8 Strategies For Avoiding A Life You Hate - Dr Gad Saad

Is it nice to be out of the culture wars and actually closer to your realm of expertise now?

You know, it, it's, uh, thank you for that opening question. When you are in the culture wars, by definition, you're in a war. You're in a war on reason, on logic, on evidence-based thinking, on common sense, on reality. And so even though I may be a affable, happy person, just the sheer fact of th- that you have to take on these issues causes your cortisol levels to go up because you're constantly fighting against someone. Uh, not physically, of course, but in terms of the ideological battle. So it's so refreshing to be able to talk not just about something that is, you know, within the realm of psychology and wellbeing, but positive psychology, right? I'm not talking about OCD and about, uh, depression. I'm talking about arguably the topic that philosophers have most written about, which is how do we lead a good life?

Yeah. Something maybe less contentious, but, uh, equally contested and equally confusing to many people trying to break down what happiness is. So your background is in evolution, which I've taken a massive interest in over the last couple of years. Why would it be the case, in your opinion, that evolution would curse humans with the ability to feel chronic prolonged existential angst and dissatisfaction and unhappiness?

What a great, uh, (laughs) question that gets my, uh, cerebral juices going. Uh, look, so let, I, I'll answer this in a roundabout way. Uh, if you look at some of the dark side consumption acts that we succumb to, so to your point about succumbing to these things, so pornographic addiction, uh, compulsive buying, eating disorders, excessive sun tanning, uh, pathological gambling, why would we, if we are adaptive creatures, ever succumb to these behavioral traps? And so what I argue in answering that question, which can then serve as a oblique answer to your question, is that oftentimes what happens with, uh, each of these phenomena is you take an adaptive mechanism that misfires, and it's that misfiring that then leads to the maladaptive behavior. So for example, when you look at, uh, compulsive buying, it's almost exclusively women who suffer from compulsive buying, about 90%. And they're, they don't compulsively buy l- lawn mowers and, uh, digital cameras. They pathologically purchase, compulsively purchase beautification products. So what's happening there is you're taking an adaptive mechanism, which in this case is a sex-specific one, how do I ameliorate my lot in the mating market, and then it just consistently misfires so it becomes maladaptive. So I think a similar kind of framework might explain the question that you're talking about.

Is happiness adaptive in your experience or in your view?

Well, so it's interesting that you ask this, again, because there is a whole field... So there's a field called evolutionary medicine which tries to incorporate evolutionary principles in the practice of medicine. And it may or may not surprise many of your viewers and listeners that very few physicians are trained in evolutionary thinking. They might know anatomy, they might know physiology, but they are stuck in what's called proximate world. They understand the how and the what of a mechanism-