← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
How to Build Ruthless Empathy Without Getting Soft | Stanford Psychologist Jamil Zaki (Fan Fav)
00:47:40
This is a fan fav episode. Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki breaks down the science behind empathy as a tactical advantage—and how to train it like a muscle without sacrificing strength, control, or clarity.
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- [00:01]
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Tom Bilyeu
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Jamil Zaki
That's gotta be true again.
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- [01:01]
Jamil Zaki
When we start to think of situations as zero sum, when we start to believe that every victory of yours is a defeat of mine, we actually lose opportunities to find win win situations, common ground and common solutions. In fact, it's totally fine to acknowledge differences between you and somebody else. But when we take that sentiment and say, and also, you're not even a person, I'm not even going to see you as anything beyond the opinion that I hate. We just lose so many opportunities from that. And we don't have to do that.
- [01:40]
Tom Bilyeu
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. I am joined by professor of psychology Jamil Zaki at Stanford. By the way, not a bad pedigree. My friend and author of the amazing book the the War for Kindness. Thank you for joining me today.
- [01:57]
Jamil Zaki
Thanks for having me, Tom. It's a pleasure.
- [01:59]
Tom Bilyeu
So, man, we're in a war for kindness. How do you see that?
- [02:03]
Jamil Zaki
You know, I get asked about the title of the book all the time. People say, a war for Kindness. That just sounds like an oxymoron. You can't possibly mean that. I do mean it. I think that, you know, the way that I see it, we as a species are built, evolved for connection and togetherness. But that doesn't mean that those qualities of life are easy to cultivate. And the way I think about it, modern life has sort of put a bunch of barriers in the way to human connection. Things like political polarization, the way we use technology, the levels of stress we're dealing with pull us apart instead of bringing us together. And so in order to Kind of rehumanize ourselves in order to recover our sense of connection to other people. I think you do need to fight those trends, and I think that we can win, but I do think it's a battle.
- [02:55]
Tom Bilyeu
I actually love that language. I was once, I think, rightly accused of using war language, but for some reason, that, like, really resonates with me, the idea that, you know, if you've got a problem, you really have to attack it and get after it. So I like it. I also like the, you know, the dichotomy there between something that seems so soft and genteel. But in reality, to me, the punchline of the book and the whole idea is so in line with Carol Dweck, obviously, who you know well and referenced in the book, and is like one of my personal heroes. I love her. And she's just made something so easy to understand, which you echo in this book. The way that she made people understand that mindset is malleable. You've made people understand that.
- [03:43]
Kindness and empathy have that same malleability. And I want to hit that from an evolutionary perspective.
- [03:50]
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Why?
- [03:50]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you think that it's useful enough from an evolutionary perspective to be one of the levers that we can pull on?
- [03:59]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, you know, I think about this a lot. And Darwin was really confused by the evolutionary roots of kindness. Right. According to his theory of natural selection, an animal should really just do whatever it takes to survive and pass on its genes. And in that equation, it didn't seem to Darwin like helping others would fit in, especially if you sacrificed in order to do it. Darwin wrote something like, I'm paraphrasing here. He said, he who is willing to sacrifice himself rather than betray his comrades would leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature. In other words, from an evolutionary perspective, it was once thought that kindness and empathy were losers. Right? That they would not help you advance where you needed to go. Even Darwin did not believe that anymore by the time he died. There's ample evidence that, in essence, when animals work together, they can achieve things that no animal can alone. And we, as a species, humanity, are the champions of collaboration and. And working together. And that's how we have. That's a key ingredient in how we have succeeded as a species. So, again, this old creaky version of Darwin, where you can only look out for yourself if you want to succeed, is one that has been clearly debunked in a bunch of different scientific spaces. But I think sometimes it still carries on in our collective imagination. We like to equate Sometimes selfishness with, with success. In fact, if anything, the opposite is true.
- [05:30]
Tom Bilyeu
Now, have you looked at Darwin? Close enough to know sort of what was it in the biology that he began to see that made him switch his opinion?
- [05:40]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah. So there's a bunch of. There's a long tradition starting with Darwin, but going far beyond him as well, that explores this. And there's kind of three, three buckets you could put the kind of smartness of kindness into. Right. The why is kindness, in fact, evolutionarily a winner instead of a loser? The first is what's known as kin selection. So that means if you help people you're related to, your genes are actually doing pretty well. In fact, Tom, if you were, I don't know how many siblings you have. If you had three siblings and you wanted to save them from a burning building, even if you died in the process, your genes would be doing better because each of your siblings has 50% of your genes.
- [06:21]
Tom Bilyeu
So.
- [06:21]
Jamil Zaki
So together they would have 150% of you in them. Right. So that's one way that kindness can be a winner evolutionarily. The other is through what's known as reciprocity. So that is when we act kindly towards others and they return the favor in some way that can be directly to us, like a tit for tat. You know, I scratch your back, you scratch mine. But it can also be indirect. For instance, if I help you and somebody else sees that and I develop a positive reputation, I end up being able to be part of a community that trusts one another and helps one another. That's really the key to our success as a species in sort of ancient times. I think that's still a key to our success now is being part of something that's greater than ourselves.
- [07:09]
Tom Bilyeu
It's a cool part of the talk that you give around this topic of, you know, you often start with. To really understand this, let's go back 100,000 years and, and paint that picture for us. What did we as a species look like 100,000 years ago? And how did we become the most dominant apex predator of all time? We have literally, and I know some people don't love this, but we've taken over. We run this bitch. So what was it.
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About us that allowed us to pull this off?
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Jamil Zaki
Yeah, I mean, and there's never gonna be just one answer to that, Right. So you might hear that human beings, we have this enormous frontal lobe which allows us to engage in planning for the future. We can use language to communicate an infinite amount of thoughts and experiences to one another. And those two pieces are hugely important. Interacting with both of those is the fact that, well, what do we use that massive brain for? What do we use that communicative ability for? Well, it's to coordinate, it's to work together. Right. There are these different views of why we're so smart. And two of them are really interesting in their contrast to each other. One is what's known as a Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis, which is that we're smart so that we can basically dupe each other and like win in a competition where we're all trying to outsmart one another and kind of dominate each other. Another is what you could think of as a cooperative or collaborative intelligence hypothesis, which is that in fact the reason that we're so smart is because we need to coordinate to do all sorts of things like hunt a woolly mammoth or build a suspension bridge. You can't do either of those things alone. And so working together is the way that we get it. Really interesting thing is that you can put both of those ideas together kind of neatly because people don't just compete as individuals, we compete as groups. So if you think of two groups of people in the ancient world, one of whom is terrible at working together and trying to screw each other over all the time, and the other one of which is internally really kind and collaborative, well, guess what? When those groups come into competition, the collaborative group will win. And you see this in sports and in the world of business now as well. Right? I mean, when groups can really tightly work together, they win even in a sort of bottom line, competitive set of terms.
- [09:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that, that to me is really striking when you, when you sort of put multiple ideas together. So idea number one, hey, this is malleable. If you don't focus on it, then, you know, sort of second law of thermodynamics states that it, it's going to move towards chaos. So your relationship to empathy won't necessarily be optimized for your well being. It might not be optimized for your success. It's just going to be whatever you happen to bump into. Law of accident. And then you put that together with that idea of cooperation. And now it's like, hey, if you focus on empathy and realize that the sort of natural output of this is that you can now cooperate. And there's that great African proverb which I think is so brilliant. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go in a group. And so now understanding that, okay, I'm more Likely to be a high functioning group if I'm working on that, optimizing the malleability of my empathy and my ability to cooperate. And you really bring this home in the book with something that I'd never really thought of, which is that there were, I think you said, roughly five different types of highly intelligent.
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Offshoots of apes. I would assume that we were coexisting with Neanderthals being sort of the most famous, and we end up winning out.
- [10:58]
Jamil Zaki
Why? Yeah, I mean, again, it gets back to this idea of you've got different groups, some of whom are better at working together, and when they come into conflict, guess what? The more cooperative ones can actually compete more effectively. Yuval Hariri writes beautifully about this, and there's a lot of work on these sort of, you know, basically what we would think of as the cultural ratchet effect. The idea that because we were so cooperative, so collaborative among our own groups, we actually were able to advance, for instance, in terms of simple technologies more quickly because you pass along that information, you share that information really efficiently, and that produces advances in your culture. And also we were able to coordinate, for instance, during clashes with other sort of human species. And in essence, that allowed us to use your term, to run this bitch, because we were so good at coordinating and that form of togetherness. And, you know, I just want to zoom in on something you said, Tom, because I think you really put it beautifully. I mean, I guess if there's a case that I try to make in my book and in a lot of my work, it's really twofold, and you nailed it. The first is that empathy is something that you might want more than you realize you want it. Right. You might think of it as this soft and squishy, you know, I'm just crying all the time, I feel your pain type of experience. But empathy is actually a vital skill that allows us to accomplish a lot of our goals, you know, not just around being good people, which is critical. And empathy is part of our moral foundations, but also part of living the type of lives that we want to live, having strong relationships, being able to have a good relationship with ourselves, and being able to succeed in all sorts of parts of life. So that's message one, is that you might want empathy more than you think you do. And message two, if you want it, you can get it right that this is something that is achievable just like any other skill. Just like being physically fit, just like working to strengthen our muscles, we can work to develop ourselves into more empathic more connected people.
- [13:10]
Tom Bilyeu
We'll get back to the show in.
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- [15:21]
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- [16:39]
Tom Bilyeu
All right, super powerful. So now I think we have to start teasing out a couple of different ideas. So number one, I think it's worth putting a finger on exactly what empathy is like. Is it a one for one with kindness? Is there some other definition that we can use? How do you define empathy?
- [16:58]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, thank you for going there. We really need to make sure that we have our definitions clear because a lot of people can be confused about the term empathy. The way that scientists like me think of it is as an umbrella term that actually describes at least three different ways that you connect with other people's emotions. So let's say that, you know, I hopped on this call and instead of being thrilled to talk with you like I am, I was weeping openly. Well, you know, in anguish. Well, as soon as you logged on, you'd probably have a bunch of different experiences. One, you might feel bad yourself seeing me cry. You might sort of catch my feelings almost vicariously, which we would call emotional empathy. You might also be like, what the hell is going on with Jimmy? What is he feeling and why? And that sort of cognitive detective work is what we think of as cognitive empathy or theory of mind. And three, because you seem like a really great guy, I'm sure that you would be concerned with what I was going through and wish for me to feel better, which is often known as compassion. So those three jigsaw pieces together make up the full range of human empathy. You asked about the relationship between empathy and kindness, and it's not a one to one. You can act kindly in lots of situations, not because you are connected with someone, but out of a sense of obligation, for instance, or because you feel like you owe them, or you're worried that you'll get a bad reputation if you don't help. Likewise, I think a lot of us these days going on social media, we're inundated with images and stories of other people's suffering. We feel empathy, but we can't do anything about it. We don't feel like we can make a difference. It turns out that those two states where you're acting Kindly without empathy or experiencing empathy, but helpless to do anything about it are much less healthy and helpful than states where you can kind of lock those two things in together, where you can act kindly towards people through a sense of personal connection to them.
- [18:54]
Tom Bilyeu
That's really interesting. And one of the fascinating parts of the book is how you go into how empathy, sort of in the wrong circumstance or the wrong amount, can actually become pathologized.
- [19:06]
That, to me, is super intriguing. Before we get to that, though, I want to ask. So one thing you didn't mention in that, obviously, intentionally I've read the book, is sympathy. And so how does sympathy relate to empathy? How are they different? That would be really interesting to understand.
- [19:23]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah. Sympathy is, you're right, Tom. A term that I tend to stay away from just because its definition has literally flipped over the course of history. So sympathy used to be the. Empathy has only been around as a word in the English language since 1909. It was coined. That's crazy. I know, right? It was coined in German first by sort of philosophers of art, aesthetic philosophers like Robert Vischer and Theodore Lipps. And they use this term, einfhlung, to describe the way that you respond to a piece of art, sculptures in particular, by almost feeling your way into the art. So if you imagine seeing a sculpture of somebody who's just been shot with an arrow, and they're sort of like, you know, contorted in pain, well, one way that you respond emotionally to that art is by imagining your own body into that piece of art. Right. So that was where it came from, and it sort of migrated into the English term empathy again barely 100 years ago. So before that, in the English language, people like David Hume and Adam Smith would write about sympathy. And to them, sympathy was vicariously taking on other people's emotions, especially their suffering. Right? So, like, if I saw you in pain, my. Sort of. My palms would begin to sweat. I would feel really bad. That would be sympathy to them. Weirdly, empathy basically took that corner over and kicked sympathy off of it. And now when people use sympathy, they almost mean it, as far as I understand, to mean something like pity. Like, I feel bad for you, but I'm not really going there with you. You know, I'm sort of. It's. It's like. Yeah, it's like empathy, but at a serious remove that often doesn't actually inspire much positive behavior. Now, again, those are two ways that sympathy has been used. I hope you can see that they're basically the opposite of each other. Right? Because the Old version was, okay, I'm really here with you. I'm resonating with your experience. The new version, as I see it, is quite the opposite of that. So as a result, and I know that was a long answer to what straightforward question. I think that sympathy is just a compromise term. It's not one that's very meaningful to me because it's wobbled around so much in our culture.
- [21:41]
Tom Bilyeu
It's interesting. So what I love about it is that. So there's this idea, and I really need to go back and figure out where I first read this. But I read this maybe apocryphal story that there is a certain language where they don't have a color, they don't have a name for blue, they don't have a word for it. And because they don't have a word for it, they cram it into other color definitions like turquoise or whatever.
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- [22:06]
Tom Bilyeu
And so because of that, so the apocryphal story goes, there's actually shades of blue that they don't see because they don't have a name for it. So to them, it just becomes an idea that gets pushed into something else. Now, if there were no word for empathy versus sympathy, would it be harder to really get a concrete understanding of that difference? Now, in my marriage, I've always said to my wife, I am desperate for empathy. I don't want your sympathy, because I interpret sympathy the same way that you talk about. So, you know, when. When we were sort of mapping out how we wanted each other to be, it was like, look, if I get knocked to my knees, I don't want you to get on your knees with me and put an arm around me and, you know, pat me on the back and tell me everything is going to be fine. Which all equate to sympathy. The like, you feel like you have to pity me and take care of me. What I want is empathy. I want you to understand. I want you to know what I'm going through, but also know where I'm trying to go. Offer me a hand, pick me back up, brush me off, see me, like, understand where I'm at, but remind me of who I'm trying to become. And so that sense of like. And you talk about this in the book, and now is probably the time to go into your first daughter's birth and, like, sort of the trauma around that, and then your own worry that the caretakers in the ICU would sort of ultimately succumb to just the overwhelming emotions that are present. And if they were to carry them and take them on, that it could become pathologized.
- [23:41]
Jamil Zaki
Oh, man, that was such a great question. I have a bunch of response. I'm going to try to hit them really quickly. First, the work that you're talking about on the color blue and is not apocryphal. That's, that's real. And so there's.
- [23:53]
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, you're my man.
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Jamil Zaki
This is amazing. I believe that in Russian there are different words for light blue and dark blue. Those are just not the same category, really. And so there's some work from some of my colleagues actually that shows that Russian speakers are more quickly able to discern light and dark blue from each other because they just think of them as totally different visual experiences. So I'll send you that work, but please.
- [24:24]
Tom Bilyeu
And if you have more details, I'm all about it.
- [24:26]
Jamil Zaki
I have brought this up so many.
- [24:28]
Tom Bilyeu
Times, not even knowing where to start to refine this. So, yeah, if you've got more, I'll take it.
- [24:33]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah. Basically, if you have a really precise language for something, you can experience it more precisely. And that's part of why I think it's so important to have a very precise understanding of empathy, because it does have these different pieces and some of those pieces might be what you want in one moment and not what you want in another moment. I mean, a second response to you, Tom, is that it sounds like a really phenomenal relationship that you're in if you're able to have those types of conversations. You know, my wife and I are both psychologists, so we talk like this all the time. But it's rare for me to meet other people who are not psychologists who have very self aware conversations of this sort of. I think that that's incredibly productive and so useful and really, you know, quite moving as well. So to get to your point, I think that you're exactly. Your experience resonates with my own, which is that sometimes there are different pieces of empathy that I want and others that at that moment would be the opposite of useful to me. Right. The opposite of what I want. So, and a great distinction here is between, you'll recall, we're talking about these three pieces of empathy between emotional empathy, so just sharing, taking on other people's pain, and compassion, which is feeling for other people without necessarily feeling as they do in the moment. And so like, it turns out that emotional empathy is the type of empathy that wears us out most quickly. It's the most associated with burnout and it's actually not always the best way to help Another person.
- [26:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Right.
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Jamil Zaki
If I'm with my therapist and I'm crying, I don't want him crying to me, like, my God, your life really does suck. Right. I don't want him to feel everything that I'm feeling. I want him, as you put it nicely, to be there for me, to understand me, to engage in cognitive empathy and then to express goodwill towards me and maybe help me strategize my way out of where I am in that moment and as you put it beautifully, remind me of where I want to go. Right. So that distinction, I think, is really critical. And sometimes I think people imagine that empathizing has to mean I hurt when you hurt. And if we believe that, then that can get us into some cul de sacs with our own process of empathy that we don't really need to go into.
- [26:49]
Tom Bilyeu
Wow, I love that idea of a cul de sac where you're sort of self reinforcing and ending in a bit of a death loop. How did you end up becoming so focused on empathy?
- [27:01]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah. So for me, it was a survival skill that really defined my childhood. Right. So my mom is an immigrant from Peru and my dad is an immigrant from Pakistan. And they met and fell in love, I think, because they shared a sense of foreignness in the U.S. i think if you're in a new place and somebody else is also new there, you can connect just on the fact that you're both trying to figure out what the hell is going on around you. And I think they found that comfort in each other. But then as they got more comfortable in the U.S. now they've been here for 50 years, basically 49 years. You know, I think that they realized how little they actually had in common, which, as their only kid, is like nothing. They have nothing in common at all. And so they, you know, they split up and it was one of those, you know, long, messy, painful divorces. And, you know, as their only child, I spent a lot of my time as a kid kind of shuttling back and forth between their houses. And I think, you know, there's, I'm sure, many children of divorce who are listeners of yours. And because a lot of us can attest, you really feel pulled in these different directions. Right. You feel like you're caught in between these different realities. And in my case, those different realities weren't just personal, they were cultural. Right. It was like literally different parts of the globe that were dominant, that were sort of vying for my attention, for my loyalty. And. And I learned that if I would sort of Work hard to connect with my mom. Those same, those that same approach just wouldn't work at all with my dad and vice versa. So it was a really hard time, obviously. But I also think about it as the time that I learned to work on my empathy.
- [28:46]
Tom Bilyeu
Right.
- [28:46]
Jamil Zaki
I think of my parents divorce as like an empathy gym for me. That forced me to work at that care and understanding. Why? Well, because I had to. I wanted to keep my relationship to each of my parents. I knew that they were both good people who were in a lot of pain and it wasn't their fault that they had different perspectives. So I had to sort of become a bridge between them. And honestly, I think it's the most important thing I ever learned. I think that that's sort of still the most important skill that I have in my life. And now I try to teach it to other people.
- [29:17]
Tom Bilyeu
All right, so, man, that's such an interesting.
- [29:21]
Way for things to play out for somebody like you, who I would assume has sort of a natural predilection towards empathy, maybe some extra self awareness.
- [29:32]
This idea of teaching other people. So.
- [29:37]
I want to get into that. You talk a lot about how we develop this skill, how we reconnect in a world that's divided and fractured. I think that especially now exacerbated with the massive isolation caused by Covid, you get this atomization that you talk about. But one thing I want to set the stage for this part of the conversation by saying, it seems to me, and I'd love to get your take on this, that.
- [30:02]
The very thing that makes empathy an evolutionarily advantaged thing, such that we can increase its effectiveness because it has such tremendous impact on our ability to survive as a group. But so does tribalism. And so when we look at like, hey, the brain has all these cool mechanisms. Carol Dweck identified one that you're very. Whether you believe that you can improve something or you don't will determine whether you actually improve it or you don't. Like, that's such a revelatory idea that's changed my life in ways I couldn't even possibly begin to catalog. But tribalism also serves a purpose, which when you're on.
- [30:50]
The plains of Africa and you're on the come up and you're in these tribes, it's like you really do have to band together and create this sense of, well, there's us and I'm super empathetic to you, but then there's others and I will kill them as fast as I'll kill a water buffalo. And that has real utility. And I know that people trip up on that now in a modern context, but now you're fighting against something that's real. And so how do you help people train that empathy up and tribalism down to match a modern context? Like what are the things you tell them to do?
- [31:28]
Jamil Zaki
Wow, what an amazing question. I mean, I think you're totally right that these are two enormous forces in our mind, right? Our capacity to connect with each other and our capacity to divide the world into us and them and to then selectively connect with the people who are on our side. What we would call parochial empathy or parochial altruism. And if anything, fear, loathe, hate and try to destroy whoever is on the other side, especially if there's any conflict between us, if there's any sense of scarcity as well. I don't even need conflict. Even if there's some resource where there's not going to be enough for everybody, I will start conflict in order to protect that resource for my own group. Right. These are, as you say, really powerful and really ancient tendencies. So how do we get beyond them? Well, I don't think that we can get beyond them entirely. You know, I've never advocated that just through empathy we can get to some place where we're all just holding hands in a global circle, singing Kumbaya together. Right? Conflict is real and sometimes it's quite legitimate. But I think that oftentimes when we take that conflict, that tribalism, and start to just, and we stop seeing that there are human beings on the other side of it, we actually lose a lot. We lose a lot of opportunity. For instance, in the US we're more politically polarized than we have been at any time in my lifetime. But also, people hate the level of polarization that we have. We hate each other and we hate how much we hate each other. We have the goal of finding some common ground. When we start to think of situations as zero sum, when we start to believe that every victory of yours is a defeat of mine, we actually lose opportunities to find win win situations, common ground and common solutions. In fact, there's a lot of work in economics and organizational sort of management science on what are known as lose lose negotiations, where people end up in a place that is demonstrably worse for both of them than some alternative. Right? And that often happens through zero sum thinking. So the way that I see it is it's totally fine to acknowledge differences between you and somebody else. Right? And for instance, ideological differences are real and it's okay to say, well, I want the people who I support to win an election. Which means I want the people who you support to lose an election. Right? That's legitimate. There's no papering that over. But when we take that sentiment and say, and also, you're not even a person, I'm not even going to see you as anything beyond the opinion that I hate. We just lose so many opportunities from that. And we don't have to do that. There are, there's work from my own lab, for instance, that demonstrates that when people realize that empathizing with somebody on the other side of a political conflict can be useful, they do it and they actually make arguments that are more persuasive to people on the other side. When, when they open up and listen first, right? When they lead with empathy, they actually become more convincing to the other side. So again, empathy and tribalism will never, I don't think one will ever just steamroll over the other one, but they can coexist more than I think they do. Right now.
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- [38:06]
Tom Bilyeu
And so is a key part of dialing getting control of the volume knob. I think that's a really great way that you gave us to think about it.
- [38:16]
Is a part of getting control of that volume knob. Self awareness. Are there exercises that we can do? Like how do we get better at that?
- [38:24]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, it's a great question. So the way I think about it is I do think of it as really analogous to being in shape. So if, let's say it's Covid. My gym has been closed for a year. I've been sitting on the couch eating potato chips that whole time and I want to run a marathon. Well, I'm not going to go and try to just run a marathon. Run a marathon right away that day. Right. I'll probably break my ankle. I definitely won't make it right. Instead, I'm going to run a half mile today and then three quarters of a mile tomorrow and then a mile the day after that and keep up that habit. So the first thing I want to say about, like, how can one practice empathy, how can one improve is it's not always about the big swings that we take. You don't have to go and volunteer for a month at Habitat for Humanity. It's more about the little habits that you cultivate, but that you deliver on every single day. And so there's a bunch of different ways to do this. A classic form. Probably one of the most best studied ways to build our empathy is through certain meditation practices like loving kindness or metta which is a very simple practice of extending goodwill to others. And there's evidence that when people practice this every day, not only do they get better at empathizing, but the brain structures that are associated with empathy in their brain actually increase in volume. Right? So they're literally sort of going to the empathy gym and literally changing themselves physically. Likewise.
- [39:54]
Tom Bilyeu
How does meta work?
- [39:56]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, meta is a really simple practice. It's got a series of different stages. Stages. And basically, after cultivating a mindful awareness of where you're at right now, you extend kind of goodwill. You think about your own suffering and you wish yourself well the same way that you would somebody who you love. Then you extend that same goodwill towards people in your life, you know, people you care about, towards people you might be having a hard time with, someone who you might be in conflict with, then towards strangers, and then eventually, like the, the hard level, the expert level is you extend goodwill towards all living beings. And so, you know, it's basically an exercise meant to push out the diameter of your empathy, push out the diameter of your kindness as far as you can. And again, practicing that every day turns out to have profound effects on people's ability to connect with others.
- [40:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Man, that is one of the most fascinating things about the brain. The fact that you can sit there by yourself and just think about wanting good things for other people and it actually changes the physical structure of your brain.
- [41:05]
Sponsor Voice
That's crazy.
- [41:06]
Jamil Zaki
It's amazing. And the craziest part to me is that I'm a neuroscientist. But it didn't take neuroscientists to discover this. These are ancient cognitive technologies developed far before the advent of what we would think of as modern science. And I think, to me, you know, when I learned about these practices, I thought maybe what some of your listeners think, are you kidding me? This is just some squishy bs, you know, like, I don't believe any of this at all. And then the neuroimaging work started to come out showing that, wow, actually it can change your brain in these really deep ways. I was humbled. You know, I think as scientists, we can be a little bit arrogant. We think that hypothesis testing and statistical confirmation are these like the royal road to truth, that we are better at finding the truth than non scientists, especially people in spiritual traditions. And to me, the work on Metta is a deep reminder that we should stop being so arrogant and realize that there are different ways to accumulate knowledge and that they should all be respected. Anyways, that's a little aside, but I think to me it's. I share your perspective of how mind blowing it all is.
- [42:17]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. So taking that and now putting it into real world context, something you talk about in the book, the Rwandan genocide.
- [42:25]
The way that they have attempted to combat that now is. It speaks to me personally because I'm so obsessed with the idea of storytelling and like how much we can do with that. One, just give people a quick primer if they don't know what happened. And then two, what they're now doing to try to unite people.
- [42:44]
Shopify Advertiser
Yeah.
- [42:45]
Jamil Zaki
So for those of you listeners who don't know, I mean, Rwanda was the site of one of the worst massacres, genocides in history. In the 1990s, there was a huge, you know, like an ethnic cleansing, in essence, that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. And, you know, afterwards there was this incredible collective trauma. I mean, there's really, it's unspeakable what people there went through. And didn't it happen over like a two week period? I think it was a few months, Tom, but it's been a while since I did, since I like did the deep dive of researching it, but I believe it was a few months. And it was, you know, just so many people being killed per hour at some point. It was, it's just, yeah, it's, it's devastating to read about and to think about. And if you, if it's hard for us to think about, imagine how it is to, if you were part of that, if your family was affected by that, if that's where you live. And so there was, you know, this, this big process of what are known as Gachack courts, you know, sort of this. There were just too many people who had committed atrocities, so a standard court system couldn't process them. And so there were these tribal courts that were set up where people would, who had taken part in the genocide would apologize to the family members of people they had killed and then there would be some standard sentence that they were given. I mean, can you imagine losing a family member and then sitting there and listening to this? I mean, it's just. It was really powerful and helpful in certain ways. Right. Sort of this attempt to heal, but it was also re. Traumatizing for many, many people. And so.
- [44:33]
Some people in media, and it's sort of like there were sort of peace building and also in media, decided, well, let's try an alternative approach, a complementary approach where instead of talking about what really happened, we're going to tell a story that's sort of like, what really happened? And they created this radio soap opera called Musikawea or A New Dawn. And it was this, you know, story of these two tribes, these two. These two basically small towns that entered into conflict with one another. And it was super. It was filled with all this romance and intrigue and betrayal. You know, it was a soap opera, but it brought out some themes, including, you know, that. That. That these types of conflicts can be deadly. And also that even people who do horrible things can change, right. Can. Can become better. And it turned out that this soap opera became the most popular soap opera. It, like. Like 90 of the country was tuning in to listen every week. And people who listened to it versus those who didn't turned out to develop slightly more positive attitudes towards the other side. Not. Not like I like these people, but more like I think that there might be a path forward to some piece somewhere in the future. The way that my friend Betsy Levy Palak puts it is that it might not have convinced people to find peace right away, but it at least allowed their imagination to wander that in that direction. Right. Which I think is so beautiful, because storytelling, whether it's immersing ourselves in novels or plays or whatever, you know, we think of it as just engaging with fictional people, characters and fictional worlds. But in fact, evidence demonstrates that when we immerse ourselves in those stories, we can build our empathy towards real people. We can broaden our care towards real others. And that can be another really powerful way to practice this sort of personal growth.
- [46:34]
Tom Bilyeu
I love that. And that reminds me of another story that you tell in the book, Tony, who was a white supremacist but ended up unwinding all of that. How did empathy play a role for him? How was it possible that he ended up being reachable?
- [46:50]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah, no, this is great. And I really appreciate you ticking through these different techniques for empathy building because they can all work for different people. So so far, we've talked about contemplative and meditation practices. We've talked about storytelling. Now let's talk about contact. Contact is the idea that sometimes prejudice and hatred are easiest to do from a distance.
- [47:11]
Sponsor Voice
Right.
- [47:12]
Jamil Zaki
When you don't actually know somebody who is in the group that you profess to dislike. And Tony was like that. Right. He was a very troubled, you know, young person. Right. He came from a broken home. He had just a lot of trauma early on, and he would never use that as an excuse for his behavior, and nor would I. Right. I mean, most people who go through trauma don't become neo Nazis. And he Did. Right. So. So, I mean, thankfully, most people don't. So Tony was. Was really, you know, a virulent racist and xenophobe.
- [47:47]
And. And it changed. Change for him came in two stages. First, he had kids, and having kids for some reason made him think, okay, well, I really like what they're doing matters so much more to me than my hatred. Right. So that kind of helped him. That sort of like started the process of getting him unhooked from his hatred and anti Semitism in particular. But then the thing that really cracked him open was he met this person, they became friends, and this guy was sort of like a professional and life coach sort of. And. And one of Tony's friends paid for, you know, session with this guy, DAV Baron. And so Tony and DAV are sitting there and talking. They're becoming super friendly. And DAV happens to mention that he's Jewish. And Tony's like, oh, sh. Can I swear here?
- [48:36]
Shopify Advertiser
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- [48:37]
Jamil Zaki
He's like, oh, you know, like, this is the person I'm supposed to hate. And what do I say now? Should I admit that I basically, you know, am sort of, you know, I'm part of this, like, white nationalist movement? And he decided to admit it, and he fully expected DOB to like, punch him or, you know, tell him to leave immediately or what have you. And DAV instead showed him compassion. He said, that's what you've done, but it's not who you are. You're better than that. I see you. And it was just shocking to Tony to receive compassion from somebody who he was supposed to hate. And that type of close connection, that type of friendship, that type of accepting and compassionate connection with somebody on the other side of tribalism, as you. As you well put it, is one of the ways to, if not eliminate tribalism, to soften it. Right. And in Tony's case, it actually set him on a path not just to not being a neo Nazi anymore, but he then co founded this organization called Life After Hate that helps get other people out of hate groups. Right. So he's like a force against hatred now. And a lot of it that is thanks to his personal connection with Davos.
- [49:51]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, man, I love that. I'm saddened that it doesn't happen very often, but I love that coming into contact with it and getting to know somebody can help you cross these barriers. Where can people connect with you? Follow along as you help us all become more empathic.
- [50:08]
Jamil Zaki
Yeah. Thanks, Tom. So you can find my book, At War for Kindness. I want to shout out that on that site. I also have some kindness challenges that I've provided. Just little. You don't have to read the book. They're just little exercises that you can try on a day to day basis. Many really connected to our conversation and so I hope that if anything people feel empowered to work on their own empathy and they can use those challenges. It's just one starting point. There are lots of places, places that they can try it. But that's, that's one.
- [50:44]
Tom Bilyeu
No, I love it. What about social media? Are you on there? Are you active?
- [50:47]
Jamil Zaki
Yep, I'm on Twitter and @Zakijam.z a k I J A M. That's my Instagram handle as well. So yeah, you can find me there. And my lab is the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. SSNL Stanford Edu. If you want to get to the really nerdy stuff, that's where all of the peer reviewed stuff publications are awesome man. I love it.
- [51:10]
Tom Bilyeu
Well guys, I encourage you not only to do the exercises but to read the book. The book is actually really good and it gives a lot of great stories and useful takeaways about how you can take control of your own volume knob and make sure that you're getting the most out of, you know, our species powerful ability to group up. And I think that it is, you know, now necessary more than ever. And like he was saying that when the struggle is worth it, it's worth engaging in it. And I think that for everybody's sake, it is worth engaging in it. And speaking of things that are worth engaging in, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary.
- [51:51]
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- [51:52]
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