Drew, I noticed something very exciting.
OK today. This is our 72nd episode.
Oh no, I probably should know that, but I no, I did not.
You know how I know that? How do you know it?
I opened up the Notion database and counted how many episodes
there were in it. OK, so I probably should know.
This I have two thoughts. 1 is that's a lot of episode.
It feel, it doesn't feel like that many episodes.
It feels like way fewer than that.
And that's my first thought. And then my second thought is
when I think about some of the podcasts that have like 1500
episodes or 2000 episodes and I'm like, what the fuck?
Yeah. How do you guys do that?
That's a lot of work. It's a lot of talking.
It's it's a lot of talking, it's a lot of work.
I don't think people do realize how much work goes into A lot of
people don't realize how much work does go into these.
If you have a show that's been got thousands of episodes, my
God, I don't know how they, I don't know how they do.
It, it is a lot. Well, first of all, I, I just, I
think I'm done. I'm not going to do anymore.
You're done. What am I going to do?
I don't know. You're pretty good.
You're pretty good with your hands.
We could use some more insulation in the other studio.
All right. We talked about AI taking my job
last time, but this is this is this.
Is a little sudden I didn't think it was going to happen
this quickly. OK I have a gripe about podcasts
in our space is that I I feel like and I definitely feel this
tendency myself. You know, when you're kind of
running through this machine gun of guess yeah who come from all
these different places and have written all sorts of different
types of books or have studied different things.
As a host, you kind of just feel like you're, I don't know, it
feels like there's no intellectual consistency to
things. One of my gripes about the
podcast in this space is that hosts just go out and get the
most popular guests they can find and they bring them on and
they'll just let them say whatever.
And they don't disagree and they don't push back and they don't
change their mind about anything.
And I don't like that. And I feel myself getting tugged
in that direction as well. And I don't like that either.
So in honor of that, I would like to do an episode today
about things we've changed our minds about significant things,
not just like minor things, but like major beliefs or
assumptions that we have changed or dropped over the last few
years. And in the consequences of that
and also like what that looked. Like that process?
Yeah, because I do think the ability to change your mind is
super, super important. Underrated skill.
And especially these days, yes. And it's it should be lauded and
encouraged rather than than ridiculed.
So I figured maybe we could do our part.
Let's do it. OK, let's get into it.
It's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast with your
host Mark Manson. You, Sir, what have you changed
your mind about? What were you wrong about?
Well, OK, this is this is actually something I don't know
if I've changed my mind on it, but it's I think I see myself in
the a position to start changing my mind on it.
So I think I thought that was kind of a cool one I could bring
up here. I'm not sure if I'm changing my
mind or if I'm in the pre stages of changing my mind.
Maybe. OK, I I have changed my approach
to this topic which is religion in general.
OK, let's just dive right into religion.
Let's start. Let's start with religion.
For the longest time, I just haven't been really.
I grew up around religion, in religion.
I was religious at one point. Yeah.
Growing up as a, as a child, you know, because you adopt whatever
is around you, right. And then I got older, was
exposed to more of the world, and I was like, oh, God, OK, no,
this isn't for me. I saw the problems with it.
I've seen a lot of people, a lot of the damage that religion has
done both on an individual and cultural, societal level, too.
And then on top of that, too, I think in my formative years,
too, which, you know, like, kind of came of age in the 2000s, I
would say. And there were a lot of like,
kind of very vocal atheists out there, especially in the
intellectual realm. And I really wanted to be like
an intellectual or at least ally ally myself with them.
You know, atheism became cool. It was you.
Know like kind of 2006 to 2008 you had like Sam Harris and
Chris Hitchens and. Richard Dawkins.
Yeah, yeah.
And I, I wanted to kind of, I wanted to be aligned with them.
But it was a very sorry to interrupt them.
It was just for the listener. It was a very, it was a, it was
a very rigid atheism. Like it wasn't, it wasn't like a
kind of passive, oh, we don't believe in God.
It was no religion is a problem and everybody should be atheist,
right type of type of vibe going on.
Right, which I, I wasn't real familiar with atheism before.
Prior to that, what I understand was it was more just like AI
don't believe in God, just leave me alone, right.
And then kind of came this more virulent strain of atheism and
it was like jihad atheism basically, right?
Like, like, like there was like they were actively like, look,
this is how religion is damaging society.
People in general. I think there was a a lot
around, you know, the first, the first, the second Iraq war.
And you know, there was a big religious undertone to a lot of
that. And people were freaking out
like, hey, get this out of of the discourse right now because
it's getting very ugly very quick.
So I understood that and I kind of, I aligned myself with that
Lately, though last few years I would say I look around at some
of my family and friends who do still, they go to church and
they, they have families and they bring their families to
church and they maybe they pray or they celebrate religious
holidays and all that. And you see this, there's like
there's a community around it. They help each other out.
They're service oriented. A lot of them are.
Whereas like my non religious friends, I don't see as much.
They're not volunteering, they're not donating as much.
Also, the other thing I've noticed lately too is they're
very locally focused, but people, you know, churches in
general are very hyper local and they care about local issues a
lot. And we've talked before on this
podcast about how we think both you and I think that people are
over indexed on global issues and under indexed on their local
communities. I'm like, well, there's a
solution right there, but OK, I'm not, I'm not fully changed
my mind yet. Like I said, because I still do
see a lot of the, the damage it's done, the dogma, I really
don't like the dogma in any religion.
I don't, I, I think there's just a, there's so many problems with
it. But what I'm trying to figure
out is, is there a way to incorporate the good parts of
religion without the bad? And people have tried to do
this, I think. And I, I just don't see it
working the way that like religion is this glue that, that
binds people together. And if you take out all the
supernatural and the mysticism and, and the magic of it all,
what are you, you're not really left with the same thing.
It's something completely different.
And I'm not sure if it's a binding presence or not.
Well, in the the kind of the tragedy of it too is that what
you find is that the more dogmatic and judgmental the
religious sect, the stronger that binding is, which is scary.
To me. Which is because it's, I mean,
that's part that's just human nature, right?
It's like the higher the barrier to entry and the higher the
barrier to exit, it's like the more and the more the more you
sacrifice you have to make to be in the group, the more you're
going to care about the group and the more you're going to
engage with the group. I'm curious like where this
started. I find like belief change is so
interesting to me because I think ideal idealistically, I
want to believe that it's an information thing.
It's like, you know, you come across a data point and you're
like, oh, that I need to change my prior assumptions.
But I also know that's usually not how it works.
So I'm I'm curious, like, where do you think this started?
Like what was the what was the crack in the surface?
Well, like I said, just pointing to examples in my life where
I've noticed it more and the older I get, I think my values
are changing a little bit too, where it's less about I do want
to find something that's bigger than myself.
And you know, you get older and those kind of things, you start
thinking about your role in society, in the world and the
legacy you leave behind. And so you start thinking about
these bigger concepts. And I just can't help but notice
that people who have been religious throughout their lives
in my life kind of have that sense of grounded sense of
purpose and meaning around them. And so that, I mean, there's
also too, what I've also seen is more in the kind of intellectual
realm, the intelligista, if you will, especially in the United
States, seems to be kind of having a little bit of a
religious resurgence right now. And so I'm, I'm kind of
wondering if I'm just, you know. Like.
The smart people are doing this. Maybe I should look into it too.
I don't, I don't know, I don't know where I really stand on it,
but I can feel, like I said, I can kind of feel myself
shifting, at least opening my mind to like, OK, what's going
on? Why, why is this resurgence
happening? Is there something to it that
maybe those virulent atheists that I, I once kind of like look
to for a lot of, I guess philosophy around life and
everything like that, Maybe they don't have it figured out.
A lot of atheists are just miserable people too, you know,
I mean, there's a lot of just miserable people in general.
I get that. But it's like the IT, it became
kind of like you were angry and, and you're angry at the world
and kind of there's just like a little bit of a nihilism to it
that I'm just like, I don't, that doesn't quite sit right
with me. So I don't know if I can
pinpoint an exact. Well, it sounds like there's a,
there's a handful of factors. 1 is that your personal value
shifted, right? So you start valuing more
community, being supportive of people, engaging with people,
relationships. And you started to notice that
the people who are really good at those things were more
religious. Coincides maybe with a little
bit of this kind of cultural pressure of like, you know, some
of the IT thinkers at the moment are religious people.
It is interesting too, you know, Speaking of, I think Harrison
Dawkins in particular, now that it's been 20 years, you know,
one, one of the I used to be a huge Sam Harris fan and and I've
met Sam a number of times and he was super nice and we had great
conversations. The the interesting thing about
him, though, is that he he is kind of infamous for not
changing his views. Right.
Yeah. And it's actually ironic that he
comes up in this episode about changing beliefs because I think
the probably the most appropriate criticism of him is
that he really doesn't update his views and, or doesn't seem
to at least as a, as a public observer of him.
He doesn't seem to update his, his views dramatically.
And Dawkins is like very proudly not updated his views on
religion. And so it, it, I don't know.
I just I always my default when I see when I notice that
somebody has gone 20 years without changing their mind
about anything, I trust them less.
And it's to me that's a little bit of a signal that there's
like a little, there's some close mindedness going on there.
I'm interested if, you know, on this show, we've had a number of
guests who've come on. I mean, you and I have talked
quite a bit about like the loneliness epidemic and the loss
of community. You know, David Brooks came on
and we had a whole episode about the lack of community in, in
American life. And he, he and I talked quite a
bit about church and like the lack of religion.
Arthur Brooks came on, talked about some similar stuff as
well. I'm wondering how much you know,
the research that has gone into this show, seeing the data
points around loneliness, fragmentation, isolation, lack
of purpose and meaning, the mental health crisis, Like how
much do you think that is influenced you?
Definitely, yeah, that was the point I wanted to bring up.
I I especially like the loneliness epidemic and like,
well, people are looking for community, Why don't and I why
don't people have community? Look back was like, well, yeah,
I mean, it was you had a built in community when the church was
more central to people's lives or mosque or synagogue,
whatever. And that yes, that absolutely
influenced me and like, OK, well, but The thing is I still
keep going back to can you, can you build that community?
Can you build that sense of community, that sense of, of
belonging without all the downsides?
You know, you, you talk a lot about like the best thing about
a place is usually the worst thing about a place where
there's a country or city or whatever the best thing about a
person is usually also, it's a double edged sword.
It cuts both ways. Sure.
Is that, is that true for religion?
I don't know. My gut says yes.
It's funny because my wife and I've had a number of
conversations around this because it's like we've had very
honest conversations between ourselves that like, kind of the
one thing that we feel like we lack at the moment is community.
Like everything else in our lives is going great, But, and
we do have friends and we have people that we hang out with.
But yeah, there's like that lack of communal solidarity in our
lives at the moment. And we've tried all sorts of
things. We've gone to like different
clubs and activities. And my take on this is that it
is exactly what you said. The bug is the feature, right?
Like it is the fact that religion is bound to these
supernatural, cosmic existential beliefs.
It's what causes the problem. It's like people are literally
willing to die for that group or that community which that causes
many problems. But that's also the benefit
because like, I don't care how cool your pickleball group is.
Yeah, exactly that. That's exactly.
Where I go with it like you're not going.
To you should try out these groups or you should you.
Should it doesn't? Work, go volunteer for a a local
cause or something like that. I'm I guess those things are
important. I get that and they help, but
it's not the same. It's not the same.
And and so I don't know, I'm just really torn by all of that
because like it, it would be great if you could have all the
benefit without the cost of it, but I'm just not sure if that's,
that's how that works. And you know, Tim Urban came on
too and he said, you know, we're, it looks like we're a
religious species. Like like you said, it's a.
It's a feature, not a bug. Right, I think it was, Pascal
said. There's a God shape hole in US
and and if it's not filled with religion, it will get filled
with something else, right? Right.
And we've attempted to do that before too, like the all the
atrocities of the 20th century were, you know, we were trying
to replace religion with politics.
And we're still trying to do that to some extent today.
And it's not working out, right? It's not working.
Out. And you could argue it wasn't
really working out with religion either.
There was a lot of atrocities in the name of religion as well.
I don't, I don't know, I just don't.
I like I'm in the process. Like I said, I'm in the process
of just kind of wandering and figuring out how does what is
the is, is there a way to go about harnessing all of the good
things of religion without having to, you know, just like
get in this really tribal mindset around it?
And I just, I don't know, I don't think there is.
And so. There was a period where I
thought Buddhism could do that because Buddhism is, is really
not very, at least in the West, it's not very dogmatic and you
don't kind of have all these like supernatural judgments
going on. But it's funny, I never found
that. Like I've been parts of a number
of different Buddhist groups and places that I've lived and done
a bunch of retreats and gone to a bunch of meditation sessions
and stuff. And it, I don't know it, like
you said, it feels very fragmented and isolated.
The people are super nice, very sweet.
Some of the events are really nice, but like, I don't know, I
think about, like, my parents when I was a kid in their church
community, and it was super tight knit and people really
relied on each other in a way that I don't see my generation
right doing. Yeah.
And that worries me a little bit, or at least at the very
least, I look back now and I'm a little bit envious of that.
Yeah. You know, it was the sort of
thing that like if my brother or I was sick and my parents had to
go do a thing, it like they had 15 people they could call to
come watch us. Like it wasn't even a question.
Like it was just somebody's there, right And, and.
Most people now would be hard pressed to find one or two,
right? Yeah.
So I don't know.
I don't know where I land on that.
But yeah, I feel my mind changing around that.
And the process of it has been interesting.
Yeah. Cool.
They cool. What about you, Mark?
What have you? What have you changed your mind?
You get at this question quite a bit like, do you stand by your
books? Do you stand stand by statements
you made? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, the, the, the quick, the quick and dirty answer to that.
For listeners who care. I do stand by the books.
Generally speaking, I stand by almost everything I've written
in in my books. What I would quibble with is, is
specific instances of, of language.
You know, some, some things I think are overstated, some
things I think are understated. Some examples I think don't hold
up super well. So it's like when I go back and
look at subtle art now, I'm not thinking like, Oh my God, I got
chapter 4 so wrong. I think chap, I think the
principles in chapter 4, chapter 3 or whatever are correct.
It's just now I look back and I'm like, I would do that
sentence differently or like there's a little bit of nuance
that should have gone here. So the big thing for me is I
have come to the conclusion that people are much less malleable
than I used to think. And I think most people think
like, I think most of who we are is pretty much determined by
some combination of genetics in the culture, cultural
environment we grew up in. And that is something, it's
funny. So where my mind is changed on
this, I think it has much more to do with time and personal
experience because the research around this has been around for
a long time. And I remember the first time I
was exposed to the research around this was I did a bunch of
reading around twin studies in like 2013 or something.
And I was like, wow, that's really fascinating.
Basically twin studies is what what they did is they found
identical twins who were separated at birth.
There was a researcher in Minnesota who just like
dedicated his entire life to finding these twins that were
separated at birth. And then he would go find them.
And then he would run all these tests and studies on them to
figure out essentially how much of our how much of us is nature
and how much is nurture. So how much is like baked in at
the beginning and how much is affected by parenting and
upbringing and all this stuff. And one of the spicier
discoveries of this body of research is that parenting
styles doesn't really matter a whole lot.
And even things like, you know, school system or type of
education, like a lot of the stuff that most parents
especially, but older people spend their time worrying about,
like, you know, am I raising my kid correctly?
Am I, are they doing their homework?
Are they going to the right school?
Like all this stuff is actually pretty marginal.
And the most fundamental things is essential is really just A,
genetics and then B peer group and cultural environment, right?
And so I was exposed to this a long time ago, and I was like,
that's interesting. But, you know, obviously there's
still a huge component of ourselves that is malleable,
that can be changed and improved and developed and is alterable,
I guess. And so I just stayed focused on
that. And I guess really what happened
is as my career went on and I had more and more exposure to, I
guess, the same people over a long period of time, You know,
being in this industry, I've now met a lot of people who have.
I mean, there are people that I coached 10 or 12 years ago that
like industry people coached 10 years ago, readers and fans that
I've kept in touch with for over 10 years, people in my life that
I've helped in the past that I have kept in touch with for 1012
years. You just start seeing those data
points and you start realizing you're like, yeah, they don't.
People don't really change a whole lot.
Like, like, it's. And I, I feel like that is is an
extremely contrarian take in this industry.
Especially yeah, yeah. Like it's it, that's not, that's
not a very pot. Like that's not something I put
on a billboard or my Instagram account.
But like, I for the most part, I don't think people change a
whole lot. I think really like if you're
generally speaking, if you're, if you're a highly anxious
person when you're 20, you're probably going to be a highly
anxious person when you're 40. What changes is your attitude
and disposition towards it, your ability to manage it, the
behaviors that you attach to it, right.
Similarly, it's like if you are somebody who's very detail
oriented and perfectionist, like you're probably not going to
stop being detail oriented and perfectionist.
I think there's this, there's this naivete, especially with
young people and especially not not to make it political, but I
think, you know, left wing people that you are, each
individual is completely malleable, you know, so if
you're a highly anxious person, you can train yourself to stop
being anxious. If you're a perfectionist, you
can train yourself to stop caring about details and wanting
to optimize everything. And it's like most of this stuff
is just baked in. And that doesn't, that's not a,
a death knell. Like that's, that's actually
bringing it back. Like the the worst thing about
somebody is also usually the best thing about something like
perfectionist. They drive themselves crazy, but
they also tend to be very, very high performers, anxious people.
Sure, they worry all the time, but guess who catches the risks
and the problems before anybody else?
It's usually the person who's worrying all the time, right?
So it's like, I guess this in this kind of ties into the
community thing, because I think the things that feel like a
hindrance as an individual when you're isolated, if you embed
yourself into a community, they actually become useful, right?
Like it's, it's, if you are all these kind of weird things that
you're prone to in these quote, UN quote, mental health issues
or your neurodivergence or whatever they are, they will
feel like a handicap if you're sitting in a room by yourself
all day, every day, you know, But when you are embedded with a
group of people where you can be, you know, your specific
brain and personality and, and individual traits can be
leveraged by the group, it actually becomes the best thing
about you and it, and it, and it actually becomes part of your
identity and it becomes who you are.
And so I, I just think I, I very much become convinced that,
that, that it's like personal growth, quote UN quote.
It's not really about changing anything.
It's, it's primarily two things. First one is just simple self
acceptance and self knowledge. Just becoming aware of your own
shit and being OK with it. I mean, like, yeah, I mean, like
I'm an ADHD motherfucker. And it like, you know, three
days out of five, it drives me insane and causes problems.
But those two days that it doesn't, man, I'm like cooking,
right? So we've all got something like
that in ourselves and you just learn what it is and you learn
how to manage it and you develop a healthy attitude around it.
And then you just try to put yourself in situations where you
can leverage it. And then two, it's just skill
issues. Like I, I just, it's funny like
getting on social media and, and looking at content creators in
our space because they, they will like take a very basic
thing. And, and when I say basic, I'm
not trying to like diminish it at all because I know it's
extremely hard for a lot of people, including myself.
But like something very simple and basic, like, like saying no
to somebody, right? Like standing up for yourself
and, and just like putting your foot down and, and say no to
somebody that you care about. That's a very difficult thing to
do for most people. And I think it is something that
we all struggle with at some point in our lives.
And some people struggle with it chronically a lot.
And it's a skill. It's a skill.
It's like anything in life. Like there was a time in your
life where you didn't know how to do your taxes and it was
fucking terrifying and difficult and intimidating and it made you
miserable. And then you did it once and
then you did it again. And then you did it again.
And then eventually it just becomes like an annoying part of
adulthood. And it's like so much of this
stuff that people call like healing or transformation or
renewal, you know, or like the new you all this stuff, it's
like it's a skill issue. Like you just, you figured out
how to say no to people you care about, which is a really, again,
not to diminish it. That's a huge, it's, it's like a
massive, it's a massive fucking life skill.
Like it is a very important life skill.
But let's not kid ourselves like you're not a new person.
Because you can say no. You develop the skill and
underneath inside you are still the same person.
Maybe your, your thought process and your attitudes and some of
your emotions around it have shifted, but that doesn't mean
you're a new person and that doesn't mean you should try to
be a new person. And, and I think actually that
desire to constantly become a new person, to change yourself
and transform and all this stuff like it can be self defeating
because there is a, there's a subtle hint of, of self loathing
underneath that. Right.
Yeah, we we in a recent episode 2, we did, you talked about, we
talked about change and you said, do you think the mistake
people make when they're trying to change is changing that
disposition? This is what you're saying
again, is trying to change the disposition when actually what
we have to change is kind of the way we handle it or the way we
express ourselves through that disposition, right.
You make the, the very good point though about the self
acceptance thing. And you, you wrote this, I was
probably back about in 2013 as well, when you wrote a, a
critique of the self help industry, which we also covered
recently. And you said that there was this
hidden paradox within self improvement, which is self
acceptance is the end goal of self improvement, which is
there's no improvement there. It's just acceptance of what
there is. And that's, it's that mind
shift, which I guess is a change in itself.
But yeah, you don't change who you are.
You just accept who you are and learn to work with it.
And that, that's been a huge one for, for me definitely over the
last several years, just like accepting I'm a perfectionist,
I'm anxious in certain situations, I'm socially awkward
in situations. That's OK.
And the, the, and then the weird thing is, is when you do
experience that, though, it feels like a big change.
It feels like a huge, huge change, and it's kind of not.
There's another paradox in right there.
Yeah, it, it is. You do feel like you can feel
like a new person, right? I, I think it's kind of in the
same way of like, I don't know, let's say, let's say you lose 50
lbs, right? People will say, oh, it's the
new you. You know, you could even feel
like I'm a new person, right? But like, are you a new person?
Like I think about that sometimes.
Like, am I really a different person than the guy who was 5060
lbs heavier and drinking 3/4 time times a week?
Like no, that was the same guy. It just IAI had a lack of skill
set around managing cravings and, you know, lack of knowledge
around nutrition and good fitness habits and all that
stuff. And and B, yeah, I had some like
there was still certain emotional proclivities and
impulses that I was blind to. I had not figured out about
myself yet. And when I figured those out,
like, yeah, they're really disappointing to discover those
things, right? They're sure.
There definitely was an emotional process of being like,
oh, wow, I really just can't control myself around food
sometimes, you know, in like that was a sad moment and it was
uncomfortable and difficult to kind of work through, But at no
point was a different person. I just learned how to A accept
it and B manage it and and and then develop the skills on top
of that to like, OK, well, let's just not put myself in these
situations. Really getting good at saying no
to certain things. Right.
So that's been my perspective. I think it's, it's and it's
primarily just been through like the longevity of my career in
this space and the amount of people that I've seen.
Like if you if you really do dig back in the old blog archive and
you probably remember some of this stuff, like it very much
was more optimistic or idealistic around, you know,
hey, if you do these things, you know, you can change and you
can, you know, change your life in this way and that way.
And if you believe these things, you know, you can heal yourself
and all this stuff. And I think again, it's not that
I, it's not that that stuff is wrong, it's just I would frame
it differently. I would write it differently
today. Like I think the advice is
probably still correct. It's just like the packaging and
explanation is is slightly off. Mark, what do you believe that
most people don't believe or you think most people don't believe?
It this is the the Peter Thiel question.
Yeah. I love this question.
So the, the tricky thing about this question is that it's
always, it's always so relative. Like that's what I found too.
Who is most people? I will tell you the most salient
one recently. I'm going to stick within the
self help stuff. Like while we're kind of on the,
on the mental health personal growth stuff, this is definitely
a minority position in this industry, which is I think
trauma is overrated. Oh yeah, I don't think trauma is
nearly as and again, for anybody listening to this who's
experienced trauma and is suffering from trauma, I'm not,
I'm the intention here is not to diminish or belittle your
experience. Like don't get me wrong, trauma
is definitely a thing and it definitely causes a lot of
problems for a lot of people. It's not good.
It is.
It is a thing and it is not. It is not a good thing.
What I'm kind of like what I'm pointing out is I, I would say
it's more of the kind of the gabarmate view, which is like
everything is trauma, right? It's, and I, I've seen this,
especially this is really starting to proliferate on like
Instagram and TikTok and stuff. Like, you know, it's I, I saw an
article recently that said like, if you have ADHD, it's because
of trauma, right? If you have like all
neurodivergence is a result of trauma.
If you have problems sleeping, that's a result of trauma.
Like it's like everything is fucking trauma.
And I, I just don't buy it. Like it, it is trauma is a
thing. It does mess up a lot of people.
But when you actually look at the data, like the majority of
people who experience trauma, they they don't experience PTSD
or any sort of PTSD like symptoms.
They experience something called post traumatic growth.
Like I think it's 7030, like 70% of people who experience a
trauma in their life within a year or two will look back and
say that they are actually a better person for experiencing
that trauma. Where is only roughly like 30%
of them will say that they're worse off for experiencing that
trauma. So the majority of people who
experience trauma grow from the trauma and, and coming back to
this point about, you know, the importance of genetics and just
predispositions towards certain behaviors or personality traits
or, or proclivities. Like, I think people don't want
to accept that, Like people, I don't know, anxious people don't
want to accept that they're an anxious person.
Perfectionist don't want to accept that they're
perfectionist. People with ADHD don't want to
accept that they have ADHD. And so trauma just becomes this
kind of perfect, just so story, you know, cause 'cause we, we
all have things about our childhoods and our upbringings
that we're, we, we're not happy about, that we're like upset
about and we all have painful experiences in our past.
And so if there's it, it, it just becomes such an easy cop
out to say, you know, well, I like, I don't really do well
with pressure at work. And it's because, you know, my,
my mom was always getting on my case for this thing and that,
and I think it traumatized me. And I've been in therapy for.
And it's like, no, you, you just don't handle pressure well.
It's fine. It's totally fine.
You're not, there's nothing wrong with you.
It's, you're like, some people are different.
And so I, I just think that, that it's a very seductive
narrative that people buy into. It's also very seductive
narrative to sell to people. It's an easy sell to people.
You know, if you basically take anybody who is in a on a rough
patch in their life or maybe has had a traumatic experience
recently, and you can put them in a seminar room and, and spend
an entire day telling them how trauma explains everything that
they don't like about themselves and their life.
And they'll gladly give you thousands of dollars for it.
So I, I just, I think it's a little bit of a grift.
And again, I don't like for the people who are legitimately
suffering from it, heart goes out to them, but it's not it's
not the catch all explanation or problem that it is.
And I worry that when you encourage people to identify
with their trauma too much, they actually begin to indulge in it,
right, And kind of identify with it.
Yeah, I was like, we had Doctor Julie on just a couple of weeks
ago and a clinical psychologist who's seen some seen some
things. Yeah, let's just say she's she's
worked not only with the general population, but also with combat
veterans. And her big take away from all
of it was, I'm not surprised by the things that screw people up.
I'm surprised by how resilient people are.
And she found it to be her big. The biggest part of her job or
one of the biggest parts of her job was to help them realize
that. And I've heard other therapists
say similar things to like, when somebody comes into my office,
I'm not there to fix their problems.
I'm sure I'm there to show them how they can, they have the
capacity to deal with these problems, even if they're
seeking out therapy and there's obviously something wrong going
on. Like you're saying there's like
the, the human condition is a resilient 1 for sure.
I think it's about kids too, people.
I think people don't give kids enough credit for how resilient
they are. Totally.
So it's like humans are very, very resilient.
We're very adaptable. Very we're, we are built to
handle a certain degree of, of traumatic events in our lives.
We just are. But a lot of that, so this, and
this is where this it starts to concern me is, is a lot of that
depends on what the person believes about themselves,
right? So like when you look at poster
people who experience post traumatic growth versus people
who experience PTSD, like one of the biggest indicators of people
who see it as something that they grow from is that they
believe they can grow from, right, Right.
And when you look at people who like, believe that trauma is
just a, a like immutable scar on your life.
Yeah, it's a it's a death sentence.
Those are if you believe it's something you can never get
over, then you're never going to get over it.
And also on the flip side of that, you can, you can take non
traumatic events, non traumatic life experiences.
And if you tell people that it's, it's traumatic, they will
start experiencing it as traumatic, right.
So, and that's where you get stuff like, you know, it's like
a, a college kid has to listen to a lecture they don't like and
they, they say it's traumatic, you know, and it's like, but
then they actually start exhibiting the, the symptoms and
effects of, of PTSD. And it's like, well, yeah,
'cause you can like the, the brain is an expectation machine.
And so if you, if you like, program enough expectation for a
result that happened into it, it'll start happening.
Right, yeah, which I in the resilience episode we did
recently too, we talked about that second arrow, right.
And that's where that all comes in.
You're taking the the first arrow is the real pain that the
second arrow is. You're spinning up this
narrative around the pain and yeah.
And especially in a, a, a social media soaked world where you're
getting kind of like a help for those second arrows, you know,
here's some here's some spin up this narrative.
About this you're you're being validated and encouraged for.
For. Yeah.
So I get that terrible second arrows.
Yeah. What's your contrarian take?
What are you going to get cancelled for?
Yeah, OK. We've already cancelled these,
So what are you getting? What are you getting cancelled?
For so I this goes back to the relative thing too.
It's depends on who you're who you're comparing.
Your contrarian take 2. Mine is though.
I'm generally optimistic about the future, not just my future.
I mean I'm just saying in general, like for society, for
humanity, I'm generally optimistic and it's not a
political thing. I thought this before the
elections. I have for years where every
there's kind of just doom and gloom nihilism going around,
especially if you read too much news.
I am generally an optimist. I'm not saying that it will be
great for everyone there. There's going to be uneven
distribution of the great things that I think are to come, which
there always are. I'm not saying that there won't
be some dips and some setbacks along the way.
I just generally think that the way we're headed and the way
we've been headed for a number of decades is the right
direction and that we shouldn't stop.
I'm not saying where we're at, a place of utopia by any means,
but we're headed in the right direction in so many different
ways. And I wish, I wish more people
would kind of sign up to that. Or be aware of it.
Just be aware of it. Yeah, I mark when when you and I
were born in the mid-eighties, 40% of the global population
lived in extreme poverty as defined by the World Bank,
right. Which is it's it's pretty low
bar. It's only a few dollars a day
that that will get you above that threshold, but still today
it's 8 1/2 percent, around 8 1/2% in in just 40 years that
happened. And that's 2 billion people or
something like that, 1 1/2 billion people.
That's another, another point I want to make when, when you and
I were born there about 4.74 point 8 billion people.
There's over 8 billion people now and we've reduced the, the
poverty rate while the, the population has grown by like 70%
in that same time period. So it's insane.
So it's it's literally billions of people.
We can do better. Yes, we absolutely can.
There's still way too many people living in extreme
poverty. See, I I thought you were going
to go, this is not where I thought this was going.
I thought you were going to get in like AI sex robots and.
You know I'm getting there. OK, OK.
That's what I'm excited. That's what I'm optimistic.
For they're going to be cheap and everywhere it's going to.
Give me AVR headset and A and a Dick glove and I'm I'm good to
go man. A Dick glove.
Give me the give me the AI porn. But the there I'm OK, but that
is another thing like. Sorry, go back to the, the, the,
the starving, the 2 billion starving children, right, right.
Well, OK, another. So in in 1800, Yeah, let's just
say, OK, almost one in about one in four children died before the
age of five. Yeah, OK.
Now it's down to like one in 200 something around there.
So we've we've reduced that by a factor of 50.
That's insane. In 200 years we've done that.
The the, the when I start to do this though, I can already hear
the people being like, well, you know, it's not evenly
distributed or whatever. And that's true.
It's not like all these benefits that have not been necessarily
evenly distributed. And we have access now to like
clean water, the healthcare that we have electricity, all, all of
the things that kind of undergird a modern society are
miraculous marvels. Like kings didn't have these a
couple of years ago, right. That argument always seems to
fall short with a certain group of people, though, who say,
well, it's still like, you know, whatever it is, somebody has
more than you still, so it's still doesn't count or
something. I don't know what that I I don't
quite get that. I've never quite understood that
so, but if you just look at the general arc of history, and
again, this is not a political thing.
I didn't magically change my mind because of some election or
anything like that. I just think that this is
actually where the world is going.
Poverty, literacy, equality like education, health, life
expectancy. Life expectancy was another one
a technology. Yeah, across the board.
Yeah, things have gotten better. So I'm I'm generally optimistic
about that. Again, it it we could screw this
up and it could go the other way.
That and that was kind of Steven Pinker, you know, when he wrote
what was the book Better Angel of that one?
Yeah, he has this. It's a laundry list of this is
how things have gotten better. Death rates have gone down.
Murder, you know, even in the 20th century with all the
atrocities that murder rates are still lower than they were, you
know, even a few, 100 years ago. And I think there's other people
who are very, I think they're more politically motivated.
They're like, yeah, it's going to be great because my guy's in
office now and work, we've turned around.
Then as soon as they get voted out, oh, everything's terrible.
I haven't thought that. I think just generally speaking,
this is way bigger than any political movement.
It's it's more we should continue doing these things and
figure out better ways to continue doing these things.
As well, it's like a, it's like a market, right?
It's like generally up and to the right, but it's.
Like recession? It's jagged up all the way up
and it's we're so present bias, recency bias that like all we
notice is like the short term oscillations and we don't notice
the general up until the right, right movement.
I've had this, I've had this discussion with people before.
I mean, I, I'm generally on the same page.
The thing that that people always throw at me is climate
change. And I'm curious, what what,
where's your optimism with that? So, so the the solutions of
today create the problems of tomorrow.
I think that's like a Kevin Kelly thing or something like
that. He talks a lot about that.
But we're like the climate crisis, the climate change
fiasco that we're facing right now was created because of the
Industrial Revolution back in the 1800s, right?
That revolution, though, brought a whole bunch of people out of
that abject poverty. What we're talking about in
1800, I mean, it was something like 90, some percent of people
lived in poverty all around the globe.
And the Industrial Revolution was a huge force behind bringing
people out of poverty. We can feed, clothes, house
people. It created another problem
though, but so I, I think we're on our way though, too.
We are now we're able to technological advances in
agriculture, for instance, we are using, we're figuring out
ways to use less land to produce more food to to support the
populations that we have right now.
Agriculture too is getting a lot more precise.
So they're developing different types of machinery that can go
through like a field. Look at each plant individually,
use some AI there's look at each plant individually.
OK, this one needs a shot of some pesticide or herbicide
here. This one doesn't.
This one's fine. So instead of just blanketing,
you know, a whole field with pesticides or herbicides,
whatever, we can be more targeted about it saves money,
makes food cheaper, makes it more accessible.
We use less land. We use less inputs.
We use less carbon. I think we're going to figure
this out. I really do.
We're going to create new problems that we haven't even
thought of yet. And nobody thought of the
environment in the 1800s when the industrial revolution was
going on. But I think we I, we figure
things out. Again, We're resilient.
People are resilient. We'll figure this out.
It's one thing that I heard about this is that actually, if
you just kind of isolate the Western countries like the North
American and, and Western European countries are net
emissions have actually been declining for like 20 years.
And, and actually a lot of Western countries are actually
net positive carbon in terms of carbon emissions, net negative
or sorry, net negative in terms of carbon emissions.
And actually, if you look at like who's emitting the vast
majority of the carbon, it's, it's China.
And they have been, I believe they're currently building like
50 to 100 nuclear power plants. They just built the biggest dam
in the world. Like they're going all in on
clean energy, but it just takes 1020 years to like ramp it up
so. Same thing like fusion
technology like we're like tantalizingly close like we
might be to a super super clean and and safe energy source.
Like now we're turning to a tech podcast.
Drew, what are we doing? I know what are we doing?
I'm. Sorry, that's our rant I just
had. So what's the wisdom of the
week? No, I didn't come.
You didn't come over, You don't. Don't we get like a Willie
Nelson blowjob? Joke.
No, no, no. That we.
No, I'm sorry. I wish I had a dirty joke.
I should have prepared something.
Maybe, maybe that should be our sign off from that one.
It's just a dirty. Joke.
It's just just The Dirty joke corner.
Yeah. I don't know, maybe that that's
just what people start listening to us for.
Yeah. Here's the wisdom of the week.
Keep an open mind. But not so open.
Your brain falls out. That was Carl Carl Sagan by the.
Way. That's who it was, that's who.
OK, Yeah. Great quote.
All right, guys, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is
produced by Drew Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura.
Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer.
Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.