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- [00:00]
Francis Foster
I've bought two mattresses in my entire life. Both times I walked into a shop, lay on it for about four seconds
- [00:06]
Constantine Kisin
and thought, yeah, that'll do.
- [00:08]
Francis Foster
Genuinely world class decision making. Which is crazy because you spend a third of your life on the thing and most of us buy one the way you'd buy a toaster. Today's sponsor is Avocado Green Mattress. Certified organic mattresses. No polyurethane foam anywhere near them, just natural materials and they're handmade. The bit that actually got me is you don't have to buy it blind. And Avocado has real showrooms, plus retail partners across the us. So you can go in, lie down properly, not for four seconds, and work out if it actually suits you before you pay for it. Cotton, wool, latex, that sort of thing. Built to last, rather than built to be replaced in three years. Before I came across Avocado, my approach to buying a mattress has always been the same. Walk in, lie down for exactly as long as it takes to feel slightly awkward, then buy whichever one is cheapest. Genuinely not a system I'd recommend, which is probably why the actual sit down and try it approach is worth doing properly for once. They're not everywhere yet, so check the store locator for what's actually near you. Avocado products are made, not manufactured, and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. You can experience them in person at an Avocado showroom or a premier retailer near you. Or shop online at avocadogreenmattress.com trigger to check out their mattresses and furniture sale. That's avocadogreenmattresT.com trigger avocadogreenmattrasT.com trigger introducing Meta Glasses.
- [01:39]
Arthur Brooks
You have questions, They've got answers. Hey, Meta, what's the capital of Peru?
- [01:44]
Francis Foster
Lima.
- [01:45]
Arthur Brooks
How do you say where's the restroom in Spanish?
- [01:49]
Francis Foster
Donde esta albano?
- [01:50]
Arthur Brooks
Hey, Meta, Is a hot dog a sandwich? Technically, no. Spiritually, yes. Hey, Meta, what should I do with my life?
- [01:59]
Francis Foster
That's one of life's biggest questions. What do you think?
- [02:03]
Arthur Brooks
Ask anything. With the new Meta glasses, happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. Try to understand how to enjoy your life. How. How to achieve satisfaction in your achievements and accomplishments and understand deeply the why of your existence. And then happiness will find you. The biggest mistake people make about enjoyment is thinking that it's the same thing as pleasure. And the pursuit of pleasure does not lead to happiness. The pursuit of pleasure leads to rehab. A lot of young people today will go for Every crazy activist scheme because they're screaming out for meaning, because they don't naturally experience. They're completely numb. And so what they, they get involved in forms of very, very performative activism because it puts, it makes them feel alive maybe for the first time in a long time. The four idols are money, power, pleasure and fame. I teach MBA students at Harvard and I have a game called what's my idol? And they're usually wrong. They think it's one thing and it isn't. But if you know you have unbelievable power, why? Because you know it will beguile you and it will distract you from what you truly want. You want to play?
- [03:10]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [03:10]
Yeah, let's play.
- [03:13]
Arthur Brooks, welcome to Trigonometry.
- [03:15]
Arthur Brooks
Thank you. I love the show. I'm a regular, longtime listener, first time guest.
- [03:20]
Francis Foster
Yes. And you being a happiness expert, we talk about a lot of depressing shit on the show. So it's a bit shocking to me that you watch the show, you listen to the show, you're a fan.
- [03:30]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, I'm listening to the show. I do watch your beautiful mugs sometimes, but I mostly listen to it on Apple podcasts. And there's a couple of different reasons that I do that. Number one is because I'm looking as a happiness entrepreneur. I'm looking for problems to solve and you dig in very, very effectively in what's actually on the hearts and minds of a lot of people. The things that are irritating people, the things that are holding them back, but in a very incisive way. I mean, you guys are serious about taking on these things and not sweeping them under the rug. And I want to know about that. As a happiness expert, I don't want to go where people are already happy. If I were a missionary, I wouldn't go into neighborhoods where everybody already has the faith. So I want to see what's actually keeping people up at night. That's the first reason. But here's the second reason. You're comedians and you have rhythm. I'm a public speaker. I learn from people who have natural rhythm. I've learned when I started doing a lot of public speaking hundred times a year. I'm not going to learn from the great orators in history and certainly not from politicians. I learned from stand up comedians how to keep people's attention, how long a module should actually be. And so I can tell when people are doing media if they actually have the right rhythm. And I actually have learned a great deal from you.
- [04:41]
Francis Foster
That's really interesting. I've always thought, particularly when Public speaking, that humor is like you're buying another 10 seconds of people's attention and then they wait for the next joke or the next bit of interesting information. But anyway, enough about that. It's fascinating to have you on. Happiness is obviously, I think most people, if you ask them, what do you actually want to be in life? What do you want? That's actually somewhere very high up on the pecking order there. What is happiness?
- [05:08]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, so that's where the problem begins. Everybody wants to be happy, but they can't figure out how to become happy. And there's a lot of metaphysics to that too. I mean, the fact that we can't be happy, but we believe that we can and we strive all of our lives, suggests that it does exist, that true, unremitting happiness actually exists, just not in this life, in much the same way that thirst presupposes the existence of water. But metaphysics aside, people want it. And one of the reasons they can't find it in this life is because they don't know what it is. They think it's a feeling. And they want this feeling of happiness. And that's where we actually all go astray. I want to feel happy all the time. The limbic system of your brain is not made for you to feel happy happiness all the time. It's made for you to feel misery. A lot, as a matter of fact, negative emotions, of which there's only four. Fear, anger, disgust, and sadness. They exist to keep you alive and out of the jaws of a tiger. Sadness is so you won't say those things inside your head and have your wife leave you summarily. You know, this is what is behind your survival is actually negative experiences and negative emotions. And yet people don't want them. And that conflict, I want something I can't get. I want that particular feeling. That's the problem. So you have to define it in the right way. And the right definition of happiness is much like you would say, what's the right definition of food? And that's protein, carbohydrates and fat. Happiness is a combination of enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. Those are the macronutrients of happiness. Don't try to pursue happiness. Try to understand how to enjoy your life, how to achieve satisfaction in your achievements and accomplishments and understand deeply the why of your existence. And then happiness will find you.
- [06:52]
Francis Foster
Can you break down those three a little bit more as well? So say them again.
- [06:57]
Arthur Brooks
Enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning.
- [06:59]
Francis Foster
Okay, what do they mean?
- [07:01]
Arthur Brooks
So enjoyment is, believe it or not, most, many, many people Especially strivers. Very successful people listen to this program. Many of them don't know how to enjoy their lives. Now the biggest mistake people make about enjoyment is thinking that it's the same thing as pleasure. And the pursuit of pleasure does not lead to happiness. The pursuit of pleasure leads to rehab. And there's a reason for that, which is because it's a primal urge. You tap the ventral tegmental area and the ventral strain. I'm part of the limbic system of the brain, you say. And you can get that in a lot of ways. You can get that when your wife says, konstantin, I love you, or you can get that from a bump of cocaine. We have very thrifty brains. The pursuit of pleasure is not the right pursuit. But you add people and memory to that, and then you deliver that experience to the conscious executive centers of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. And then it becomes enjoyment, which truly is part of happiness. Many people don't know how to pursue that either. They're, they're, they have the old hippie dictum, if it feels good, do it, which is problematic and actually disastrous in a lot of people's lives. Or they just, they, they feel bad about enjoying their lives because they feel like they're going backwards and they're not putting points on the board. So I have to give a lot of very successful people enjoyment lessons. That's part one. And, and you'll for. There's a lot of applies.
- [08:22]
Francis Foster
Can I dive in there a little bit? So enjoyment is not a bag of cocaine, but it is having a drink with your buddies. Is that, is that what you're kind of saying?
- [08:30]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. So if you're doing something that gives you pleasure and could be addict addictive and you're doing it alone, you're probably doing it wrong. That's what it comes down to. That's a pretty good rule. If I find you at 4:00 in the morning in Vegas, pulling the, on the one, the, the lever on the one armed bandit, we'll have a conversation. This has become pleasure and not enjoyment. But if you're at the blackjack table, prudently wagering money that you can afford with your best friends, that's enjoyment. Good for you. You should be careful with addictive things in general. But this is why, this is why the Internet is so dangerously addictive. For example, this is why pornography is so bad. I know nobody who looks socially at pornography. Hey, let's get our friends. No, I mean, it's a solitary, shameful thing to do because it's pleasure, never enjoyment. So the same thing is true, by the way, even with highly glycemic carbohydrates, which are highly addictive, people tend to snack and eat them alone.
- [09:30]
Francis Foster
Wow.
- [09:30]
Arthur Brooks
And they. You're stressed out, you go home and you eat by yourself. And so there should be. It's a good rule of thumb not to even eat alone. As a matter of fact, such that you're eating, which should be an inherently social and enjoyable thing to do, leads to happiness.
- [09:47]
Francis Foster
Okay, so that's enjoyment. Enjoyment, satisfaction.
- [09:50]
Arthur Brooks
Satisfaction is a really paradoxical one. Satisfaction is the joy of an accomplishment with struggle. Only Homo sapiens want pain. Only Homo sapiens want suffering, because that's how you understand what's proportional to your accomplishment. If you don't have to give something up for what you're doing, you will get no sweetness from it. If my students, if they cheat on my exams, they will get no satisfaction from the A. And you look back on your life and you think about the hard things that you've done and you ponder the hardness, and that gives you the sweetness. That's how satisfaction works. That's why you tell. Your kids are little, right?
- [10:27]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah.
- [10:27]
Arthur Brooks
And your kids are a little older.
- [10:28]
Constantine Kisin
I don't have kids.
- [10:29]
Arthur Brooks
You don't have kids. Okay, so they're really little.
- [10:33]
Francis Foster
They're very small. And there's a lot of.
- [10:38]
Arthur Brooks
So how old are your children?
- [10:40]
Francis Foster
Four and a few weeks.
- [10:41]
Arthur Brooks
Okay. I knew you just had a baby.
- [10:43]
Francis Foster
Right.
- [10:43]
Arthur Brooks
Your wife just had a baby. So four is just old enough that you can tell them to wait until dinner.
- [10:49]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [10:50]
Arthur Brooks
Right. That's when you start doing three. If they're hungry, you take the opportunity and give them some food. By four, you're starting to space out their meals a little bit for proper nutrition. But the big lesson from that is that you want them to come to dinner hungry because they're learning about life. If you're teaching them that good things come to those who wait. You don't enjoy your food if you snack all day. This is actually one of the big reasons how we sacrifice happiness is through snacking. Snacking destroys the satisfaction that we actually get from meals. And putting food in our mouth is one of the great sources of happiness for people. It has the enjoyment part, which is the social part, but there's the anticipation part, which is the satisfaction part of eating. And so that's why you say you can't have an ice cream at 4:30 in the afternoon. And what you're really saying to Junior is, I want you to suffer it
- [11:40]
Francis Foster
just doesn't sound good.
- [11:41]
Arthur Brooks
And so that's important, because then their little synaptically plastic brains learn this lesson that. That they should put on. They should defer their gratifications. That's part of being a mature person who actually knows how to produce satisfaction. And this happiness now, it gets weirder when you get the thing that you're deferring your gratification for. Because your primeval brain says that then you'll be super happy, but you're not. And that's called the arrival fallacy. In behavioral science, the arrival fallacy is that if it was really fun to make progress, it's going to be bliss when I hit my goal. And it never is. Which is why people, when they win an Olympic gold medal, they tend to fall into a clinical depression. Because it doesn't work that way. Your emotions don't work to give you a permanently good day. Because that would put you in danger of the tiger sneaking up behind you. It has to be transitory as a signal that something is either good or bad for you. So when something feels really good, it should be very momentary. But we don't figure that out. And the reason we don't figure that out is because Mother Nature wants us to be fooled again and again and again. So we stay in the hunt. That's why the Kissens passed on their genesis, is because they made that mistake over and over again. But that's maladapted. And so I have to work with a lot of people about how to maintain a higher sense of satisfaction. Not by having everything that they want, but by wanting what they have. So, in other words, your satisfaction is sort of all your haves divided by your wants. You need to work the denominator more than the numerator. And that goes against your animal impulses. It speaks to your moral aspirations. That's what every religion teaches, which is why, ultimately, people of faith and of serious philosophy, they can maintain satisfaction better than people who just go from just from fun to fun to fun thing.
- [13:23]
Francis Foster
That's fascinating. I really want to dig into that later. But just to lay out the groundwork fully and complete it, the third portion is meaning.
- [13:30]
Arthur Brooks
Meaning that's the big E. That's the big one. And part of the reason that's the big one is because that's the one that's missing from most young people's lives today. That's what we have vacated largely to the way that we've used and misused technology. Now, that's what my. I have this new book out the meaning of your life. And the reason I wrote that book is because that's as. As a. As a behavioral scientist, what I saw was the most urgent problem facing young people today. The way that technology has affected our brains is this largely vacated important activity in the right hemisphere, which. You've had Ian McGilchrist on the show, right?
- [14:03]
Francis Foster
We haven't. Well, we will at some point.
- [14:05]
Arthur Brooks
It's really. He's really. He's really a genius on this. He talks about hemispheric lateralization, where the right side of the brain is all the complex problems of mystery and meaning and love. And the left side of the brain is the complicated problems of information and things and technology. We check our phones on average 205 times a day, which just shoves us into the left side of our brain, where not only do we not know the meaning of our lives, we don't even ask the questions. That's why young people are depressed and anxious today. It has to do with how we're using our brains. That's why a lot of young people today will go for every crazy activist scheme because they're screaming out for meaning, because they don't naturally experience it. This really is at the doorstep of small screens in our pockets and this meaning crisis.
- [14:50]
Constantine Kisin
People frequently tied to religion, particularly on the show, are religious people, therefore happier than non religious people.
- [14:57]
Arthur Brooks
Yes, yes. No religious people who practice their religion. I mean, we all know a lot of people, of course, you know, look, you're not Catholics, right? Actually, you're not, are you?
- [15:07]
Constantine Kisin
I was raised Catholic. Struggling Catholic.
- [15:10]
Arthur Brooks
I can help you back. We can get this deal done right now on the show.
- [15:15]
Francis Foster
I'm gonna take half an hour. You guys crack on.
- [15:18]
Arthur Brooks
There's a brochure under your seat so that people. There are a lot of Catholics who don't practice. And one of the things that you find is they have no better sense of meaning than people who have no religion at all. But people who believe that they have a concept of the divine, a transcendence, who have not just physical but metaphysical fitness, which requires that you practice something. These people have a much, much deeper sense of the why of their lives. Now, the why part is important. Meaning is really the answer to the questions of why things happen the way they do, which is coherence. Why I'm doing what I'm doing, which is purpose and why my life matters, which is significance, the three big whys of life. And religion's really good for answering that. Why do things happen the way they do? Mind of God. Why Am I doing what I'm doing because I'm trying to live up to God's will? Why does my life matter? Because I'm a child of God? I mean, this perfectly answers the three why questions of meaning, if you take it seriously.
- [16:14]
Constantine Kisin
Is that the reason, do you think, why we're seeing a resurgence, particularly of Catholicism amongst young people? It's actually happening in the uk, but very much so in the United States.
- [16:23]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm super interested in these data, as you can imagine. And there's a problem with these data, which is it tends to be quite anecdotal. So you go out to a lot of dioceses and parishes and say, oh, bigger class at the, you know, the returning order of Catholics coming in ever that we've seen in 15 years, 20 years, 30 years. And I want that to be true. I mean, I deeply want that to be true. But I also look at the Pew data that say that 840 Catholics leave the church each year for every hundred who come in. That's not good. Now, an explanation might be that the hundred who come in are on fire, and the 840 who leave are boomers like me who were signing up in parishes and they chose not to attend in the first place. They're just disaffiliating. But they were lukewarm to begin with, at best. That's a possible explanation, but we need to know more. Now, young men, particularly under 30, for the first time in the past two years, have upticked in, in their designation as none. N o, N, E. So this idea that you would be, what's your religion? Whole bunch of categories or none. Nobody ever said none. When I was born in the mid-60s, 1% of Americans said none. And now it's about 32% of young adults say none. And for the first time, young males have started to say none less. They started to come back just for the past year. There's a little fish hook on the bottom of that line. And, you know, I'm hoping for the best and fostering it as well as I can pardon the pun.
- [17:56]
Constantine Kisin
Because to me, when I see this uptick in religion, it makes perfect sense. If you look at what society values, if you look at what our society says will make you happy, invariably these things won't make you happy.
- [18:11]
Arthur Brooks
Right.
- [18:11]
Francis Foster
Look, career is important.
- [18:13]
Constantine Kisin
Money is important. No one's disputing that. But the idea that this is going to give you ultimate fulfillment is a lie, surely?
- [18:19]
Arthur Brooks
For sure. Now, that's as old as Aristotle, who talked about the things that we think will make us happy, that don't. And really through the lens of Aquinas, who in the 13th century was an unbelievably astute social scientist Aquinas talked about in his summa theologia in 1265, he wrote about the idols that beguile us. And it was ever thus. The four idols that beguile us, he said, and each one of us has a particular idol that if we know what it is, we have power. But if we don't know what it is, we'll always, in retrospect, be the cause of our regret. The four idols are money, power, pleasure and fame. And each one of us, I mean, they're all nice, they're all great. And I play as I teach MBA students at Harvard. And I have a game called what's my idol? They don't know. They don't know. But if you know you have unbelievable power, why, because you know it will beguile you and it will distract you from what you truly want. Faith, family, friendship, satisfying, meaningful work, which are the kind of the four virtuous parts of the Happiness 401k plan, if you want, but if you know, it's really important. So I play this game so that we can uncover their own idol. And they're usually wrong. They think it's one thing and it isn't. And I have a series of questions that I go through to figure out which it is. You want to play?
- [19:38]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [19:39]
Yeah, let's play.
- [19:39]
I'd love to.
- [19:41]
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- [21:04]
Arthur Brooks
Which one do you want to play first, Franz?
- [21:05]
Francis Foster
Me.
- [21:06]
Arthur Brooks
Okay. Okay, let's hear it for our first contestant. So here's how what's my idol works in social science. I never give you a survey and say, pick one. I eliminate the things that it's not. It's a much, much more accurate way of getting at the whole idea.
- [21:22]
Constantine Kisin
I've just realized this is going out on the Internet.
- [21:24]
Arthur Brooks
This is going out on the Internet.
- [21:25]
Francis Foster
But be loud, be proud.
- [21:28]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, don't worry, I'll do it too. If you want. I'll tell you what my idol is at the end of the day. But so of the four, and I'll repeat them, tell me. I want you to tell me the one that you're least beguiled by, that you're least attracted to. But that doesn't mean you don't have it at all. So for example, if you say I don't care about money, that doesn't mean you have no money, you're not in poverty. What that means is that you go to the population average and if it's your idol, that's torture. Being normal is the worst if it's your idol. Okay, so here are the four. Money, wealth, resources, power, which is influence over the people. It's not evil, it's not Hugo Chavez. It's something. It can be very, very good, but people are beguiled by it. Pleasure, which either means feeling good or comfort or security. So if you check your stock portfolio every day, you've got a pleasure idol. Or if you have a hard time getting out of bed, not just if you get high a lot. Okay, and last is. And last is fame. And fame doesn't necessarily mean Internet fame. It might be prestige. It might be just like status well regarded in for the right people, you know? You know what I mean? It's like for professors, it's like most professors don't. They don't want to be, you know, Taylor Swift. What most professors want is to walk into the room of that conference and everybody says, that's professor kissing. Yeah, you know, it's like he wrote that paper, you know, on, on the seven dimensional disappearing manifold.
- [22:55]
Francis Foster
Yeah, I definitely don't want that academic.
- [22:57]
Arthur Brooks
Right, but, but you do want.
- [22:59]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [23:00]
Arthur Brooks
Prestige in your field.
- [23:01]
Francis Foster
Right.
- [23:01]
Arthur Brooks
Okay, so that's fame can mean all sorts of things. Now you're thinking about these things, Francis. You got to get rid of one. Which one do you get rid of first? Okay, so we've got fame, money, power, pleasure, and fame.
- [23:13]
Constantine Kisin
Money, power, pleasure, fame, or honor.
- [23:17]
Arthur Brooks
You know, honor, which is. That's the old word. That's the word that Aquinas uses, is honor, instead of. Instead of fame.
- [23:24]
Francis Foster
Okay.
- [23:24]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, but that has kind of a connotation, you know, I have. Two of my kids are Marines. They serve with honor. That's not what I mean. Right, right. Yeah.
- [23:31]
Constantine Kisin
I'd say power.
- [23:32]
Arthur Brooks
Power. Tell me why. And by the way, I believe you, but tell me why.
- [23:36]
Constantine Kisin
Tell me. Look, I kind of see it, like, through. Through kind of an addict's lens, and I'll tell you why. It's because whenever I've been gambling with friends, yeah. I'm like, this does nothing for me. That little in my brain where I'm like, yeah, more, more, more. I. I get nothing from it. Yeah.
- [23:55]
Francis Foster
So power.
- [23:55]
Constantine Kisin
I'm like, I don't. What's important to me is that I am satisfied with what I'm doing. That's what matters to me. Like, have I done my best? Have I produced work that I'm genuinely proud of? At the end of the day, do I look back and go, that was a good day? It matters to me what my friends and family think. But everybody else, I don't really care that much.
- [24:18]
Arthur Brooks
You don't want to order people around?
- [24:20]
Constantine Kisin
No.
- [24:20]
Arthur Brooks
Snap your fingers and people do what you want?
- [24:22]
Francis Foster
No.
- [24:22]
Arthur Brooks
You don't want to be a CEO?
- [24:24]
Francis Foster
No.
- [24:25]
Arthur Brooks
So let me make a supposition about you. Do you have libertarian political tendencies?
- [24:31]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah, I kind of want to be left alone.
- [24:32]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. Do you hate it when people tell you what to do?
- [24:34]
Francis Foster
I fucking hate it.
- [24:35]
Arthur Brooks
Yep, there you go. And when people who hate actually seeing having other people have power over them don't like power. Here's the thing. When you see somebody who has a particular idol, they admire somebody who has the same idol, but more of it. So if you see a politician who admires dictators, look out. That person wants to be a dictator. Look at who you admire. If you admire rich people, if you admire famous people, that's your idol. Almost certainly. You desperately despise powerful people who wield it arbitrarily. Right?
- [25:07]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah.
- [25:07]
Arthur Brooks
I mean, from Venezuela, for Pete's sake. I mean, you've actually seen the fruits of that. So I totally believe you now. You've just gotten rid of an idol that's not an Idol. So there's no virtue. Okay. You've got three left. Money, pleasure, and fame. You got to get rid of one more. And this is going to get harder now, because these are all kind of nice, right?
- [25:31]
Constantine Kisin
Fame.
- [25:33]
Arthur Brooks
Sorry, I don't believe you. You have a famous podcast.
- [25:37]
Francis Foster
No, but, you know,
- [25:40]
Constantine Kisin
I. No, I tell you why. I. I know enough about myself that I know pleasure. I know pleasure.
- [25:48]
Arthur Brooks
You know where you're driving with this, right? Okay, now. Now, the reason I say this is because, I mean, it might perfectly well be the case that it doesn't matter to you at all when people recognize you in the airport, which I'm sure they do.
- [26:01]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah.
- [26:01]
Arthur Brooks
Because you got millions and millions and millions of viewers, and they go and say, oh, I love trigonometry, and it feels kind of good.
- [26:07]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah.
- [26:08]
Arthur Brooks
But you don't care.
- [26:09]
Constantine Kisin
It's not that I don't care. I'm glad that it provides them with value, and I'm glad that I'm doing something that makes people feel good and it teaches them and it educates them. All the rest of it. But it's third in that list.
- [26:22]
Francis Foster
I wouldn't pretend it doesn't matter, because it does.
- [26:24]
Constantine Kisin
But if I'm being honest, it's third.
- [26:26]
Arthur Brooks
What you're saying is that the other two are more important to you, and I know what you're gonna get rid of next, which is.
- [26:30]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah.
- [26:31]
Arthur Brooks
And this. Because what's left is pleasure.
- [26:33]
Constantine Kisin
Yes.
- [26:33]
Arthur Brooks
Tell me about the pleasure. Idol.
- [26:37]
Francis Foster
I could have told you this from the moment we started.
- [26:39]
Arthur Brooks
Francis, are you a porn addict? I'm kidding. The last episode of Triggeredometry.
- [26:51]
Constantine Kisin
There is a family history, obviously my family, with alcoholism.
- [26:55]
Arthur Brooks
Alcoholism, Yep.
- [26:59]
Constantine Kisin
I know that I have those tendencies, which is why I don't drink. It's why I have to be very regimented with my life. I meditate every morning, I plan, and I structure my day because I know that if I don't have those guardrails, I can easily veer off. I have depressive tendencies. And when I indulge those depressive tendencies, it either goes. It can go. It goes very quickly down a dark
- [27:26]
Arthur Brooks
path, and you try to alleviate those tendencies with immediate pleasures, which ultimately make the problem worse.
- [27:32]
Constantine Kisin
Like every comedian, I got diagnosed with adhd, and I know that I have those trying to ameliorate those best set of behaviors, whatever you want to call them, and ameliorate it with substances and various different behaviors that I know are deeply destructive.
- [27:49]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, I completely believe you. And I completely believe that. And it's interesting because I've actually studied how humor works. And humor is all based on surprise. And so you're usually really good at being surprised or you're good at surprising people. So humor works on a part of the limbic system called the parahippocampal gyrus. And you flick it and it creates surprise, which you resolve by laughing. And so, you know, any stupid dad joke does this. And the reason that little kids laugh, your four year old laughs. Or when you're, when your four year old was two and you did this, it's flicked the parahippocampal gyrus of your baby. And so they laugh like crazy. And now, you know, even now I'll tell you the st. A stupid joke. My. I, I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers.
- [28:39]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah, that's an Email Phillips joke.
- [28:41]
Arthur Brooks
That's dumb. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's my father's favorite joke. So that's. But, but here's the interesting thing. Most people are either good at fighting, flicking that thing to change the mood because they're depressed, which is most comedians, or they're really good at having it flicked by somebody else, which means they actually enjoy humor. Those are the two aspects of humor. You're unusual because you laugh a lot. Most comedians don't laugh that much because they're only good at one part of that. They're really good at changing the tenor. It's called emotional substitution. And so you find out when you're a depressed kid that you're funny and you say a funny thing and everybody laughs and it makes things better inside your brain. Right. So it's a strange thing. Right. But you actually, you enjoy jokes too.
- [29:21]
Constantine Kisin
I love jokes, yeah.
- [29:22]
Arthur Brooks
I mean, good jokes.
- [29:22]
Constantine Kisin
Not the one I just, I like. Imam Phillips.
- [29:25]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's. Anyway, so that's, that's. Sorry, I didn't mean to take us off that path. What were we talking?
- [29:33]
Francis Foster
Pleasure is his idol.
- [29:34]
Pleasure is pleasure.
- [29:34]
Arthur Brooks
Pleasure is your idol and pleasure is your idol. And I actually believe that. And so you have to be very, very careful about the fact that you'll self administer pleasure for mood management because it's an ineffective mood management technique.
- [29:46]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah, it's why I. One of the things that I spend my money on is like personal training because I know that I'm physically lazy and if I go to the gym, I'm just gonna mess about, which is why I need a very angry South African man to basically shout at me and get me to list heavy things. Three to four times a week.
- [30:06]
Francis Foster
Lift, lift, lift.
- [30:08]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, I like it.
- [30:09]
Constantine Kisin
But I just know that if I do that, that again, I see my life essentially, and my. And my behavior and the. The way I plan my life as a series of guardrails. If I don't have the guardrails in place, we go somewhere very dark, very quick.
- [30:25]
Arthur Brooks
Right, Right. Ready?
- [30:26]
Francis Foster
Yeah. All right. It's going to be difficult. I can't eliminate any of them.
- [30:32]
Arthur Brooks
Well, having a balanced portfolio of idols is actually pretty healthy insofar as that you're probably not. You're probably not managed by any of
- [30:40]
Francis Foster
them really vigorously, but give them to me again.
- [30:42]
Arthur Brooks
Money, power, pleasure, and fame. You got to get rid of one of them first. And that means going to the population. Mean, which one do you get rid of first?
- [30:50]
Francis Foster
Going to the population means if I eliminate money, I make what, an average.
- [30:54]
Arthur Brooks
You're the most average Brit ever. Which, by the way, is getting worse and worse.
- [30:58]
Francis Foster
Yeah, tell me about it. I can't believe I'm saying this, but power and fame, I definitely eliminated.
- [31:04]
Arthur Brooks
You would. Yeah, you would. You know, I mean, you're pretty libertarian, too.
- [31:07]
Francis Foster
I'm very libertarian. I fucking hate people telling me what to do. But I am CEO of Trigonometry, and I do run it. Right.
- [31:13]
Arthur Brooks
Because it must be done.
- [31:14]
Francis Foster
Because it must be done.
- [31:15]
Arthur Brooks
But when somebody's. I'd rather not do it, but if people start calling you boss, it's going to make you uncomfortable.
- [31:19]
Francis Foster
Yeah, I don't like someone to stop it. Yeah, it's king.
- [31:22]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're a hierarchical organization that has the. That has the. That's flatter than it could be because you don't like it when people call you by your last name and. No, that stuff really bums you out. Okay. And fame, it doesn't. It's not. It doesn't draw you in at all. So if I don't like them, if literally nobody recognized you on the street, I'd prefer that. You would prefer that.
- [31:42]
Francis Foster
So to me, fame is a. Is an unpleasant byproduct of what we do.
- [31:46]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. Really?
- [31:47]
Francis Foster
Yeah. Like when people come up to me in the street and they want to chat, I sort of. I want to chat to them to give them what they want. But for me, it's awkward and a bit of a distraction.
- [32:01]
Arthur Brooks
It's not oxygen for you?
- [32:02]
Francis Foster
No, not at all. Having said that, I don't want people to walk away from this thinking, like, I, you know, I'm being superior in some way, whatever. Like, I enjoy having that conversation. But If I could just walk around and people didn't recognize me, that would definitely be my.
- [32:17]
Arthur Brooks
Are you an extrovert or an introvert?
- [32:18]
Francis Foster
Introvert.
- [32:19]
Arthur Brooks
You are an introvert, which means that when you do something big like arc.
- [32:22]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [32:22]
Arthur Brooks
I think you're drained of energy.
- [32:24]
Francis Foster
Absolutely. I need to rest for a week.
- [32:26]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So an extrovert would be wired.
- [32:29]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [32:29]
Arthur Brooks
After that. That's. That's really how you find out. Because introverts can be very public.
- [32:33]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [32:33]
Arthur Brooks
But they don't get energy from.
- [32:35]
Francis Foster
I get tired from being with lots of other people.
- [32:37]
Arthur Brooks
Okay, so you like solitude.
- [32:40]
Francis Foster
I love solitude.
- [32:41]
Arthur Brooks
You like being alone or being alone just with your family? Yeah, that's my interesting.
- [32:45]
Francis Foster
Alone. Okay. I've got two young kids. You can tell.
- [32:50]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [32:51]
Francis Foster
So.
- [32:51]
Arthur Brooks
And so we're just two left. Which is. Which is money and pleasure.
- [32:56]
Francis Foster
Well, I really value comfort. Right. And the thing with money is it's like, I'm not someone who wants to make lots of money for the sake of making money, but I do need a lot of money to. To do the things in my life that I want. I don't. Maybe that doesn't make any sense.
- [33:14]
Arthur Brooks
It makes a lot of sense because you just said it's pleasure, not money. You need the money to give you the. To give you the comfort that you want.
- [33:19]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [33:20]
Arthur Brooks
That's really what it comes down to.
- [33:21]
Francis Foster
And for me, comfort is peace, is what I mean. Like, I want to be left alone in a comfortable space.
- [33:26]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah, that.
- [33:26]
Francis Foster
That's kind of what.
- [33:27]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. You want to eliminate sources of discomfort. Yes, that's what it comes down to.
- [33:30]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [33:31]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. And that's actually one of the things that we find a lot of people. They don't, you know, they want. They don't want noisy neighbors, for example. They don't want to wait in a queue to go to the doctor.
- [33:42]
Francis Foster
I do not want to weigh in.
- [33:43]
Arthur Brooks
They don't want to be in traffic.
- [33:45]
Francis Foster
I do not want to be in traffic.
- [33:46]
Arthur Brooks
Those things cost money.
- [33:47]
Francis Foster
Right.
- [33:47]
Arthur Brooks
And so that's a pleasure.
- [33:48]
Francis Foster
Right.
- [33:49]
Arthur Brooks
That's a pleasure, Idol. And what that means is that it's very, very easy to kind of fall into patterns. And again, there's nothing wrong with these things. These things are not evil. There's nothing wrong with pleasure. It's just the misuse of pleasure. It's just the elevation of pleasure when you're doing this at the expense of your family. It's like, I want peace. Get the kids out of here. Then you'll actually sacrifice your relationships. You'll do things that you ultimately regret as a result of that. And so knowing that is super important for most of my students. They think they have a money idol. I mean, they're MBA students at the Harvard Business School. Well, they're American, but it's not that they have a. They actually have an honor idol. They're not even a fame idol. It's to be beloved. They want to be adored. And the reason is because my students, and by the way, me too, is my problem too. They're really, really, really good at something when they're kids. Like, really good at something when they're kids. And they learn that they only get love and attention from their parents when they do that thing and their little synaptically plastic brains. This is really importance of dad. I'm a dad. I'm a grandfather. My grandkids are the same age as your kids that they only get attention when they do that thing, which makes them conclude in their synaptic plasticity that love is earned. And then go through life trying to get that feeling. I want that feeling by doing the thing. And they become sort of human doings as opposed to human beings. And what they want is. They want adoration and they want to earn it. They want to earn. They'll earn their spouse's love, they'll earn their friend's love. They'll try to earn God's love. They'll go through their lives trying to earn love. And what that. That's really. That's an honor idol. That's an idol of the adoration that you're trying to earn. And love can't be earned. Love is a free gift, freely given. It's a grace. And so this is one of the most important things we have to get strivers, super successful accomplishment people off of that idol because they'll never be happy. They'll never have a happy marriage, they'll never have true friendships, they'll never have an ordered relationship with the divine as long as they're trying to earn love.
- [35:50]
Constantine Kisin
It's a lot of comedians have that. Yeah, I can see that. The moment you started talking about that, I was like, yeah, that's a bit of you, mate.
- [35:56]
Arthur Brooks
I know a lot of comedians. I work with a lot of comedians. And part of it is I learned from them. You know, I think I'm the only social scientist that's ever done Mike Birbiglia's show.
- [36:04]
Constantine Kisin
Oh, really?
- [36:05]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, Working it out. That's a great show. Yeah, I listen to that show sometimes because I'm trying to Because I'm working things out all the time. Because I'm always on tour. It's just doing public speaking. And so. And I went on to talk about how I work out my material on a. On a. On a comedian podcast. But it's true. It's true. They want to be loved. Like, laugh at my joke. I just want you to laugh at my joke.
- [36:26]
Constantine Kisin
It's just.
- [36:26]
Arthur Brooks
That's points on the board. It makes me feel like I'm worth something, for Pete's sake. And deep in my heart, I don't feel like I'm worth anything. And I feel worthless until somebody's loving me.
- [36:36]
Francis Foster
Yeah, that's really interesting. You call it joke coke, don't you? Yeah, yeah, it's a joke coke.
- [36:40]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, totally.
- [36:41]
Francis Foster
Since why I never really enjoyed being a comedian. I like making jokes as part of my speeches or doing this. But the life of a comedian, like, it's very hard. It's a hard life.
- [36:51]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
- [36:52]
Francis Foster
The travel, all of it. And I was very happy to not do it anymore when Covid came along and, you know, everything shifted.
- [37:00]
Arthur Brooks
Really?
- [37:00]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah.
- [37:01]
Arthur Brooks
Oh, I hated being taken off the road.
- [37:03]
Francis Foster
I hated really.
- [37:04]
Arthur Brooks
I love being on tour. I started going on tour when I was 19 because I was a professional classical musician all the way through my 20s, and I started going on chamber of music tours. I toured for a couple of years with Charlie Bird, who is a bossa nova guitar player. And I love tour. I love the touring life. It's just the best. And it's not a well balanced, healthy life, which means that married life and family life actually saved me. But left to my devices, I would be out seven days a week.
- [37:30]
Francis Foster
Right, right, right, right, right. I want to come back to something you said, and obviously the meaning issue is something we've talked about a lot, and the. Is something we've talked about a lot.
- [37:40]
Arthur Brooks
I know on this show really well.
- [37:42]
Francis Foster
Too well. Thank you. Because we're really trying to get to the bottom of it. I think it's very easy and tempting for people who, you know, who maybe got their life together a little bit and they've successful in some ways to just look at people who are, you know, throwing soup on paintings to save the planet or whatever. And, you know, it's kind of silly and you make fun of it, but I think I've always seen that within that is the drive to have meaning, and it's the drive to be significant as well. And it's a drive to live in a significant time. I think there's a huge appeal to the idea that we are living in some kind of time that is immediately before an imminent catastrophe, and if I just go out and I have the right placard at the right protest, and we'll save the planet, otherwise everything's gonna go haywire. And what I wanted to ask you is why is it that people pursue forms of activism that are not actually effective? Because if you wanted meaning, like I get a lot of meaning from doing trigonometry, because I feel like we're contributing to the cultural discussions and shaping them in a way that we think is true and matters a lot. And from the feedback we get from people, I hear that it makes a meaningful impact in their lives and that that to me is meaning. That's real meaning. But if I was engaged in something that was not producing any outcome and was in fact not geared to producing any outcome, was simply attending protests for the sake of feeling like I am with other people who are achieving effectively, nothing, I. I wouldn't find that meaningful. Why do, why do people pursue forms of activism that don't actually achieve anything at all?
- [39:27]
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Constantine Kisin
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- [40:58]
Arthur Brooks
Well, One answer, which is an incomplete answer, is that it's performative, okay? And. But it's not performative to others. It's performative to yourself. The meaning comes from.
- [41:08]
Francis Foster
From.
- [41:09]
Arthur Brooks
From showing that you care about something enough to be angry about it, to have to put yourself into a hot hedonic state, to feel intense levels of negative emotionality. It just shows that you can actually feel something. For Pete's sake. You're looking. You're doing the show really, really good. Really good, but you're not in a hot hedonic state. On the contrary, it'd be terrible if you're just yelling the whole time. I mean, there are people who try to do that in media, but there would be a less effective medium if you were doing that. But there are a lot of people who just can't feel anything. They're not feeling anything. They're completely numb. And so what. They get involved in forms of very, very performative activism because it makes them feel alive maybe for the first time in a long time. And so really an extraordinary thing. I mean, they're spending their time scrolling and dating online, and it's just incredibly numbing behaviors. They kind of wiped out all sense of boredom, but their lives are grindingly boring. And so the result of it is they want to feel something maybe for the first time in a long time is what it comes down to. The second problem is that a lot of young people today have been effectively conscripted into a culture war by baby boomers. And they've been made to understand that their identity is in a form of grievance. And this is very common. This is the best way to manipulate people, is to help them, is to create a victim identity. That's identity politics. But the most single toxic kind of identity that you can have is that I'm a victim. This is what.
- [42:38]
Francis Foster
Why is it toxic?
- [42:39]
Arthur Brooks
It's toxic because you're looking in the mirror and saying, I'm aggrieved. I don't know who I am if I'm not feeling bad. And this is the exact antithesis of Christianity or any good, serious, nutritious religion, which is to look in the mirror and say, I'm a bologna child of God. What's my identity? Child of God? It's profoundly positive. But if you look in the mirror and you say, I'm the victim of discrimination. I'm somebody who's actually suffered marginalization. I'm somebody who's on the short end of the stick, that's terrible as an identity. That's the recipe for anxiety and depression, which of course, it has produced.
- [43:15]
Francis Foster
And what would you say to people who will say to you, well, I have been a victim of this, or my people have been a victim of this for a long time, or now you get the same on other parts of the political spectrum. And we have been a victim of DEI or whatever. And these are all things that are historically accurate.
- [43:32]
Constantine Kisin
I mean, the woke.
- [43:32]
Arthur Brooks
Right, is doing exactly the same thing today. I don't know. Do we use is on trigonometry? Do we talk about that? Do we use this term of art?
- [43:38]
Francis Foster
I was one of the people that pioneered it. You did.
- [43:41]
Arthur Brooks
You coined this, didn't you?
- [43:42]
Francis Foster
Yeah, yeah, he's got me lots of love and gratitude on the Internet.
- [43:46]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah, he's come for a drink. Now we talk.
- [43:49]
Arthur Brooks
Means you're onto something, Constantine. You're onto something. But the truth is that you will find again, this is not the exclusive ecosystem of the left. The left got really, really good at this, of. Of conscripting people into the culture war with victim identity. But the right has picked this up like crazy because it's incredibly powerful. And. And why should. I mean, you should acknowledge the fact that there are injustices in the world. That's the right thing to do. But you don't identify yourself with injustice per se. That's the vic.
- [44:17]
Francis Foster
That's.
- [44:18]
Arthur Brooks
That's the. The perfect recipe for misery. To do something like that, on the contrary, you should be joyful. There's something that you can actually do. I mean, the message of most religions is not withstanding all the hard things in your life, you're beloved notwithstanding, that you can have a good life. That's the whole idea that the good life is open to absolutely everybody. As opposed to. I know you grew up in some. You grew up in a first world country with all kinds of prosperity, but you're still a victim. Yeah, I mean, that's a hell of a way to live. But of course, that makes you. That makes you really a putty in the hands of the dark triad activist boomer. You know, the person who's a narcissist, the person who's Machiavellian, the person who has psychopathic tendencies, which, by the way, the research is very clear, describes most real activist leaders today in the political environment. They have these tendencies. That's 7% of the population is dark triad, but they're disproportionately represented in the activist community. And they want soldiers. How do you get that? By freaking them out, by making them think that the world is actually against them, as opposed to helping them understand how they can take control, how they can have agency, how life can be joyful, how life can be good, which is the responsible thing for all of us to do with young people today.
- [45:41]
Francis Foster
Do you think part of the problem
- [45:42]
Constantine Kisin
as well, Arthur, is they say comparison is a thief of joy, and with social media, we live in a perpetual state of comparison.
- [45:48]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, no, that's absolutely the case. And that quote is frequently attributed to President Theodore Roosevelt, of all people. And whether he said. He said it on the Internet. So it may or may not be his, but it's certainly manifestly true. And I've got data and all kinds of experiments from the literature that show that's exactly the case, as much as if you take photographs on your vacation, you will enjoy the vacation 16% less and about 25% less if you post them to the Internet. So, for example, that's just all that is sort of empirical verification of the fact that when you're doing something and you're living for other people, when you're trying to hold yourself up to the standards of others, when you're not fully present in the joy that is your life, you're not going to enjoy your life is what it comes down to. But sure, I mean, you're going to. But fundamentally the problem isn't social comparison. Fundamentally, the problem is that our brains are broken. Our brains are broken. We're being shoved 205 times a day on average, which is the number of times that the average American looks at her or his phone, into the left hemisphere of the brain. The right hemisphere is mystery and meaning and significance and purpose and love and hope with the right side of the brain. But no, no, you're over there in the world of information. You didn't ask for, for things that actually promise you everything and deliver nothing. And the complicated problems of engineering and analysis, as opposed to the complex issues of meaning and mystery. And if you're just never there, well, guess what? You're going to be sad and angry
- [47:20]
Constantine Kisin
and that sadness and anger, particularly when you've got young men who are more prone to extremes of emotion. That tends to lead towards extremism, doesn't it?
- [47:30]
Arthur Brooks
It can, absolutely. Although I would contest that it's mostly men. On the contrary, what we find is that, and this comes from the work of John Haidt, who's just the best on this, and Gene Twenge and a lot of other people, Brad Wilcox down at the University of Virginia, who show that there's incredible problems of depression and Anxiety of mood disorders of diagnosed mental illness, particularly for Progressive women under 30. Progressive women under 30 have a 56% chance of having been formally diagnosed with at least one mental illness.
- [48:02]
Francis Foster
Why?
- [48:02]
Arthur Brooks
Well, because of this. Because this is how it's manifest when depression is largely shown among women with sadness and men with anger. That's how you see it. A lot of women don't understand that about their husbands. Like, my husband's so grumpy all of a sudden. He's depressed. He's depressed. Well, he's not crying. Of course not. That's not how men do it. Men do it in a different way. So you're going to see this manifest in different ways in classic mood disorders with sadness, especially sadness, you know, depression, rumination with women and with unhealthy, disordered forms of anger for men.
- [48:38]
Constantine Kisin
And the worrying thing is, is the way we're going in society where, if you look at it, men are less and less likely to get married, less and less likely to be in relationships, less and less likely to have deep friendships, which are incredibly important for men. You do worry where this is going to go because we're less and less happy. And as a result, young men and young women, they're veering away from each other as well, right?
- [49:05]
Arthur Brooks
No, that's right. And effectively, what the Great Awokening has done, but what that really is, the manifestation of modern technology has done, is it's driven us away from the thing that's best for us in the right hemispheres of our brain, which is romantic love. This is the ultimate mystery of life. It's a problem that can't be solved. So are you married, Francis?
- [49:27]
Constantine Kisin
No.
- [49:27]
Arthur Brooks
You're not married. So I'll talk to you as a married man. I've been married 35 years. There's lots of complicated left hemispheric problems in my life, like my car. My car is the classic left hemisphere problem, complicated problem. I can solve it, but I haven't. I don't have the slightest idea how it works. I'm incompetent, but I could solve it.
- [49:47]
Francis Foster
Right?
- [49:47]
Arthur Brooks
My marriage is a complex problem in the right hemisphere of my brain. I will never solve my marriage. It's so complex, right? I mean, that's because it's dynamic. You know, you want a cat because you have right hemispheric needs. You don't want a mechanical cat, which would be a left hemispheric simulation for it. We're living in the world of simulations which don't. Which don't satisfy us is what it comes about furthermore, when we're living over there, we're going to drive people apart from even being able to comprehend that mystery. I talk to men in their twenties all the time who've never been on a date. I mean, in my 20s, that was the point. That was the point. I mean, I wanted a career and I wanted to make money. I wanted to be successful. I wanted love. I wanted to find the love of my life. When I was 23 years old, like, yep, I'm looking for my wife. That's.
- [50:34]
Francis Foster
I mean, I was like that as well.
- [50:36]
Arthur Brooks
And that's, that's. You're 20 years younger than me.
- [50:39]
Francis Foster
So I've been married 23 years.
- [50:40]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah.
- [50:41]
Francis Foster
Got married at 20, met at 18. Married at 20.
- [50:43]
Arthur Brooks
Nice. Yeah, I admire that a lot. I met my wife when I was 24 and I couldn't close the deal for two years because she didn't believe in marriage. I mean, she's in Barcelona.
- [50:54]
Francis Foster
Okay.
- [50:54]
Arthur Brooks
Like Denmark on the Mediterranean. And, you know, they're all very modern, you know, they're, you know, hard read, you know, atheists, et cetera, et cetera. But I had to set about. This was a big, big, big project. Now, of course, she leads me in paths of righteousness. I mean, she's a true believer in all these things, but. And she leads me. But the whole point is that this is the mystery of life. And if we've eradicated that, we've broken the brains of young people because of how technology has changed our lives, how culture, the culture that everything has a complicated solution, the culture of technology and engineering, where there's an app for that, all that does is it ruins mystery. And the ultimate mystery, of course, is love. And so if you're freaking people out in activism, turning the genders against each other systematically, if you're making it harder for people to meet, if you're taking out all the joy from the way that they meet because they're meeting on apps, for example, if you're making it such that they don't even know how to date in real life, guess what? You're going to get a baby bust. You're going to get a love depression, which is exactly what we have.
- [52:04]
Francis Foster
Well, technology seems like such a huge part of it. And I think because people feel that we. People feel may not be true, that they can't control that part. We focus so much on culture and politics and all this other stuff where it seems to me quite obvious that, for example, the pill and other elements of the sexual revolution drive so much of the stuff that people think is cultural. And likewise, I think Francis was saying before we started, happiness peaked in 1992.
- [52:29]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
- [52:29]
Francis Foster
Well, yeah, the Internet comes along, right? Is that, is that fair?
- [52:32]
Arthur Brooks
That's fair. But really the, the biggest. That is true that there's been a kind of a climatic change in happiness since about 1990. But then you have the storms, the hurricanes. The weather of happiness has been a lot more severe. And that's been since 2008. Right.
- [52:48]
Francis Foster
Social media.
- [52:48]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah. And at the beginning of that, when I saw the biggest downdraft in happiness in my data, I thought it was the financial crisis. Nuh, that was, that was the introduction of the smartphone. That's what that was. And then the introduction of apps on the smartphone, then the introduction of dating apps. I'm not against dating apps. That's the way that the world is going to work. I do scientific advice to dating app. As a matter of fact, I want them to be better because they're not going to go away. And the way that you do that is by adding the human element into the algorithm, adding the right hemisphere into the left hemisphere, and then you can actually make them productive. We learn how to use the machines, by the way. We're going to figure this out. People are really ingenious and we're going to figure this out. I know the end of the story. We're fine. The problem is we lose a lot of people in the meantime. And that's what I want to avoid.
- [53:31]
Francis Foster
And the other thing I have noticed in the time that we've been doing the show, I think we started trigonometry in 2018. By this point, you know, Joe Rogan and other people were already really big. But there was, it felt like a bit of a renaissance because for the first time you were hearing long form conversations, often about difficult issues. They were conducted with mutual respect and all the rest of it. And I very naively thought, you know, this is it now. We found the magic formula for discussion. And now I see that that very thing is becoming what we saw in the mainstream media, which is typically for a podcast. The thing that will be most consumed is a short clip that totally misrepresents the conversation that goes viral because somebody said something out of context that can be made to look offensive and triggering and whatever. So we keep reverting to this very bad meme. Why is that?
- [54:28]
Arthur Brooks
Well, because people want. They want the immediate emotional hit. I mean, because something that actually gets you into this hedonic state, it gives you a lot of dopamine. I mean, the Idea that somebody said something that triggers you, something that offends you, that actually gives you the sense that you're right and they're wrong. And that's really, really satisfying. It feels good to be right and to hear somebody that you don't like saying something you think is wrong. That's why you'll pass it on. That's why you kind of know it's out of context. But that's no fun. You'll actually pass that on. It's satisfying.
- [55:03]
Francis Foster
Right.
- [55:04]
Arthur Brooks
That's why it's more satisfying than putting something into context and getting the nuance. Is that the least satisfying thing ever?
- [55:10]
Francis Foster
Right.
- [55:11]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, that's a drag, man.
- [55:13]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah.
- [55:13]
Francis Foster
What do we do about that?
- [55:15]
Arthur Brooks
Well, I mean, what we do about that is adhering to truth is being serious about truth. And. And, you know, there's always been this problem. There's nothing new under the sun. I mean, people have misrepresented each other and lied about each other. That, you know, calumny is nothing new. I mean, if you go back to the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and, you know, there were pamphlets that were coming out from John Adams that were, you know, defaming Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Jefferson was sniping at John Adams, and they were taking lies about each other. And there were people that were lying about. We look back in the glory days, everybody loved George Washington. No, I mean, if you look at the second term of George Washington, he literally wouldn't read the newspapers because they were so calumnious about him. They were lying about him and saying terrible things about him. The newspapers in those days were all completely aligned with one particular political party or one. And so. And the ones that were against him in New York or whatever. And so there's nothing new under the sun. This is the way that this works. And what we're dedicated to is the long game of truth and love and beauty and all of these good things. But that's always the long game. You'll always lose the short game to the quick hit and to the negative emotion. But the long game has got to belong to us ultimately, because if it doesn't, then there is no hope.
- [56:40]
Constantine Kisin
This is a question I really wanted to ask, which is, does taking risk make us happier?
- [56:47]
Arthur Brooks
So the answer is maybe.
- [56:48]
Francis Foster
Well, it depends what happens, I imagine.
- [56:50]
Arthur Brooks
Well, no, it doesn't actually depend on the outcome so much as with the nature of the risk. So entrepreneurs take a lot of risk, but so do compulsive gamblers. And so risk per se isn't good. But risk in search of an explosive reward, and done prudently and managed in the right way, can be the most rewarding thing possible. Now, we could go and talk about Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs or Henry Ford, who took incredible risks in search of these entrepreneurial results that were outsized and the wonderful things they were able to do. But that's actually not the best example. The best example of the biggest entrepreneurial risk that leads to the biggest rewards. Falling in love. That is the ultimate enterprise. A family, a marriage, babies. That's an enterprise. That's way bigger deal than Apple Computer. That's a way bigger deal. And it's a little explosion happening all over the place, less than it was, which is problematic. But that's risk in the enterprise of life. And I talk to my students about this all the time. I say, you want to be an entrepreneur? Yeah. Good. Go raise $25 million in venture and throw it behind your crazy scheme on the Internet. I don't care. You want to be a real entrepreneur? Give your heart away. Go give your heart away. Tell that girl that you're secretly in love with her and let her stomp all over it. Maybe. Or maybe say, I like you too. That's risk that really, really matters. And when you take risk with a sense of prudential judgment, which is to say that you're doing. And by the way, prudence in the classical sense is not taking risk. It's taking the right amount of risk. Sometimes risking your life is the prudent thing to do. Right? That's. Joseph Pieper talks about that in the Four Cardinal Virtues. He writes about prudence in the best way. So taking prudent risk in search of explosive returns for things that really matter, then risk is the best thing ever.
- [58:48]
Constantine Kisin
Because the enemy I think of happiness, and correct me if I'm wrong, is a desire to seek comfort.
- [58:54]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, Well, I mean, an enemy of happiness is actually never living in an entrepreneurial way. Absolutely. I mean, this is one of the things. And this is one of the biggest problems you could live in this kind of cocoon of. And really what the cocoon is is the Matrix, that movie that came out 27 years ago. Isn't that shocking? But what that is, is that nobody people lived in a pleasant simulation because they were being controlled by an artificial intelligence that fed off human energy. Francis, we're literally in the Matrix, this actually happening to us right now. And the way that you keep people pacified is by the pleasant simulation, the kind of the curve fit of a right hemispheric Life, that's actually a left hemispheric experience. And in so doing that comfort, it's a comfortable thing that's actually awful. That's a dystopian nightmare, is the way that that works out and the way that you break out is by taking all kinds of IRL risks, especially with your heart.
- [59:56]
Francis Foster
If you own gold, you probably bought it for the same reason I did. Because you looked at what central banks are doing to currencies and decided you wanted something they can't print. Good reasoning. But here's the thing nobody talks about. After you make that decision, your gold is just sitting there. It's not doing anything. You're paying to store it, you're paying to insure it. And in the meantime, it earns precisely nothing. Until now. What you're about to hear is not a normal gold advert. Today's sponsor is Monetary Metals. They figured out something that once you hear it, seems obvious, but almost nobody in the gold world is doing it. Monetary Metals connects gold owners with productive businesses, refiners, jewelers, companies that actually need physical gold to operate. Those businesses lease your gold and pay you a yield. Not in dollars, not in pounds, in gold. So instead of your gold sitting in a vault costing you money, it's out in the real economy doing something useful and you're earning more ounces of gold for it, up to 4% annual yield, paid in gold. If you already own gold, this is the logical next step. Visit monetary-metals.com trigonometry or click the link in the description. See how your gold can stop costing you money and start earning you more gold. That's monetary-metals.com/trigonometry. And metaphorically speaking, I think that I. The Matrix was a very formative film in my life, as I was probably 18, 19 at the time, something like that. I think the. Metaphorically, it's interesting because when Neo leaves the Matrix, life is shitty.
- [61:33]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
- [61:34]
Francis Foster
And I think it's life, but it's life. And I think there's so much to that because it's only when you abandon these superficial comforts and actually take the risks. Like it's not that pleasant all the time. No, but it's meaningful.
- [61:47]
Arthur Brooks
And it's not just the risk. It's actually saying, I want the suffering. Yeah, I want it. Bring it on. You know, the glory of God is a man fully alive. That's Saint Irenaeus in the third century, second century. The glory of God is a person fully alive. What's a person fully alive? That's a Person in pain, you know,
- [62:08]
Francis Foster
you sell it.
- [62:08]
Constantine Kisin
Well, you can tell he's a Catholic.
- [62:11]
Francis Foster
Yeah.
- [62:11]
Arthur Brooks
No, but you go into a Catholic church, you're literally worshiping a guy represented in the front of the church who's being tortured to death. Yeah, that's. I don't want that, but I need that. I need that. I need that suffering. I need that full experience. I want to bite out of life. I want to be fully alive. And this is one of the reasons that suffering, which is a largely right hemispheric experience, makes people understand the meaning of their lives. If I go back through your life, if we went back, if I were your therapist, which I don't do clinical work, if we went back year after year after year, and I would say, tell me the formative moments. You wouldn't say, oh, yeah, that beach vacation in Ibiza. No, you'd tell me about when that person passed away, when that woman that you loved wasn't there, when something that you wanted didn't happen. And then you understood who you were because you survived. And you understood something through your suffering that's critically, critically important. And there's no suffering in the matrix. I mean, we need to. I make my students say my suffering is sacred. And they have this little mantra that I give them to wake up each morning, whether they're on their knees or not, and to say, I'm truly grateful for the things that are gonna happen this day. You know the psalm, this is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it, but I will also rejoice and be glad in the suffering I'm gonna face this day and the setbacks I'm gonna face this day. Bring it on. That's a life. Fully alive.
- [63:39]
Constantine Kisin
Yeah, it's what I love.
- [63:41]
Francis Foster
What the French call heartbreak. They call it le de l' er
- [63:44]
Constantine Kisin
exquisite, which means the exquisite pain.
- [63:48]
Arthur Brooks
And there's something to that, isn't there? There's something to that. People are not afraid of breaking up because of the pain it's going to bring, but because they're afraid of the pain per se. I mean, I didn't say that. Right. Pain isn't a problem. Our fear of pain is the problem. And by the way, we're evolved for that. I mean, social pain or rejection, it actually implicates a little part of the limbic system called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, about the size of the end of your index finger. And we have it so that we're averse to losing something or someone that we Love. Because if we didn't 250,000 years ago in the middle Pleistocene, you'd wind up walking the savannah and dying alone. Because you'd be rejected from your tribe. Because you wouldn't be afraid of rejection. You wouldn't be afraid of loss. It's maladapted today to a certain extent. But also when you learn to live with the hyperactivation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, then you get that. That meaning. You say, okay, this is why I'm still alive. This is how I'm actually surviving. That's, by the way, why you listen to sad music when you're heartbroken. Because it puts into perspective that aliveness that's in you right now. It helps you understand the emotions that you're actually feeling. You're saying, I want to understand this emotion. I want meaning. That's the reason you're listening to Taylor Swift over and over and over again.
- [65:08]
Francis Foster
Right? Right.
- [65:08]
Arthur Brooks
How did you know? Francis?
- [65:11]
Constantine Kisin
Only when I work out.
- [65:15]
Francis Foster
It's interesting you say that particularly about suffering because I think, as Buddhists who say life is suffering.
- [65:19]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, that's the first noble truth of Buddhism.
- [65:21]
Francis Foster
And also in the Matrix, interestingly, I don't know if you remember the scene where Agent Smith is talking about the history of the Matrix to Morpheus when he's got him captured and in handcuffs and he says, we made a bunch of versions of the Matrix and they all failed because there was not enough suffering.
- [65:37]
Constantine Kisin
Right.
- [65:37]
Francis Foster
And what you just did is you explained how suffering is part of what makes life meaningful. And that's a very powerful framing of it because I think it's fair to say suffering is inevitable.
- [65:51]
Arthur Brooks
It is. Well, what's actually what's inevitable is pain. So suffering equals pain times resistance to pain. So that's sort of the right formula. So suffering is mental suffering, et cetera, et cetera equals pain, which has both sensory and affective components. The sensory pain has to do with inflammation and nerve endings, and it's processed in one part of the cortex. Affective pain is part of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex that I just talked about a minute ago. That's the I hate it part. You get affective pain after you touch a hot stove and you feel the sensory part and then you feel the affective part. I don't want to do that anymore. I hate that when you have mental pain, it's only the affective portion, which is, by the way, the reason that acetaminophen, you call it paracetamol, over here, Tylenol, it affects sense, affective pain. It doesn't make you feel less pain, it makes you care less. That's how Tylenol works. That's why a blend, when you have physical pain of both Advil and Tylenol works so well together, because you're working on the both sides of the pain mechanism. So it's important to keep that in mind. So that's pain. And pain is super important. It's how you learn. It's how you learn not to do things, et cetera. And it's inevitable. But when you multiply it by resistance, then you understand that suffering is not inevitable. And that's how meaning comes into the picture. If you have high, high, high pain, but low, low, low resistance, you can actually have very manageable suffering. And that's how in non resistance, how the Buddhists understand suffering versus pain itself.
- [67:30]
Francis Foster
That's so interesting. I had an experience where the place I was living there was. There was a lot of noise coming in and I. I was really angry about it the whole time.
- [67:40]
Arthur Brooks
Is why your resistance was sky high?
- [67:42]
Francis Foster
My resistance was sky high. And the moment I just accepted that it's happening and started just managing around it, you know, going, you know, just doing what I could. And I couldn't eliminate the problem, but what I could do is just accept it. My level of suffering went way down. Not to zero, but close, actually almost to zero.
- [68:01]
Arthur Brooks
I would say that is Catholicism. It is. It's like I will. It's like not my will be done, but thine. Said the master in the Garden of Gethsemane. Yep, that's what he said. Right. And that was to say, this is going to hurt. This is. Our Lord did not say, this is going to suck, but he was thinking that. And he said, but thy will be done, not mine is the act of non resistance. Which is the lesson for us. I mean, so the first noble truth of Buddhism, and I've worked a lot with the Dalai Lama over the past 13 years. I go to Dharamsala every year to do conferences and projects with His Holiness. It's been very helpful to me. The first noble truth of Buddhism is dukkha, which technically means the sticky craving from inadequate things. It's sort of dissatisfaction is really the first noble truth of Buddhism. It comes from attachment. Attachment is a form of resistance to not getting what you want. The second noble truth of Buddhism is the attachment per se is that explanation. The third noble truth of Buddhism is that the solution is detachment, non resistance. And the way to get that is the fourth noble Truth of Buddhism, which is where it gets complicated. The Eightfold Path. So it's like you're yes, yes, yes. And then you get the Eightfold Path and you're like, that's a lot of work.
- [69:12]
Francis Foster
What is that?
- [69:13]
Arthur Brooks
Well, the Eightfold Path is the way that the Buddhists teach you to live such that you can live in non resistance, that you can live to non resistance to ego, to non resistance to suffering. Sorry. To pain, non resistance to the things in life such that you can be integrated into a life that has inevitable pain but not inevitable suffering.
- [69:33]
Francis Foster
This is what I've what seemed to me like a contradiction with me that I've always wanted to ask someone who's as smart and knowledgeable as you about it. It's like I just gave you the example where my suffering went to zero because I let go. But then also like isn't having ambition to do things and create things and to build things and have conversations. That isn't that, isn't there ego in that?
- [69:57]
Arthur Brooks
Yes, yes. And so here's the thing, this is the balance. If I were a Buddhist, which I'm not, I might say you should always have complete non resistance and disregard pain. I'm not a Buddhist, I'm a capitalist. I'm an American. Right. I think there are lots of cases when you should actually try to lower the pain. Yeah, I mean I take a Tylenol if I have a. I wake up, my back hurts a lot, I got like back issues and, and I take Advil because I want an anti inflammatory. By the way, I also am very familiar with the clinical research on back pain which shows that you should alleviate the pain, manage it a little bit. But you shouldn't take a narcotic analgesic because that's eliminating the pain. I should manage the pain and then have non resistance to the fundamental presence of it in my life, which will actually co occur with my life every day for the rest of my life. It's okay. It's okay to say I'm a guy with back pain. I can manage it a little bit because Advil's pretty good. But I can also live a really, really good life and I can focus on the things that I like. And so what I'm doing is I'm combining the lowering of pain with non resistance in a way where the suffering is where I needed to be in my life. If I'm running a company and I see some problem that I can avoid, I have a problematic loudmouth, employees lighting me up on a slack channel. I'll fire him. I'm getting rid of pain. I'm not gonna have non resistance to that because it's not right for me to practice non resistance in the lives of other people. Right. There's all kinds of cases where judgment requires that you understand which lever you're gonna try to work. But if you only think there's one lever, which we are telling young people that there's only one lever. That pain, that depression, that sadness, that melancholy, that anxiety, that loneliness is evidence that you're broken. No, it's evidence you're alive. It's evidence that you're. I tell my students, look, you're studying at Harvard University, if you're not sad and anxious, you need therapy. The truth is that's a really good and normal thing. And so don't go to somebody who says, ah, oh, you're sad and anxious, we gotta fix that. No, gotta manage that, you gotta live with that. You have to understand the balance between pain and non resistance to pain, such that the suffering is what it's supposed to be.
- [72:09]
Constantine Kisin
And how much does gratitude play into this? I saw this amazing interview with a football manager called Luis Enrique and he was Talking about his 12 year old daughter who died. And they were saying to him, how do you cope? And he said, the only way I learned how to cope was to be grateful that I had 12 years with this person.
- [72:25]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah.
- [72:26]
Constantine Kisin
And just saying it and I've never had kids and all the. I'm welling up and I'm thinking that is the ultimate way to cope with probably the most tragic loss a human being can suffer.
- [72:39]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, for sure. That is the hardest thing, by the way. That is the hardest thing. And people do deal with it with gratitude. The ultimate long term way to deal with that. Grief. Grief is the unremitting sadness, unremitting sadness. It's remitting. Ultimately the way that people will accelerate their healing is by helping people who are fresher in their grief. So the best way, if you lose a child, for you to heal faster and better is for you to find somebody else who's more recently lost a child and help that person, which is one of the laws of love, that you will actually heal more when you give more that, that, that your injury is actually it, it, it actually has a purpose because you can share what has happened in your life with somebody else and help that person heal in their fresher wounds. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it sounds like a karmic Truth. But. But I think it's a fundamental truth of a beautiful truth about humanity is the way that this works now as a way to deal with the fact that we have this horrible tragedy. Gratitude is great. And there's a reason for that. I mean, we have a negativity bias. Homo sapiens have a negativity bias. You don't want to be focusing how grateful you are to find those berries on that bush 250,000 years ago while there's a saber toothed tiger sneaking up behind you. You need to be focused on the saber toothed tiger, not on the good things, bad things. You know, if you're sitting at a party and somebody's smiling sweetly at you from across the room, that's nice. But if somebody's frowning angrily at you, take note. That might be a big problem once you get outside on the street. And so we do. We notice all the terrible things that are happening to us, and that's amplified in the environment of grief. So what do we do? We have to manually turn up the part that's less natural, which is positive affect about naturally good things. And it's funny how we do this. Religious people sort of do this naturally. We almost lost one of our children many years ago in 1999. Our oldest was one and he fell out of a third story window. And it was horrible. It was horrible. And he was going to die. He was going to die. And so we're at the hospital, my wife and I, and we start praying. We're praying, we're praying, we're praying. What do we pray? Keep him alive, obviously. But then we were praying, thank you for giving us our son. That's what we pray, naturally, not on purpose.
- [75:01]
Francis Foster
Why?
- [75:01]
Arthur Brooks
Because that's what we've been trained as Christian people is to thank God for the good things and not just curse God. See, this is funny. So this is the book of job. Job 1:27, 128. 127 or 128. See how illiterate I am in this? That Job's all, you know. God and Satan are throwing dice and Satan says, you know your boy Job? I bet I can get him. And God says, no, you can't. He says, watch. And so he goes and kills all Job's kids and he takes all his animals and he takes everything away from Job. You know what Job says before the whole story starts? He said, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. But then the real part comes that nobody remembers. Blessed be the name of the Lord. That's the end of that scripture. See, that's what a supernatural view of life can bring you. That's why it's so critically important. Now it goes on to. Three of Job's buddies show up and the entire book of Job, which is tiresome. Or they're trying to tell them, here's all that happened. You must have done a bad thing. You probably sinned a lot. It's just this sort of rabbinical exegesis on why. It's sort of like Kushner's why bad things happen to good people, but, you know, boring. Then in the 38th chapter of job, Job gets to talk to God about suffering because God comes in a whirlwind. It's one of the times in the Old Testament where somebody actually talks to God, comes in the whirlwind, and Job puts God in the dock. He's like, I'm your boy. You said I was a righteous man, and you did all this stuff to me. Explain yourself, sir. And God said, this is the funniest part of the Old Testament of the Bible. It's actually. It's genius comedy. God says, oh, yeah, I'll tell you. I mean, you're so smart, you deserve an explanation. Of course. But since you're so smart, first you tell me, why did I create the heaven and the earth? You're so smart, tell me, and then I'll tell you why you suffered. You're so smart, tell me why I put the stars in the sky and the fishes in the ocean. You're so smart, I'm sure you know, but tell me why. Then I'll tell you why you suffer. Here's the point. It's a mystery. It's part of the mystery of life itself. And life itself is a miracle. And if we want. Do we. Do you want part of the miracle, or do you want the whole miracle? That requires that we embrace the mystery that we love, the mystery itself. And they're the bad parts. And that's the struggle. You get about 90 years to figure that one out.
- [77:40]
Francis Foster
Arthur, what a pleasure. I feel like we've only just scratched the surface, so perhaps we'll. We'll carry on the conversation another time.
- [77:46]
Arthur Brooks
Ended after Job.
- [77:49]
Francis Foster
Yeah, well, we depress people. That's what we do.
- [77:51]
Arthur Brooks
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [77:53]
Francis Foster
Not this one, actually. I thought it was a very unusual and special episode of our show, so thank you. Thank you for making.
- [77:58]
Arthur Brooks
Thank you for what you're doing. And you've. You've really enriched my life a lot with the show.
- [78:02]
Francis Foster
Well, this was amazing for us. Thank you. The last question, as you know, is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?
- [78:09]
Arthur Brooks
We touched on it. We touched on it here. But I think that the story of our civilization today is the lack of romantic love. I think that the lack of relationships. This is not a sentimental issue. This is an existential issue that we're actually getting in here. And I think that we need to have a better scientific understanding of what exactly is happening and what's going to happen. And this is not just demography. This is the question of whether life is actually worth living going forward, not whether life is going to be worth, not whether life is going to continue going forward. So that's what I think we should talk about more, which is the deep physics of romantic love.
- [78:50]
Francis Foster
Arthur Brooks, thank you for being here.
- [78:52]
Arthur Brooks
Thank you, guys.
- [78:54]
Francis Foster
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