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Jane Borden: Cults and the American Monomyth
00:52:38
Jane Borden on doomsday thinking, power, and why America keeps waiting for a savior.
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- [00:06]
A
Welcome to Simplify. I'm Caitlin Schiller.
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B
I'm Ben Schuman. Solar.
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A
Hi, Ben.
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B
What's up?
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A
Yeah, I'm good. I'm kind of cold, but I'm really happy to be in this beautiful studio.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Colo Media.
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B
You're still getting used to the new studio.
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A
I am.
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B
It is good fun in here.
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A
Also, do you like how much I match the studio today? Look at this. I'm wearing all the same colors. It's very satisfying to me.
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B
Congrats.
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A
I'm camouflaging effectively. Anyway. Hi.
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B
What do we got today?
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A
Today we have Jane Borden. She is a journalist, an author, a very, very funny person, and a sharp thinker. Also great follow on Instagram. Please follow her on Instagram. She shares fascinating tidbits in a really compelling way. But she wrote a book called Cults Like Us why Doomsday Thinking Drives America.
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B
Okay. And why did you want to have her on the show?
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A
Well, I heard about her book on another podcast that I listened to, which is Kara Swishers, and I just thought, what an interesting premise. How is the US one of the world's biggest doomsday thinking cults? Like, what does she mean? I just had to know more. So I picked up the book and I was immediately captivated by how funny it is. You don't get a lot of, or I don't think you get a lot of nonfiction and history based books that are this funny and delightful and sharp. It was such a good read. I loved it. I felt like I learned so much about US History and that I just didn't. Not that I didn't know it, but I got a new lens on it. A new lens on the Puritans, which is a funny thing to get after being a kid who grew up in New Hampshire, like in New England. New England. I thought I knew who the Puritans were, but I did not. And, yeah, it just gave me a new lens on history and on what's going on in the US Now. Really? Yeah. I thought it was fascinating. I loved how she reframed cult leaders as excellent salespeople. And it really made me think about, like, how important it is that we become aware about how we get into these mental traps of cult, like, thinking, you know? Yeah, I wanted to have her on because I just. I was delighted by this book.
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B
Yeah, it's cool when you look at history through the prism of one specific thing. Like, I remember when that book about the bagel came out.
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A
No.
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B
So it's cool to look at history through the hole and see new history or like whatever. Baseball or something. Whatever. But yeah, looking through cults, you can you get a different angle on everything. That's nice. So what's. Before we play the interview, what's one thing people should, should listen out for?
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A
Oh, there, there are actually so many things what you'll hear me get really excited about the American monomyth.
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B
Yes.
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A
In this interview, which I find fascinating. So listen out for that, but also in a more, I think, be aware of the costs of comfort. Yeah, so, yeah, listen to the part about monomymymthythm.
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B
Comfort. Comfort.
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A
Monomyth and comfort. So, yeah, with that, let's go.
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B
All right, before we play the conversation with you, Caitlin and Jane Borden, I wanna remind everybody that we have a new newsletter. We'll put the link to sign up for the newsletter in the show notes. We are independent now, so we really appreciate people who wanna follow along and support. Please pass this on to other people if you enjoy the episode. And also, as always, for not 90 plus episodes, we will see everybody after the interview in the bookend where we will talk about the interview and recommend some books.
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A
Yeah, see you there.
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B
All right, here's you and Jane Borden.
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A
Jane Borden, welcome to Simplify. I am so delighted to have you here today. Could you please, to start us off, introduce yourself the way that you like to be introduced.
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C
Interesting. You know, my career has taken a few twists and turns and this latest path I'm on is kind of the combination of the previous paths. Everything kind of came together in this book. My goal in school was to enter academia in the field of religious studies. But I decided to take a gap year and moved to New York and then accidentally fell into the improv comedy scene. And. And so then I was following a creative career for quite some time in humor. The part of me that is fascinated with belief and the intersection of belief and identity and the Judeo Christian tradition specifically just kept kind of knocking around in my brain. And I became interested in, specifically in that playing out in the American landscape around Trump's first presidency when I saw exactly how divided America is culturally and politically, in spite of really having so much more in common than distinct. And I had been reporting on cults for Vanity Fair and I started to see the same dynamics that I was researching in cults. I started to see them in America, in politics and culture and pop culture. And I thought that was strange. And so I started pulling the thread and pulling the thread. And then one day it kind of dawned on me like, oh, I think the Puritans were a cult. I think we were founded by a group that most people would look at today and call a cult. And what are the ramifications of that? Um, that's, that's kind of where I am.
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A
Let's just get into it. You are probably so sick of this question by this point, but what's a cult, Jane? How, how is a cult defined? Because I want to set the table here.
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C
Yes, a lot of people, I get comments and reviews and people say, oh, everything's a cult. You know, in, in one ear, out the other. It's like, well, that's not, you know, I understand the fatigue. But there is a definition, there is a working definition that people in the anti cult community have. Agree, pun. It comes from a psychiatrist named Robert J. Lifton. And there are three prongs to the definition. There is a leader who's worshiped. And the worship part is important. We typically say charismatic leader, but they aren't always charismatic. So, you know, sometimes it's like, why, how, how, why are people interested in this person? And then part two is that, uh, there's thought control at play. Undue influence, what people sometimes call brainwashing. Thought reform comes, comes by a lot of names. And then the third part is that actual harm is done, typically to members within the group. Typically we're talking about financial and sexual exploitation.
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A
Is there a shortcut to spotting a cult? Because as you said, people, people kind of chuckle and say, ah, everything's a cult. But what is the. Maybe the, the, the top note that you're looking for when you're wondering, is this a cult, Is this not a cult?
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C
The power structure? Is power shared or is there a dictator, so to speak, at the top? Because if power is shared, then you're not looking at a cult. You know, a lot of organizations engage in financial and sexual exploitation, but they aren't cults because there isn't a charismatic leader. Right. So, and, and, and there's a lot of thought control and thought reform happening out in the world. I mean, you know, we see that in advertising and public relations every day. I mean it, Influence is a huge part of our daily lives, which of course is something I explore in the book. But, but you wouldn't call that a cult. Right? So I, I think really check the power structure. And if, if one person has all the power, then you're in trouble because even if that person isn't yet a quote unquote cult leader, if they still have, you know, good intentions or whatever, it is. Power will corrupt inevitably. It's inevitable. It's just the way it's. It's power has specific effects on our brains, and there's really no way around it. That's why it's so important to always set up power structures that are shared.
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A
Yeah, by your definition, I was in a cult. I was. I was a rower in college and we. It had the charismatic leader. It had the abuse. It really had all the markings of it. I think that, wow, probably happens in college athletics a lot more than we think it does.
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C
Yeah, that sounds right. I mean, cult leaders exist on a spectrum between domestic abusers and dictators. So it's a wide spectrum.
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A
Well, on that note, the sort of central conceit of this book is that the US came by its cultish roots pretty early on, and it happened with the Puritans. And when I think of Puritans, I think of very door gentle people, probably suffering from scurvy, terribly pale, dressed up like the Quaker O Sky. But they were also doomsday cultists, and they shape the US. Can you explain a little bit the background of this thesis?
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C
Yeah. So technically I describe the Pilgrims and the Puritans, who were separate groups, but more or less believed the same thing. Technically, I describe them as high control doomsday groups. A high control group and a cult are very similar, and those terms get tossed around interchangeably. Uh, however, because the Puritans didn't have a charismatic leader. I mean, you could say Jesus was their charismatic leader, but of course, he'd been gone for 1600 years at this point, because they didn't have that element. I don't call them a cult per se, but there were more. More or less. More or less a cult, which is what a high control group is. So they showed up in America. The pilgrims came in 1620, and the Puritans started settling Boston in 1630, and they were essentially fleeing Armageddon. They believed doomsday was coming any minute now, and they thought God would first reign terror on England as punishment for England failing to purify the Anglican Church of Catholicism. Remnants of Catholicism. This was all after the Reformation, when Protestantism was first developed and the Puritans believed that the Anglican Church had not gone far enough. And the Pilgrims were done with it completely and wanted to separate. So they were separatists, which was treason. It was treasonous because the Church was the state, the Church of England was the state. So they fled and the Puritans did it more. You know, they. They had like a charter, essentially, they were Allowed. They were recognized, I guess, by. By England to set up their colony. But it was theocratic rule, and that was not the norm among other English colonies. And their theocratic rule was really the secret to their success. The Puritans in particular, were an incredibly successful colony. They essentially became the breadbasket for all of the Americas from Newfoundland down to the Caribbean. They were producing agricultural surpluses to the degree that they were feeding all these other colonies. And so we have this idea that they were, you know, issuing the material world, which is completely false. They were trading from the jump, and they. They had slaves as well, both local indigenous people as well as Africans. And the other secret to their success was their ideology, particularly this idea that work is holy. You. You glorify God by having a calling, and the more you work, the more you show you love Him. And so therefore, if you are successful and get wealth, then that's just evidence that he loves you too. And this is, of course, incredibly problematic because the inverse of that suggests that the poor are sinners and deserve their poverty and should be punished for it. Which, of course, again, we see today all. Everywhere in America.
- [12:41]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the homeless are being pulled off the street and thrown into jail. Now, the US has these. Has its roots in these doomsday beliefs, and we learn about the Puritans, but why don't we ever learn any of this stuff? How does this slip away out of cultural consciousness?
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C
Because it's unsavory. We don't want to. I'm assuming we don't want to know that about the groups we've made, our avatars, our founding avatars. You know, we want to lionize them. And the Pilgrims didn't become, you know, these avatars until much later, until a couple hundred years after they were kind of chosen because they fit this bill, because they would make a good avatar for us to lionize. And, you know, I'm not here to paint them as evil. There was a lot of good in their community. Governor Winthrop in his City on a Hill speech on the Arabella as the Puritans were coming over in 1630, made clear to everyone on the boat that if their neighbor was in need, they were to give their neighbor money, even if they knew they wouldn't get it back. So they took care of their community. They were giving these. The. The work is holy ideology eventually twisted all of that over time, but there was a lot of good stuff about the Pilgrims and the Puritans, and the really problematic parts of their communities developed later. And that's always the case with high control groups, leadership becomes corrupted by power. They hold the reins ever tighter. And that's what happened in, in Boston and, and the surrounding areas. As the Puritans expanded, the magistrates made it harder and harder to gain entry into the church because they didn't want to lose power and control. And that drove people crazy with self reflection and self investigation. Trying to figure out, am I chosen? Am I chosen? Because that's how you got into the church, is if you could, if you could convince yourself and others that you found within yourself, you know, signs of election, meaning God had chosen you. They literally made themselves sick with self investigation, which we're, which we're still doing today in a booming self help industry. And they, let's see, they banished even more people. They were constantly banishing people. They made it illegal for towns to take in strangers unless the strangers had been vetted. After one particular controversy of a woman named Ann Hutchinson was an agitator, a radical, they kicked her out and they did away with the questions and comments sessions following sermons because they were an occasion of much vexation and folly.
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A
Oh, wow.
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C
As they put it.
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A
This sounds very familiar.
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C
Yeah, we know, we see that today. The GOP did away with town halls, you know, not to. In the not distant past.
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A
Exactly.
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C
And of course, kicking people out, we're seeing that with ice. I mean it's, it's the same playbook. I did a piece for Vanity Fair drawing all the commonalities between Trump's America and Puritan America. And, and there are quite a few.
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A
Yeah. I'm hearing that you spoke before about avatars and you also just said for these people to amass power, they had to come up with justification for their electability. And this is all storytelling. I'm trying, I'm trying to lead us into what for me was this was the moment I knew this book was for me. When we got to the American Monomyth section. What is the American Monomyth and how are we seeing it show up today?
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C
So I came across this book called the American Monomyth and it's by Robert Jett and John Shelton Lawrence, who have both passed sadly. Although I was able to interview Lawrence for the book. But they were in the 70s, colleagues at a university, and were just chatting in the hall one day about the Vietnam War and wondering, how is it possible that the American public is stomaching this violence because images from the war were showing up in people's living rooms for the first time because of television.
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A
Yeah.
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C
And they started investigating and they discovered a pattern in pop culture. And they. A narrative pattern. And they labeled it the American Monomyth. And this is what the story is. There's a small Eden, like community that's under some kind of threat and is unable to save itself. You know, the cops are bumbling, the politicians are corrupt.
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A
What.
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C
What are they going to do? And then suddenly this outsider appears. Typically, the person literally comes from outside of the community. Sometimes it's someone within the community, but. But in that case, the person's a loner, right? It's always a guy. There's never a girlfriend, or if there is, he's not interested in her. There's also. There's all sorts of, like, gender and sexual stuff going on here. Like he, you know, reproaching advances from women. And. And this is, by the way, this was Charles Manson's whole thing, right? He's like, oh, women are always coming after me. I can do without him, you know, whatever. But. Yeah, but I'm getting sidetracked. So. So this outsider, or loner appears and ends up saving the community through violence. It's always violence, and it's targeted violence. Only the bad guys get it right. There are no civilian casualties, therefore it's cleansing violence. Therefore it's righteous violence. And Jewett and Lawrence traced this. Well, first of all, we see it in. It first began proliferating with westerns and dime novels, and then in the development of superheroes in the 30s and 40s. And we see it today all over television and film. The Jack Reacher series. Just earlier this spring, in April, I was looking through all the new releases and saw three different movies fitting this bill coming out within, like, a couple of weeks of one another. Their revenge stories or their vigilante stories. Death Wish series, even the movie Jaws follows this pattern. Every disaster film, I mean, it's. Once you see it, you. You see it everywhere. It's kind of ruined TV and film for me, to be honest. Yeah, we're obsessed with this story. And they. They traced it to a collection of narratives known as indie Indian captivity narratives, which came out of the Puritan era. This is when colonists would be kidnapped by indigenous neighbors and then rescued through violence. And that was considered. When such a thing happened. It was considered not just that the person had been rescued, but that the wilderness had been cleansed. And these narratives kind of represent that. But of course, it predates that. And something I explore quite a bit in the book is the commonalities between the American Monomyth and the book of Revelation. The story in the last book of The New Testament, which is pretty similar. It's an, an outsider, you know, shows up and cleanses the world of evil, of the Antichrist and eventually Satan. So the Puritans, of course, were obsessed with the Book of Revelation. Yeah, that's the American Monomyth. And it's problematic because most myths, most cultural myths, support the founding ideologies of that community. That's sort of the role that myth plays. However, the American Monomyth undermines our founding ideology, democracy, if you believe democracy is our founding ideology. It undermines that because it's. The American Monomyth is really a story of autocracy. It's. We're waiting for a superhero to come and fix all our problems. And, you know, Donald Trump has played that role. And, and I like him or don't like him. I think we can all agree that he's an autocrat. I mean, he's styled himself as a strong man. He says, I alone can fix our problems. And so, and we like that. We like that. We're primed to like it by, you know, 400 years of ingesting the American Monomouth.
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A
Wow. Yeah. Stories are powerful. And this is also so dangerous. And you write about this because it removes agency from the community. So we don't feel a sense of alarm when someone says, I can fix this for you and only I can fix this for you. Where, you know, maybe we should be thinking, wait a second, do, do, do I need you to fix this for me? Is it even healthy for you to fix this for me? I mean, I guess so, but I, I think that Americans are so tired and overworked and overwhelmed by stimuli, it's no wonder that they want someone to come in and fix things for them.
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C
Couldn't agree more. And we're, and we're back now to the American obsession with work. And I think the fact that we are so overworked and overstimulated is intentional because it serves the people in those in power. Not everyone in power, but it serves those in power who want to benefit off of our distraction, benefit off of our inability to fight back due to exhaustion or organize or fight for social reform because we're too preoccupied just trying to make the rent.
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A
And this is so, it's so interesting to me that a nation that has so much individualistic pride that it would want a strongman to come in and fix everything.
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C
Yeah.
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A
And, and it's so, and I guess this is a decent segue into, into self help, because the self help industry, as you said in the US Is Booming. It was basically created in the US and has certainly gained all of its traction there. So it's fascinating to me that the self help industry does so well, and yet what it seems like so many Americans actually want is not to help themselves. It's to have someone come in this mythical figure and fix it for them. What, like, what's up with that?
- [24:00]
C
I think, you know, I think maybe this is that, maybe this is that magnet theory that the two extreme poles are closer to one another. But I think extreme individualism often leads us to a strong man. Because when you believe no one can tell me what to do, then it's very easy for someone who wishes to take advantage of you to walk up and say, hey, these other people are trying to tell you what to do. Screw them. Come with me. Right? We become very reactionary and we are, we are, we are a reactionary culture. We are anti intellectual, we are anti elitist, anti authoritarian. This is all part of what it means to be an American and what it means to be Protestant. I mean, the word Protestant has protest in, was a bucking of authority of the Catholic Church. And, and Protestantism is schismatic in nature. It's constantly, you know, breaking off into new sects and factions that are then saying that their, their parent or grandparent organization was the devil. So I actually think a hyper individualistic society is more vulnerable to the kind of demagoguery and con artistry we see so rampant in America, including in the self help industry, where people are constantly being taken advantage of by, you know, life coaches or authors or influencers who don't actually intend to help, who are just trying to make money. You know, they're, they're, they're salespeople or business people. And you know, to some degree it's not wrong to try to sell something. But what's wrong is when you convince people that they have a problem they don't actually have and that you have a solution that you don't actually have. Because ultimately what they're selling is addiction. It's not help, it's addiction. Because once you realize you haven't been helped, then the next prescription is, well, you need to buy more books or you need to buy more sessions, whatever it is that's being sold as the solution, what's being sold as salvation, that's ultimately what we're after in not just the self help industry, but the larger consumer industry in America that sells our citizens all sorts of stuff we don't need. And if we don't need it, well, Then how are they going to sell it? They do so by connecting it to a. Subconsciously, emotionally connecting it to a path to salvation. That's what all these things are. I mean, I remember as a kid seeing commercials for Rogaine and being so sad because it always showed a man being rebuffed by women and then suddenly he has hair and all the women want to be with him. Which first of all is heartbreaking. Okay, any guys listening? Bald is sexy. All right? Just be you. Do you, dude. You know, but, but like what they're selling is, is immortality. They're, they're selling a mate, right? You want a woman in order to have children. That's, that's immortality. That's what that is. And, and a lot of these, a lot of self help books are about money, how to make money. That's a form of salvation. It's deliverance from hardship. These, these stories are as old as time. You know, when you look at ancient myths or stories of saviors of salvation, that's what people are after. They're after deliverance from hardship, immortality. It sounds extreme, what I'm saying, but when you start to look at these ad campaigns and you dig a little deeper, almost always what's being sold is some emotional connection to some kind of salvation.
- [27:55]
A
Yes, absolutely. And I'm so glad you took us here because you know that game sometimes you'll play it at a, at a, at a dinner party and it's. If you could go back in time and kill one person in history, who would it be? And so many people say Adolf Hitler. But after reading your book, I thought, you know what? Edward Bernays might be a really good choice. Can you. Edward Bernays, I can't believe I have never heard of him. I started my, my career nominally in marketing as a copywriter and I, I've never heard of Edward Bernays. We have so much to thank him for and to curse him for. Do you want to talk about him a little bit? Because I do. Okay, great. He, who was he? I'll just, I'll just hand this to you. I'm so excited about this horrible figure in history that I don't think I'm, I'm, it's safe for me to speak
- [28:45]
C
about him, who by the way, had absolutely no compunction about anything he did.
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B
No.
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C
That's so cool.
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A
Clear. Yeah.
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C
No, and, and he's been called the, the father of public relations. And, and a lot of that is because of his own spin. I mean, that's what he did. Was he, he was a PR man. And so he made himself this figure. And, and of course he didn't ultimately invent public relations. There were some other people around the same time in similar, doing similar kind of work. But, but he did bring an indelible twist if I can use those two words together in that his, his uncle was Sigmund Freud and perfectly positioned. He was perfectly positioned. So after visiting his uncle and learning more about his uncle's work, he had this big idea. What if I can control people's purchasing habits by tapping in to these unconscious and subconscious desires that my uncle has just explained to me. And it worked. He was incredibly successful. He completely changed marketing and sales and public relations. So before then most advertising was needs based. It was like, hey, we have this product, do you need it? I bet you do, you might need it, check it out. And of course there was like pressure, right. You know, they were trying to convince customers but it was mostly needs based. And then after Bernays what we see is desires based advertising and marketing, inventing a problem and convincing you you have it and then saying I have the solution. Right. That, that was a Bernays development. And he also connected the products made by the companies he worked for with identity. So he developed this idea that if you can convince people that consumption is a form of self expression then you can sell a lot more. And of course we still see that everywhere today self expression is endless. So you would just buy more and more and more. And at the time America was experiencing a bit of a crisis of overproduction following World War I. We were producing more than the public could consume and this was a danger to the economy. However, it was also dangerous to backtrack these new modes of overproduction. Right. What would that do? Economists were fearful and so they thought well, what if we can just find a way to get the public to buy all these extra goods that are being produced. And that's what they did. And America switched to a consumer based economy, which of course has been dangerous ever since. I mean there's always a fear that if we stop buying stuff that the economy will collapse. And of course we're just drowning in crap we don't need. And we're told to buy it, convinced to buy it. Because we create emotional connections with products, we see them as forms of self expression and because we believe we are buying something that's going to save us from some problem that we've been convinced we have.
- [32:25]
A
Yeah. So cult leaders are really just incredible marketing people.
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C
Yep, cult leaders are salespeople that's what they are. And cults are businesses.
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A
Yes. And this really makes sense for me why the US seems to be the perfect target market for cults. If we are so indoctrinated into being sold to, then of course, when a politician comes and sells us a dream, we are used to responding to that dance of need created, bad feelings created, panacea offered.
- [32:59]
C
Wow.
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A
Oh, and this brings me to one of the things that you, you talk about in the book is how Americans are obsessed with comfort and convenience. And I, I found myself all a tingle reading this because I remember when I first moved to Spain in 2006, I could not believe how difficult everything was. The Internet was bad. I had to wait in line for everything. I could not believe how incredibly inconvenienced I was. But I have to say, it really kind of taught me how to deal in, in a lot of ways. And when you see Americans here on vacation, they're. They're also still, you know, up in arms about how inconvenient things are. And what does it do to us, this, this obsession with comfort and convenience?
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C
Well, it's usually at the expense of something else. You know, Amazon has brought us incredible convenience. At what cost? Right? You know, the exploitation of workers in the warehouses, the closing of innumerable mom and pop shops and independent businesses, all of which is destroying the middle class. We should be running a cost benefit analysis on comfort and convenience whenever we're seeking it and not just take it at face value. And this is what cults offer is cults are selling comfort. They're selling. I explore comfort and convenience. At the end of the book, after exploring control, our obsession with control. And this is a human desire for control. Right. More than just American. And, and this is what cults offer. They offer the comfort of hierarchy. They offer a comfort of relinquishing agency. Come live with me and I'll take care of everything. And of course, in seeking control, we don't always realize that we would be relinquishing our own control. That's not always made clear. Right, Interesting.
- [35:18]
A
Yeah.
- [35:20]
C
But I think comfort and convenience are intrinsically linked to control, to our desire to have an ordered world, and to our desire for ease. We just want life to be easy. And again, this goes back to deliverance from hardship. What I wish for all of us is that we can, instead of constantly fighting chaos with order, if we can just sit in the chaos a little bit and learn to be okay with some of it. Because discomfort with chaos is often what leads us to assume a solution in the blaming of a scapegoat, right? Life is scary. We have these problems. It's got to be someone else's fault. Who can we blame? And that kind of us versus them thinking is at the heart of all cults and is also the message of almost every demagogue. Anyone who wishes to control us can play on our own fears of chaos by saying, yes, the world is scary and terrible and it's the fault of. Insert blank, right? It's the Jews fault. It's immigrants fault. It's, you know, truly we over the history of the world, it's been any kind of other you can imagine. And when a community is fearful and when a community is in crisis, for example, because the billionaires have taken everyone's money and everyone's blown through their saving and built up credit card debt and working three jobs, when a community is in crisis like that, they're desperate for salvation. And apocalyptic thinking flares during times of crisis. And that's always been the nature of it. That's how apocalyptic thinking developed in the first place, was among communities experiencing extreme persecution as a way for them to get through it, to have hope. Oh, one day a savior is going to come and destroy our enemy. Kill all the Romans and save the Jews. Whatever it is, that gives a community hope and that helps them understand their suffering and get through it, you know, in that way. There are some positive aspects to apocalyptic thinking, but it's been used by bad actors to activate us to behave in certain ways that ultimately only benefit the bad actor.
- [38:03]
A
That was such a beautiful summation of the message you're trying to give in this book. I could talk to you about this book for another hour easily. Unfortunately, we can't do that. There's just one thing you want people to know about the material that you've treated in this book. What would that be?
- [38:20]
C
I want people to know that the problem is division. Division fuels cult like thinking at the societal level as well as cults themselves. There's always us versus them thinking in a cult. And in turn, cults and narcissists who come into power demagogues in turn fuel division because they know it serves their ends. And when we can turn toward one another, we can stop the exploitation. You know, that sounds a little Pollyanna, but it's actually been proven out by sociology. Acts of mutual aid and even just seeing one another, you know, the process of dehumanization plays out in our brain chemistry. Like there. There are processes occurring in the brain that allow us to dehumanize other People. And those are mitigated when we see one another. You know, Following World War II in Germany, there was a study trying to figure out why certain gentiles had helped Jewish people. And they couldn't find a commonality. There was men and women, young people and old people, professional class, working class. You know, they were distinct, all members of the group. But the only commonality they found is that everyone who had helped a Jewish person had, before the war, known a Jewish person, whether a colleague or they're a child's friend at school or a house cleaner or whatever it was. And so, you know, it's. It's his science proving common sense. But when you see someone, when you actually know someone, that person is human. You cannot dehumanize them. And bad actors in power want us to dehumanize one another because when we're fighting each other, we're too distracted to stop them. And it's. And it's an easy fix. Right. It doesn't require political will. It doesn't require legislation. It's just turning toward one another, having a conversation with someone about whom you might otherwise be suspicious or fearful.
- [40:53]
A
Beautiful. We're not gonna have time.
- [40:56]
C
There's so much more to discuss.
- [40:58]
A
So sorry.
- [40:58]
C
Hopefully. Hopefully you're. Hopefully your listeners will go get the.
- [41:03]
A
You know, they have to read it.
- [41:04]
C
I'm. I'm. I. Well, I. I hope they will. Not only because I would like to continue having a career, but also because I. I am trying to reveal the magic trick so we stop falling for it.
- [41:16]
A
Yeah.
- [41:16]
C
You know.
- [41:18]
A
All right, Jane Borden, thank you so much for taking the time to talk today. This has been so great.
- [41:22]
C
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
- [41:40]
B
Welcome to the bookend. That was an announcer voice.
- [41:43]
A
I loved it.
- [41:44]
B
In honor of cultural cult, American culture, and marketing, welcome to the bookend, where we end with books.
- [41:51]
A
Yeah. Ben, what artificial need would you create in people to get them to listen, to simplify?
- [41:55]
B
It's always about survival. Right? Is that what she said? Yeah, it's always about survival, security and survival.
- [42:01]
A
Yeah.
- [42:02]
B
The main thing I wrote down was the problem is division.
- [42:05]
A
Yeah, I agree with you.
- [42:06]
B
Just to get right to it.
- [42:07]
A
To get right to it.
- [42:08]
B
You wanted to talk about comfort and monomyth. I also wrote down monomyth. I wrote down power of stories. But the problem is division. So how would you define the American monomyth?
- [42:20]
A
It's the idea of an outsider coming in to solve all of our problems. And we see that repeated over and over and over, starting with these Indian captivity myths. That Jane talks about. But I just, I thought it was so interesting because it lines up so well with exactly what's going on in the US and other countries right now that you know you're looking or that you're looking, that people in a time of flux and uncertainty are looking for some point of certainty. I thought that it was really interesting how Jane explained that extreme individualism often leads us to a strongman. Even though it feels like those things should be anathema, they're not. When you believe no one can tell me what to do, then it's very easy for someone to walk up to you and say, hey, this person is trying to tell you what to do. Screw them. Come with me, I'll protect you. Let's fix this. And then it becomes, I fixed it and you're under my boot, essentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [43:12]
B
I mean, so what about the idea of comfort that you wanted to talk about?
- [43:18]
A
Well, I think that it was interesting to me that so much of this urge to turn toward a simple, often one person solution is just this need for comfort. As I said, looking for a point of certainty in a world full of flux and uncertainty and change. Jane said that it's important to know that division is the problem. But I also think, and she addresses this somewhat, it's not just division that's the problem. It's also that we have a really difficult time sitting in discomfort. Personally, I know that's true for me too. I've had to look at that really hard over the past decade or so. I'll never forget a job review I had early on at Blinkist. One of our founders said to me, you know, when I first met you, I thought that you had a really hard time with uncertainty. And I wondered if that would stand in your way. And then I saw you working on it actively and I was like, oh, he saw Seb Kline, the one and only. He's been on Simplify. He's got an episode. And it's true, it's really hard because uncertainty is tough. But if what you're doing is searching for comfort, you have to understand that often comfort comes at the cost of something, and often that is liberty. And might it be better to have a little more freedom and a little bit less comfort and know that you can depend on yourself and your community in order to get through that discomfort?
- [44:46]
B
Yeah, I think you put exactly right. I think that's really interesting and it is something that we should consider. I mean, some of this might be. Might seem like theoretical or historical or something. But I do think there's an urgency in every, in how we address this in our own lives. So what, what's one way that someone can like reject the cult or reject the monomyth, or not be marketing fodder for the brands or whatever? I mean, how do you. How, how, like, how do you take the lessons of this book and your conversation with. With Jane and like give a kind of piece of advice or either in your own life or to somebody else?
- [45:28]
A
Mm, okay. Interesting. Didn't expect to be asked this question. Well, I think that a way that I would. I would take this, that I would take what she said about division is I think that there's a knee jerk reaction to reject the other who doesn't agree with us. And I have felt myself do this with my own family who holds political beliefs that are very different from mine. And all that I've seen is that when I reject them, they reject me just as hard. And then it creates more division instead of a starting place for us to actually have a conversation. So that's one way. And that's also digging into discomfort, accepting their views and that they might be valid for them. That's not comfortable for me, given that I know what I think I know. Right. And another way that I think that we can avoid being sold to is just something as simple as break up your habit of like scrolling on Instagram before you go to bed. You are being. That is comfortable. Right. It's a really comfortable, soothing thing to do before you go to bed. You know what's not comfortable? Putting your phone in a different room and picking up a book that used to be comfortable for me. And I'm like trying to retrain myself to do that this year. So this is something I'm working on too, but finding ways that. Or just, I think, interrogating ourselves about little comforts that we take on and what we might be sacrificing when we take on those comforts instead of, I don't know, doing something that might be a little bit more confronting. What about you?
- [46:57]
B
Yeah, or communal. I mean, I don't know if it's like what I got out of it was less don't doom scroll, but rather read and more like. No, I mean, I know more like don't avoid awkward small talk conversation with a stranger, but rather offer to help the old lady to carry her bags to the car or whatever, you know, and like find a way to bridge division wherever you can, even if it's with somebody you disagree with. Or might you Might think you disagree with or looks different or you might be afraid of or something. I think that's, you know, what's hard. Like what's hard is reaching out to people. What's hard is connection. What's easy is ordering groceries online and hardly even seeing the guy or a gal who drops off the groceries because you know what I mean? Like, you can just look through your security camera or whatever. You know, what's easy is avoiding interaction. And what's hard is, like, human connection, but that's more meaningful. And that's, I think, the way out of all of this.
- [47:55]
A
Is this a direct criticism of me because, you know, I got groceries delivered at 7am today.
- [48:00]
B
No, you did. Yes.
- [48:02]
A
But I also talked to the guy who dropped off my groceries. We'd had a conversation about how cold it is. And I asked him how his holiday was.
- [48:08]
B
But, you know, while he's driving around all day, like the week of.
- [48:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, the week of the holidays.
- [48:15]
B
Anyway, let's talk about some books.
- [48:19]
A
Let's do it.
- [48:20]
B
I'm really excited to hear what books you book or books. I have one.
- [48:24]
A
You have one. I also have one.
- [48:25]
B
All right, do you want to start?
- [48:26]
A
I'll start. I will also preface this by saying I have not read this book yet, but I really want to. It's at the top of my list. I've not read this book, but I have ingested a lot of the work of this person. It's called the Hardest Job in the the American. And it's by John Dickerson. He's a journalist, an American journalist who is a contributing writer at the Atlantic. He was just, until recently when he stepped down, a co anchor of the CBS Evening News. And he. The way that I know him mainly is through Slate's political gabfest, which I've been listening to for like a decade. And I find him to be a very fair humanitarian, a humanitarian, good thinker. And I think that this book could be really, really interesting. He writes about American presidents from Washington and Lincoln and fdr, two more contemporary ones like Bush and Obama and Trump, to show how this job has been done in previous years. And then ask the question, how do we choose our presidents? Are we asking the right questions about what they're doing? What makes a good president, even? What are the goals for this post? So I think that that's a really important question to ask. This is another way of, you know, questioning the status quo and the comfort of just going ahead and electing someone. But how about reorganizing how we think about this actual job, because it's a job that we're hiring someone for. Yeah. So that's the Hardest Job in the World by John Dickerson. I'm going to read it. Maybe we can get John to come on the show. I don't know. That'd be great. Yeah. So that's my rec. How about you, Ben?
- [50:01]
B
I have a book by Robert Putnam from 2000. It's called bowling Alone. You know this book?
- [50:06]
A
No. I've heard of it though.
- [50:07]
B
Bowling the Collapse and Revival of American Community. So this is about the. He's at Harvard. He's a professor. He's done all this research on communal involvement. I think he calls it social capital in the US since 1950. The idea is that the sort of decline of these kinds of in person social moments, interactions like, undermines the sort of civic engagement that democracy needs. And bowling is obviously just a stand in for unions or Rotary Club or parent Teacher associations or Federation of Women's Clubs or. I mean, there's millions of these, right? Even like Freemasonry or whatever, the Elks, Knights of Columbus, whatever. Church, synagogue, mosque groups, whatever it is. You know, the idea is that that's. That's part of. That's part of the sort of lack of trust in political. In politics is that people aren't involved. We're not involved. We're not with our community.
- [51:18]
A
In love with each other. Yeah, exactly. What an amazing image, though, because, like, when you say bowling alone, I just think, how weird is that?
- [51:26]
B
Yeah, but you also think about, like, men, right? You think about, like. And we know about the loneliness epidemic. We know about, quote, unquote.
- [51:33]
A
Yes. This crisis of masculinity. Yeah, yeah.
- [51:38]
B
I mean, okay. Yeah. So that's my book, Bowling Alone.
- [51:41]
A
Nice.
- [51:41]
B
Check it out. Thanks. Let's wrap up.
- [51:44]
A
Let's wrap up. Okay. Simplify was produced by me, Caitlin Schiller. You, Ben Shuman. Stoller, Odie Constantino. Thank you, Odie, for making us sound like adults always. And produced here or recorded here in the Cola Media Studio in Chapter's bookstore in Berlin, Germany.
- [52:01]
B
Yeah. Don't forget to sign up to our newsletter. Follow us wherever you want to follow us. We're around. We're excited to be in our new rhythm as Simplify owners.
- [52:09]
A
You can email us@infoolomedia.com and one of us will respond.
- [52:15]
B
Yeah, we'll put all this stuff in the show notes.
- [52:17]
C
Yeah.
- [52:17]
B
So check out the show notes and otherwise. See you in a couple weeks.
- [52:19]
A
Okay. Checking out.
- [52:20]
B
Checking out. Bye,
- [52:26]
C
Sam.