Modern WisdomSomething Is Very Wrong With Modern Life - Arthur Brooks
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
120 min read · 23,882 words- 0:00 – 6:42
Are We Living in a Simulation?
- CWChris Williamson
Why do so many people feel like modern life is simulated rather than real?
- ABArthur Brooks
Because it is. We're living in the Matrix. That movie, The Matrix, came out twenty-seven years ago. I hate to shock and sadden you. It'll make anybody who was alive then feel old. But the plot of that movie was that a great artificial intelligence was dominating the human race and kept the human race placid in a pleasant simulation so that it could feed off human kinetic energy. It kept them in pods and ran a simulation. And, and the truth of the matter is that we are subjugated, not by people necessarily, but by algorithms that fundamentally are creating a simulated version of a real life that's pleasant enough, keeps us from being bored, and that feeds off our attention and energy and money. We're living in the Matrix, and that's why people say, "I don't know, it doesn't feel like real dating." Z- z- z-... "It doesn't feel like real friends." Scroll, scroll, scroll.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
"It doesn't feel like real achievement." Game, game, game. 'Cause we're living in a simulation.
- CWChris Williamson
What's happening neurologically there?
- ABArthur Brooks
So what's happening neurobiologically is that we're literally in the wrong half of our brains. So this is the work of Iain McGilchrist, the great... Have you had him on the show?
- CWChris Williamson
Friend of the show.
- ABArthur Brooks
He's fantastic. He's a- a-
- CWChris Williamson
Is he?
- ABArthur Brooks
... an Oxford neuroscientist. He's a, you know, a great genius and, and he brought back the whole idea of hemispheric lateralization. That's the, the concept that the two halves of your brain do different things. I mean, they do a lot of the things the same too, but the, the fact is that they have different core competencies. Now, when I was a kid in the '70s, this is long before you youngsters were born, there was this belief that there were right-brained and left-brained people. Right-brained people were creative. Left-brained people were analytical. My mom, who was an artist, was a right-brained person. My father, who was a mathematician, was a left-brained person. Growing up, I was a right-brained person like my mom because I was a musician. I was a classical musician, and I painted, and I wrote poetry. And, and then I got my PhD, and I became apparently a left-brained person because I became a scientist. Well, the truth is that that theory didn't work. What does work, however, is what Iain McGilchrist brought back to show that we have-- we ask and answer different questions with the different hemispheres of our brain. The right hemisphere is the complex why, the mystery and meaning of life, the things that set us out in the hunt for the things that matter in life. The left brain is the how to and what. It's how we execute. It's the linear side. It's the analysis. It's the engineering. It's the apps of life or the left brain side. And what's happening is that we're running a simulation of life. We're running a left brain simulation to meet our right brain questions-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- ABArthur Brooks
... of love and mystery and meaning, and you can't simulate the meaning of life.
- CWChris Williamson
Is it not a good thing for people to be more rational and analytical and objective? Is this not something that only a couple of decades ago we were trying to push more on people?
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, I suppose, except that we need both. The truth is that we need both because life is full of both kinds of problems. Look, if you, if you don't know the why of the things in your life, the how to and what mean nothing. But if you only know the how to and what, then the why and the, and the why is elusive. I mean, you, you get the point that I'm trying to make. I mean, you can either be incompetent at executing anything in your life, or you'll have no purpose in the life that you lead. You actually need both. You know, I go to work every day. I'm, you know, traveling around doing my job. It's great. I know how to do it. I'm competent at it because my left brain is working properly. I know how to get where I'm trying to go and-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- ABArthur Brooks
... do what I'm trying to do. I can write my speeches and my columns and books, et cetera. But I gotta know why, which is that I wanna do something good for the world. I wanna support the people that I love. I wanna glorify God. That's what I want. That's the why side, and that originates on the right side of our brains. And furthermore, all the things we really care about are not the analytical things. The things that we care about are not the physical. They're the metaphysical.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
That's what we really care about. So I'll give you an example. A big left brain question is, how does my car work? I actually don't know. Not the slightest idea, right? [chuckles] I just... I mean, it's a car, right? And, uh, but, but I could know because I could actually get a book or I could s- uh, you know, get a guy and come teach me or I could watch a bunch of YouTube videos, and that's knowable because those are complicated left brain questions. My marriage is a right brain problem. It's completely unsolvable. I have to live with it. I can't figure it out. I will never figure out my marriage. Dude, I've been married thirty-five years. Before-- You know, just, you know, an hour ago she texts me, "I love you. Good luck on the podcast." I'm sure it's true she loves me. Tonight I could call and she might be completely pissed off at me. I, I don't know.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, but you did decide to date somebody with Latina blood.
- ABArthur Brooks
It's-- Well, that, that adds, that adds a level of complexity, I grant you.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct. It's like a, yeah, it's a multiplier.
- ABArthur Brooks
She's a big pulsing right hemisphere, right? [laughing] Sure enough.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- ABArthur Brooks
But, but this is the thing. The reason I love my marriage is because it's unsolvable, right? The reason people want to get a, a, a real cat and not a mechanical cat is because it's alive, and things that are alive are right brain problems, and things that are mechanical are left brain problems. And so what we've done is we've, we've solved life. We've solved life. I mean, we have, uh, I mean, everything-- We're, we're trying to-- The, the engineering, the Silicon Valley set of solutions for everything that we're trying to do that actually pops through the screen at us, that dominates our culture, that increasingly can be simulated and understood through artificial intelligence, all that's doing is it's a curve fit through the messy business of life-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm
- ABArthur Brooks
... using these left brain algorithms, and that's not gonna get done what we need to get done. It is gonna leave us lonelier and more depressed and more anxious. Here's the thing. Your brain knows. So for example, this is one of the reasons that the more pornography people look at, largely young men, because more than eighty-five percent of pornography is being consumed by men. Now you're thinking to yourself-- I know what you're thinking. "Who are the fifteen percent?"
- CWChris Williamson
Old men?
- ABArthur Brooks
No. [laughs] So-
- CWChris Williamson
Is it you?
- ABArthur Brooks
Thank you.
- 6:42 – 11:00
What Are We Mistaking For Real Meaning?
- CWChris Williamson
What are some of the other counterfeit sources of meaning that people mistake for the real thing?
- ABArthur Brooks
Achievement is a counterfeit source, is something that you actually get that doesn't build anything real, of any real consequence in life. So the idea of, like, y- the score in a game gives you a real s- uh, s- short-term sense of, of achievement, which is a source of purpose, which is a component of meaning.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
But it isn't real. It's fake. It's a, it's a, it's counterfeit. It's, uh, it's simulated. And that's one of the reasons that you'll find that you gotta do more and more and more and more and more to keep up with it. You don't... You know, they s- used to say if you wanna... If you really wanna live the good life, you know what you need to do? You need to have a son, plant a tree, and write a book. I don't know. I've done all those things. I don't know if I planted a tree. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
That's what you're missing.
- ABArthur Brooks
I don't have a green thumb, you know? So this is my problem. I need to plant more trees.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
But the whole point is that what those things have in common is that they're real. They're in real life. They're real achievements in real life. They don't say, "Plant a tree online," you know? "Pretend you're planting a tree," you know, "Get really good at doing it. Have a son online." You know, the whole idea of simulating these experiences is unsatisfactory. It, what it does, it, it simulates the experience in the moment. That's another example. Having friends is another way, is another way we think about it. Uh, virtual friends, they, they simply don't meet your needs. And one of the ways that we know this is that the more virtual friends that you have, the less that you're actually illuminating in the experience of interacting with them the right hemisphere of your brain. You know, o- one, one of the reasons that you don't like to do your show virtually is 'cause you don't have the same experience. And the reason is that you and I are connecting with our right brains right now.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Our right... You and I are friends. I mean, we text and talk to each other even when we're not doing a show.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Which is great-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- ABArthur Brooks
... because we're friends, and we have that texting relationship because we've actually looked at each other in the eyes and had real, no-fooling conversations with each other, and that's how you have to link with other human beings. Otherwise, it's a simulated friendship.
- CWChris Williamson
It's one of the biggest realizations I had when I was trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life toward the end of my 20s, and I had all of these friends because, shock horror, in the nightlife industry in the northeast of the UK, there weren't many people that were into the things I was getting into.
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
There weren't many people that had, you know... Maybe they'd heard about Sam Harris, and they were thinking about doing meditation, or they'd read a bit of Robert Greene and then got stuck after a couple of pages, and then were struggling with that, and then felt real bad because they couldn't sit still. Like, all of these-
- ABArthur Brooks
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... things that I was going through, it was... I was finding it difficult on the front door of a nightclub to find people to resonate with. So I made friends online that were into the same sorts of things that I was, and I found that these friends kind of distilled out into two strata of people. Even if all that I'd done was, as I was going through a city on a train-
- ABArthur Brooks
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... stopped off for a 30-minute coffee with someone, that person immediately went into a different bracket of-
- ABArthur Brooks
Oh
- CWChris Williamson
... I've actually met this person.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
They're real. In three dimensions, they're real.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And, uh-
- ABArthur Brooks
'Cause your brain actually apprehended that person in a different way.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
What you did was you had an imprint of that person in, you know, flesh and blood in real life, which is, by the way, how the brain was evolved. You know, we are... Our brains are more or less the same size and shape. There are slight physiological differences, but trivial for what we're talking about here, as they were 250,000 years ago in the mid- in the middle Pleistocene.
- 11:00 – 15:30
Why Can’t Meaning Be Simulated?
- ABArthur Brooks
it any other way.
- CWChris Williamson
Why is it that meaning can't be simulated?
- ABArthur Brooks
Meaning can't be simulated because meaning is this fundamentally complex right hemispheric experience. And so when you're... The simulation is always in the wrong side of the brain, and so it'll look like it's meaningful, but it isn't-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- ABArthur Brooks
... is what it comes down to. It'll feel like in the moment like love, but it isn't. It'll feel like friendship, but it isn't.
- CWChris Williamson
It's so interesting with this conversation because a lot of people, when, when I think about how this lands on the internet, there is a kind of cohort of people that will say something like, "This is good enough. This is actually as good..." There, there's a, a disbelief that you actually do need to go into three dimensions.
- ABArthur Brooks
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, there is a, a... I'm happy to wait for the sex robots to come. I'm happy to have the AI partner. There's even a company that makes AI versions of your exes, so if you don't ever want to leave the relationship with them, you can just keep on texting. Um-
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
And I think... That, that kind of... When I read those comments, it makes me sad.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It makes me sad because I think it sounds like somebody who's got hurt or is scared that the world isn't going to be able to give them something that they know that they can get compliantly- ... online, uh, permissionlessly, uh, with lower risk of rejection or zero risk of rejection. And, um, it makes me, it makes me sad, but yeah, it's so much of what we're seeing in the modern world is people getting what they want, but not what they need.
- ABArthur Brooks
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And this is something that people need but don't realize that they want.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. Well, they do know that they want it. They just don't know how to get it-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- ABArthur Brooks
... and is ordinarily what's actually happening. I mean, I, I rarely meet somebody who would say, "I actually would prefer not to meet anybody in real life." I mean, there are people who are agoraphobic, for example. There are people that have particular pathologies along these lines. But the truth is, it's, they feel like it's the best that they can actually get under the circumstances. Look, when, when 62% of couples are forming online, then it's very hard to form... It's increasingly hard to form a, a couple offline.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
And, and if you're an e-exceptionally online person, or you're living in a remote location, or you, you know, ca-came of age during COVID, which means that you, you don't have social skills that were wired into you at a, at a tender age, then, then you're gonna struggle-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- ABArthur Brooks
... is what it comes down to. But here's the thing to keep in mind. The biggest predictor of depression and anxiety is, is to say, "I don't know the meaning of my life," or, "My life feels meaningless." That's the number one predictor.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- ABArthur Brooks
Well, that will ... It, it, it all gets down to the fact that these pathologies, they actually follow from this sense of emptiness. It, you know, so people will often say, "So why has depression tripled? Why has anxiety doubled?" Which they literally have clinically since about 2008. Why? And they'll say, "Well, because generational difficulties," because, you know, boomers wrecked the economy and created income inequality and, and, and, and made houses expensive or something. They have all of these exogenous economic explanations for this stuff. These are all wrong, is what it comes down to. Since 2008, when life has become increasingly online and we ... You know, the average American is now checking her or his phone 205 times a day. What you've done is you've shoved yourself into the wrong hemisphere of your brain, and in so doing, you haven't been able to naturally experience this meaning, and that's what leads, empirically, that's what actually leads people to feel empty, to feel depressed, to feel anxious, to actually feel lonely. That's the big predictor, is what it comes down to. We have a meaning crisis.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 15:30 – 19:29
The Most Meaningless Day Imaginable
- CWChris Williamson
checkout. Let's say that you're going to design a life for someone to have as little meaning in it as possible.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What would that consist of?
- ABArthur Brooks
It would start by, um, waking up, um, when the sun is warm, you know, making sure you don't start your day, like, before dawn. Make sure you start your day when, kind of when you get up. Make sure that if you have an alarm clock, that it's your phone. Um, look at your phone before you roll out of bed, right? Uh, then make sure that the first thing that you do is eat a bunch of, you know, highly processed foods, high in sugar. Make sure you get your coffee in the first five minutes, uh, so you get a big dose of caffeine, and make sure that you're looking and scrolling on your phone while you're eating your first meal. That's a really important thing to do. Make sure that your whole first hour is neuro, is, is neurocognitively programmed to be on the screen. Then make sure that you have a remote job. It's very important that you go to work back in your bedroom and, and you look at a screen, and you look at a screen all day long so that your colleagues are kind of s-squares on the Zoom screen, and you see them sometimes and the clients and et cetera, et cetera, and, and you don't actually know where anybody lives. You don't have a relationship with anybody, right? It's actually better if you don't see anybody the whole day, as a matter of fact. Now, if you're gonna date, make sure that it's, it's swipe right, swipe left, swipe left, and so that you're only getting a two-dimensional understanding of the person that you might want to fall in love with as well. Like, no multidimensional, multisensory understanding of who the person is. Make sure you can't smell that person be- right? I mean, that's really important because, you know, the olfactory bulb does all kinds of meaning-related things in the brain. So make sure you rule that out, right? Um, and make sure that on your own dating profile, you're lying a lot. That's important too, right?
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- ABArthur Brooks
Uh, [laughs] the- then, uh, let's make sure that, that for fun, that you're spending sort of the evening not doing anything of, of real importance. I mean, you're not working on a big project. You're not going out and seeing people, that you're kind of staying in and scrolling, uh, and, and watching YouTube Shorts. And, uh, and if you're doing something that's kind of competitive and achievement oriented, make sure that it's gaming. Make sure that it, you know, it's really oriented toward that. So it's kind of writing your life in disappearing ink.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Um, and, and then go to bed. Make sure you didn't do any exercise. Important not to do any exercise at all, right? And, um, and then r-repeat times or N equals any number that you can conceive of so that N- that, that you're never bored. You're never bored, but your life is grindingly boring. See, here's the key. If you want your life to have no meaning, make sure that there's no boredom moment to moment, but that day to day and week to week and month to month, life is boring. That's what you're actually going for. As opposed, if you want your life to be really meaningful, make sure you got plenty of boredom moment to moment, and then, then your life won't be boring at all.
- CWChris Williamson
Isn't that a strange paradox?
- ABArthur Brooks
It is. I mean, my, my great-grandfather, um, Leroy Brooks, he was born in Olathe, Kansas. He married the sheriff's daughter. John James was the sheriff, was strung up by Quantrill's Raiders during the Civil War. I kid you not. This is Americana in my family, Chris. [laughs] And h- and, and, and he married Mary Ellen in Olathe, Kansas, and that's about pretty much what I know about him. But I'm gonna make a, a prediction about good old Leroy. He never came home to Mary Ellen and said, "Honey, I had a panic attack behind a mule today," [laughs] 'cause his brain was working the way it was supposed to. I promise you that his life behind the mule, looking at a mule's butt, was gr- was pretty boring moment to moment, but he was not bored. His life wasn't boring, 'cause he was living a real life. But a lot of people today who have figured out a way, by checking the screen and living online and, and living the hustle and grind culture that's been engineered out of Silicon Valley and various other places around the world, Hyderabad and wherever you want, that not being bored from moment to moment gives them the most boring lives possible.
- 19:29 – 22:00
Are Ambitious People Susceptible to Meaninglessness?
- CWChris Williamson
Is it the case that ambitious people are particularly susceptible, vulnerable to meaninglessness?
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs] So asking for a friend, right? [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Of course. Of course.
- ABArthur Brooks
Me too. I'm, I'm like a senior version of you, man. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- ABArthur Brooks
Except you're not gonna be bald.
- CWChris Williamson
That's true. I'm gonna have to lose a lot of hair to turn into you.
- ABArthur Brooks
You're gonna have to lose a lot of hair. I know.
- CWChris Williamson
In a few years.
- ABArthur Brooks
If I had your hair, I'd be President of the United States right now.
- CWChris Williamson
I think you would.
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs] Um, yes and no. So one of the, the, the problems that really ambitious people have is that they, they, they don't know how to live with themselves. So ambition, striving, busyness, um, is, is, is really a way that people anesthetize themselves because they're very, very uncomfortable. So, you know, one... To give you an example. One time, I was talking to a great friend of mine, um, who traveled constantly for work, constantly for work, and, and his wife was just in his grill. It's just like he had kids, and she says that, "I miss you," and, and you always, every year you tell me that this year's gonna be different. And, and I realized, getting to know this guy really, really well, the problem wasn't that his job made him travel too much. The problem was he didn't want to be home.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
He didn't want to be home. He wanted to be distracted because his life stressed him out so much. This is what it's like to be a striver, is, is like having this unbelievably chaotic life and, and, and you need to distract yourself all the time. And so sometimes your ambition will be distracting you. Sometimes your success will be stra- distracting you. Sometimes just your overriding need to be special or to be applauded by others is your way to distract yourself from all the things that are actually going on, all the storms and things inside your head, right? And, and, and when you have a down moment, then you panic, and that's when the screen comes out. Or, or for that matter, that's when alcohol and drugs come out. There's very interesting data from the OECD that show that above average, busier than average people are above average risk in alcohol, in alcohol abuse. So you don't think... You think of somebody who's an alcohol abuser, who's an alcoholic, as somebody who's down and out, you know, you know, a bum, right? No. It's more likely to be an investment banker. It's more likely to be a wealthy, successful podcaster. And, and the reason is because successful strivers anesthetize themselves with drugs and alcohol, with pornography, with screens, with anything that will actually make you like, "Don't leave me alone in here, man." [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
"I don't want to be alone in here." [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Which is why they're strivers in the first
- 22:00 – 30:24
Are We Just Pursuing Approval?
- ABArthur Brooks
place.
- CWChris Williamson
How often do you think people are pursuing goals because they genuinely want them versus because they want approval?
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs] So everybody pursues goals because human beings, Homo sapiens, only get satisfaction in their life when they're making progress. It's... The satisfaction is the joy of an accomplishment, of making progress toward an accomplishment with struggle. That's what satisfaction is all about. That's why, that's why goals are incredibly important and struggle and pain are incredibly important. That's what it comes down to. These are the two things to teach your kids is have goals, accomplish stuff, and struggle, and don't be afraid of pain. Those are the things that you teach your kids, and they'll get a lot of satisfaction. Satisfaction is one of the macronutrients of happiness to be sure. The trouble with that is that if it's somebody like you, highly intelligent, super hardworking, unbelievably energetic, then you can actually start fooling yourself into thinking it's actually not about making the progress and the struggle and the hustle and grind of life itself. It's actually about if I finally get that thing, then it's gonna be okay. When I finally get that thing... So, you know, I've, I've, I've worked with Olympic athletes and, and, and it's funny because y- you'll often, they think they're alone in their struggles. And you'll say, "Did you... When you won that gold, were you depressed afterwards?" They'd be like, "How'd you know?" [laughs] Like, 'cause it's always true.
- CWChris Williamson
Every other gold medalist.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's literally called gold medalist syndrome.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, it's called gold medalist... And, and what it is, it's als- in, in, in my field, in behavioral science, it's called the arrival fallacy.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
And the arrival fallacy is just like I, I, I, I gotta get there, and when I get there, I'm gonna feel that thing. Now, what, what is the thing I'm gonna feel? And this gets back to your question. I'm gonna feel like I'm worthy. I'm gonna feel like I'm something. I'm gonna feel like I'm special.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
I'm finally going to feel like I'm special. And you don't. And you don't. And that's the problem. That's what a big part of the striver's curse.
- CWChris Williamson
You know what's fascinating about the arrival fallacy? No one's ever been able to make it popular.
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs] The, the concept?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct. Has... Tell me the most-
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... well-known book on the arrival fallacy that points it out exactly.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, I know. I know.
- CWChris Williamson
Fucking... So I was on my way out to Australia texting Mark Manson about this, and I was explaining one of the problems I was trying to navigate with the show.
- ABArthur Brooks
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
This live show that I was doing, that I was putting together.
- ABArthur Brooks
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And one of them is that a good bit of it is kind of about the, the arrival fallacy.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's a PG version because I'm aware that it's- ... chronically the most unsexy topic to ever talk about
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah
- CWChris Williamson
And his response was, "Good luck. I've tried to talk about this publicly, and every single time it's fallen flat."
- ABArthur Brooks
I know.
- CWChris Williamson
It's not just not mimetic that people don't wanna-
- 30:24 – 34:33
The Big Questions Everyone Should Be Asking
- ABArthur Brooks
or something.
- CWChris Williamson
How can people work out the meaning that they've got in their life? What are the big questions they should ask?
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. So, um, there are three big why questions that constitute meaning, and this actually comes from the work of Michael Steger, who's a, a really good, um, social psychologist at, uh, uh, in Colorado. And he, uh, he has the three parts, the three elements of meaning, which are called coherence, purpose, and significance. And there are three why questions. Number one is w- you have to have an answer to the question. You know, why are things happening the way they are in my life? You know, things are happening all around me all the time. Why? Part of meaning is having an answer to that. Maybe that's a... Maybe that's your religious answer, like because of the mind of God. Maybe that's your scientific answer, because these are the laws of the universe. Maybe you're a conspiracy theorist and say because powerful people are doing these things.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Conspiracy theories are nothing more than crying out for an answer to the coherence question, which is a meaning problem. You know, when... So, so if you have a, a relative who's going down the rabbit hole on the craziest conspiracy theories, don't, don't throw data in their face and say, "You moron." That's the wrong way to approach it. They're, they're having a meaning crisis. They're having a happiness crisis, is the reason they're doing this in the first place. So coherence, number one. You know, why things happen the way they do. Second, why am I doing what I'm doing? That's purpose. Purpose and meaning are not the same. Purpose is goals and direction so you can make progress. So why am I doing what I'm doing? If the answer is, "I don't know," then you can't make progress, because you're just going in circles. You're just a, a, a Carnival cruise ship just kind of randomly going around and round and round and round. It's the reason I find cruises unbelievably depressing. They don't go someplace.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Right? I'm a teleological individual like you. I want a goal, right? And that's purpose. And, and so in the, in the, in the research, you know, Sonja Lyubomirsky's stuff. Have you had her on the show?
- CWChris Williamson
She's coming on next week or the week after.
- ABArthur Brooks
Super good.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
She's awesome.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
And she's at UC Riverside. And she does this work on goals, and you'll give students these just random goals, like you're getting a B-minus in physics. You know, let's get a B+ this semester. Just that goal, they get happier, they get more directed. Life seems better because they have more meaning in their life-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- ABArthur Brooks
... is what it comes down to. Even arbitrary goals work. Better to have meaningful goals. And last but not least is significance, and that's my life matters. You know, my life matters to someone, you know, to my dog, to my wife, to, to God, to my kids. And so that's the love question. And all these things are completely missing in modern culture for so many people. You know, why do things happen the way that they do? It's just random. I don't know. Why am I doing what I'm doing? I have no idea. I get up and I scroll. I get up and I surf. I get up and I go on a Zoom meeting for a company I don't really care about. And, and, and, you know, what is the significance of my life? Why does my life matter? I don't think it does.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
And that's... Those are the three things to actually keep in mind.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 34:33 – 36:07
Why Life Feels So Random
- CWChris Williamson
What happens psychologically when life feels random?
- ABArthur Brooks
When life feels random, then it feels like anything could happen at any time and there is no control. There are no levers that you can actually pull. So you, you're not an active player in your own life when there is no coherence. When you don't see a pattern, it's a big problem. You know, when you, when you... The first... You remember when you learned to drive?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
How old do you have to be in, in the UK?
- CWChris Williamson
17.
- ABArthur Brooks
Okay. And, and when you first... You know, you got a lot of confidence, but when you're looking at the traffic and the like, and it's like, it's like chaos.
- CWChris Williamson
Wildly intimidating.
- ABArthur Brooks
It's wildly intimidating.
- CWChris Williamson
I learned to drive in a Mini, which is a very British way to do it, but it's fucking terrifying.
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
You're like half the height of everybody else.
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs] Yeah. And, you know, any, any system that you're in that doesn't seem to make sense, that's... that, that, that... it tends to feel really, really meaningless because you don't know what you can actually do to have some sense of agency.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
There's no sense of agency when there is no coherence, is what it comes down to. So for example, if you believe that things happen the way they do because that's what God wills, then you're gonna try to work that lever.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
You're gonna pray, for example. You're gonna try to have a relationship with God. If you believe it's because of the laws of science, you're gonna learn more about science, and you're going to actually enter into that particular dimension. So for example, I'm a behavioral scientist. I, I really believe in science. I really believe that it's just like, it gives you incredible amounts of power. My job is to explain the science and explain how people can interact with the science. It's a pure coherence play, is what it comes down to. And if it's all about conspiracy theories, then I'm gonna get online and, you know, share them with my friends.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs] So that, that's why coherence really matters, so that you can have agency over your life.
- 36:07 – 37:50
Why Are Directionless People So Fragile?
- CWChris Williamson
And why are directionless people so psychologically fragile?
- ABArthur Brooks
They're fragile because they don't know actually in which direction that they're going, which means they can't make progress. Now, remember, this whole idea of happiness comes from making progress toward a goal, and there's tons of really interesting examples of this. The weight loss literature is super interesting in this. So Diets are all effective and they're all catastrophic failures, is what it comes down to. Effective insofar as that almost any diet will make you lose weight, but they have between an 80 and 95% failure rate after a year, meaning you gain all the weight back and then some.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
It's the weird industry. It's like a $40 billion industry in the United States that fails, you know-
- CWChris Williamson
It's Ouroboros of nutritional advice
- ABArthur Brooks
... It's craziness. You know, nine out of 10 times they, they fail. Um, now, now why, why are they successful? Because, in, in economically, it's because temporarily they make you make progress, but they ultimately fail because once you get to your goal, your goal weight, the reward is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life. Congratulations.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
That, and then you get the arrival fallacy is what it comes down to. So what you want in life is something where you can just make constant progress. I wanna be, like, I wanna be a better dad. I wanna be a better person. I wanna create more value with my work. And that's, there's no end to that. I can't be like, "Yeah, well, I got to the best dad I can possibly be, so that's all good."
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
No. I'm, I'm... I can always work to be a better husband. I can always work to be a better friend. I can always work to be a better citizen. I can always work to love my country more. I can always work to actually do something more important in my work and reach more people with the, with the, the, the moral objectives that I have, and that's what I need. I need goals I can't meet.
- 37:50 – 41:12
Why We Confuse Fame With Significance
- CWChris Williamson
I don't... I think that the confusing thing is if, if significance is about being valuable to others and not famous, why is it the case that modern people confuse the two?
- ABArthur Brooks
Part of the reason is because, um, what strivers they get into... There's actually a pathology that, that, that is in the middle of this. Um, so what you find is that w- certain people... Let me back up a little bit. Um, I work- I'm sort of the striver whisperer. In, in my work, I specialize in people who do incredible things.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Right? And not just because that's fun, although it is, but because that's the kind of books that I write. You know, people who do amazing things and still don't have perfect lives. That's kind of my area of research, as a matter of fact. They have a common childhood, and it kind of looks like this. You know, super strivers who are never satisfied and struggle, they, generally speaking, um, found that they only got attention and affection from their parents when they did something, when they got good grades, when they made pitcher on the baseball team, when they made first chair in the orchestra, when they... Right? When they, you know, set up a lemonade stand and made more money than anybody thought possible. Whatever it was, right? And, and their parents, often their parents are immigrants or, or came from poverty, and they'll reward their kids when they do a thing, thinking that they're actually wiring in success and happiness for their kids. What they're telling their kids is that love is earned. They're teaching their kids that love is earned, and they, kids will learn that. And when your brain is synaptically plastic, boy, will you ever learn that lesson. And then you will go through life trying to earn love over and over and over and over again. You'll look for... If you're a man, you'll look for women who make you earn their love, right? And, and that you'll spend your marriage trying to bring in more and more and more and more money, for example. Women will try to stay young forever by trying to earn their husband's love. You'll find that they will surround themselves with sycophants and yes-men who are just like fake friends who make you, make these people earn their love, um, with gifts and favors and fanciness. And, and you'll surround yourself with people because you believe that love is actually earned. Well, the truth is that's wrong. Real love isn't earned. It's a free gift, freely given. It's a grace. Anybody who makes you earn their love doesn't love you, is what it comes down to.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
But they don't learn that because that's actually what they've, what they've, what they've, they've, um, uh, evolved over the course of their lives, and they're, they, they, they become success addicts, winning addicts, looking for the specialness. And, and in the modern economy, when you can metastasize that from one to your family to your community to your church to your city to the whole world on the internet, then you're going to be searching for the adoration of strangers, 'cause it's the best possible dopamine hit that you can get, and life is gonna feel gray if you don't get it. So this is a pathology that actually people have, and the more talented you are, the more danger you're in.
- CWChris Williamson
One of my favorite ideas of yours is this difference between specialness and happiness.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, it's so good. When you see it, it's something that you kind of can't unsee anymore.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. And, and it's, it's a lot of people who are, you know, they're... People watch and listen to Modern Wisdom because they want an edge. You know, it's good, it's good entertainment. I'm, I'm, I'm a fan. Long before I met you. Yeah. But it's, it's actionable material for people who want it.
- 41:12 – 52:59
How Your Weaknesses Become Strengths
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, so... Well, I'm act- I'm, I'm actively making less actionable material-
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, I noticed
- CWChris Williamson
... which is an interesting pivot at the moment, I think. There's a, a new term floating around which you might not have seen yet. It's called grindslop.
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
And, uh, grindslop is kind of this fuck your feelings, just work harder, achievement and progress and optimization at any cost.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I think that people are feeling a lot of fatigue. I've felt that for a while and, you know, if I go back and look at what I was talking about two years ago, 18 months ago, a lot of that was, "I'm gonna try and feel my feelings a little bit more. I'm gonna try and see if there's something a little bit deeper."
- ABArthur Brooks
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
"I'm gonna have a little bit more fun. I'm not gonna optimize for outcomes at the-
- ABArthur Brooks
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... expense of experience." And that has really come to a head, uh, I think for a lot of people. I think it's worsened by AI. I think that if you can have a oracle in your pocket, which you always had, but now an oracle that speaks to you personally and knows exactly everything that you need and kind of gives you this very curated, idiosyncratic, customized version-
- ABArthur Brooks
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... of what it is that you want in a chat format-
- ABArthur Brooks
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... it's almost as if you're speaking to your best friend that happens to be God. People have got information overload.
- ABArthur Brooks
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And what I don't think that they necessarily need more of is just getting, like, like how foie gras is made.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
By just force-feeding that high-velocity, like, high-density stuff.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and I think that- At least for me, what I'm finding myself enjoying lots of is I took something away from that.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And I had a good time.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
As opposed to optimizing for, you know, you think about short form or Blinkist or SparkNotes or, you know, what- whatever your favorite book summary service of choice was. Like, what is it that you're doing? You're like trying to get to the outcome-
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, no, you're put- you're... to get points on the board.
- CWChris Williamson
As-
- ABArthur Brooks
You're trying to get points on the board
- CWChris Williamson
... as fast as possible.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, totally.
- 52:59 – 54:51
Stop Blaming Your Parents
- ABArthur Brooks
I had this idea, the parental attribution error, like the fundamental attribution error, that we are often prepared to, especially in the modern world, right, um, blaming our parents for stuff is basically a rite of passage- Right ... in modern psychology- Mm ... in mod- modern therapy culture. Yeah. Uh, but if we're not prepared to lay our strengths at the feet of our parents, then maybe we shouldn't be so quick to call them- Right ... the villains for what's wrong with us. So, you know, you say that your desire to work hard is because you were never freely given love at home, but isn't that also the same thing that's made you so driven and ambitious? Right. You say that your hypervigilance was brought out because people didn't observe your needs ahead of their own. Isn't that also the same reason that you're so concerned to ensure that everybody else's welfare is put before yours? Yeah. All of these things are... They're not even two sides of the same coin. It's just a single fucking piece of metal. Right. This thing exists. It's woven throughout it all. Right. Right. And, uh- Well, you're, what you're doing is, right now you're being very subversive because what you're doing is subverting the culture of grievance. Mm-hmm. Uh, which you've actually, you're pretty good at that at this point. I've noticed that. That- Peop- people got really angry when I, when I talked about that. Yeah. Really didn't like it. Well, the whole point is that, you know, the unhappiest people are people who are, whose identity, it revolves around grievance and victimization. And, and th- this is, by the way, one of the ways that people in positions of relative cultural authority and power keep you subjugated. The way that I, that a baby boomer like me, technically I'm the last year of the baby boom, can conscript culture warriors who are Gen Z into my movement is by convincing them they're victims and they should be aggrieved- Mm ... about how the world treats them, about how older people treat them, about how the culture treats them. It was easier before you, so there's no point in trying now. Yeah. Well, or you should be really mad about it. Yeah. You should be angry about it. You should be, you know, carrying a, a sign in the streets. You should- Apply your efforts to complaining about the problem as opposed to lifting yourself out- Yeah, yeah, go trash a Starbucks. Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah,
- 54:51 – 1:03:47
How Technology is Rewiring Our Brains
- ABArthur Brooks
yeah. So i- it seems like a lot of what you're laying at the feet
- CWChris Williamson
Here, th-the issue is largely technology. That that is one of the biggest movers. Is that a fair assessment?
- ABArthur Brooks
That's the tip of the spear. It's actually, what it is, it's, uh, the technology's a manifestation of the way that the culture of engineering has given us this scientism, this conceit that every problem is a complicated problem that can be solved, as opposed to the most important problems, which can't be solved. They can only be lived with and understood. That a more human approach to what we're talking about is that there are plenty of complicated problems that we can solve, but the most important ones are the ones we can't solve.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
And that's what, uh, properly... It's interesting because that's what most of the, you know, Buddhist teachers will say, that the, the wrong turn of the West was that, was the scientism that said that everything is a solvable, complicated problem. Whereas you, what we need is a balance between complex and complicated. The complex problems of the right hemisphere and the complicated problems of the left hemisphere, and they exist in a system. And there are many things that we shouldn't try to solve because we can't.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
We should live with them. We should understand them.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
We should leave them as permanent mysteries that actually give our life flavor. But the truth is that, especially over the past twenty-five years in the era of hyper-development of technology, that is an expression of the idea that, "No, no, we're gonna hit the singularity, man. We're gonna live forever. We're gonna be actually be able to figure out how to upload our brains. We're going to be able to solve any problem with whatever app or doodad or, or, or, you know, supplement or whatever it happens to be, that we will have the scientific acumen to solve everything that actually s- um, uh, is a problem in our lives." And that's just axiomatically wrong.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
And how do I know that? Because we're solving more and more of these problems, and we're getting less and less and less happy. It's the same kind of thing to say, for example, if we had enough therapists, we wouldn't have any more depression. Well, depression has tripled, and the number of therapists has tripled. So what's going on here?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
Obviously, there's a cause and effect problem and a, a, a glitch in our logic.
- CWChris Williamson
I wonder if this is part of the reason why people are feeling exhausted. They've got personal development fatigue.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That permanently asking the why question, permanently trying to optimize everything becomes exhausting. Uh, the kind of cost that you pay of trying to optimize everything is worse than being under-optimized.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That the process of trying to be perfect will kill you more quickly than the imperfections would.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And yeah, all of this together is like, "Dude, I got enough on my plate."
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"I got enough on my plate. Do I need more homework?"
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"Do I really need more homework-
- ABArthur Brooks
Right
- CWChris Williamson
... right now?" As opposed to like, "Ah, I'm trying, I'm trying. I'm, I'm trying, and I'm trying hard, and that's, that's pretty good."
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. And you know, there's nothing wrong with these big why questions. The problem is having these big why questions and believing that if you watch enough internet videos and take enough supplements, that you'll be able to answer these things. And, and this is one of the, this is a big generational difference that we actually find. So there, every philosophical school, um, of note and of merit has something that the ancient Greeks called aporia, which is to sit in a state of puzzlement over questions that can't be answered. So Zen Buddhism is based on koans.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Koans are riddles. You know, what is the sound of one hand clapping? And a strange, unanswerable question that you're supposed to ponder that, and in the pondering, you gain a certain kind of complex knowledge, which we know is, you know, the, the dominantly processed in the right hemisphere of the brain.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- 1:03:47 – 1:10:19
How to Escape the Doom Loop
- CWChris Williamson
Getting back to the technology thing, how do you interrupt this doom loop that everyone's on?
- ABArthur Brooks
So the doom loop is that I'm, you know, I don't want to be bored, um, because I don't like boredom because it's boring, right? And so I distract myself. And when I distract myself, what I do is I become less tolerant of boredom. Um, my life feels less meaningful because I'm not actually illuminating the parts of the brain that are necessary for that. And so I'm more at loose ends, and so I spend more time online, more time scrolling, more time, you know, doing what people do when they're, when they're really bored, and that makes the problem worse. Much the same way with drugs and alcohol, you know, and it, that's how escalation and dependence actually works. Um, the two biggest predictors of alcoholism are anxiety and boredom. And so when I'm anxious and bored, I drink.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Well, that makes boredom and anxiety worse the next day, and so I drink some more, and then down and down and down and down it goes. And so what you have to... You're in a doom loop. Any addictive process is a doom loop. The same thing is true with the way that we use technology, the same way is true of, you know, anything, any, any amount of behavior.
- CWChris Williamson
Which is totally hidden under the radar, by the way.
- ABArthur Brooks
Completely.
- CWChris Williamson
You know, and you... Most people, despite the fact that alcohol is having a resurgence only after it was recently sort of stripped away, uh, um-
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
... most people understand, I, I, I, I'm, I'm doing this, and I didn't used to do this. And when I do this, I keep... It seems to be ratcheting up. I'm drinking more than I used to. I'm, I'm... That's probably not good.
- ABArthur Brooks
Well, it depends on how much you drink. It might be good.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I mean, if you're getting to five, six, seven drinks a night, I don't think-
- ABArthur Brooks
That's a big problem.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
That's a lot. [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
But, but how many times does that entropy start to build?
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Because your tolerance... You're chasing... You're not chasing having the drink, you're chasing the sensation of the drink.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And your tolerance, I-
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, exactly
- CWChris Williamson
... I'll drink-
- ABArthur Brooks
That's, that's a doom loop
- CWChris Williamson
... I'll drink 10, 20 times a year, maybe at most now.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And that means half a Corona in, I'm like, "It's nice."
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, I know.
- CWChris Williamson
"It's like being 14 again."
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You know? "This is cool."
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- 1:10:19 – 1:14:51
Can You Recover From Meaninglessness?
- CWChris Williamson
How easy is it to recover from this? I think a lot of people feel like they're lost and totally unrecoverable.
- ABArthur Brooks
It's absolutely possible. I've seen it again and again and again and again. I mean, look, this is, this, this is not heroin that we're talking about here. I mean, the, the, the process of detox, for example, isn't... You don't even have to give up your phone. You just have to put it in proper boundaries and have some rules in your life, right, and, and actually have some proper habits. And, you know, we're-- our life is, if you have a fairly functional life, you've got good habits already, right? I mean, you get up at a certain time. You work out every day. You, you eat something. You don't eat like an eleven-year-old. I mean, you have good habits, and then you just put protocols around it. You know, it's like Huberman talks about protocols and which has kind of infected the culture. It's a culture of protocols. Um, and, and I'm, I'm an absolute believer in that when it comes to your phone. I mean, you, you wake up in the morning. If you can, don't look at it at all for the first hour for neurocognitive programming. If you're a journalist or, you know, you have your job, you gotta look at it and make sure nothing's on fire. To- put it down. That's it for the hour, right? First hour of the day. While you eat, neurocognitive programming while you eat is critically important. It's best not to eat alone and never eat with your device.
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- ABArthur Brooks
Brain is, is actually, your, the, the neuropeptides in your brain, most notably oxytocin, uh, they flow very liberally when you're eating with somebody. This is how, you know, Homo sapiens would establish and, and foster kin bonds, is by sitting around a campfire, putting pieces of yak meat into their mouths, discussing their day, and looking into each other's eyes. That's how we're wired. If you have a phone on the table while you eat, or God forbid, if you're looking at it, there's no... none of this neurochemistry happens.
- CWChris Williamson
What if you're on your own?
- ABArthur Brooks
Then, um, you might read a book, you might listen to music, but don't look at your phone.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. There's a meme online of, uh, guy starves to death even though he had food because he couldn't watch YouTube.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
'Cause his phone had run out of battery.
- ABArthur Brooks
I know. Or, or it's like, or, or died of sepsis because he didn't go to the bathroom.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
He, he couldn't take his phone in there. So, and last but not least, it's the last hour of the day. Now, that part of that is sleep architecture and blue light, et cetera, et cetera, the pineal gland, melatonin, yada, yada. We all know the physiology of that. But part of that is just the way that you actually understand yourself at the end of your day and get ready to rest. If you're living with your partner, that's critically important to your relationship, is not to be looking at your device in the last hour, so you can be fully present as you drift off to sleep together.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
That's super, super important for your relationship. But just those three things. Then there's phone-free zones. You shouldn't have your phone in the bedroom ever, ever, ever, ever. Because, I mean, God forbid you get up to pee at three o'clock in the morning and look at your phone. That's a big mistake.
- CWChris Williamson
Game over.
- ABArthur Brooks
Well, I mean, it's, it's your pineal gland shuts off, right? No more melatonin for you. And, and so, which is problematic on its face, but it's also you just, you, you, you spike your cortisol. I mean, just bad stuff happens to you. So the phone should be in a different floor, in a closet ... plugged in someplace from the hour before you go to bed until after an hour after you get up. That's number one. It's a phone-free zone. Second is that, that, I mean, this is just, you know, basic public policy. There shouldn't be a, a phone in any classroom in any school in the world between kindergarten and PhD. It is complete insanity because it interrupts everything that we're actually trying to do, and it's, it's child abuse that there's phones in classrooms, you know? And, and the most important hour they shouldn't have phones is during lunch, by the way.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Because they need to-
- CWChris Williamson
So it's even worse.
- ABArthur Brooks
It's even worse.
- CWChris Williamson
It shouldn't be in a classroom.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And it definitely shouldn't be in a cafeteria.
- ABArthur Brooks
I mean, I mean, most of what's going on in the classroom is not that interesting to begin with.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
I mean, I don't think I ever learned anything in public school. I think it was mostly babysitting, but-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah
- ABArthur Brooks
... but, you know, at least I had friends, and, and, and they don't have friends. And then, and then people need phone fasts. They need technology fasts. I recommend 96 hours a year is kind of ... This is, and there's a little bit of research on this that shows that this actually can break the relationship that you have, so you prove to yourself that you actually don't need it, and you're kind of in a state of bliss by the fourth day.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
You know, it's really, really... I mean, I go on a spiritual retreat every year for four days. No phone. Oh, it's great. First day is like children screaming in my head.
- 1:14:51 – 1:16:50
How Important is Love to Meaning?
- CWChris Williamson
How important is romantic love to meaning?
- ABArthur Brooks
That's one of the best ways you can turn on the right hemisphere of your brain because that's something you will never solve. How do I know that? Because if we could have solved algorithmically romantic love, we wouldn't still have app developers that were trying to make the ultimate dating app. The dating apps are fundamentally a left brain solution to a right brain problem. Right now, they're getting better, but the way that they're getting better is by figuring out ways to add more human friction into the algorithm as opposed to taking human friction out of the algorithm. So for example, you're finding early experiments which suggest that a good way for you to find your matches on an app is to have your matches, some of your app matches, go to your best friend and have your friend decide which ones you're gonna go out with.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughs]
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs] Because you're adding a right brain into the mix.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
You're adding your friend's right brain into the mix, for example, or having a whole bunch of potential people in a group that will actually meet in a mixture. You know, that's a good way to do it too.
- CWChris Williamson
Polygamy.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. Uh-huh. [laughs] And then pair up if it's meant to be, or make friends if it's not.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
And so that, that's, those are ways that we actually do that, but the point, the point of the matter is that the human brain, um, is, is highly attuned toward this incredibly complex, indescribable experience of falling in love. That's one of the reasons that all country and Western songs are about romantic love. That's the reason that the greatest poetry is about romantic love, because it's not described scientifically. It's described artistically-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm
- ABArthur Brooks
... because it's a right hemispheric experience. So you wanna, you wanna turn on the meaning in your life, go get your heart broken. I mean, go take a risk. I mean, that's, that's when you find the meaning of your life, right? I mean, when you've had your heart broken, that's horrible, and that's hard, but that's meaning rich. That's when you ask all those big questions.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, you're definitely alive.
- ABArthur Brooks
You'll learn a lot about yourself. You learn a lot about yourself, right? Unless you stay drunk.
- 1:16:50 – 1:21:04
The Ladder of Love Explained
- CWChris Williamson
What's the Ladder of Love?
- ABArthur Brooks
[laughs] So Diotima of Mantinea was this prophetess that Socrates sought out. So Socrates sought out the, the Diotima of Mantinea, um, and, and, and she described to him that the way to find the meaning of life starts with this ladder, and each rung of the ladder gets you closer to the meaning of life, and the first rung of the ladder is falling in love. [laughs] The first rung of the ladder is actually attraction toward the beautiful other. Romantic attraction, not just like, you know, "Chris is awesome. He's so smart. He's got such a great show and such great conversations, such a good friend."
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you. Thank you. Keep going.
- ABArthur Brooks
But it's, it's like that spark that you can't quite understand. Now, actually, we do understand neurochemically what's happening when you're falling in love. We know how the sex hormones start, and then we get the, the catecholamines actually involved along the way, and then we get a really dramatic drop in serotonin, and then we get the neuropeptides. And, and, and the sequence, we know when the sequence is off between two people is why they don't, is why they don't actually succeed in a relationship. There's all kinds of really fascinating neuroscience of falling in love, but it's still a mystery. I tell you, the, the, the neuroscientists who are doing this cutting-edge research, they can fall hard in love just like anybody else.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
They go like, "I don't know what happened. I don't know what hap-" Yes you do. You wrote that paper, right? But still, I mean, it's like I, I, I teach this stuff to my students at the Harvard Business School about the, the neuroscience of falling in love, but I don't understand this relationship with my wife. I just love her. You know? I just... It's like, okay, yeah, a lot of oxytocin and vasopressin and, you know, and there's some amount of dopamine and, and, and norepinephrine involved and, and there are drops of serotonin when you're fighting and, you know, uh... [laughs] That's not it. It's because it's this deep metaphysical experience. Most religions believe, as Mantinev of, of Diotima, Socrates's prophetess suggested, that romantic love is the beginning of an antenna to the divine, that... And, and most religions believe that if you're in a serious marriage and you deny your spouse love, you're denying your spouse God's love.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
That's how right-brained and complex this actually is.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, just because you can explain how gravity works doesn't mean that you're not going to hit the ground if you jump out of a, a skyscraper.
- ABArthur Brooks
Mm. You can understand it plenty well.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You're still at the mercy of these things. There's that, uh, interview that Sam did with Daniel Kahneman- Think must have Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize winner. After many, many decades of studying the fallacies of the human mind and mental models and all of the different ways that our rationality goes awry, has it made you any more rational?
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Not really.
- ABArthur Brooks
Not really, no. I know, no, it's interesting too, you know, and, and, and Sam and I have had one conversation, um, more or less along these lines. He's the most soulful atheist I've ever met.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
He really is.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- ABArthur Brooks
He's a soulful guy. I really have-
- CWChris Williamson
He'd be a great believer apart from the lack of belief.
- ABArthur Brooks
[chuckles] But that's the point, because his soulfulness would seem, might seem on the outside to, to contradict his, his uber rationality as an atheist. But it doesn't because these things coexist. These things can reside next to each other. And because Sam's brain has two hemispheres to it, so does mine, so does all of ours.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 1:21:04 – 1:24:38
Should We Be Thinking About Transcendence More?
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think people think enough about transcendence?
- ABArthur Brooks
No, [chuckles] I don't. And transcendence is important because it, once again, it contradicts Mother Nature's tyranny. So Mother Nature wants you in the psychodrama of your utter stultifying christness from moment to moment to moment. My job, my flights are late, you know, my podcast guest, you know, might be good. I got to prepare for that thing. And my stomach is rumbling. I forgot to eat lunch. And, uh, oh yeah, the payment didn't come in for that thing. It's so boring, but Mother Nature wants you to be the star of that psychodrama all day long in your head. That's what, uh, William James called the me self. The me self. It's looking at yourself and thinking about yourself all day long. And you need that for self-reference to make your way in the world. If you don't understand what you're doing, you're going to be a pretty bad driver. You're going to be in a traffic accident pretty quickly. But there's also the I self, which is looking out at the world, which is transcending yourself by looking at, out at the world, f- in which you're one player, but you're only one player in it. And, and it's interesting because transcendent experiences are those where the me self disappears and the I self becomes dominant. There are times actually when, when they, they become confused, and that's kind of what a fugue state is psychologically, where the, where you become disassociated with yourself in this weird way. And, and you, all of us have experienced this. I remember one time, um, I had a lot on my mind, and I was putting gas in my car, and I was just, like, really worried about something. This was back when I was a CEO, and my life was like a living, like, dystopian hell hole, right? And everything was a problem every single day. And I was putting gas in my car, and it was, like, eight o'clock at night. And, and I, and I finished and, and I got back in my car and I was driving. And my daughter was with me in the car. And she was a little girl then. And there was this, like, weird clanking sound behind me, like somebody had a muffler down right behind me, like they were following me. And I said, "Honey, what is that sound?" She's like, "I don't know." It's like clankity, clankity, clankity, clank. I said, "They're following me. What's going on?" Until people started pointing to me at my car. And I realized that I had driven away with the hose in my gas tank, and I pulled it out of the gas pump, and I was dragging it behind me, the whole mechanism behind me. Clankity, clankity, clank, right? And so I thought somebody else was doing a thing that I had actually done. I'd confused the me self and the I self. I was in this, like, weird fugue state. It got real, real fast when I took it back to the gas station, and these four Iranian dudes were standing around the gas pump really mad, like, "Who destroyed our pump?" I also, I also found out how much it costs to fix a gas pump. It's expensive. But the whole point is that, that, that what we want is not to get into a fugue state. We want to have these experiences where we can be in the I self, where we can stand in awe, where we can get outside ourselves, which is religious experiences, and that's spiritual experiences and philosophical experiences and, and experiences of service and love toward other people unbidden by any self-interest. And that's where life gets really interesting and beautiful. And when you do that, when you truly are in a transcendent state, that's when you're in the right hemisphere of your brain. And you don't find meaning. Meaning finds you. Which is why I'll often recommend to people, it's like, "I don't know how do I find the meaning of my life?" Go volunteer. Go volunteer. Go pray. I'm not religious. I don't care. That's not what I said. Go pray. Why? Because when you do that, you'll induce a state in your brain, and you'll want to do it more.
- 1:24:38 – 1:27:27
Why is Transcendence So Rare?
- CWChris Williamson
What is it that people are missing? What, why is transcendence so rare without engineering it in that way, at least in the modern world?
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. It's, it's especially true in the modern world that it's rare because the modern world is a big mirror. It's a big me self. That's especially true in online. Uh, online you're looking in a mirror constantly because you're looking not at the, at the, the, the dialogue you're having with other people, looking at them. What you're doing is that you're... It's, it's, think about it as the Zoom problem. The problem with Zoom when you're in a Zoom meeting is you're always looking at yourself. In the Zoom meeting. It's really hard. It's a really good idea to turn off your own camera, um, or at least your own view of your own camera so you can focus on the other people. But one of the ways that Zoom has, has made communication a lot harder for people is because you're always in the me self, even when you're trying to be in the I self.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
And, and this is true certainly with social media as well. You're looking at your likes and your mentions, and how do people interact with what I was doing. And it's this one big virtual mirror of everything that we're doing. It's be- become very... It's induced narcissism where it wouldn't have existed otherwise, which is incredibly misery provoking because it, it, it kills meaning in the crib from the very beginning. You can't get out of yourself. You can't get out of your head.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
And that is increasingly true. Now, it's interesting because people who have experimented with trying to stay in the I self, um, in, in, in literature but also just in real life, have had these incredible results. I had this PT, this guy who worked on my back. My back hurts, and so you get to my age, your back hurts, right? And, um, and he always w- he worked on my back every week. Great guy, unbelievable. I mean, just, like, talented, full of love, you know? And, uh, and I said, "How did you get these skills? I mean, is this... Did you... Were you always a physical therapist? Acupuncture?" He said, "No, no, no, I used to be a, I used to be a fitness influencer." I'm like, "Dude, tell me more. I gotta know. Tell me more." He said, "Yeah, you know, I basically took off my shirt on Instagram and was, kind of sold supplements, and it was all about the abs." And, and, and I said, "How was that?" He said, "It was the worst. It was the worst. I didn't eat what I wanted for 10 years. I was so miserable. I didn't have any normal relationships at all. I couldn't have any functional relationships with women because they'd be so jealous about the fact that I'm showing my body off for other people. I'd be looking at my... I'd be, I'd gotta get a photographer because this guy doesn't understand the shadows." And he said, "It was horrible and it was miserable and I was sad, and I didn't know what to do." And so he said, "Finally, I gave up. I deleted all my accounts. I, uh, I enrolled in acupuncture school. But here's the most important part," he said. "I got rid of all of the mirrors in my apartment, every single one of them, and I showered in the dark for a year so I couldn't see my abs. And then I finally was free." [chuckles] And he's happy.
- 1:27:27 – 1:32:02
The Truth About Finding Your Calling
- CWChris Williamson
Most people, I think, look to their work for something that's supposed to be transcendent.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-
- ABArthur Brooks
Calling.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Now, what do you think people, what do you think people think they're talking about when they talk about finding your calling?
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. They think it's going to be the thing that they're... Well, I mean, there's kind of two versions of it. The, the, the two graduation speeches. You know, graduation speech number one is, "Go find a job that, that you love and that's fun, and you'll never work a day in your life." Now, that speech is being given by, um, a cardboard box magnate who's so severely workaholic that he's had three heart attacks and two divorces by the age of 40, right? So don't believe it, right? Or the second speech is, "Go save the world. No pressure." You know, it's like, "I, well, my generation wrecked the world. Go save the world." You know? That's, uh, that's the second speech. That's, both of those are wrong fundamentally. Your calling, generally speaking, finds you as the thing that you can't stop thinking about, is the most interesting thing, right? It's not the thing that you think, "I'm gonna be the savior, I'm gonna be the great Messiah," and it's not the most fun thing necessarily. The thing that's most interesting to you is often not that fun, actually. A lot of the time, it's actually not that fun. It's just something you can't get out of your head. It's something you feel you really need to do. Second, the goal is creating value with your life, is earning your success, is being rewarded for something that you do well, where you create real value with your hard work and, and, and, and personal motivation and, more importantly, where you're serving somebody, where somebody needs you. That's what it comes down to.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Are you earning your success? Not only are you really earning, are you recognized and acknowledged for real value that you're creating? Not kissing up to the boss and not because somebody's trying to be nice to you. No, no, no, no. You're really creating value. And does somebody actually need you? That's what it comes down to. That's your calling.
- CWChris Williamson
How do you know, or how does somebody know when they're chasing status instead of their calling-
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... instead of meaning?
- ABArthur Brooks
Mostly people deep down know, because what it comes down to is when you're creating true value and people need you, then you can, it, it... I mean, you can sort of imperfectly measure that with respect to status, but you actually know when there's true value behind it. Most people have a, an innate sense of that, a strong, innate sense of that. And, you know, I've interviewed a lot of people about this. You know, I talked to a guy, um, who builds homes. Home builder, right? He had a, uh, he got his master's degree in, um, in biochemistry from MIT and he was going on to get his PhD, and his parents really, really wanted him to be a scientist is the whole thing. But he recognized that he, he, his, he only felt truly alive, he was only truly interested when he was building stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
That's what it came down to, and he became a home builder as a result of that. So it's really, really important to listen to what your heart is telling you about this. Status is a very, very bad barometer. A lot of people are using status or using fame or power or money because they don't want to look at the truth. They don't want... It's like looking into the sun of something. And a lot of people make big mistakes for a long time as a result of that. Like, they're, they're doing something they don't, it's not their calling, and it burns them out. They don't like it. But they should like it, it's paying so much. They should like it, they got so many followers, for Pete's sake. But they're unhappy. [chuckles] That's what people need to be paying attention to. Look, if you're doing something that's highly rewarding but you're unhappy, it's not your calling.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm. I wonder how many people sit in that bucket. What proportion of people?
- ABArthur Brooks
I meet a lot. I meet a lot. Look, I teach at a big business school. I meet a lot of people who honestly think that- They go into business school thinking, um, "I will, I will find my calling because it's gonna be something that's gonna pay me so well, which means I'm so good at this thing that it's gotta be my calling."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
No. No, no, no. No, no, no. On the contrary. Look, I, I, I walked away from a career in classical music when I was 31 years old. Um, I could've done it for the rest of my life, right? It wasn't my calling. I'd done it since I was eight. I'd been doing it since I was a little boy, right? But it wasn't my calling. And, and I made a living and I made some records and I was so unhappy. [scoffs] It wasn't my calling. I'd spent many years on it. I'd spent decades on it, as a matter of fact, but there was no choice but to walk away because it wasn't my calling.
- 1:32:02 – 1:34:35
Why Changing Direction Feels So Scary
- CWChris Williamson
What about the fear that comes up when someone is faced with that realization? They've got the inertia, the momentum, the sunk cost fallacy.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. Yeah. No, no, it's n- it's no joke. It actually requires an unbelievable amount of personal entrepreneurship. Look, entrepreneurship is not about building a business. It's about building your life, right? Great entrepreneurs, they change all the time. They make all kinds of changes. You know what crummy entrepreneurs have in common? They have a bad business idea and they chase it until they're broke. That's what bad entrepreneurs have in common, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Good entrepreneurs, they try this and it's not quite right, and they change, and they go from this thing to that thing, and they sell when it's time and start a new venture. That's what great entrepreneurs have in common. If you wanna be an entrepreneur in the business of your life, you cannot afford the sunk, sunk cost fallacy with your own career-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- ABArthur Brooks
... or your own relationships or your own interests.
- CWChris Williamson
Agile.
- ABArthur Brooks
You have to change is what it comes down to. Now, there's a very interesting theory about people who need to change the most, the people... And, and these are called spirals. This is the spiral career pattern. There's, there's four career patterns psychologically. There's linears, who just kinda go up and up and up and up and up and up and up in their careers, and they only change when something is better. There are transitories, who kinda just skip around all over the place. They don't live to work. They work to live, right? They, they, you know, "I'm gonna be a barista, then I'm gonna run a, you know, drive a moving van, and then I fell in love with a girl in San Diego, so, you know," right? There are e- what's called expert, which is, like, slow and steady. Y- it's lifestyle, right? I have a... My dad had the same job for 42 years, for example, and the reason is because it was secure and because, uh, it was low-stress, right? And that's what he wanted. The post office is an expert career path. But a lot of people, probably disproportionately a lot of the people who are watching this show, are spirals, where every seven to 12 years what they need is to take their career down to the studs and start again.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
And take everything they learned in the last one and funge it into something that's meaningful in the next one, but have a new adventure. The first turn is hardest. For me, leaving the French horn and becoming a scientist, that was brutal. Going back and, and getting a PhD when I didn't know what I was doing, it was really, really, really hard, right? Second turn, easier. Third turn, easier. I'm on my fourth turn right now. Who knows? Maybe in 10 years I'll be a circus clown or firefighter or something.
- CWChris Williamson
You can see it in there.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I can see it in you.
- ABArthur Brooks
But the whole point is that that's what it means to live an entrepreneurial life where you're pursuing your calling because you have the agility and the courage to be an entrepreneur in the enterprise and the business of
- 1:34:35 – 1:37:08
The Surprising Role of Beauty in Meaning
- ABArthur Brooks
life.
- CWChris Williamson
What about the role of beauty?
- ABArthur Brooks
Physical beauty? [scoffs] Any kind of beauty. Beauty is a transcendent experience. So one of the things that a lot of people have observed about the modern technocratic life is it's not beautiful. It's bereft of beauty. Now, why is that? Because stuff that goes on in the left hemisphere of the brain never prioritizes beauty. Beauty is a right hemispheric experience. You know, it's, it's when people see a beautiful sunset, sometimes they'll cry. You know, when people hear a, a work of music, you know, people listen to Bach B Minor Mass, and it's like they, they weep. Why? And, and, and they c- they can't exper- as a matter of fact, any time that you become emotional, um, and you can't quite explain it, it means you're having a right hemispheric experience.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Something that moves you weirdly, right? When... Some people, when they talk about religion, they get really choked up. Some people, when they listen to music, they get really choked up. It's really interesting how this works, but those are right hemispheric experiences. And disproportionately, that's when it comes to beauty. So if we have a society that's entirely left hemispheric, that's technocratic, that's complicated and not complex, it's not gonna be beautiful, and that's exactly what we find. I mean, there's compelling evidence that music is less objectively beautiful than it was in the past. Newer music is less objectively beautiful than it was in the past. I can't really judge that.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
But, you know, this is what, uh, this is what we pay, you know, musicologists to do or something. Um, that moral beauty is harder and harder to find. Moral beauty is just kindness toward others for no apparent reason. You find very little of that on X. You know, you find very little of that online.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
Right? Um, that, that natural beauty is harder to find when you're, when you're never in nature, [scoffs] which is sort of axiomatic, but a lot of people will say, you know, "It's, like, got this incredible screensaver of El Capitan in Yosemite." It's like, there's the real thing. It's gonna blow your mind, right? And the reason is because it is an entirely different neurobiological, uh, experience for people when they're actually out in nature. If you're behind a screen, you're not getting beauty is what it comes down to. And so artistic beauty is absent. Moral beauty is absent. Natural beauty is absent, and the reason is because we're trying to filter everything through the left hemisphere. The simulation isn't beautiful. If you wanna know if you're too much in the left hemisphere of your brain, it's whether y- ask yourself, "Is there enough beauty in my life?" And if the answer is no, it probably means that you're too far to the left.
- 1:37:08 – 1:39:01
Is Suffering the Ultimate Meaning?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. What about if there's not enough suffering?
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. [scoffs] That's the hard one. I left... Actually, I, I wrote about that in this, in this book, and, and, uh, I left that to the last chapter because I was putting it off. ... because putting it off. Um, suffering is the ultimate meaning-making experience, and we've talked about that. You know, we've talked about heartbreak, we've talked about loss, we've talked about grief. Um, there's a little part of the limbic system called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex that, that is really, really active when you experience social exclusion, when you experience loss. It's, it was evolved so that you would be averse to sadness. Sadness is supposed to be really, really painful, and you don't want it. So people actually, they don't suffer so much from sadness, they suffer a lot from fear of sadness. You know, you're trying to avoid sadness, which is what motivates a lot of our behaviors. Most of the things, most of the reasons we do what we do is because we're afraid of bad, we're afraid of negative emotions. But at the same time, most people will talk about the most meaningful periods of their lives were at times of the greatest negative emotion in their lives. Negative emotion brings meaning unless, unless we try to eliminate it, and this is another wrong turn that we've taken because once again, in our, our left hemispheric conceit of the complicated world, the singularity is one in which we will have eliminated pain, eliminated sadness, eliminated negative emotionality, eliminated negative experiences. That's not only impossible, it's actually suboptimal. It's death for what it means to be fully alive. We don't want to be... We don't want to suffer, but we must suffer.
- CWChris Williamson
Strange the things that people want and what they need.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, I know.
- CWChris Williamson
And the fact that those two don't cross over all that much.
- ABArthur Brooks
And, and Mother Nature is a wicked tyrant. She's kept us alive for generation after generation, but animal impulses are not the same thing as moral aspirations.
- 1:39:01 – 1:47:09
The Modern Unhappiness Crisis
- CWChris Williamson
Seems like you're saying that enjoyment and satisfaction haven't collapsed-
- ABArthur Brooks
No
- CWChris Williamson
... in the same way that meaning has.
- ABArthur Brooks
No. That's right. That's right. It's really interesting. I mean, I, I didn't know. You know, when I see a big happiness problem, when I, when I look at the, the depression explosion, the anxiety dis- explosion, I know that one of the channels of happiness is blocked. This is, as a diagnostic matter. Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. We've talked about it on the show a couple of times, as a matter of fact. These are the three macronutrients of happiness. You want to be a happy person, you need to enjoy your life, which back to an early part of the conversation, by the way, one of the reasons that you're moving from a pure achievement orientation in the show toward one where you're having more fun is because you want to increase enjoyment, which many strivers struggle with.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- ABArthur Brooks
They don't enjoy their lives very much, and they want to enjoy their lives more, and they don't know how because they're always trying to put points on the board. So that's a different subject. I'm gonna write a book about how to enjoy your life because I want to figure it out, because I need to figure it out before I die. So enjoyment, which is not pleasure. It's pleasure plus people plus memory. It's a, it's a conscious phenomenon, is actually pretty high for most young people. Satisfaction, which is the achievement of worthwhile goals with struggle, that's pretty high, especially for strivers. I mean, my MBA students at Harvard, they're real high in satisfaction because they're accomplishing a lot and they're struggling a lot. It's meaning that's collapsed, and that's the reason-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- ABArthur Brooks
... that we have this unbelievable happiness cri- unhappiness crisis-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- ABArthur Brooks
... in our society today.
- CWChris Williamson
Have I ever told you my idea about Frankl's inverse law?
- ABArthur Brooks
Oh, no, tell me. Victor Frankl? [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. So there's that famous quote, "When a man can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure."
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Right? He's arguing lack of meaning causes-
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, that's the distraction, yeah
- CWChris Williamson
... people to seek temporary relief in superficial pursuits rather than addressing some underlying void.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. And this is before scrolling even existed.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Uh, perhaps for many, maybe even most people, this is a big issue. But there is another group who suffer with the opposite problem, Frankl's inverse law. When a man can't find a deep sense of pleasure, they distract themselves with meaning.
- ABArthur Brooks
Nice.
- CWChris Williamson
If ease, grace, joy, and playfulness don't come easily to you, one solution is to just ignore moment-to-moment happiness entirely and always pursue hard things. You become a world champion at winning the marshmallow test. You convince yourself that delayed gratification in perpetuity is noble because you struggle to ever feel grateful. The TLDR is you prioritize meaning over happiness because happiness doesn't come easily to you.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah, I did. But you know, it's absolutely the encapsulation of the striver's lament. You know, it's like I can't, I can't... Everybody else is having a great time, and I can't feel it. I don't... You know, they're out dancing, and they're out of cl- I mean, think about it. So you're a club promoter.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
In your heart, you're... I'm a French horn player in my heart. You're a club promoter in your heart, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
And, uh, everybody's having a great old time, and you're like, "No, no, this is my business." [laughs]
- CWChris Williamson
Go and enjoy yourself. I'm gonna suffer over here.
- ABArthur Brooks
I think in a real way, the meaning part is quite right. But I think ordinarily, strivers are addicts for satisfaction from achievement.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- ABArthur Brooks
And so they will put points on the board and when they can't feel, they can't feel enjoyment, and so they put points-
- 1:47:09 – 1:53:02
How to Build a More Meaningful Life
- CWChris Williamson
Let's say that someone feels completely empty right now.
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Where should they start? What, what are the most important habits in order to increase the meaning in your life?
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. So the things to be th- the things to be thinking about are a-along the lines, the, the sustaining activities that will actually use your brain the way it's supposed to be used. So number one is understanding that your emptiness is not some sort of psychological weakness, that notwithstanding what anybody's gonna tell you, there's not something wrong with you. On the contrary, your brain is working the way your brain works, and you're living in the world, and it's, the malfunctions are not your fault. The malfunctions are you're going with kind of the slipstream of the culture. The culture is being driven by the technology. It's making you work in a way that's completely contrary to your ancestral habitat, and that's what's making you feel like garbage. That's what it comes down to. It's kinda like you're eating meal after meal of Twinkies and wondering why your digestion is wonky and weird. That's why, is what it comes down to. What we need to understand then is you need to become aligned. You need to have a brain that's properly, uh, hemispheric, that's properly, um, balanced between the hemispheres of what you're doing, which means you need to change your behavior. So number one is getting right with technology. That's the number one thing that almost everybody today needs to do. Almost everybody's addicted. Almost everybody has a dysfunctional relationship with it. Some more, some less. Me, less because I'm older. I remember the before times, right? I mean, I could... You could throw Instagram up in front of me, I'm like, "Okay." You know? "Good. Good. This, this is really good for my business." You know, "This is good." I can... Wildly interesting for, for, you know, sharing my ideas with other people, right? You know, clips of you and me talking, people really like them, and that's great. Makes me feel great. But I'm not gonna get, I'm not gonna scroll for an hour like, "Huh," right? But many, and the younger you are, the more prone you are because you don't remember the before times. So actually changing your behavior with respect to it, and there's ways to do it. That's what I write about. Then you gotta live in a new way. You gotta live in a new way. The first thing I recommend to almost everybody is go get bored. Go get bored. Get g- get good at it, right? I don't mean like this whole thing where you stare at the front of the seat in front of you for a nine-hour flight on the way to Greece.
- CWChris Williamson
Raw dogging.
- ABArthur Brooks
Raw dogging a flight. Yeah, it's a great expression, isn't it? Yeah. Uh, it's disturbing. But the whole, I mean, I, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about actually living moment to moment. You know, putting your hands in your lap when you're in the, on the train, looking out the window and saying, "Huh, it's a tree." You know, being fully alive and saying, "I'm fully alive right now." So, you know, one of the ways to do that is to become more comfortable with, you know, repetitive prayer or meditative ideas that you would actually bring into your life so you can be more mindful. Just bring in some of those ideas so you can become more comfortable with your brain working the way it's supposed to. Which, by the way, ignites the default mode network in your brain, which you know about. The set of structures that, that allow you to mind wander. Mind wandering leads to meaning. It's just as, as, as, as, uh, predictably as, as night turns to day. That's the second thing. And then it's actually having the experiences that, that naturally open up the right hemisphere of your brain. That means allowing yourself to actually fall in love and make friends and doing things in real life with other people, in relation to other people, and taking risks in your relationship. It means actually entertaining the idea of something metaphysical beyond yourself. The left hemisphere is profoundly physical. The right hemisphere is metaphysical. It says there is something more. And again, you don't have to do it my way. I'm a Catholic. I go to mass every day. You don't have to do it that way. You can do it like Sam Harris. He's super right hemispheric guy, right? Because he has a sense of soulfulness. He has a sense of things beyond what we can actually see and touch. He believes there are things that we can't see and touch that exist. He doesn't think it's God. So y- you know, you do transcendence your own way. Looking for calling. How? By serving other people and being needed. By doing something. You know, by allowing yourself to be served and loved. This is actually how you can find these things. Looking for beauty, actually experiencing more beauty, real beauty, real beauty. Not behind a screen. It's not there. It ain't there, man. I don't care how long you look at it, it's not gonna be there. That means going someplace in nature, listening to music that really sends you. I don't know, read a poem, go to a museum, right? Witness somebody helping other people just for no reason. And last but not least is, uh, lean into your suffering. Bring it on. You know, it's like you have this ... I make my students say, "My suffering is sacred," right? And there's a l- there's a, you know ... Do you remember Norman Vincent Peale? Does that name ring a bell? Okay, he had a very famous self-help book in the '60s called The Power of Positive Thinking. That n- that sound, that rings a bell, right? He was a minister at a, at a Protestant church in New York City, and he would say every single day when he started the day the psalm, "This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it." And he would have you res- re- you know, he was like the gratitude list originator and the whole thing. All these good things, good things, good things. List all the good things that are happening in your life. List the bad things and say, "I'm grateful for that, too. Bring it on." Right? Say as you wake up in the morning, it's like, "I'm really grateful for the beautiful things that are gonna happen this day. And I woke up today and it's like, I get to see Chris. It's gonna be great. I'm really grateful for that. But something's gonna happen today. I'm gonna get a phone call or a text or an email that I'm not gonna like. Bring it on. I'm grateful for that, too." Because when I lean into that, then I'm gonna be fully alive. That's the moment that I'm gonna be fully alive. And that attitude of non-resistance to pain will actually lower the suffering paradoxically as it raises the meaning in life.
- 1:53:02 – 1:53:58
Where to Find Arthur
- CWChris Williamson
Heck yeah. Arthur Brooks, ladies and gentlemen. Arthur, you're awesome. I appreciate the heck out of you, man.
- ABArthur Brooks
Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
Where should people go? New book? What else is going on?
- ABArthur Brooks
Yeah. Uh, so I'm all about, you know, looking for the sources of meaning in life, and so my, my, my website, arthurbrooks.com, actually has all kinds of ways people can interact. We have the Meaning Experience, which is a, a, a collaboration of people from all over the world on the internet that meet once a month and, and, and talk about different ways to find the meaning in life. And I give a, like a, an academic lecture, and then we have this great discussion. So we have all kinds of stuff and many ways to survey and measure where we are in our meaning journey, uh, many ways to interact with each other. It's all at, all at the website, arthurbrooks.com.
- CWChris Williamson
Heck yeah. All righty. See you next time, everyone. Dude.
- ABArthur Brooks
Thank you. Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
You're great. I mean, you're, you're the best.
- ABArthur Brooks
Thanks for having me.
- CWChris Williamson
Speak to you soon. [outro music] Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, another one that I know you'll love is just here.
Episode duration: 1:54:00
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Transcript of episode IY-UW2gmnVI
