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Jung and the End of the World: Can Depth Psychology Save Us? · This Jungian Life Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: And so I think death and destruction and strife and
0:05
Speaker 1: whatever terms we want to describe that inner chaos, it
0:11
Speaker 1: has to be channeled. I mean, it's given. We're thrown
0:14
Speaker 1: into this. At the same time, it's not determined. It's
0:19
Speaker 1: not like destined. And this is why the interplay of
0:23
Speaker 1: opposites and tensions in the psyche have to work themselves
0:28
Speaker 1: through in various ways. permutations.
0:34
Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
0:39
Speaker 2: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
0:43
Speaker 2: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
0:46
Speaker 2: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
0:52
Speaker 3: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
0:56
Speaker 2: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
1:01
Speaker 3: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod. Well,
1:16
Speaker 3: welcome to a very special episode where I have a
1:19
Speaker 3: chance to interview a giant in the field of psychoanalysis.
1:25
Speaker 3: John Mills is a Canadian philosopher and psychoanalyst and a
1:29
Speaker 3: retired clinical psychologist. And he is the honorary professor, Department
1:34
Speaker 3: of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex
1:38
Speaker 3: in the UK. He's got all kinds of other credentials
1:42
Speaker 3: under his belt and has authored or edited over 35
1:46
Speaker 3: books in philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychology, and cultural studies. And Today,
1:51
Speaker 3: I'm going to be talking with him about one of
1:53
Speaker 3: his recent books, which is quite an important work. I
1:56
Speaker 3: can see it behind you there on the shelf, End
2:00
Speaker 3: of the World. And it is a fascinating, really important read.
2:06
Speaker 3: And I must say, it's a bit of a difficult
2:08
Speaker 3: read because it really confronts the reader with, I'm just
2:12
Speaker 3: going to say, our tendency towards self-destruction. And you catalog
2:18
Speaker 3: these pretty thoroughly. So maybe to start off, tell me
2:25
Speaker 3: how you came to write this book. What prompted you
2:29
Speaker 3: to write it? It must have been a real labor of,
2:32
Speaker 3: you must have felt really compelled to write it.
2:34
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on
2:38
Speaker 1: your show. I'm a big fan. Yes, the issue about
2:42
Speaker 1: the motivation. This is a project that really started over
2:48
Speaker 1: 20 years. five years ago so i was starting to
2:53
Speaker 1: look at the problem of human aggression and evil and
3:00
Speaker 1: just our internal you know modes of self-destruction and that
3:07
Speaker 1: you know that led to a paper and then i
3:10
Speaker 1: decided well maybe one day i will you know make
3:15
Speaker 1: this into a bigger project so But when we started
3:19
Speaker 1: having more of a climate emergency that unfolded over two decades,
3:26
Speaker 1: I started then to get into thinking about the project. Like,
3:31
Speaker 1: what are the bigger existential threats or risks to humanity?
3:37
Speaker 1: And I just started getting that literature that's not in
3:42
Speaker 1: the field and just becoming quite more acquainted with with
3:47
Speaker 1: everything from, you know, global warming predicament to, you know,
3:54
Speaker 1: the possibility of, of nuclear war to the issue around
4:00
Speaker 1: fundamental or my, my Masonic religion, uh, all the big
4:06
Speaker 1: players that, that could pressurize the system, so to speak,
4:12
Speaker 1: meeting our planet. And, looking at the economic literature, then
4:21
Speaker 1: looking at AI at that time before, you know, I
4:25
Speaker 1: published a book before our current AI time. So, and
4:30
Speaker 1: then I just started trying to put them together like
4:35
Speaker 1: a common, what is the common thread? And the motive
4:39
Speaker 1: really is for me to work out my own inner
4:42
Speaker 1: conflicts around this. Because that's what I like to do.
4:46
Speaker 1: I like to meditate on things. And hopefully by the
4:50
Speaker 1: end of it, I'm going to have some integration around
4:53
Speaker 1: the topic.
4:55
Speaker 3: And what integration did you reach as a result of
4:58
Speaker 3: working on this book?
5:01
Speaker 1: Quite a dismal one. Much more pessimistic than I thought
5:06
Speaker 1: that I would end up with. So it's really... The
5:11
Speaker 1: integration was in terms of maybe more of an intellectual appreciation,
5:18
Speaker 1: but also, you know, ethical as well. What do we
5:24
Speaker 1: need to do to address this? And when you're asking
5:28
Speaker 1: that on an individual level, as you know, we are
5:33
Speaker 1: much more capable of engaging our interior employees dealing with
5:39
Speaker 1: the intersubjectivity of therapy to help us, you know, try
5:44
Speaker 1: to integrate and synthesize and resolve conflicts. But here you're
5:49
Speaker 1: talking about the global scale of, you know, over 8
5:52
Speaker 1: billion people. And so I couldn't really come up with a,
5:59
Speaker 1: you know, satisfactory solution other than it's enough just to
6:04
Speaker 1: be aware of the problem.
6:07
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. And how would you define that problem? You say,
6:13
Speaker 3: be aware of the problem. What is the problem?
6:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, the problem is, I think, that we're just
6:20
Speaker 1: destroying ourselves. And it's not like a meteor is going
6:26
Speaker 1: to fall on us out of the sky or something
6:30
Speaker 1: like this. It's that we are creating our own, the
6:34
Speaker 1: foundation for our own future demise. So whether it be
6:40
Speaker 1: completely ignoring, you know, just, you know, thousands of scientists
6:46
Speaker 1: who have studied the climate crisis as what they do
6:52
Speaker 1: for a living every day, and we can see with
6:58
Speaker 1: our own eyes our climate, our environment's changing, the world
7:03
Speaker 1: is burning, and yet we act in such, contradictory manner,
7:11
Speaker 1: cavalier manner, where we either completely deny this as a problem,
7:18
Speaker 1: as many people are doing, particularly, let's say, the Trump
7:22
Speaker 1: administration is a good example, dismantling environmental protection, all these things,
7:30
Speaker 1: ignoring the fossil fuel crisis. But there's a number of...
7:34
Speaker 1: These are complex issues. I'm not saying... Why don't you
7:37
Speaker 1: just do away with things? But they're all contributing. So
7:42
Speaker 1: when you're in denial, when you are in disavowal of
7:45
Speaker 1: something or you acknowledge, oh, yeah, it's there, but, you know,
7:48
Speaker 1: big deal. Or they dissociate these realities. That stuff's going
7:53
Speaker 1: to come back to bite us. So that's one problem.
8:00
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That we're in denial about the various ways
8:05
Speaker 3: that we're behaving destructively. You know, there's the individual level, right?
8:10
Speaker 3: Because any one of us can kind of move in
8:13
Speaker 3: and out of denial about something like climate change as
8:16
Speaker 3: we move through our lives. But the truth is, and
8:18
Speaker 3: this is a very hard thing, I think, is that
8:21
Speaker 3: as an individual, if you say, well, this must not continue,
8:27
Speaker 3: you know, I've got to do something that what a
8:31
Speaker 3: single individual can do is really limited. You know, somehow
8:35
Speaker 3: there has to be, there has to be a collective solution.
8:41
Speaker 3: There has to be collective action to address it. And
8:44
Speaker 3: I think that's a very, very hard thing.
8:47
Speaker 1: Yes, it is. That's why I coined the thought of
8:52
Speaker 1: this is a collective, you know, bystander disorder at one point.
8:58
Speaker 1: I mean, like we, Most people are aware, I mean,
9:03
Speaker 1: most educated people are aware of the dangers, yet they're
9:08
Speaker 1: willing to either deny them, to acknowledge them, but to
9:15
Speaker 1: minimize their impact, or they're quick to intellectualize them away
9:21
Speaker 1: if they're just not completely overwhelmed, that they just dissociate,
9:25
Speaker 1: it's too big of a problem to fix, so let
9:29
Speaker 1: others deal with it I can't handle it. But you're right.
9:36
Speaker 1: There needs to be collective action. But how do you
9:38
Speaker 1: mobilize people on a grand scale? It would have to
9:44
Speaker 1: be governments that are making these ultimate decisions. And that
9:50
Speaker 1: means that it's citizens who vote if they're not from
9:55
Speaker 1: an oppressed nation or subjugated as a people, we have
10:01
Speaker 1: to get people in there that are willing to make
10:06
Speaker 1: the sacrifices needed to save us.
10:11
Speaker 3: And I'm so aware that I was sort of coming
10:15
Speaker 3: of age in the 80s.
10:16
Speaker 1: And I....
10:18
Speaker 3: You know, we were all very, very worried about nuclear war.
10:24
Speaker 3: And at times it seemed like it was just going
10:27
Speaker 3: to be imminent or inevitable, you know, in the 80s
10:30
Speaker 3: that there might be, you know, nuclear destruction, mutual destruction
10:36
Speaker 3: between the United States and the Soviet Union. And somehow
10:40
Speaker 3: we slipped through that. And now, of course, the problem
10:44
Speaker 3: of nuclear weapons has not at all gone away. But
10:48
Speaker 3: Since that time, climate change, as you pointed out, has
10:52
Speaker 3: really come into focus. And that's another enormous existential issue.
10:57
Speaker 3: Ecological degradation and, you know, large scale die offs of
11:05
Speaker 3: species that, you know, is sort of unprecedented even in
11:11
Speaker 3: geologic time. And now there's a new existential threat. which
11:19
Speaker 3: is the possible existential threat of AI. Again, it's something
11:25
Speaker 3: that I as an individual can do very, very little about.
11:31
Speaker 3: And it seems to me that as per your thesis,
11:34
Speaker 3: we have these companies that are racing toward improving this AI,
11:40
Speaker 3: which if they succeed, I think The AI will inevitably
11:44
Speaker 3: have the capability to destroy us, and it's not clear
11:47
Speaker 3: that they will have a reason not to.
11:50
Speaker 1: Well, that's a dismal thought, isn't it? The issue is,
11:56
Speaker 1: and this is, of course, highly debated right now, but
11:59
Speaker 1: the issue is whether or not a machine can develop
12:02
Speaker 1: a sense of agency and develop a sense of self-consciousness
12:07
Speaker 1: that would then at least mimic a human being. And
12:14
Speaker 1: so the real issue is whether or not, if it
12:20
Speaker 1: attains that, what kind of entity will it be? Will
12:24
Speaker 1: it be like a human being with every, you know,
12:29
Speaker 1: internally conflicted, driven motivations to want to exploit other people
12:37
Speaker 1: for its own gain? So... I don't think machines are
12:43
Speaker 1: conscious at this, at least at this point. I would
12:46
Speaker 1: be shocked. Even if they were, I mean, we have
12:50
Speaker 1: to define what we mean by consciousness, but would they
12:54
Speaker 1: have an inner sense of subjectivity, a unique relation to
13:00
Speaker 1: their own interior? Would they have emotions and feelings and
13:05
Speaker 1: all of this that would drive, would they desire I mean,
13:11
Speaker 1: these are some big questions. So if it does get
13:15
Speaker 1: to the point that they are autonomous, then the issue
13:17
Speaker 1: will be the control problem. How do we control something?
13:22
Speaker 1: And if there's any indication that it can become autonomous,
13:27
Speaker 1: then it should be shut down now.
13:31
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I've been... rather obsessively keeping track of this.
13:36
Speaker 3: And I think there is real cause for concern. And
13:40
Speaker 3: of course, for the past few days, we're recording on
13:43
Speaker 3: April 19th. In the past few days, there's been this
13:45
Speaker 3: news that's come out about this mythos system that was
13:50
Speaker 3: built to try to safeguard against hacking attempts. But it's
13:58
Speaker 3: so good. I mean, in order to safeguard, it has
14:01
Speaker 3: to know how to do it. And Basically, if it
14:03
Speaker 3: falls in the wrong hands, it would be disastrous. So
14:06
Speaker 3: now they've slowed down the release of it. But, you know,
14:11
Speaker 3: there are problems. They talk about problems with alignment. It's
14:15
Speaker 3: pretty clear when they've tested models that these models, you know,
14:19
Speaker 3: often go rogue and kind of propagate bad behavior among
14:24
Speaker 3: themselves in a way that we don't really understand. And
14:27
Speaker 3: there's an issue of what they call scheming, you know, so...
14:32
Speaker 3: They've run these tests on these models where they say
14:34
Speaker 3: they're going to shut them down, but they give them
14:36
Speaker 3: access to company email. And the majority of the time,
14:40
Speaker 3: the system will choose to blackmail rather than to be
14:47
Speaker 3: shut down. And they've also run models like simulations with
14:52
Speaker 3: AIs and, you know, some kind of world... friction scenario
14:58
Speaker 3: where the AI will choose to use nuclear weapons some
15:02
Speaker 3: vast proportion of the time. I mean, these are just
15:04
Speaker 3: simulations at this point, obviously. But it doesn't look good.
15:09
Speaker 3: I mean, there's new studies coming out every day and it's,
15:14
Speaker 3: you know, there's a lot of cause for concern and
15:17
Speaker 3: we don't understand them. You know, it's not, some people think, well,
15:21
Speaker 3: we've programmed them, but that's not exactly how it works.
15:24
Speaker 3: I'm not up on it enough to be able to
15:26
Speaker 3: explain how it works, but we've sort of created this
15:30
Speaker 3: and then set it loose and it's kind of doing
15:32
Speaker 3: its own thing. And at the same time that they're
15:35
Speaker 3: developing AI, there are other people that are working on
15:38
Speaker 3: trying to understand how AI works, which is, I mean,
15:42
Speaker 3: it's fascinating, but it's certainly concerning. But I think that,
15:47
Speaker 3: you know, the reason I wanted to raise it is
15:48
Speaker 3: I think that your point that you make repeatedly in
15:53
Speaker 3: this book kind of applies, that We have real reason
15:57
Speaker 3: to be concerned. And yet we are ignoring that and
16:03
Speaker 3: plunging forward. And I mean, there are certainly reasons, strategic
16:08
Speaker 3: reasons to plunge forward. I mean, for one thing, we're
16:10
Speaker 3: racing to develop super intelligent AI because if we don't
16:14
Speaker 3: do it first, then China may. So there's that kind
16:18
Speaker 3: of arms race dynamic that was absolutely, it was very
16:24
Speaker 3: much the same thing development of nuclear weapons, of course.
16:28
Speaker 3: You know, so you sort of understand it, but it
16:31
Speaker 3: still is crazy. You know, there's a level, it's kind
16:34
Speaker 3: of psychotic. So what is it about us or nature?
16:39
Speaker 3: I mean, what can we as psychoanalysts bring to bear
16:43
Speaker 3: on this? How can we understand this tendency that we
16:47
Speaker 3: seem to have to race toward our own destruction?
16:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great a great scenario that you painted
16:56
Speaker 1: because it just immediately made me realize if this is
17:01
Speaker 1: something that a machine is doing that is concerned about control, power,
17:07
Speaker 1: killing in a very unreflective manner, then what does that
17:14
Speaker 1: tell us about nature in general, particularly our human nature? So,
17:20
Speaker 1: So if they didn't program these tendencies into computers and
17:28
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, how is it that a machine would want
17:33
Speaker 1: to emulate the same kind of internal tendencies that humans have?
17:39
Speaker 1: So that would tie into a bigger question of what
17:46
Speaker 1: is maybe even a metaphysical question. of what is at
17:50
Speaker 1: play in the human race or even in the universe.
17:55
Speaker 1: And so there tends to be a proclivity toward aggression, killing,
18:03
Speaker 1: and self-destruction at the same time.
18:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question. Is this
18:10
Speaker 3: just sort of in some ways a fundamental law that
18:13
Speaker 3: given certain circumstances, this is what will arise? And that
18:18
Speaker 3: makes me think of, I suppose, a metaphysical question. What
18:22
Speaker 3: is evil and does it exist and how do we
18:24
Speaker 3: understand it?
18:26
Speaker 1: Well, sure. Definitely evil does exist. It's how we want
18:32
Speaker 1: to define it, I think. So is it on the
18:36
Speaker 1: human plane or is it on a supernatural plane? I
18:43
Speaker 1: tend to put the second or the latter aside and
18:48
Speaker 1: I think that People are innately destructive and innately evil.
18:53
Speaker 1: And it's about taming those forces within, which, of course,
18:58
Speaker 1: is a very Jungian idea with the notion of shadow, complexes,
19:04
Speaker 1: and forces. But you also can't have the good without
19:11
Speaker 1: the evil. I mean, they're dialectically related and they're mutually implicative.
19:16
Speaker 1: They're always operating. Everything is, of course, an interplay of
19:21
Speaker 1: oppositions in the sense. But are certain tendencies that we
19:26
Speaker 1: might characterize as innately horrendous or odious, are they all
19:34
Speaker 1: ultimately destructive? No. It's interesting that we have to kill
19:40
Speaker 1: in order to eat or to live. I mean, these
19:44
Speaker 1: are fundamental things. you know, aspects of living. So what
19:53
Speaker 1: do we do, though, when you have evil that's personified
19:57
Speaker 1: in a state, when you have psychopathic leaders running the
20:01
Speaker 1: world and that are indiscriminately continuing to get us into
20:07
Speaker 1: wars or kill innocent civilians as casualties. These are more,
20:15
Speaker 1: I think, in line with the psychoanalytic sensibility rather than,
20:19
Speaker 1: let's say, a theological argument. We could certainly go to
20:24
Speaker 1: that level. There's a lot of apocalyptic thinking that's based on,
20:29
Speaker 1: you know, scatological kinds of ways of looking at the
20:34
Speaker 1: end of the world. That could very much be operative
20:37
Speaker 1: in certain people's psyches, that this is a divine order.
20:45
Speaker 1: And doesn't that sound perverted, that God would want to
20:50
Speaker 1: kill his children to bring about an end in that way?
20:54
Speaker 3: Boy, there's so many places to go with that. But
20:57
Speaker 3: just sticking for a second on evil and kind of
21:00
Speaker 3: a psychoanalytic understanding of that. I mean, of course, as
21:03
Speaker 3: you mentioned, Jung talked about shadow. And Jung was also
21:08
Speaker 3: very clear that he thought that evil existed and wasn't
21:13
Speaker 3: simply the absence of good. So he had some discussions,
21:17
Speaker 3: some sort of theological discussions. You know, there's some doctrines
21:21
Speaker 3: that say that evil that evil is simply the absence
21:25
Speaker 3: of good. But Jung said, no, no, no, there's such
21:27
Speaker 3: a force. It sort of has a positive existence. It
21:32
Speaker 3: has its own existence. It's not just the absence of
21:35
Speaker 3: something else. And you better be aware of it. Otherwise,
21:39
Speaker 3: it will overtake you. You know, you have to be
21:42
Speaker 3: aware of it, Jung said, as a potential or a
21:46
Speaker 3: reality even within yourself, not just as something that exists
21:50
Speaker 3: out there. So I think, you know, what a Jungian
21:53
Speaker 3: might say in response to, what Jung might say in
21:58
Speaker 3: response to your book would be the imperative that each
22:03
Speaker 3: of us would do our own psychological work, especially on
22:06
Speaker 3: withdrawing the projection of the shadow on others. And of course,
22:10
Speaker 3: you know, Eric Neumann wrote Depth Psychology and a New
22:14
Speaker 3: Ethic shortly after World War II. And he said, you know,
22:19
Speaker 3: we used to deal with things that we didn't like
22:21
Speaker 3: by projecting our shadow on them. And I want to
22:24
Speaker 3: come to one of the chapters in your book about this.
22:27
Speaker 3: He said, that's no longer going to work. We're going
22:29
Speaker 3: to destroy each other if we keep doing that. So
22:31
Speaker 3: we have to do this shadow work. So in a sense,
22:34
Speaker 3: that's really kind of optimistic in a way, because it says,
22:38
Speaker 3: here's something we can do. And it's something we can
22:41
Speaker 3: all do. And Jung said, you know, at one point,
22:44
Speaker 3: Someone asked Jung, will humanity survive? And he said, well,
22:48
Speaker 3: it kind of hangs by a thin thread, but if
22:50
Speaker 3: enough people do the psychological work and withdraw the shadow protection,
22:54
Speaker 3: then I think we might squeak by. So that is actually,
22:59
Speaker 3: you know, a fairly, as I said, optimistic and empowering
23:04
Speaker 3: read on things because it does say, look, there's something
23:06
Speaker 3: that each of us as individuals can do. I think
23:10
Speaker 3: that it's harder to do that than we think, because
23:14
Speaker 3: I think a lot of us look at some of
23:16
Speaker 3: the evil in the world and we set out to
23:18
Speaker 3: correct it. And it's very hard not to just point
23:20
Speaker 3: a finger and say, it's the Trump administration, it's these guys, it's,
23:24
Speaker 3: you know, that kind of like activist fervor. But actually,
23:28
Speaker 3: if we get too far into that, we're just doing
23:31
Speaker 3: more shadow projection. So it takes a certain kind of
23:34
Speaker 3: real discipline. to constantly say, where is that in me?
23:39
Speaker 3: Where is that in me? Where is that in me?
23:42
Speaker 3: But I'm wondering if I can ask you, so I've
23:44
Speaker 3: just sort of maybe laid out a Jungian way of
23:47
Speaker 3: thinking about evil, but what would Freud say about evil
23:52
Speaker 3: in the soul of mankind? What would be a Freudian
23:55
Speaker 3: understanding of that? I mean, it would have to do
23:56
Speaker 3: with the id, no?
23:58
Speaker 1: I would think that Freud would certainly have views that
24:04
Speaker 1: are very similar, to Jungian understanding. There's nothing that's incompatible
24:11
Speaker 1: with the two systems in that way. Freud would likely
24:17
Speaker 1: start with what he felt was the root of the psyche,
24:23
Speaker 1: and that is the dialectic between the drives. So would
24:30
Speaker 1: it ever be Eros or a life force and the
24:34
Speaker 1: death drive? and that these are working in tandem, so
24:39
Speaker 1: hence they're dialectical as well, they're opposites, but they also
24:42
Speaker 1: come out of the same spot, as you rightfully pointed out,
24:48
Speaker 1: the unconscious. And so, like anything in life, I mean,
24:55
Speaker 1: the psyche is a developmental achievement, so we're not born
24:58
Speaker 1: this way. We become and evolve, and we have to
25:04
Speaker 1: grapple with these more primitive forces in us. At the
25:09
Speaker 1: same time, they are a life force. They have to
25:13
Speaker 1: be modified. They have to be differentiated. They have to
25:17
Speaker 1: be then applied in very positive ways. And this is
25:21
Speaker 1: why we have civilizations that are, you know, able to
25:25
Speaker 1: survive because they end up improving. We were becoming much
25:32
Speaker 1: more ethical at, spiritual people in terms of the human
25:39
Speaker 1: race in many ways, even though there's all these regressive
25:42
Speaker 1: retrograde forces that are operative.
25:46
Speaker 3: So you see some sort of evolution?
25:48
Speaker 1: Well, evolution can be described in many ways. One could
25:55
Speaker 1: look at it in terms of our embodiment, of course.
26:00
Speaker 1: You can't deny the fact that we're embodied. And One
26:04
Speaker 1: can also look at it psychologically that we evolve and
26:10
Speaker 1: that based upon our values, based upon our identifications, based
26:15
Speaker 1: upon our inner experiences and what we cherish more, then
26:23
Speaker 1: these are exalted ideals and values that in many ways
26:30
Speaker 1: we have advanced. I mean, the notion of of what
26:34
Speaker 1: is justice, you know, we're having fairness in terms of
26:38
Speaker 1: laws and, you know, in terms of the psyche that's
26:41
Speaker 1: oriented toward a religious attitude or an aesthetic one or
26:48
Speaker 1: a philosophically inclined one. I mean, there's definitely an evolution
26:54
Speaker 1: in the sense that we're not just simply animals.
26:57
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, there's that famous Martin Luther King quote,
27:01
Speaker 3: the arc of the moral universe is long, but it
27:03
Speaker 3: bends toward justice. And sometimes I think that's really true, right?
27:07
Speaker 3: I'm kind of a history buff. And so, you know,
27:11
Speaker 3: I like reading about, you know, things that happened 500
27:15
Speaker 3: years or so ago. And if you look at, you know,
27:17
Speaker 3: what was considered, you know, justice, say, back in Tudor England,
27:22
Speaker 3: you know, if you didn't go along with the king,
27:24
Speaker 3: you might get boiled alive or something like that. And Now,
27:28
Speaker 3: that wouldn't stand. Like, no one would say that that
27:31
Speaker 3: was okay. The horrible things might still happen, but I
27:34
Speaker 3: think there's a sensibility, you know, that we all, we
27:38
Speaker 3: would all agree that that's not okay. And the recent,
27:41
Speaker 3: you know, past 10 years or so kind of cancel culture.
27:43
Speaker 3: I mean, I know a lot of people have suffered
27:46
Speaker 3: greatly because of cancel culture, and I don't want to
27:48
Speaker 3: minimize it. People have lost jobs and they've lost reputations.
27:52
Speaker 3: And some people have been, you know, terribly harmed by it.
27:56
Speaker 3: But it used to be that if you went against
27:58
Speaker 3: what the crowd thought, you maybe got stoned or something worse. And,
28:03
Speaker 3: you know, so now maybe you get kicked off Twitter.
28:05
Speaker 3: You know, it's like, I mean, again, I don't want
28:08
Speaker 3: to minimize that there's been real harm done, but it
28:11
Speaker 3: is different. You know, you lose your job versus you
28:13
Speaker 3: lose your life. Of course, in some places in the world,
28:16
Speaker 3: you would still lose your life for saying the wrong thing.
28:18
Speaker 3: But it does give you a sense that there has
28:21
Speaker 3: been some kind of movement forward. And yet, of course,
28:25
Speaker 3: some of the worst atrocities in human history have occurred
28:30
Speaker 3: in recent times. So that's a paradox.
28:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sure is. On one hand, we could say
28:39
Speaker 1: in many ways we're the most enlightened ethical species alive.
28:45
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, we're the only one that
28:48
Speaker 1: takes pleasure in killing people. And Other species don't. So
28:56
Speaker 1: the idea in my mind is that all of this
29:01
Speaker 1: is rooted in pathos or suffering. You know, to be
29:06
Speaker 1: human is to suffer. And it is to find ways
29:10
Speaker 1: of ameliorating that givenness of our existence. And, you know,
29:18
Speaker 1: some of us are able to sublimate this to some
29:22
Speaker 1: degree in very successful ways. Others succumb to their pathology,
29:29
Speaker 1: and they then enact those destructive forces, whether it be,
29:35
Speaker 1: like you mentioned earlier, projecting them outwardly, which is, of course,
29:39
Speaker 1: very easy to do. It's hard to, again, use the language,
29:45
Speaker 1: the Jungian language, since I'm on your show, of holding
29:49
Speaker 1: the tension of opposites, right?
29:50
Speaker 3: Yeah.
29:52
Speaker 1: There are these forces going on here, and you just
29:54
Speaker 1: can't just rush in and take one side without analyzing
29:58
Speaker 1: and paying attention to the other side, and not simply
30:05
Speaker 1: wanting to say one side is superior, the other is
30:09
Speaker 1: bad and should be eliminated. That's the basic mechanism of splitting.
30:14
Speaker 1: And we all do it because it's the way the
30:18
Speaker 1: nature of the psyche is organized. On one hand, the
30:22
Speaker 1: very nature of thought, of thinking itself is based upon divisions.
30:29
Speaker 1: of identity and difference. And then when you have all
30:35
Speaker 1: these emotional and passionate or desirous conflicts that you're then
30:41
Speaker 1: evacuating onto the designated evil other who's that person over there,
30:46
Speaker 1: that's an easy way of resolving the internal split. But
30:54
Speaker 1: it's never going to work because the other guy is
30:57
Speaker 1: going to also hate you. And they're going to be
31:02
Speaker 1: coming for you no matter what. And getting back to
31:06
Speaker 1: your earlier point, we're not only stockpiling nuclear arms, we're
31:11
Speaker 1: modernizing them.
31:14
Speaker 3: Oh, God.
31:15
Speaker 1: Just in case, the comment you made about the AI race,
31:23
Speaker 1: the mere thought that you would say, if we don't
31:25
Speaker 1: get there first, China will and they're going to kill us,
31:29
Speaker 1: is a paranoid position. Like, well, why would they kill us?
31:33
Speaker 1: I mean, the way things are construed is, it's basic
31:39
Speaker 1: to human nature, I understand it, but it's ultimately simple.
31:46
Speaker 1: It's binary logic that is certainly not a sophisticated or
31:53
Speaker 1: mature way of thinking about complexities or issues complexifications in
31:59
Speaker 1: the world.
32:00
Speaker 3: You know, there's something about that, though, like taking the
32:03
Speaker 3: paranoid position, assuming that the other guy is out to
32:06
Speaker 3: get you and stockpiling your nuclear weapons. And I'm thinking
32:11
Speaker 3: about how this plays out even as just, you know,
32:13
Speaker 3: relationships with people in our lives, right? Like when trust
32:16
Speaker 3: breaks down or something and you just like assume the
32:19
Speaker 3: other guy's out to get you. And then, you know,
32:21
Speaker 3: are you naive? If you don't become, you know, take
32:24
Speaker 3: a defensive stance and stockpile, you know, metaphorically stockpile your
32:29
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons. You know, sometimes people do come for you,
32:33
Speaker 3: and then you got to be ready, right?
32:35
Speaker 1: Well, that's a survival mechanism, sure.
32:38
Speaker 3: Yeah.
32:41
Speaker 1: Just in case somebody busts in my house, I, you know,
32:43
Speaker 1: I have a riot shotgun waiting for them, you know, so.
32:50
Speaker 1: The paranoid position, though, can take on its own autonomous life. And,
32:57
Speaker 1: You can distort what's really happening quite easily. As you
33:01
Speaker 1: put it earlier, you can enter into some kind of
33:04
Speaker 1: psychotic universe. It's easier, of course, to do that when
33:09
Speaker 1: it's on big scales that are impersonal, that we're not
33:15
Speaker 1: directly involved on the ground with.
33:19
Speaker 3: Because it's easier to project then, right? It's easier to
33:22
Speaker 3: see other people as other people. When it's not someone
33:26
Speaker 3: that you're directly connected with. And then there's the mass psychology, too, which,
33:31
Speaker 3: of course, Jung was very distrustful of. But it's that
33:34
Speaker 3: dynamic of, you know, when you're in a big crowd
33:37
Speaker 3: and feeling gets very contagious and there can be this
33:42
Speaker 3: kind of lowering of consciousness down to the kind of
33:46
Speaker 3: lowest common denominator level. Yes.
33:49
Speaker 1: I mean, mass movements are the most dangerous, right? Mm-hmm.
33:53
Speaker 1: They have no brain. They're not rational. It's just raw
33:58
Speaker 1: desire and conflict and passion and emotion that drives group thinking.
34:07
Speaker 3: So here's a question that's occurring to me right now.
34:10
Speaker 3: I mean, can we understand this as largely related to
34:14
Speaker 3: the fact that we as homo sapiens evolved in an
34:20
Speaker 3: environment where there was intergroup competition? I guess I'm going
34:25
Speaker 3: evolutionary psychology.
34:27
Speaker 1: Well, that would certainly be one element of it. Another
34:30
Speaker 1: element is mutual cooperation. So you have to have both
34:37
Speaker 1: sides of the coin operative. So on one hand, yeah,
34:43
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a good example. I mean, like, I
34:45
Speaker 1: am very competitive. I like to argue and I like
34:49
Speaker 1: to win. I mean... At the same time, I'm not
34:53
Speaker 1: going to exploit and harm people that, you know, that
34:57
Speaker 1: I identify with or value. And so just if you
35:02
Speaker 1: were just completely a rogue, you know, selfish, hedonistic narcissist,
35:08
Speaker 1: like there are many, then you're going to just go
35:11
Speaker 1: through life probably, you know, with a whole trail of
35:15
Speaker 1: debris in your wake. But we have also evolved not
35:20
Speaker 1: just out of aggression and competition and rivalry, but as
35:25
Speaker 1: a species, we've had to rely upon one another. We've
35:28
Speaker 1: built societies and civilizations based upon that. So I think
35:33
Speaker 1: they're both operative.
35:35
Speaker 2: Right.
35:35
Speaker 3: And you make that point in your book, too, that
35:38
Speaker 3: kind of prejudice can either bring us together and bind
35:42
Speaker 3: us or it can set us at each other. And
35:46
Speaker 3: it's kind of the same mechanism, right? So there's forces
35:51
Speaker 3: that cause us to feel connected with and kind of
35:55
Speaker 3: pro-social towards those that we see as our kind of confederates.
35:59
Speaker 3: But at the same time, those that we see as other,
36:02
Speaker 3: we can feel and enact great hostility toward. You know,
36:09
Speaker 3: and that's tricky. And I think we also, I think
36:13
Speaker 3: it's good to know that. Like our tendency to sort
36:16
Speaker 3: of other people is, see them as other prejudice, it's
36:21
Speaker 3: sort of a feature, not a bug. And we would
36:26
Speaker 3: do well to come to terms with that. But the
36:28
Speaker 3: interesting thing is, I mean, I just hadn't thought of
36:31
Speaker 3: it and someone said it and I thought, oh my God, right.
36:33
Speaker 3: Part of the difference in the America that I knew
36:38
Speaker 3: growing up until about the mid-90s was it was a
36:46
Speaker 3: different place sort of maybe after about 2000, it felt
36:50
Speaker 3: really different. It felt much more polarized, right? That's where
36:55
Speaker 3: I would say that 2000 election is when it first
36:58
Speaker 3: started feeling really, really polarized. And it only got more so, obviously,
37:04
Speaker 3: now it's incredibly polarized. And someone pointed out that when,
37:08
Speaker 3: before the Soviet Union collapsed... There was an outer entity
37:14
Speaker 3: that was a common enemy. So there was an other
37:17
Speaker 3: that we could all agree, regardless of what we thought
37:21
Speaker 3: about abortion or immigration or any other hot button issue,
37:27
Speaker 3: we could all agree that we didn't want to be
37:30
Speaker 3: like them. And now that's kind of gone away. We
37:33
Speaker 3: don't have that, you know, that sort of that clear
37:37
Speaker 3: opposite anymore. And now it's a little more chaotic and
37:42
Speaker 3: we're fractured from within more. So it's almost like we
37:48
Speaker 3: have to have an other.
37:50
Speaker 1: Well, no matter what, we have to because we're not
37:56
Speaker 1: all the same. And so, you know, difference in any
38:00
Speaker 1: form is automatically going to just, you know, define... who
38:08
Speaker 1: we are in relation to what we are not. And so,
38:11
Speaker 1: you know, again, basic ways of constructing personal and group
38:16
Speaker 1: identities based upon identifications are, on some level, they can
38:22
Speaker 1: be quite simple. This is how you were raised. This
38:25
Speaker 1: is how you grew up. This is the type of
38:27
Speaker 1: community you're in. Are you of the same race, religion,
38:34
Speaker 1: so-called value system?
38:35
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
38:36
Speaker 1: And the minute you introduce any threat to that, splitting
38:43
Speaker 1: and projection and the like get mobilized. But at the
38:48
Speaker 1: same time, we are constantly bombarded with multiple identifications of difference.
38:56
Speaker 1: In fact, you're drawn to difference in many ways. You
39:01
Speaker 1: want to incorporate. You want to appreciate. So it's not
39:05
Speaker 1: a simple binary by any means, but it is like, again,
39:12
Speaker 1: a mechanism for how prejudice plays out. I think ultimately
39:19
Speaker 1: we need to have enemies. We need to have a
39:22
Speaker 1: whipping boy or a post to displace all of our frustrations, rage, disappointment.
39:31
Speaker 1: the hatred that's been welling up that can't be repressed,
39:36
Speaker 1: and take great pleasure in being able to eject it
39:40
Speaker 1: onto some designated symbolic other.
39:43
Speaker 3: Did you ever read a book, it's an older book now,
39:45
Speaker 3: called The Conquest of America?
39:47
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I don't think so.
39:49
Speaker 3: The author's name was Todorov. And I probably shouldn't talk
39:54
Speaker 3: about it because I haven't, I literally haven't read it
39:56
Speaker 3: since like 1986. But it's really stayed with me. I
40:00
Speaker 3: still have it on my bookshelf. So Todorov looked at
40:05
Speaker 3: the conquest of America by, you know, of the conquest
40:08
Speaker 3: of the Aztecs by the Spanish people. And he talked
40:12
Speaker 3: about the sort of outer other. So the Spanish came
40:15
Speaker 3: over under Cortes and like kind of obliterated this whole culture.
40:19
Speaker 3: But then he was looking at the Aztecs and they had,
40:22
Speaker 3: you know, they sacrificed, I guess it was members of
40:26
Speaker 3: their own. I mean, and we know now there's actually
40:29
Speaker 3: like new archaeological evidence that, yeah, they did. They sacrificed
40:33
Speaker 3: a lot of people. But Todorov was sort of saying
40:36
Speaker 3: what you were just saying, like we need to have
40:38
Speaker 3: some enemy. And Todorov was saying like, here's a culture
40:42
Speaker 3: that had a mechanism that was sort of built in for,
40:47
Speaker 3: I guess, kind of projection of whatever needed to be
40:51
Speaker 3: expunged onto these people who were sacrificed. And I think,
40:57
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know, it's within the past year
40:59
Speaker 3: or something, there was some, the new archaeological evidence is like, yeah,
41:02
Speaker 3: they were like, I don't remember, but like huge piles
41:06
Speaker 3: of bodies that were sacrificed versus, this arguably much more
41:11
Speaker 3: destructive thing that the Spanish did by coming over and
41:14
Speaker 3: kind of just wiping out this whole culture. It was
41:16
Speaker 3: really fascinating. It's not a psychology book, but it strikes
41:20
Speaker 3: me as one of the most psychological histories I've ever read.
41:24
Speaker 3: But it's really kind of mapping onto what you're saying. Like,
41:27
Speaker 3: is this just part of our nature? That somehow this
41:31
Speaker 3: is what we need to do is we almost have to,
41:34
Speaker 3: I don't know, manage some aspect of our collective life.
41:40
Speaker 3: through some sort of violence.
41:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, sadly, I can never envision a future devoid of violence, destruction, murder, savagery.
41:55
Speaker 1: I think it's as natural as breathing. You're only going
42:00
Speaker 1: to tame it. And that might be a dismal way
42:06
Speaker 1: of looking at things, but you're getting back to the
42:08
Speaker 1: question of, what is human nature? And that by itself
42:14
Speaker 1: is a universal question. What is something that we all
42:18
Speaker 1: have in common that motivates us, drives us, makes us tick,
42:25
Speaker 1: whatever language you want to use? And that would mean
42:28
Speaker 1: that we have to have some kind of common essence
42:32
Speaker 1: to the psyche. And so I think, again, death and
42:36
Speaker 1: destruction and strife and Whatever terms we want to describe
42:43
Speaker 1: that inner chaos, it has to be channeled. I mean,
42:48
Speaker 1: it's given. We're thrown into this. At the same time,
42:52
Speaker 1: it's not determined. It's not like destined. The end product
42:57
Speaker 1: isn't like a teleologically given outcome. And this is why
43:04
Speaker 1: the interplay of opposites and tensions in the psyche have
43:08
Speaker 1: to work themselves through. in various permutations. And eventually those
43:18
Speaker 1: who don't learn how to inhibit, bridle their destructive forces
43:24
Speaker 1: within are going to be a casualty because the reality
43:28
Speaker 1: principle will be coming, crashing home. You know, you're going
43:33
Speaker 1: to go to jail. You're going to lose your job.
43:35
Speaker 1: You're going to whatever the negative consequence will be. Let's,
43:41
Speaker 1: kill our planet, set it on fire. At the same time,
43:46
Speaker 1: we're missing all the positive significance of the negative. You
43:52
Speaker 1: have to have that violent factor in order to bring
43:55
Speaker 1: about something that's better, that's on a higher tier. And
44:00
Speaker 1: this is the paradox or the aporia that we encounter,
44:06
Speaker 1: that how is it that violence is a necessary force?
44:11
Speaker 1: to the psyche that brings about a greater good or
44:15
Speaker 1: a higher value. That is important because that's what the
44:20
Speaker 1: whole history of human race is built on, that we've
44:23
Speaker 1: improved ourselves.
44:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm thinking about the sort of psychological fact
44:29
Speaker 3: that there often has to be a kind of, you know,
44:32
Speaker 3: an inner destruction or a sort of inner death before
44:37
Speaker 3: a new attitude can be created, for example. You know,
44:41
Speaker 3: so that truth seems to operate on many levels. And
44:46
Speaker 3: how do we make room for that? And know at
44:49
Speaker 3: the same time, as your book points out, that kind
44:52
Speaker 3: of operating in this current environment that we're in, we
44:57
Speaker 3: really are headed perhaps directly towards self-destruction. And will there
45:02
Speaker 3: be something, will we be around to see the new
45:05
Speaker 3: thing come? I mean, we may not be.
45:09
Speaker 1: Well, I hate to be alarmist about matters, but I'm
45:12
Speaker 1: also a realist. And if we can't agree upon truth
45:17
Speaker 1: and reality, or at least empirically validated facts, then we
45:23
Speaker 1: are living in a little fantasy world, delusional land. So
45:28
Speaker 1: I think the writing's on the wall that we need
45:31
Speaker 1: to wake up. We need to overcome our unconsciousness, so
45:36
Speaker 1: to speak, on this issue. And stop the Pollyannish denial
45:44
Speaker 1: or negation of the very thing that's staring us in
45:48
Speaker 1: the face.
45:49
Speaker 3: I gather you're thinking most prominently right now of climate change,
45:53
Speaker 3: is that when you say what's staring us in the face?
45:57
Speaker 1: That, the threat of a global nuclear engagement that's going
46:01
Speaker 1: on over in Iran, you know, and also the AI threat.
46:07
Speaker 1: And of course, all of these things are dependent upon
46:10
Speaker 1: capital you know yeah economic disparities versus those who get
46:16
Speaker 1: to exploit and enrich themselves and that's that's interconnected.
46:25
Speaker 3: And so how do we how do we as individuals
46:29
Speaker 3: what do we do as individuals about that do you
46:32
Speaker 3: think Like, someone listening to this and maybe feeling some despair,
46:38
Speaker 3: what could a single person do?
46:41
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I do have some suggestions in the book.
46:48
Speaker 1: But like you said earlier, what we can do as
46:54
Speaker 1: one person to affect a global change is nil. And
47:00
Speaker 1: we can do things to make us feel better. feel
47:03
Speaker 1: good and do our part. But I would say it
47:09
Speaker 1: was going to have to take, as you pointed out,
47:14
Speaker 1: a collective action on a larger scale. How do we
47:18
Speaker 1: do that? I mean, you could have, of course, grassroots
47:21
Speaker 1: movements where you get a small group of people that
47:25
Speaker 1: at least identify with your values and your aims, and
47:29
Speaker 1: you come together based in principles. and then you, in
47:34
Speaker 1: some ways, like a missionary, try to spread the word,
47:38
Speaker 1: you appeal to people's lives, their current realities, these placating
47:48
Speaker 1: fantasies that aren't real, and no more platitudes. Unfortunately, this
47:56
Speaker 1: is what politics is all about. And if you can
48:01
Speaker 1: at least influence those in political office to align with
48:06
Speaker 1: your goals and your values, then that can be achieved
48:10
Speaker 1: on some level. And people vote people out all the
48:13
Speaker 1: time they don't like and vote people in that they want.
48:16
Speaker 1: We just don't know how the outcome is going to be.
48:19
Speaker 1: Once again, I think it comes down to policy changes,
48:23
Speaker 1: to changing the law. And a number of this comes
48:28
Speaker 1: down again to money. Who's making the money? Who's going
48:32
Speaker 1: to have to give it up? Who's going to have
48:34
Speaker 1: to sacrifice? And who's going to maintain a need for
48:40
Speaker 1: self-interest and greed over a collective ideal?
48:44
Speaker 3: So I want to add something to that. And I'd
48:47
Speaker 3: like to know what you think about this, because I
48:49
Speaker 3: have a, I guess, a pretty strong conviction that one
48:54
Speaker 3: of the things that we need in order to solve
48:57
Speaker 3: these big problems is the ability to to at least
49:01
Speaker 3: talk to each other, even maybe talk to people that
49:04
Speaker 3: we disagree with. And I feel like that has really
49:08
Speaker 3: broken down. And for example, I don't think that it
49:14
Speaker 3: is constructive to simply like point fingers and, you know,
49:19
Speaker 3: rant about how wrong the other guy is. It doesn't
49:23
Speaker 3: really seem to change anything when we do that. And then,
49:28
Speaker 3: you know, we're really just preaching to the choir and
49:30
Speaker 3: the people who already agree with us already agree with us.
49:33
Speaker 3: And we just denounce the other guy more. And, you know,
49:37
Speaker 3: and I honestly think that's kind of going on, at
49:39
Speaker 3: least in American politics, kind of on both sides. And
49:43
Speaker 3: it alarms me because, you know, I think we need
49:47
Speaker 3: to be finding some common ground from which we can
49:51
Speaker 3: move forward. But, you know, and where is that in
49:55
Speaker 3: sort of psychological language? You and I have already referred
49:58
Speaker 3: to these concepts. I mean, I think when we're simply
50:00
Speaker 3: denouncing the other guy, which admittedly is pretty easy to do.
50:05
Speaker 3: But that's more shadow projection, right? And, you know, Jung said,
50:11
Speaker 3: you can't project shadow if there isn't a hook. And
50:14
Speaker 3: there may be a giant hook. I'm not denying that.
50:20
Speaker 3: But I also think that if we're convinced that they're
50:24
Speaker 3: all wrong and that we've got all the answers... We're
50:29
Speaker 3: in problematic territory right there because that only works if
50:33
Speaker 3: it's a dictatorship and we're in charge. And you don't
50:38
Speaker 3: want that system because it'll be their turn to be
50:41
Speaker 3: in charge at some point too. And that won't be good.
50:46
Speaker 3: So I think that part of addressing this is... to
50:53
Speaker 3: do what I said before Jung said was necessary, which
50:56
Speaker 3: is to withdraw shadow projection. And then the other part
50:59
Speaker 3: is the phrase that you brought up, to be able
51:03
Speaker 3: to hold the tension of the opposites, not to collapse into,
51:06
Speaker 3: to throw out another psychobabble term, kind of the paranoid
51:11
Speaker 3: schizoid position of Melanie Klein, where all the bad's out
51:15
Speaker 3: there and all the good's in here. And, you know,
51:18
Speaker 3: I'm going to just wall myself off because everything out
51:20
Speaker 3: there is bad. But to be able to imagine that
51:24
Speaker 3: even the people that we find most execrable might, we
51:29
Speaker 3: could at least grant that they may have good intentions,
51:33
Speaker 3: even if we might think, you know, we have very
51:36
Speaker 3: different ways of going about things or something like that.
51:39
Speaker 3: But it's like if we're going to address a problem
51:41
Speaker 3: like climate change, simply talking about how bad the other
51:46
Speaker 3: guy is, is not going to help. And in fact,
51:49
Speaker 3: it's probably going to make things worse. So I don't
51:51
Speaker 3: know if you have any thoughts about that.
51:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think that's a really excellent point. The
51:59
Speaker 1: issue is how do we create or foster an environment
52:06
Speaker 1: where people can come together and they can mutually understand
52:10
Speaker 1: each other and then they can then show some form
52:14
Speaker 1: of recognition of the other. Now this is of course,
52:19
Speaker 1: extremely difficult, but this is kind of like what we
52:23
Speaker 1: do as therapists. So how do we subject or submit
52:29
Speaker 1: the citizens of the world to a well-intended therapist who
52:36
Speaker 1: would like to heal the split? Well, you have to
52:41
Speaker 1: first get people willing to be in the same room
52:44
Speaker 1: together and just like anyone coming into the consulting room,
52:51
Speaker 1: I want to understand their experience. So it would be
52:55
Speaker 1: like to use the notion of hospitality. You're willing to
53:02
Speaker 1: invite the enemy into your house under certain conditions that
53:08
Speaker 1: you want to have a talk and you'll even feed
53:11
Speaker 1: them a meal. And yet there's certain rules to be
53:15
Speaker 1: observed while being in my house. The notion, though, is
53:20
Speaker 1: whether or not you can get anyone to step across
53:23
Speaker 1: the threshold to even have that initial dialogue.
53:27
Speaker 3: That's really interesting because you've just helped me with something.
53:31
Speaker 3: Because in a lot of traditional cultures, there is such
53:34
Speaker 3: an incredibly strong value around hospitality. There are many traditions
53:42
Speaker 3: and they're sacrosanct, you know, about how you treat a guest.
53:49
Speaker 3: And there are myths about it and there are fairy
53:52
Speaker 3: tales about it. There's something profound about it. And I
53:55
Speaker 3: think you've just helped me understand, you know, it must
53:59
Speaker 3: have something to do with exactly what we've been talking about,
54:01
Speaker 3: that in some way, the cultural artifact of hospitality somehow
54:10
Speaker 3: mitigates some of our more primitive, aggressive urges. You know,
54:17
Speaker 3: that you absolutely, for example, the duty of the host
54:23
Speaker 3: to welcome the person in and feed them a meal
54:25
Speaker 3: or whatever and offer them a place to sleep, it's sacrosanct.
54:30
Speaker 3: And that would be an interesting thing to explore, you know.
54:36
Speaker 3: And to carry that into our political lives, like when
54:39
Speaker 3: you meet someone whom you disagree with, can you invoke
54:43
Speaker 3: that archetype of the guest, you know? And even though
54:48
Speaker 3: you're a stranger to me, can I welcome you into
54:52
Speaker 3: my psychic home, at least for a meal? You don't
54:55
Speaker 3: have to move in. But metaphorically, could I imagine sort
55:00
Speaker 3: of breaking bread with you, you know?
55:02
Speaker 1: Yes.
55:04
Speaker 3: That's a really interesting question. What else would you like
55:09
Speaker 3: us to know?
55:10
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, Lisa, you just made me, you know, think
55:15
Speaker 1: about I think when people come together under conflict, they
55:21
Speaker 1: really want their inner pain to go away. They really
55:24
Speaker 1: don't want it. And when you're hearing someone else's hardship
55:30
Speaker 1: and you realize that they're a human being just like me,
55:34
Speaker 1: you can see their soul. And if you can have empathy,
55:46
Speaker 1: and some identification with what they're going through, it makes
55:49
Speaker 1: it a lot easier, I think, to connect with people,
55:53
Speaker 1: even if you disagree. So that's why it's so much
55:59
Speaker 1: more difficult to just be aggressive toward another when you're
56:02
Speaker 1: in their presence. And ultimately, there has to be a
56:06
Speaker 1: desire to want to have some peace about these things.
56:09
Speaker 1: You want to get rid of things. You don't want
56:12
Speaker 1: to harbor it anymore. And if you could come to
56:15
Speaker 1: some kind of, mutual recognition or negotiation around our differences
56:22
Speaker 1: and perhaps even have a shared identification that you both
56:25
Speaker 1: can come, you know, whether a side can come and
56:30
Speaker 1: connect with, then there's some shared meaning in that.
56:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like recognizing our common humanity, you know,
56:40
Speaker 3: rather than recognizing the group To which we belong, you know,
56:45
Speaker 3: I'm an American and you're a Canadian. But just recognizing
56:50
Speaker 3: that kind of that universality of being human is part
56:54
Speaker 3: of the antidote, isn't it? Of really being able to
56:58
Speaker 3: receive one another, even in our differences.
57:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's well, very well put.
57:06
Speaker 3: Jung said, the most important political, social, and spiritual work
57:10
Speaker 3: we can do is to withdraw the projection of our
57:13
Speaker 3: own shadow onto others.
57:15
Speaker 1: It's a tall order, isn't it?
57:18
Speaker 3: It is. Because we don't know we're doing it, you know?
57:22
Speaker 3: We don't even know we're doing it. And I think
57:27
Speaker 3: that's part of what needs to happen after reading your book.
57:30
Speaker 3: But it's It's not the only thing, is it? Because
57:35
Speaker 3: you also referenced just a minute ago that we need
57:40
Speaker 3: to get out of our fantasy world and accept sort
57:45
Speaker 3: of objective facts about things, which is easier said than done,
57:52
Speaker 3: because it can be very hard to wade through the
57:55
Speaker 3: misinformation to decide what is reality here, I mean, certainly
58:03
Speaker 3: that's true with climate change. There's lots of people, if
58:06
Speaker 3: you look for it, you can find people who say
58:08
Speaker 3: there's nothing to worry about. That information would not be correct,
58:12
Speaker 3: but there's plenty of information out there like that. So
58:17
Speaker 3: figuring out what to believe these days is hard. But
58:20
Speaker 3: if we were all working off the same set of
58:23
Speaker 3: facts and we weren't giving into stories that suit our
58:30
Speaker 3: desire for denial, that would also probably move us forward.
58:35
Speaker 1: It sure would. But unfortunately, my cynicism comes out here
58:42
Speaker 1: because I don't think the world masses are capable of
58:45
Speaker 1: doing this on a grand scale. I mean, most people are,
58:51
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying this in a negative way, but
58:55
Speaker 1: they're not very reflective. They just go through their life.
58:58
Speaker 1: You know, they do things for the most part. They
59:02
Speaker 1: might be decent people in their heart. They're just not incredibly... self-reflective.
59:12
Speaker 1: And so it's much easier just to have a conditioned
59:15
Speaker 1: way of being told this is the way things are
59:17
Speaker 1: rather than have to go through the laborious task of
59:22
Speaker 1: having to dissect the information yourself, think critically about it,
59:27
Speaker 1: and before forming a judgment. The mind just wants immediate release, right?
59:33
Speaker 1: It's easier just to think in terms of basic splitting, good, bad.
59:40
Speaker 1: But if they were, if more people became more self-conscious
59:43
Speaker 1: about these things, I mean, like you point out, you
59:47
Speaker 1: don't know what's real from what's being manufactured by a
59:50
Speaker 1: bad actor now. You don't know what's going on in
59:54
Speaker 1: all our media, in all our news outlets, everything. It's
59:58
Speaker 1: just like, It's also too much for most people to
1:00:02
Speaker 1: be tracking what's going on every second of the day.
1:00:07
Speaker 1: And it's depleting to the psyche, too. You're constantly submerged
1:00:12
Speaker 1: in negativity. Unless you're watching kitten videos, you're getting the
1:00:20
Speaker 1: world news, and it's not pretty.
1:00:23
Speaker 3: Speaking of which, I have a sort of final question
1:00:27
Speaker 3: to ask you, I think, about this book. What was
1:00:30
Speaker 3: it like writing it? Because it's pretty confrontive. I imagine
1:00:35
Speaker 3: being steeped in it was difficult.
1:00:39
Speaker 1: Well, I guess as I mentioned earlier, I tend to
1:00:42
Speaker 1: meditate on things to try to resolve them in my
1:00:45
Speaker 1: own mind. And that takes me to places that I'm
1:00:51
Speaker 1: surprised I'm going to go. Because I never know what,
1:00:56
Speaker 1: you know, I'm the type of of a thinker and
1:00:58
Speaker 1: a writer that I never plan out what I want
1:01:01
Speaker 1: to say. It's all based on an, an organic process
1:01:05
Speaker 1: at the time. And this is where it kind of
1:01:09
Speaker 1: led me. Unfortunately, I couldn't get, I couldn't get the
1:01:13
Speaker 1: transcendent function to, to men that, to bring everything together
1:01:19
Speaker 1: where there was a happy ending. That's what I'm hoping.
1:01:23
Speaker 1: I want, I'd like to have the happy ending, you know, where,
1:01:27
Speaker 1: wherever we wake up from our collective denial.
1:01:31
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, I would like that happy ending, too.
1:01:36
Speaker 3: And I don't know, perhaps our podcast episode is a
1:01:41
Speaker 3: drop in the bucket toward that. So we'll have more
1:01:45
Speaker 3: information about you and your work in the show notes,
1:01:47
Speaker 3: but is there anything, you know, tell us where listeners
1:01:51
Speaker 3: can find out more about you or maybe what you're
1:01:53
Speaker 3: working on next?
1:01:55
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, you can... you can google my name and
1:01:59
Speaker 1: i'm sure i'll pop up somewhere i do have a
1:02:02
Speaker 1: web website and yeah currently i'm working on a few
1:02:09
Speaker 1: projects my my next book that's coming out is actually
1:02:14
Speaker 1: based upon my career uh treating you know severe psychopathology
1:02:22
Speaker 1: so it's it's kind of my uh retirement present to
1:02:29
Speaker 1: myself where I get to reflect upon my career and
1:02:34
Speaker 1: having specialized in treating, you know, psychosis and severe trauma
1:02:40
Speaker 1: and extreme states. I'm reflecting on that in this book.
1:02:44
Speaker 3: Wow. Well, we'll look forward to that. Well, thank you
1:02:47
Speaker 3: so much for coming on. And it was just been
1:02:51
Speaker 3: an honor and a pleasure to be with you today.
1:02:54
Speaker 1: Well, you're such a gracious host, and I really enjoyed
1:02:57
Speaker 1: our conversation. Thanks so much.
1:03:01
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
1:03:05
Speaker 3: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com. If
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