you do in your life, it's easier said than done. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, when that cookie, you know, where is that cookie?
Speaker 1: I'm looking for my favorite cookie? Yeah, just throw it away,
Speaker 1: like tie yourself to the mast. But yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 1: I really like that, And I hope people get I
Speaker 1: hope our listeners really get it too. I really do
Speaker 1: hope my listeners, like you know, understand just how profound
Speaker 1: that really is as a way of living one's life. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we this might be a controversial territory. But
Speaker 1: politics you say, quote and I'm almost nervous to quote this,
Speaker 1: but you say political extreme because they're intractable and impossible
Speaker 1: to bargain with, are by definition childish. They are a
Speaker 1: bunch of fucking babies. Now, now, now here's the thing
Speaker 1: I want to be. You know, almost everyone agrees with that.
Speaker 1: When you talk about the far right, you know, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Nazi is you know, all right, yeah, baby, But it
Speaker 1: seems more controversial say that about the far left because
Speaker 1: that's because you and I live in New York and
Speaker 1: you're a professor. You know, I'm serious though, I think, okay,
Speaker 1: there's there's truth there. But this is I think this
Speaker 1: is an important point and it was actually a very
Speaker 1: important thing for me while writing this book. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: my politics lean left. I wouldn't consider myself like far left,
Speaker 1: but I'm definitely a lefty. And one thing that surprised
Speaker 1: me when Subtle Art came out and it became so
Speaker 1: popular is I started getting invited onto right wing talk
Speaker 1: shows and right wing blog media, and it was funny because,
Speaker 1: you know, so I did all the left wing interviews
Speaker 1: and stuff that I kind of expected, interviews with professors
Speaker 1: and whatnot, and we'd get on and they're like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you know, people are entitled in this country. They want
Speaker 1: their way or the highway. You know. Entitlement was a
Speaker 1: big theme in Subtle Art, and responsibility was another big theme.
Speaker 1: And I kind of wrote that book. The book itself
Speaker 1: is a political but I wrote that book, and I
Speaker 1: and I was thinking about that stuff when I wrote it.
Speaker 1: And then what surprised me is that I started going
Speaker 1: on all these right wing shows and media and they're like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's those damn liberals. They're they're just entitled. They're taking
Speaker 1: no responsibility for themselves. I was like, wait, what in retrospect?
Speaker 1: You wrote the Republican Manifesto. Did you not know that
Speaker 1: you like in retrospect? Yeah, So it was crazy because
Speaker 1: both sides read their own you know, it was like
Speaker 1: a template that both sides kind of put themselves, projected
Speaker 1: themselves and the other side into. And so I wanted
Speaker 1: to write this book in such a way that I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about politics and political polarization and extremism,
Speaker 1: but I also I wanted to be very careful to
Speaker 1: talk about it in such a way that that both
Speaker 1: sides would be able to see themselves, see the other side,
Speaker 1: and just see the dynamics at play, because everything is
Speaker 1: becoming politicized today. So when you say that, when you say, well,
Speaker 1: it's easy to see that about the right wing, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you well, I've actually already had one interview where
Speaker 1: somebody has said that said the exact same thing about
Speaker 1: the left, you know, and I'm going to go on
Speaker 1: Fox News in a week or two. So it's you know,
Speaker 1: my goal. You know, we could argue whether which side's worse,
Speaker 1: and you know whatever, and I agree they're extreme. They're
Speaker 1: the extremism is happening in different places and in different ways,
Speaker 1: into different degrees. But it's like if you go to
Speaker 1: some other countries, if you go to like Australia, there's
Speaker 1: a a much larger left wing extremists component that's going on.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, I wanted to write it. I wanted
Speaker 1: to get out of the America US centric bubble because
Speaker 1: I see extremism is happening all over the world in
Speaker 1: different capacities. Yeah, and the recent st idd to come
Speaker 1: out showing that the left wing authoritarianism does exist. You
Speaker 1: know that we tend to think of it authoritarians only
Speaker 1: as a right wing phenomenon, but people psychologists have started
Speaker 1: to quantify that. You know, there's about just as many
Speaker 1: left wing authoritarians as well. So what is the difference
Speaker 1: between fake Okay, what's the differen between pound fake freedom
Speaker 1: and no pound real freedom? Because real freedom doesn't involve
Speaker 1: a hashtag? Right, is that the point you're making, Scott, Like,
Speaker 1: where's your Twitter game? It's hashtag fake freedom? Oh right,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's so embarrassing. That is so embarrassing. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: what's the difference? Let me start that over. What's the
Speaker 1: difference in hashtag fake freedom and no hashtag real freedom?
Speaker 1: Oh man, you should definitely keep that. Oh no, I'm
Speaker 1: going to keep it in. I will, I will keep
Speaker 1: that in. Yeah, it'll show my age or whatever. Well,
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta, you gotta up your Twitter game, Scott.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's so a hashtag hashtag fake freedom is
Speaker 1: I guess it's me poking fun at hashtag fake news. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But my argument, you know, I I have a chapter
Speaker 1: towards the end of the book that that I make
Speaker 1: the argument that we need to redefine our understanding of freedom.
Speaker 1: I think for most of human civilization, we've lived in
Speaker 1: a state of scarcity, and so the assumption that more
Speaker 1: is always better has held true. And I think today
Speaker 1: we're seeing that Now today is kind of the first
Speaker 1: day the last generation or so. It's like the first
Speaker 1: time in human history that we are exposed to far
Speaker 1: more information than we can ever process. We're exposed to
Speaker 1: far more more people than we can ever know intimately
Speaker 1: or care about. We're exposed to, you know, far more
Speaker 1: opportunities to buy shit and to waste destroy the environment.
Speaker 1: And so I think I make the argument that we've
Speaker 1: hit an inflection point that assumption of more is always
Speaker 1: better is no longer true. And I think that the
Speaker 1: new definition of freedom is going to be people who
Speaker 1: are able to limit their own consumption effectively, be able
Speaker 1: to focus their attention and their experiences based on their values.
Speaker 1: Because the other thing that's happening too is just that
Speaker 1: media and marketing are getting so good they're literally like
Speaker 1: hijacking our attention away from us. And so I try
Speaker 1: to argue that the new definition of freedom is self limitation,
Speaker 1: citing where you're going to draw the boundaries in your experience,
Speaker 1: in your existence and sticking to them. Is that similar
Speaker 1: to commitment? Is that synonymous? Do you kind of use
Speaker 1: them synonymously in a way, Well, they're not synonymous, Like
Speaker 1: they're kind of they're correlated, significatistically significant with each other.
Speaker 1: I think I think commitment is maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: It's a context driven so you know, like I make
Speaker 1: a commitment to my wife, I make a commitment to
Speaker 1: my career. And what that means is that I'm blocking
Speaker 1: out you know, I'm not seeing other women, and I'm
Speaker 1: not like trying to like, you know, do a Broadway play.
Speaker 1: Like it's I'm focused on this one thing. And so
Speaker 1: so I think you could what I'm talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: I think we just need to apply that same dynamic
Speaker 1: in a lot of other areas of our lives, of
Speaker 1: like information sources, people that we interact with or care about.
Speaker 1: It's activities, we participate in, stuff, we buy things like that.
Speaker 1: So what do you do say when like I have
Speaker 1: a friend David Epstein who wrote a just recently wrote
Speaker 1: a cool book on generalists, and that is a potential
Speaker 1: way of being, you know, not necessarily Like there's kind
Speaker 1: of different ways of living one's life. Well, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, you can be kind of this cal newport
Speaker 1: like deep work obsessed person, you know, or you can
Speaker 1: be more of this like I have a diversity of interests.
Speaker 1: I have just I just like embracing life and all
Speaker 1: of its glory. And if that involves five hundred women
Speaker 1: or five hundred you know, iPads, or you know, like
Speaker 1: I've just like I want all the things, to experience
Speaker 1: all the things. Now, you're not saying like one way
Speaker 1: of living one's life is universally objectively better than another,
Speaker 1: are you? Is there a way of like maybe you
Speaker 1: can be a generalist and still have commitments. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: also a false dichotomy. I would say it is. I
Speaker 1: see it as a false dichotomy, Like you can be
Speaker 1: interested in a lot of different things, but you still
Speaker 1: need to be very focused on how you experience those
Speaker 1: things I like, and committed to how you experienced those things.
Speaker 1: So you can have ten hobbies, but you also have
Speaker 1: to be like conscious of the time you're setting aside
Speaker 1: for them not getting distracted by you know, all this
Speaker 1: other crap, not sitting there scrolling through your social media
Speaker 1: two hours a day, like it's I think, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm arguing against this is basically not succumbing to
Speaker 1: an autopilot based in abundance. Like it's just I think
Speaker 1: today the technology has created an environment today where we
Speaker 1: tend to fall into autopilot. Not because we're doing the
Speaker 1: same thing, it's because there's just so much different stuff
Speaker 1: that's being thrown at us that it's so easy to
Speaker 1: just sit there and kind of like go through it
Speaker 1: for hours and hours on it does that makes sense?
Speaker 1: It makes a lot of sense. I really like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, like it's kind of like you have a monogamy,
Speaker 1: but people are making polyamory work in the sense that
Speaker 1: they're rationally trying to figure out, how can I do
Speaker 1: this in a way that doesn't hurt anyone in the
Speaker 1: relationship but still has love and depth. So yes, I
Speaker 1: guess I'm making it a polyamory analogy to like the
Speaker 1: world at large. Sure, And I would even argue that
Speaker 1: in polyamory, they're still making a commitment. It's just they're
Speaker 1: not making a commitment to monogamy, they're making a commitment
Speaker 1: to say intimacy, or they're making a commitment to honesty.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's totally reasonable. It's it's I think that
Speaker 1: what I'm arguing against is this idea that you can
Speaker 1: like just compulsively sit on Twitter and go on twenty
Speaker 1: dates a week and think that like you're going to
Speaker 1: get any value out of that, and think that that's freedom.
Speaker 1: That's not freedom. That's compulsion, you know, it's that's by definition,
Speaker 1: the opposite of freedom. I agree. I agree. So and
Speaker 1: the existentialists would agree, and the humanistic psychologists would agree,
Speaker 1: and anyone who's sensible would agree with anyone who's right
Speaker 1: would agree what they're talking about. Okay, second to last question,
Speaker 1: and then you'll like my last question. Second last question,
Speaker 1: why are we bad algorithms? And why should we not
Speaker 1: bear AI so much as we do? So this this
Speaker 1: was just kind of a fun I wanted to wrap
Speaker 1: up the chat the book with a discussion of AI
Speaker 1: because I feel like, you know, we're all so caught
Speaker 1: up in like you know, impeach Trump or you know,
Speaker 1: all this little stuff that's kind of going on, and
Speaker 1: I feel like we're not even there's this tidal wave
Speaker 1: that's approaching that is going to render a lot of
Speaker 1: what we understand as society and culture like just completely irrelevant.
Speaker 1: And that's AI, and so I have I kind of
Speaker 1: have fun with it. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: alarm AI alarmists out there. I'm definitely not one of them.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of AI utopians out there. I think
Speaker 1: that we're all going to become a single consciousness, live
Speaker 1: in you know, perfect happiness and pleasure for all eternity.
Speaker 1: That's not me either, I think. I guess the point
Speaker 1: that I make is that because our minds construct meaning
Speaker 1: in terms of in terms of these hope conflict narratives,
Speaker 1: we are very limited in our understanding of the world.
Speaker 1: And so I argue that people who see AI as
Speaker 1: this destructive thing that's going to wipe out humanity efficient
Speaker 1: toothpicks or whatever, they're just projecting their own human understanding
Speaker 1: of the universe onto this new what they would do
Speaker 1: if they were an AI robot exactly exactly. And I
Speaker 1: even point out, you know, I say, like ethically speaking,
Speaker 1: like we're throwing rocks in a glasshouse here, Like it's
Speaker 1: like I run through all these statistics of like there's
Speaker 1: five genocides occurring in the world today. You know, there's
Speaker 1: like I think seven hundred million people who or starving.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like, who are we to say that,
Speaker 1: like AI is going to be this horrible evil that's
Speaker 1: going to destroy everything. And then the other point I
Speaker 1: make is, you know, I think the the techno utopias
Speaker 1: are kind of they're just on the other side of
Speaker 1: the same coin. They're projecting the same way people used
Speaker 1: to project, you know, used to say like God is
Speaker 1: going to save us, or Jesus is going to come
Speaker 1: save us or whoever. You know, I think people are
Speaker 1: just saying, oh, Ai is going to come save us,
Speaker 1: and everything's going to be happy. We're going to live
Speaker 1: in heaven. The point I make is that AI is
Speaker 1: going to be once they surpass our intelligence, We're literally
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to understand. The analogy I use
Speaker 1: is that it's our relationship with AIS is like trying
Speaker 1: to play chess with your dog, Like it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how smart your dog is, Like, they're not going to
Speaker 1: be able to play chess with you. So you know,
Speaker 1: AI is going to come and we're not even going
Speaker 1: to understand what's happening, why it's happening, and I think
Speaker 1: that's okay. I'm I'm like, I'm at peace with that.
Speaker 1: And because again, and I think this is what's distinguished
Speaker 1: me in the self help industry is that I ultimately
Speaker 1: I'm kind of a pessimist about human nature. I think humans,
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of suck. We're bad algorithms, we're bad.
Speaker 1: We are inefficient information processors. We are speak for yourself.
Speaker 1: We are We're evolved not for truth or you know,
Speaker 1: reduction of suffering. We're we're we evolve for survival and reproduction.
Speaker 1: And I think AI will be some sort of sentient
Speaker 1: thing that exists that will be optimized for information processing
Speaker 1: and rationality. And I think that that is far more
Speaker 1: promising than our own minds. And and you know, I
Speaker 1: don't and I don't you know, maybe there'll be like
Speaker 1: a singularity or whatever, but you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just kind of have fun with it at the end.
Speaker 1: So it's a kind of like a you know, it's
Speaker 1: like at the end of a Stanley Kubrick film where
Speaker 1: shit just gets weird and you're like, whoa, what's happening?
Speaker 1: You know, I wanted to put that that sort of
Speaker 1: experience in the end of the book. I wonder, No,
Speaker 1: I loved it. I loved it. I wonder. I just
Speaker 1: do wonder if it's going to be a singularity kind
Speaker 1: of event or more aggress something more gradual that we
Speaker 1: start to have that we have control over and we
Speaker 1: can make decisions. But or is it going to be
Speaker 1: this Like we wake up in the morning, we turn
Speaker 1: on the news and it's like all over the world,
Speaker 1: robots have taken over the cities and you know, and
Speaker 1: turning cars over and you know, it's like it's like
Speaker 1: the terminator. Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, last question, what
Speaker 1: do you dare to hope for? Uh? You know, I
Speaker 1: I dare to hope for a lot of things. So
Speaker 1: the last section of the book is called I Dared
Speaker 1: Hope that Dot, and it's just a list of things that,
Speaker 1: you know, you get to the end of the book
Speaker 1: and it's like, Okay, we have to hope for something,
Speaker 1: like it's impossible to not hope for something, But we've
Speaker 1: also just gone through like three hundred pages explaining the
Speaker 1: precarious nature of our own hopes. And so I wrap
Speaker 1: the book up with kind of my own, like, these
Speaker 1: are the things that I dare to hope for that
Speaker 1: I'm I'm nervous hoping for these things, but these are
Speaker 1: the things that I hope for, and I kind of
Speaker 1: run through them and explain them, and they relate to
Speaker 1: a lot of the concepts discussed throughout the book, ideas
Speaker 1: about technology and information and media and the climate, you know,
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. So it's kind of my little
Speaker 1: farewell after like the wild crazy ride of the book. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being on the show today,
Speaker 1: and I hope that your next book does not become
Speaker 1: a New York Times bestseller so that you can have
Speaker 1: more you can hope for in life for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life. Thanks Scott. I hope you fail. Well.
Speaker 1: That was clever, though, right, that was clever, very clever,
Speaker 1: Like you see what I did there? You see it?
Speaker 1: I definitely do. I do, you know, like I'm scared
Speaker 1: of usually my guests. At the end, I say, I
Speaker 1: hope I wish you well, and I'm almost scared to
Speaker 1: say that. The way you've turned to say well is yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I don't know what to wish you
Speaker 1: for you or hope for you. But my gut instinct
Speaker 1: is telling me that I wish you know for your contentment.
Speaker 1: How about that? Oh, thank you, I'll go with all
Speaker 1: the best. Thanks dude. Last thing, can you we actually
Speaker 1: we didn't plug the book at the end. There, you're right? Okay?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I wanted to plug your book, like, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you want to say about it? Sure? So
Speaker 1: everything is fucked a book about hope. It's out May
Speaker 1: fourteenth everywhere, so check it out. And then also I'm
Speaker 1: going to be on a speaking tour around the country
Speaker 1: and check that out at mark manson dot net slash
Speaker 1: Speaking dash Tour. So yeah, get the book, come out
Speaker 1: and see me. It would be a great time. Thanks Mark. Also,
Speaker 1: please say hi to Big Willy for me. Well Smith,
Speaker 1: you're you're you have a top secret project with him, right,
Speaker 1: Well to a lot at least say that. Hey, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's top secret anymore. So I'm I'm I'm working.
Speaker 1: I'm co authoring his book with him awesome, which is
Speaker 1: gonna be amazing. I can't wait. And uh, I devour
Speaker 1: all your writings. So thanks again for being on the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast today. Thanks dude, appreciate it. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 1: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
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