Latest / Thinking Class / #062 - Dr. Roy Baumeister - The Power Of Culture: How We Evolved To Live In The Tribe

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#062 - Dr. Roy Baumeister - The Power Of Culture: How We Evolved To Live In The Tribe · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello classmates and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm John Gillam and today I'm speaking with Dr.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Roy Baumeister.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Roy is one of the world's most prolific and influential psychologists.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: He has published over 700 scientific works, including over 40 books.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: In 2013 he received the highest award given by the Association for Psychological Science, the William James Fellow Award, in recognition of his lifetime achievements.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: As of 2023, Roy holds affiliations with Harvard University in the USA, Constructor University Bremen in Germany, Florida State University, also in the US, Better Up, Inc.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: US, and the University of Bamberg in Germany.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: His 2011 book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength with John Tierney was a New York Times bestseller.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: He has appeared on television shows such as Dateline NBC and ABC's 2020, as well as on PBS, National Public Radio, and countless local news shows.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: His work has been covered or quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, The Economist, Newsweek, Times, Psychology Today, Self, Men's Health, Business Week, and many other outlets.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: In this episode, Roy and I think out loud about why culture is a fundamental aspect of human existence, how it shapes individual identity, social structures, and helps our understanding of mortality, the role of language in culture, whether the cultural homogenization of the internet and the modern world is causing people to feel disoriented, why self-esteem is driven by cultural belonging, how culture provides a defense against death, and the shifting role of religion in contemporary society.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: We also talk about the evolution of self-control, how technology impacts behaviour, how the Academy has overseen a lowering of standards in education, how cultural shifts affect self-regulation and the implications for future generations, and how Roy's own beliefs have changed over time, particularly regarding feminism and much, much more.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was a real pleasure to meet Roy and to get into the finer details of his specialist topics of culture and self-control.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: The distracting nature of the world we have built for ourselves means we don't often give ourselves the opportunity to think about why culture is so important to us and the benefits of practicing it and continuing it.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: For our self-esteem, for cooperation, and even for our longevity.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I really hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really wide-ranging discussion.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and make sure to subscribe to the show on YouTube, your favourite podcast platform, and on Substat, because soon paid subscribers will get the opportunity to contribute to a special QA behind the paywall.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Let's grow Thinking Class together.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Roy Baumeister, welcome to Thinking Class.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me, Jen.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's my pleasure, and uh you probably need a little introduction for those people who've pulled out your name and this episode amongst the directory of thinking class episodes, because anyone who knows anything about psychology knows you're famous for your work on willpower, self-esteem, self-control, and how they relate to success within an individual's life and also the human morality more broadly.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and this latter point, I suppose, is where I'd like to focus in on today, but specifically in the context of culture and what it is and why we as humans seem to have create so much of it.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And whilst you've written so many books about all of those topics, one of the books I read most recently of yours is called The Cultural Animal, in which case you lay out a few different notions of what culture is deemed to be and how we create it.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you are convinced with the cultural animal theory.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: So perhaps we begin with that.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: What is the cultural animal theory?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: All right, well, that's that's been the foundation of my thinking and my quest to understand the big picture of what human life is all about.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so uh in five words or less, the human mind was created by by nature for culture.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, in other words, we evolved uh to and evolution is driven by what maximizes life, uh survival and reproduction.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and our strategy, every every species has to solve those puzzles, or else it goes extinct, obviously.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Ours solves it in an unusual way.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: We create these social systems with uh lots of shared information, systems of interlocking roles, uh, where different people do their part and understand that.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so uh I think of culture as as the system uh that organizes society.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um cultural animal, the phrase is partly based on the phrase the social animal, which has been used to describe human beings, uh, going back to uh Aristotle, I think, and more recently by uh Aronson.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um so, yes, we are social animals, but there are lots of social animals.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: That doesn't really capture what's unique about human beings.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but culture really does.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: Now, there are arguments that uh several dozen other species have a little bit of culture, uh, by which they mean learned patterns that are passed through the group and passed on to the next generation one way or another.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um so they have a little bit uh uh uh uh of that.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but culture is so central to everything we do.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think of every meal I've eaten in my long life.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's not that I went out and killed something in nature uh or harvested it to feed myself.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: I get my food from grocery stores and restaurants, and I if it's at home, I cook it on stove that's made in factories and uh and so on.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: So even in something as fundamental and universal as eating, our species is totally reordered the way that that it's uh that it's done.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we store food uh in advance rather than having to each day get your food for that day.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um so uh anyway, does that that explain enough?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: It does the idea of culture.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's a a set of you know it's organized, it's a set of institutions.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in modern culture, we've got banks and stores and schools and uh countless other kinds of institutions.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And how how does the individual fit into all of this?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: You've written about how the individual relates to society um and the relationship of a of a person to culture.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: What does it what is what does that interrelationship look like?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well, um, when I was working on that cultural animal book, I came to a surprising realization that you know I'd been brought up reading about you know this long history of individual and society are at odds and the society oppresses the individual.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: The philosopher Rousseau thought, well, we'd be happier if we could all just go back to nature and get rid of all these things.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: And uh uh Sigmund Freud, one of the influential early psychology theorists, uh had similar idea that uh to adjust to living with it together with each other without killing each other, uh we have to make all sorts of internal adjustments that are very difficult.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: So this idea that the individual is helpless or victim of society or is oppressed and so on, I mean, I won't say it's totally wrong, but I think the main point is the opposite.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: What I came to realize is the human mind is very well designed to live in culture, to flourish in culture.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's no accident that people don't live alone uh in the the radical sense.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, some people have their own apartments.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh even in those, they're very enmeshed in lots of social relationships.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so all over the world people choose to live with each other, and they seem very well uh designed uh to do that, to understand our roles, to understand how society works, to cooperate and communicate.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um in I'm not an evolutionary psychologist, but everything starts with evolution, and I've read a lot of that.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: And to me, the two big themes of human evolution, the things that we departed from, even the chimpanzees and our closest relatives, much more cooperation and much more communication.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: And culture is a giant system you can think of as for cooperation and communication, uh that people work together.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: It took me a while to realize this is this economic marketplace is basically uh a system of cooperation.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: We don't think of it that way because we think of you know markets uh where competing forces uh trying to drive each other business, and the seller wants to raise the price, and the buyer wants a lower price.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: We see the antagonisms in there.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: But the seller wants to sell, the buyer wants to buy, if they can find a price that's acceptable to both, they make the deal and then they're both better off.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the essence of cooperation.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: You do something together that produces a net benefit uh to both of you.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: We are huge masters at that.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: Some animals will cooperate a little bit mostly with their immediate kin, their relatives' family.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but uh we work in large corporations where you're cooperating with people you have never even met and you don't know their names or anything.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but somehow uh the corporation works and the airplanes get built, or the uh the bank uh lends money and stays in business and all those things.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Nietzsche has enjoyed somewhat of a renaissance uh amongst well I won't put a label on it, but certainly in the modern world there are lots of people who are now turning toward these philosophers of the past, and in in uh Nietzsche's case, you could probably say the anti-philosopher, because he set himself against all of the West all of the Western uh canon when it came to philosophy.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: But he had a huge um focus on the sovereign individual.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you talked a little bit about the individual being oppressed by society.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And a quote of his, which is eminently quotable, is the individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you try it, you'll be lonely often and sometimes frightened, but no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think it's even possible to own yourself?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Is this is this uh a pipe dream?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds very good and it rouses you to action of self-actualization, but is it possible?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you have varying degrees of control over, say, what role you take in society, what occupation you choose, where you choose to live, and things like that.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Some people have more more freedom in in that regard than others.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um but again, we are we are heavily enmeshed in society and uh uh owning your own self, well, it's it certainly uh depends a lot on what other people think of you.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: And and that's what we uh again he Nietzsche's phrasing it in terms of the the tribe oppressing the individual.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: But I think of it no, the individual evolved to live in the tribe and to work together with others in the tribe if if you don't get along with the tribe, uh you need to find a new tribe.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh going it alone is not really not really viable.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um even you know, you have to participate in society enough to take part again with housing and food and the basic requirements of life.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: You get them from society, so you need to work uh with the tribe to some degree.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: Now, at the time Nietzsche was writing in the late 1800s, um society was becoming more more powerful and more mass, and so a lot of intellectuals were worried about this uh alienation was a big theme around the early 20th century.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: You don't hear that much uh about it now, we have other problems.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but there was this sense that society had become so much more powerful, uh the police were suddenly competent and could keep track of you, governments could make laws and force you to obey them.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh, you know, it soon emerged after Nietzsche uh died that the countries could declare war and send millions of young men to their uh deaths and then to other injury.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: So the helpless individual, it was more of a thing back then.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: We hadn't had the uh the social safety net.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: It was one of the great achievements of the the 20th century, uh, to take care of people who were in trouble.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh so the balance of power between the individual and society had come to favor society around the time uh Nietzsche and those other people were writing.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh since then I think it's uh it's it's restored to a more even uh capability of social security where you uh where the government gives money to old people who otherwise would be poor and have no income.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think the first uh of those was uh in Bismarck and Germany uh in uh you know around the 1870s.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know exactly what the time was.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um so that was the first time before that.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: If you got old and were hungry, you needed your kids to feed you or uh went to the poor house or something else something else.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but uh now um old people get checks from the the government to take care of them.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: The the individual's better protected now, the vulnerabilities have been uh eased to a substantial degree.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I can I can see why Nietzsche said that, but I think again the the opposite is the key thing.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: The human is is designed to work with other people, uh not to cut away from them and strike out on your own and and and try to live uh by yourself in the forest.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean that's not really viable.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: This notion, and it's more than a notion, but this this reality that humans are formed to live with with others.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, one key way of doing that is language, and and you wrote in The Cultural Animal that language is not activity inside an individual brain, but rather part of the collectively shared transmitted knowledge.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then you went on to say the only way for a person to use language is to belong to a culture.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now yeah, go.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and uh uh again, this is one of the big differences.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: As I said, communication and cooperation are the the two big human innovations in evolution.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: All known human societies have language.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh no animal societies have, I mean, they have some communication, but none of them have what uh linguists would say is a as an actual language.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: So that's one of the key defining human traits.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: And it makes things so much better and easier.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: It enables us to share information, to talk about dangers, to talk about other people, uh to build reputations and of course to destroy them too.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh but yeah, I think that's uh language is emblematic of the the direction of human evolution.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: You that second part of the first sentence that a collectively shared transmitted knowledge, I've been riffing on this in my head in the last few days.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've done a a couple of podcasts recently around the Western canon.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh had some guests on who are selecting key figures and some unheralded, and their stick is attempting to bring back some level of consciousness about the cultural heritage.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um, anyway, this this collectively shared transmitted knowledge, you know, the Western canon is all based on that.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, right through to biblical scripture, whether it's Handel's Messiah or Baxter Regiem or Dante's Inferno or George's Canterbury's Tale or all of Shakespeare, they're all self-referential to one another.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, that the medieval worldview pretty much maps right up to Second World War.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's this break, really, of uh, you know, any any works that are produced since that point don't really refer back to the same things.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: And anyway, I I I have a little fraternity of English teachers uh around me, and they often talk about reloading the canon, adding new things into the canon for various reasons.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but what what I question there is that it's not necessarily possible because we no longer really use that collectively shared transmitted knowledge because that that that worldview isn't really the guiding light of our of our policy frameworks, of our everyday discussions or everyday lies.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so, where am I going with this?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose uh for some who recognize that period of continuity and that sense of this is what we're about, this is what this nation is, what the West is, that feels like something that has been lost and we're scrambling around a bit where and now are shared repositories of knowledge.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I wonder if this is partly why in this big liquid modern world of rapid change, and then we've got lots of demographic change and different peoples and cultures then living amongst previously settled ones.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Is this is this uh upheaval of language and a lack of common reference uh contributing to a disorientation?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: That do people find or why do people find rapid cultural change disorienting?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: What is it within us that that leads us to feel that way?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's a deep question, and why it's disorienting, I could could speculate.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: I I haven't really studied that per se, but but you're right, there there is a period.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: I have the sense that the shared canon, the shared knowledge of what you can assume everybody else in society also knows, is is more and more difficult to maintain.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Partly there's so much more information available now.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um if we go back half a century uh to where there were only a couple television channels, uh, and so and you couldn't tape shows or anything.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: So most people were watching the same show uh on the same time, and that meant the next day you could talk to people who probably had watched the same thing.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, discussion of movies was a common feature in the early part of my life of social life, but it's stopped now because um the movies are available all different times.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you used to have to just watch the movie when it was playing in the theater in your town, uh and it'd be there for a week or maybe two weeks if it was a hit.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and uh so you went to see it or not.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um but that was what people uh talked about now since there's so many different things, and if you start to talk about it at a party, someone will say, Oh, I haven't seen it yet, don't tell me what happens.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so you you can't there's certainly much more information available, uh, and many more entertainments available.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: So in that sense, we're vastly richer.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but the common the commonality that we all encountered the same information, uh, that's broken down.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: And the the local newspapers that had to uh appeal to everyone on the political spectrum, um they sort of kept people together and they would have opinion columns from both sides and so on, but those have failed, and now people tend to follow the news from only one side of the political spectrum, whatever agrees with them, and so they become more polarized, they have less understanding of of what the people on the other side are uh are thinking, and that's no doubt contributed to some of the increasing partisan hostility um between the the sort of centre-left and center right parties in uh in in quite a few countries.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Your your other work on self-esteem uh and and and um I I know you haven't done lots of thinking uh in your response to the previous question about n why it unsettles people a rapid change of culture, but um y your your your self esteem work, does it link at all to Culture, for instance, does cultural belonging contribute to a a sense of self-esteem or not, as the case may be?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yes.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um that would be probably the majority uh of it.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Of are you successful at something that society values?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh or whether it's painting pictures or um manufacturing things or uh working on a sports team or raising children or or whatever.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um the direct self-esteem for that is indifferent to what other people think.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: There's probably a bit of that.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh children when they're small and they start to learn things.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I remember the great child psychologist uh Jerome Kagan talked about mastery smiles at a certain age, somewhere in the second year of life.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: One year old.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: They they figure out how to do something and then they smile.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: So that that that feels good.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: That isn't necessarily dependent uh on other people.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: But uh uh most things, it's success and failure are defined by society, and uh how you succeed in those games and activities uh will determine the self-esteem you're entitled to.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: And people uh tend to exaggerate a little bit, uh maybe give themselves a little bit more credit than that, but they stay they stay tied uh tied to that.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: You you this this tying to the culture.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um culture culture is often downstream of religion.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um at least most of the big civilizations in the world have been focused on it.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I suppose even those who didn't have a deistic religion per se, whether it's the the Japanese or or some other East Asian countries, there is something mystical at its core.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and uh there's a relationship to death within a lot of these cultural products.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um you could perhaps argue that we shy away from that quite a lot now.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: We don't really speak about it so much, certainly less people filling the the pews uh each week where there's typically a reminder of those things, and we we live in a a culture um where we are typically seeking to satisfy our desires, there's lots of pleasure seeking.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: But you you've you've written about how how culture is a defense against death.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh why why is that?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um well, I've had a long-running debate with some other scholars uh on this.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they their view, going back to uh Ernest Becker and the denial of death, is that people the base the basic theme in the psyche is that people are afraid to die.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: We're the only species who knows that we are going to die individually someday.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so they make up culture as a defense mechanism to distract ourselves from this terror.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really buy that.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh for me, culture helps us avoid actual death, not just the idea of death.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, by working together, we create more food, we create better shelter, uh, we uh develop uh medical care and things like that, uh, so that uh people can actually um live longer and uh all these positive things.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: That seems to me to be the crucial aspect, and that that's I think more grounded in the the evolutionary argument that we evolved to take social interaction to a new level uh to do it for for ways that produce mutual benefit.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: What would would you see that and I know there's been lots of work about how anxiety levels are increasing, uh, and I know Jonathan Haidt has done lots of work on anxiety levels increasing amongst um well, not just the young but the adults, but he's particularly focused on the young because of the advent of the smartphone and all of us being uh tethered to the very addictive algorithms.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I think you could probably argue is that even pre-that advent people were writing about deaths of despair.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you can find some commentators who would argue a couple of different ways, they would say, well, it's the loss of um a more settled society which knew what it was about.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, religion was often proffered as one example, uh, it could help as that buffer against death, which considering a lot of them can be focused on immortality or getting right now for the future, you could perhaps buy that.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh this back to that point we were talking about earlier on, with no common frame of reference, and you could argue that there's a lot of shared internet culture now.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's a homogenization of it, the same kind of memes, the same kind of language, there's a kind of internet dialect that has thrown itself up.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's probably fair to say that it's not quite as deep as having been inculcated in something like a canon or a nation's history or all of those things, which I think people have less of a grasp on.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so my wildcard question is um you know, could could we could this cultural homogenization, this this loss of a focus on death in our daily lives, um be contributing to rising anxiety amongst people?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: And could could that be part of why we see the depression increasing and the various other mental health disorders?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um that was a long question.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sorry, that was that was a bit of a rambling uh here's what I reckon with a question mark on the end.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um the people who feel more um embedded uh in a social structure, uh in a group, uh religious group or political group or whatever, um, probably uh have have less of that anxiety.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we find that ideological certainty reduces uh uh despair.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the things religion traditionally provided.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Again, that it's not just that you privately believed, but you were in a society where you assumed everyone else had the same religious belief uh that you did.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I know there are always arguments about the Trinity and things like that, but the basic idea of uh God the Father and so on, and people went and prayed to the same God.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: And um so, yes, uh the loss of that uh is one more more factor to uh you mentioned deaths of despair and so on.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I don't know if all your viewers know, but the the historians say the first sociology book uh back in the 1800s uh was really uh Durkheim uh on suicide.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: And uh he concluded uh just from looking at data, which you know back then there was not nearly as much data available, um, that it was people who weren't connected who were more likely to kill themselves.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: And if you look at people who are uh living alone or who are not uh uh associated with others in different ways, they're more likely uh to commit suicide uh than the people who who feel firmly enmeshed.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um yes, uh, in terms of uh um Jonathan Heid's uh uh work, I remember talking to him when he was doing the book, and one thing that sort of got left out, he writes very movingly about the increases in anxiety among young people, um, and particularly young women, uh, but in his early analyses he had also found that it was really politically uh um divisive or or divided so that it was mainly the young women with far left, leftist political orientations, who were the most uh anxious, uh the young women with uh conservative views, which often included being part of a religion, uh they're not nearly so anxious and they hadn't shown a start a steeper rise, but um and there are multiple reasons we could speculate for why that that might be.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but uh saying to me where I live now in Utah, I'm I'm surrounded by the people who live in the Church of Latter-day Saints, formerly known as the Mormons.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, I'm not a believer myself, I do envy their community.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: They uh they they raise their children, they take care of each other, they go, they don't have preachers, they take turns uh in church speaking uh out about their experiences and their their feelings and so on and and and their commitment.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I I am not surprised that anxiety levels are lower for young women and young men who grow up in that kind of community uh where everyone's you know looking out for everyone and you you share positive values and and uh belief in in religion and and it's as I said, it's not just the religious beliefs but the the community that's strong there.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's gotta be um easier to uh to be happy and and and to avoid anxiety, depression, and these other things than when you look at society as as isolated units and uh you're just uh trying to uh form bonds for yourself, which all are temporary, and uh everyone's oppressing everyone else and uh all those all those views which uh have unfortunately spread.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Dear classmate John here.
• 32:32
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• 32:35
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• 32:43
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• 32:47
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• 32:59
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• 33:02
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• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy the rest of the show, classmate.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think particularly for those of us and uh I think Anglosphere countries in particular, because of uh where uh where they've come from in the past culturally, so uh the the the the notion that we are quite at our base through the historical record, quite individual uh uh individualistic countries, and I I don't I don't mean that from the modern way modern day idea of consumers and all those things, but I've been getting quite deeply into anthropology of late, and there's a a British anthropologist called Alan McFarlane, who effectively his work over the decades having been a historian and then an anthropologist having trained for both of those things, was finding that the the the social history that we had imbibed, this idea that we were all very, very tight-knit communities until the Industrial Revolution, and then that dispersed us is not quite right because you could find in the England of the past, which was ceded um obviously by some some Celtic folks and the Britonic people, but then some Germanic tribes too, which had a real notion of individualism, is they were all living in not really tight-knit communities as far back as the record goes, like a thousand years, there's nothing that you can even recognise as being a community.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there was lots of individual trading, and people even lived far away.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the thing that is different is that the there probably wasn't high deaths of despair because whether you were a believer or not, I suppose, what else are you gonna do on a Sunday but to go to the church?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I I imagine because you don't have automobiles, claims, trains, you're gonna be more rooted by your nature, even if you're not necessarily living like southern European folks and multi-generationally.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think the the the loss of organized religion, again, whether you're doctrinally uh standing up to it or opposed to it, has had huge ramifications.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm not saying anything new here, but whatever's whatever's come after that has so far failed to to offer anything, and I'm I'm not too sure I see see anything cropping up that's going to give that sense of community.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: An ethereal digital space playing Call of Duty online is is not gonna do it.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: There are there are people saying, I don't have an expert opinion on this myself, but there are people saying that uh political activism now is for many people taking the role that religion used to do.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: It gives them a understanding of how the whole world works and a solidarity with the people on their side, and uh people on the other side are seen as the enemy and they have goals and so on.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think in some ways political movements aren't as well designed as religious ones to provide for all those those existential needs.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh and it it may just be that uh people without the religious framework they're looking for something they can totally believe in and that will give them values and structure.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so maybe the the political arguments appeal uh appeal to them for that.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_02: But uh but yes, uh uh i it is a loss.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um as I said, I'm I'm not religious myself, but religion has done far more good than harm uh to uh societies uh throughout throughout history and uh and it still has power, still people get a lot of benefit from it today.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: Religious people live longer than other people.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um probably not because God has taken care of them, uh particularly because it's all it seems to be all religions are about equally good uh at that, but uh um the variety of other things that contribute to it that religion supports self-control and better behavior, you don't go too too bad, and you're part of a community where people take care of each other.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but uh but still, I mean just longer life is it goes down to the level of biology, is what is a measure of success.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now you mentioned self-control, which is an another big focus of your your work, is um the the the technological society that we now live in, we do lots of uh mediation and interaction on digit by digital means.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: We get all of our information.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: Some people go for long-form things, but there are also lots of websites, ones that I have to use to be able to promote the podcast like X, like TikTok, which I actually don't use um that by their very nature, they are a very different uh media uh for a culture to be based upon than whether it is journals or newspapers or books or all of those things.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I just wonder um religion is less powerful, technology is certainly taking a lot more of our time and our attention.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: What what what's the social psychology literature starting to say about the modern world's impact on self-control?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because your your your point is that we regulate ourselves in four areas our thoughts, our emotions, our impulses, and then we try to regulate performance.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um what what what's what's bubbling up within your field that tells us what's what's happening with our ability to do successfully in those things in a world that's just so distracting?
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, certainly the long view of history is that self-control has improved uh over the centuries.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we may be entering into a new phase when it may be getting weaker again.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the even arguments that uh uh throughout the 20th century the gradual shift toward more permissive parenting um toward more permissive parenting um weakened the self-control uh of young people.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, technology can help uh as well you can use things to keep track of did you exercise and are you saving enough money and things like that.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so um it's it's not just that technology undermines self-control, uh but their forces operating in different directions.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean already in the middle of the 20th century people debated what would be the effect of advertising.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: Because advertise tries to advertising tries to get people to spend money and purchase products.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: It tries to stimulate the desire for things.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: So the old self-control that, oh, I don't want to waste my money unless I really need it.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that uh uh advertising worked against that.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um now people are much richer today than they were fifty years ago.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so they don't need to be as disciplined uh with money uh as as people used to be.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh many other things uh make that more difficult.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: If you go back to when people lived only by cash, well then there was a constraint you didn't need as much self-control because when your wallet was empty you weren't gonna buy anything more.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: But now with credit cards you can spend lots of money that you haven't even earned yet.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so many people with with good salaries are uh are still running heavy debts, carrying them year after year and paying high interest rates and and and hurting themselves that way.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so the opportunities uh and the uh uh and the the constraints have have have both increased um as to whether the degree of self-control among people today is different than in the past.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know as much about the UK culture uh living in the the USA now.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: There there's certainly lower and lower demands we place on children.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I can think back to the past when families were farmers.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and pretty soon the kids had to start doing chores.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: And there were a lot of kids, so they couldn't invest as much into helping the one child self-actualize uh as they had to coordinate uh the group.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: So uh compared to that, there are far fewer demands on the modern child.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they don't usually have chores, they aren't subject to uh harsh discipline and punishment.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh if they misbehave, they aren't expected to behave as well.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh all these I would think would be gradually reversing the long-term improvement in self-control that we saw over the preceding centuries that uh make people better able to function in a in a complex society and obey the rules and and behave properly.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: Self-control is such a vital trait for culture, which is where we where we started.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh culture only works if most of the people follow most of the rules most of the time.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: So you need you need a mental apparatus like self-control that'll help you obey the rules even when you feel like doing something else.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um the amount uh uh data also show in the US the amount of homework that uh that students do has gone down, even though there's more information to learn than ever.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um past 50 years or so uh the college students are doing a lot less um daily studying than they used to.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it took self control to make yourself read things.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: I've been some recent articles about many high school students in the United States don't even read a book.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and in high school they're they're not and when they get to the university and the professor wants to tell them to read a book, they like panic.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: They haven't read.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: A whole book ever.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so the professors are now acceding to that as well.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, we can't expect people uh to read an entire book.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um well it takes discipline to read a book, but it's it's good for you to do that.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, exercising self-control strengthens your your self-control like a muscle.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: So the fewer demands we put on people, uh the the students are getting better grades than ever, but it's it's not because they're smarter and doing better work, it's just that the professors lower the standards.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: There's uh pressure on teachers to uh make the students happy, and what makes the students happy is uh better better marks for less work.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so there's a long-term pressure on that that's gonna reduce uh self-control as well.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I see several bases for arguing about a downward trend.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm not a historian and so on, and uh so some of that is beyond my expertise.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: But uh um between the weaker parenting, the less discipline in schools, the less demand.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think we're not raising young people to have as much self-control as as we did in in the past.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, we're talking about millions and millions of people, and so there are plenty all over.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: This is just a change maybe in the average and in the distribution.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but there are there are plenty of people with good self-discipline still, and there always were plenty with with poor self-discipline.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm wondering longer-term implications for this, you'll have many people uh prophesying, I suppose, is what's being attempted.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: That well, if we've got a world where people can't self-regulate, where there is no share of common common shared reference, and attention has become so disparate uh because of all of the technologies we've spoken about, inability to read a book, civilization was was built on books, and then obviously the notion that culture and language are inextricable, that you need to be able to understand one another and able to cooperate and communicate, and there's so much more to all of those than just a few messages on an instant message.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so one day you can get to a point where if the academy has gradually loosened uh in terms of standards, uh in terms of the people even running the show because of what you're talking about.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you could see that if we're struggling to communicate, to read, to build things, to maintain things.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um I wonder whether there's a a cultural immune system where we flick the switch and suddenly a tightening of the belt starts going.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because as I was speaking there, another Nietzsche quote popped to mind, or at least a paraphrase, where he talks about how as we seek to individuate, we end up doing something that is obviously very divergent from our parents.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: But then typically, if we come across something that we don't like about ourselves and we turn a corner from it, we end up being very tyrannical to those people who are a model for our previous self, which we think wasn't particularly good.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm I'm wondering if we might see a generation of people who aren't that capable.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not even holding my hands up as a capable person, but as we go deeper into the technological world, and then when they get to age and they're trying to individuate and then looking at their parents going, oh gee, thanks for the no standards.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: Look at the state of this place.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: Whether they might end up bringing a kind of Victorian stoic renaissance along where it's no, you've got to crunch the books, it's the copybook headings that you're gonna be remember memorizing and writing out, and we found the value of this.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um who knows?
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, is does anything happen in the in the literature that tells you that there's a you know, because we're not just individuals, that a culture uh responds to times when it's reached a an idea.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um well uh for for one thing, the culture is uh has other ways of enforcing uh good behavior.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: If you commit a crime now, you you're much more likely to be caught and punished than say a couple centuries ago.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um so i in some respects uh people are needing to develop self-control and just focus it on different things.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm currently uh reading some of the research literature on computer uh mediated communication, like what we're doing now.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and uh initially there was a hope that uh it would free people up and uh make them feel safer because you you can talk, uh you might not be in when you're talking to someone in person, you might be intimidated or whatever if you're shy, but when you're texting or emailing, there's less inhibition like that.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: But on the other hand, people are now starting to realize the dangers are are perhaps greater uh online, and so uh in some ways people are starting to be be more inhibited about what they say, uh particularly what they write, because it it continues to uh exist forever.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um and other people can find it and pick on that, and these uh online mobs that come and punish people for saying the wrong thing, those are those are greater dangers uh than you had uh back in the day of uh only face-to-face communication.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then technology likewise can enforce things.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: I I guess what I'm trying to suggest here is the idea that even if individually we start per producing somewhat inferior character individuals, the collective may be powerful enough uh to uh to offset that.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: I remember reading this was a while ago, uh reading a case about in New York uh on the subways, they have other problems on the subways now, but uh there was a flasher who had uh you know manner just wanted to expose his genitals uh to the other people.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_02: And this was a thing that that would just happen uh from time to time.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but in this particular story, a woman took out her phone and uh filmed him and posted it online, and then they found out who it was.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that advance in technology is gonna put an end to subway flashing pretty fast, because the the guy was hugely embarrassed, and uh uh I I don't know if there was criminal prosecution or not, uh, but it was a a clear warning.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh to others.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so even if individually uh as I said, um maybe we don't have quite the the character strength as as some of our ancestors.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um collective regulation and and collective shared knowledge.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, maybe people don't need to learn as much in school.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it goes against the grain.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: I've spent my life in education and research.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh of course I believe in teaching and training and all that, but maybe it isn't as important uh even as it was uh decades ago, uh because you don't really need to know everything anymore.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: You can you can look it up.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh most people carry a phone with them that has uh encyclopedias and Wikipedia and other information.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_02: So uh any question, whereas you know, when I was young, if you had an argument about something, there was no way to settle it other than take a trip over to the library and look up the encyclopedia, and you know, if you're out for dinner or whatever, you're not gonna do that.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so maybe we don't need to know as much.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: I I I worry.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, though eroding standards in education.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh people don't work as hard and don't learn as much.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: I think that cannot be good.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: But maybe it's not as bad as we fear.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: Most things turn out not to be bad, as bad as uh the doomsayers.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_02: I had that book with uh uh John Tierney, The Power of Bad, um, which is talks about this relentless discussion in society that there's this problem and that problem and everything's getting worse.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_02: When objectively things have gotten better and better, uh and that uh people are living longer, happier, more comfortable lives now uh than at any time in the past.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and yet everyone runs around talking about these uh these imminent disasters, um, most of which don't uh don't ever materialize.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I was I was convinced um about that small p progress to a degree with a conversation I had with Ed West, who was on the podcast where we spoke about the Western canon.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: And anyway, he he came up with a brilliant line.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: Ed and I both are small C conservative, I'd say so.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: We can we can sometimes indulge in the world to go into the dog, but what we both recognized was that we have made things progressively better.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so he said, look, I'm a techno-optimist, but I'm also thinking it's better to say that I'm culturally pessimistic.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: And when I I try to make this argument, I might always say I'm terribly reactionary to people when I do, but I I do it anyway, which is you know, find me any number of works which really go pound for pound with a lot of our literature and our music and the art of pre what we would call modernity, even if it's probably the wrong the wrong term, is certainly not producing anything quite as substantial or deep or as meaningful uh as we have more disparate attention on various different apps.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we we've gone even lit from listening to full albums, whether it is a an LP or a vinyl or uh then a CD, to now we just no one no one writes albums like stories anymore, they're writing for the algorithm, and so uh it's kind of similar with literature.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my my um fiance, she's she's part of that English teacher fraternity I was telling me about, and um she loves to give modern books a fair crack of the whip, and she really tries to review them.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: And every time she reads it, she she flips between a modern version or a modern book and one from the canon or something that is deemed to be a classic, and she's always struck by just how there's a difference in the depth, uh, and there's a difference in a meaning, and also just a general understanding of human nature.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that goes back to that point of just how much we were all so heavily inducted in the past through the schooling system in previous generations, of whether it was the Bible, which has a whole bunch of stories about what it means to be human, plus the philosophy, and then all of those works we talked about, which obviously make you highly literate and refer to your own national culture in some way, means you can actually understand a bit about the world around you.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I'm I'm with you.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think things are objectively getting better, you know.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: Technologically, we're making lots of progress.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I almost feel like it's had a trade-off with our cultural outlook.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_02: There are usually trade-offs, and uh as I said, the loss of the common experience is is is an interesting trend.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: There's a uh opinion RP some time ago about there aren't as many celebrities as there used to be.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, when the movie industry was really in its uh in its prime and everybody went to see the movies and there were stars, and we all knew who they were and were fascinated by them.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't know who the stars are uh these days.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_02: I don't watch that many movies.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_02: I watched those long uh uh streaming series, which are fascinating, much much more uh extended stories and and so on, but uh they don't create celebrity stars the way um the way it the way they used to.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_02: And sports, we can follow sports, those are more still in real time because everyone has to watch the same game pretty much when it happens.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you don't say, Did you see that big game yesterday?
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_02: And oh, don't tell me what happened, I'm gonna watch it in two weeks.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh athletes too, with all the bad publicity, they aren't really the the heroes, uh, which uh you can debate whether they really were heroes in the past, but they functioned as that in the minds of their fans.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and that may not uh may not be as as true as much anymore.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know what other celebrities there are.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh um back when everybody watched uh in the United States there were only three TV uh shows and everybody watched the same news, and Walter Cronkite was uh a newscaster that everybody knew who he was, and uh he was highly respected, so you could tell, but now people get all their news from many different sources.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's no person like that who is uh who everyone looks up to as an authoritative truth-telling objective figure.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um so there is that that fragmentation, there's more and more uh information out.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh one of my friends was even telling me the podcast market is now heavily saturated and uh guilty.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so people can listen to lots and lots of different things, and uh uh but that means you can't assume that people have watched the same thing that you did or that they know they know the same things.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely right.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh I I I see it regularly.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I see it with reaction to my own podcast from people who uh have found themselves operating in a different moral landscape in many respects because different information sources, uh different proclivities to seek out certain things and the how the worldview then ends up becoming constructed over over time.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's uh it's the the question on I suppose most people most commentators' lips is are we ever going to get back to a point where we can sit around a dinner table and not think because someone is either Labour or Conservative or Republican or Democrat that the other person is inherently evil for being so uh and um whether whether we ever get to that, I I I don't know, but I suppose we can only keep on trying to create space for these these kind of conversations uh talk about what it is that we what it is we know, what we think, what we feel, uh trying to find some kind of common ground.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and also just accept that we that there's enough out there that suggests we just end up a little bit different in how we see the world, and that's okay too, and things are going to flip around in a democracy.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a separate tangent.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_01: And Ray uh as Roy, even before I let you go, there's a question I'd like to ask all of my guests, which is what have you changed your mind about during the course of your life that you thought was an absolute truth, perhaps?
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh something that would not be open to debate, but things have changed, and what was it that made you change your mind?
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, uh there have been lots of those.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_02: I I I joke that I was raised by wolves, so I don't have any allegiance to any particular uh thing.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_02: And my parents weren't actually wolves, but uh um they brought me up with a um sort of traditional conservative, they were Republicans, uh believed in God.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um so um I came to question my religious faith.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh certainly changed my mind about that.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um I rejected their sort of views of of tradition for a while.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_02: I was a pretty staunch feminist.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then uh um well I still hold some of those values, but feminism itself really changed, and so I'm kind of embarrassed by my feminist past.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, even read some of the things I wrote, and I thought, oh, I should have been more critical.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but um but as uh Christina Huff Somers argued, feminism itself has changed.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_02: It used to be for men and women together and challenging entrenched ideas and bringing up new perspectives and so on, and it's sort of changed to become much more uh uh advancing women at the expense of men and uh maintaining dogmas rather than challenging them.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um so uh that uh that turned me off, so I've turned away from that.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um many of my theories have grown and changed over time.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you talked about my work on willpower and self-control.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh when we first came up with some of those findings, we thought it well, maybe the brain is just out of fuel.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_02: It uses energy and then it doesn't have any more.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but subsequent changes no, it's the brain doesn't ever really run out of energy until you're dead.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh or advanced stages of starving, maybe.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but it does conserve very aggressively, so that uh uh these these effects we have are after exerting self-control, your self-control is worse than something else.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh those are the body's natural attempt to conserve its uh its energies.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that theory's changed in other ways, uh uh other ways as well.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um my uh views about uh uh uh universities and western civilization, those have continued to uh to change and evolve uh as well.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um particularly about universities and western civilization.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um let's see.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in terms of how good are American universities, I think I've probably held all views all everywhere on the the spectrum.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh and they may be changing again because I think the universities are are are are are are changing.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um that uh as they continue to lower standards and uh uh become more of a political monoculture that's all on the left, that's gonna undermine their effectives.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: Now they've always leaned to the left.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_02: That that was clear.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_02: I remember when I went to college at 18 and uh was just surprised how many Marxists there were.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, you know, I thought Marxism was a failure.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh I guess I still still think that.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh no rich Marxist country I know of.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh um anyway, the the leftist biased has always been there, but at least there were conservative uh voices too, and uh I think students really should hear uh at least uh a positive take on the the value of two parent families or loving your country or uh the benefits of capitalism, which despite its faults, uh works better than the communist socialist alternatives.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so uh should should be exposed to that.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_02: So between the lowering of standards so that students don't have to work as hard.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, I think uh quality is suffering, but uh uh still American uh universities have been rated along with uh some of the UK ones as the the top in the world.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I don't know how solid those rankings are though, either.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody actually goes around to all of them and tries them out.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so they're just a lot of impressions, but still, people do vote with their feet and they come from far away to study uh at our our top places, so we must be doing something right, at least relative to the others.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_02: In terms of Western civilization, uh I know the uh the popular view now is it's all about oppression and and so on, whereas I see it as a much more successful thing.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Rodney Stark's history of Western civilization, he made the argument that Western civilization is the best thing that ever happened to our species.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I think uh yes, I got a good point that that's strongly uh made that it's um enabled more people to live healthy and happy lives uh for longer lives and uh uh than any other system, and it has uh sort of Done a lot of damage and and so on, but it's probably spread much more good than bad.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_02: And the the the technological innovations that uh enable better medical care and better communication and everything else they come from this this positive uh society.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_02: And you mentioned the Anglosphere.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've there's England, which was the supreme world power for a while.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and then they also started America and Australia and Canada, which are uh always rated among the nicest countries in the world to live in and uh still very influential.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right now America is uh probably the peak world world power.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um I keep my it's always hard to judge the judge the present, but uh there are people who say America's turn as the the world supreme power is probably coming to an end.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_02: And uh there are many crises and problems um that uh I think that that could lead to uh decline.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh but we'll have to wait and see.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_02: I have to look back at a century and see if this was the peak, if the US is indeed uh entering into a uh decline phase.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but uh in many respects there's still a lot of positive signs and uh um a lot of strength in the country.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the race is not yet run, and we're we're living in history, we've always got to remember that.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_01: We'll we'll see.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see how it's written, or at least some other people will.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Roy, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_01: Before I let you go, where can people keep up to date with what you're working on?
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_01: And indeed, is there anything that you're working on that we can expect to be hitting bookshelves or otherwise in the near future?
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, my book on free will is just out uh a couple uh uh months ago, uh, and that uh um it's called The Science of Free Will.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to take it out from being a philosophical uh discussion to being more of a scientific one.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I've talked to many scientists who accept free will and many who don't, but um um there they're I agree with both of them because they're not arguing about the same thing.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_02: But if we think of it as the human mental system for controlling behavior, everyone agrees, including people who don't want to believe in free will, that the human system is really advanced, qualitatively different from anything else in nature, and and that's to me the scientific problem.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's understand how the mind controls action.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_02: And unlike other animals, we project into the future, and we have moral and economic concerns that we uh can deal with.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_02: So is it a lot more uh complex uh processes there?
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what the focus is on.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_02: And as I said, the the scientists who believe in free will and they don't, they're they're mainly disputing it's it's uh almost a semantic argument.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_02: Does this new mental system deserve to be called free will, or should we call it something else?
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_02: But there's no disputing the the reality and the power of this uh system.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um I have a website, uh Roy Baumeister.com, uh, that uh more or less keeps up with uh with my work.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, people can find my stuff uh elsewhere.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm hoping to get started in a sub stack uh um column um the next month or two.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I will be keeping an eye out for that.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: I also have a substack to promote thinking class on, and each week I I share interesting articles and and good accounts, so I'll be sure to to add you in uh not long after I publish this episode.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_01: Roy, I've kept you long enough.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh thank you so much for a long winding discussion.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I wish you all the best and uh hope we get to speak again in the future.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yes, yes, this has been fun.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_02: It was a lovely interview.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: To keep up to date with all that I am doing, please subscribe to the Thinking Class YouTube channel at Thinking Class and follow me on X at Thinking Classes.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thinking Class seeks to understand the civilizational issues we face and why what our leaders do in response matters.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Here I seek to explore the ideas, values, and culture that made our civilization, those that are unmaking it, and how leaders at our public and private institutions should respond.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Engage with me on YouTube or X or write to me at thinkingclasspod at gmail.com to tell me who you want me to speak to and what topics are important to you.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_01: I look forward to seeing you there and for joining me on this journey.