This podcast is brought to you and made possible by generous financial aid from Peter kanzler K. Ay n z l-- e-- r-- you can buy his Amazon books at your favorite Amazon Branch, for example, the original texts of lock Hobbs and the US Constitution of Pennsylvania put together into one book for only $15. Thanks for listening one one person who visited me during the break had a question. That was a good not that all the other questions weren't good. But this one is a question of good General relevant. So do you want to repeat your question? Right. Yeah. Well, it's a really good question. So the question is Nietzsche said God is dead. And he believed that things would fall apart as a consequence of that and I'm claiming for example that people have an implicit religious structure and they acted out. Okay, so there's actually a lot of things happened as a consequence of the fact that that's a reasonable issue a good question. So one of the things you might think about is that so Nietzsche's claim and Osteo skis claim were quite straightforward. They said that once you took the foundation out of something it would fall it might take a long time to fall especially if it's a big thing. So, you know, you could make the claim for example that the Soviet Union basically fell in 1970, but it took 19 years to topple over because it's a big thing right? It's just doesn't crumble all at once and so nature and dostoevsky's claim would be once you hack out the basic assumptions and In them that it's only a matter of time until the entire structure decays and you could think that perhaps you know if you have a habit. And then you become conscious of the habit and you practice a new habit. Then you can have a new habit. And so what that means is that you can use your conscious mind to restructure your implicit beliefs. It's hard or you can use your conscious mind to destroy your belief in the value of those implicit actions and demolish them across time. Okay, so that could happen and I think to some degree that has happened. It's certainly happened enough so that people are very confused about what they believe or even about what belief means because A contradiction between what people think and there's and how they act so okay, that's one. tangent so to speak young actually took that question very seriously in some sense because nature here's the flaw and Nietzsche's argument. I think that's like I hesitate to ever say that because like I said, he was a Staggering Genius. So but Nietzsche believed his proposition was that once the religious edifice fell that people would have to create their own values. So he believed that the over man the Superman so to speak would be a new type of Being like an existential type of human being who would be able to accept the fact that there was no ultimate meaning but create their own values. Okay, what the weird thing about that is you don't actually seem to create values. That's what that's where Nietzsche's flawed. I think that's where he implicitly accepted the presuppositions of the rationalists because if there's no real source of value, then it stands to reason that you create values, but you don't not easily like, you know, think about Your own life, you know, so let's say you make a New Year's resolution. You say well, I'm going to study like 3 hours a day. It's like you're trying to create your own value structure, right? But then you find out it's a lot harder than you think because you don't listen to yourself. It's like you wander off and you know play video games or watch something on YouTube, you know, and and you know, why are you doing that? Well, it's because you're led by values you don't create them now. Maybe there's a co-creation, you know, because it's not like you can't change yourself at all. We should be very careful before we jump to the conclusion that values are or even can be something that people actually create now the phenomenologist see like Heidegger and young as well would say no. No, let's let's just not get too hasty about making the presupposition that we can or should create our own values. Now one reason you might be hesitant to do that. Is that Hitler created his value so to speak and so did the Soviet Communists and North Koreans, you know, they're trying to impose a rationalist value structure on a society and the consequences of that have been you know people debate about how many people died in the Soviet Union as a consequence of internal repression and as the Marxist revisionist so rally back to the original beliefs, the estimate keeps going down but you know, it was tens of millions of people so in China Who knows it was maybe it was a hundred million people. It was a lot of people and then of course, there's the Nazis that you know, so the the act of in attempting to rationally construct a value system and then impose it doesn't seem to work out very well. So, you know on a sociological level we seem to have evidence that That's dangerous. And then on a personal level, it's like yeah, you're so sure you create your values. I would say to a large degree you discover them. and so, you know here here is Here's an experiment. You can try one. I told you last week. I think to try to watch yourself speak for I think you should do it for the rest of your life, you know, because words are very very very powerful and they lead you places. So you should be careful how you use them. But like here's another really interesting experiment is watch what you're interested in try. Don't try to control it so much just see where it is because like in the phenomenologist certainly made much of this is like for them like for Heidegger. It was something that manifested itself in the world and attracted your attention, you know, it wasn't something you precisely created. Now, I believe you have a hand in creating it will talk more about that later because you're not you're not a deterministic entity precisely. So it's like you can participate in the construction of the value system. But you know, you have to take your biological nature into mind and you have to take your cultural nature into mind and you have to take other people into To mind and so, you know you have you can vary the game, but I don't think you can really change the rules. That's a reasonable way of thinking about it. Now what you did in many ways was he said well, maybe we have to go back down into the deep symbolic substrata of the human psyche to find the origin place of the ideas that we use to hold as religious. It was a hypothesis in some sense. So they're the psychoanalytic hot hypothesis is something like It's the it's the psychic substrata the pre-linguistic psychic substrata. That is the source of ritual symbol and religious ideas. And so that you can go back to the source in a sense to revitalize those ideas. And that strikes me as a wiser approach than the rational approach, which says you can just create your values. It's like we tried that it didn't work. It really didn't work. It was murderous. So and then the alternative of the no value proposition has well, then you're going to be nihilistic and that's not I think nihilism is a form of mental illness. It's a sociological it it's caused by sociological conditions, but fundamentally, it's a mental illness. You revise what you mean by believe? That's part of it. And that's what we're going to try to walk through. Now. This is a very this is a linear argument in some sense. Although there's going to be a lot of tangents. I want to I want to show you how that might be done and what it might mean meaning who knows what It ultimately means right? There's just no going there but my experience with these ideas have been that once you understand them and it's a different way of categorizing. She and I would say all sorts of things that you didn't understand all of a sudden. It up for you and it's really helpful, you know, because for let me just give you a couple of examples, you know, I would say that it's a unspoken proposition of much of today's socio ideological thinking that there's something pathological about human beings, you know, like I've heard people say like human beings are like a cancer on the planet. It's like I went to a talk at Ted Talk at Queen's a tedx talk where one of the professors who was a radical environmentalist of sorts. You know, he told the whole audience they were all people about your age that if they had any ounce of ethical if they had any ethical standards whatsoever. They wouldn't reproduce. It's like huh? You know, really he said well, we've only had one child and for me, I thought that was one child too many for him. But you know, I thought that's bloody pathological when you stand up in front of a whole bunch of young people who have their whole future in front of him. And you say well, you know, you're such a horrid creature in your Cord that it would be a moral violation for you to propagate it's like, you know. So, I mean one of the things that has happened to me is like I kind of like people, you know, there are peculiar and weird like hippopotamuses and and rhinos and Penguins and all that. But you know, I certainly don't think that we're some sort of cancer on the planet. I really think that's a that's a pre Jenna Seidel idea as far as I'm concerned. It's like the planet would be better off without any people on it. It's like hey glad you're not near the old thermonuclear button. Yeah, really? Really? Yeah. It's like that's an archetypal idea fire will cleanse everything. It's like that's what Hitler believed that's why all Berlin was burning when he committed suicide. It's like that was what he was after from the beginning the cleansing fire. It's like beware of those ideas boy, you know, and so I see I can see the intrinsic Dignity of people and and their intrinsic value and how that can be expressed across time and you know, and I value that it's something pristine and Remarkable, you know and understanding I believe that understanding these ideas property can give you that kind of orientation. You know, I mean, everybody's flawed and useless and half crazy. I mean obviously but you know, that's not exactly the point. There are reasons. We are flawed and useless and half crazy, you know life is hard and we're finite and we hustle we have big problems that confront us. It's like I don't think any sane person cannot be crazy so to speak but having said all that the idea that there's something intrinsically pathological about human beings like that is an absolutely What's the word apocalyptic idea? It's like beware of people who tell you such things, you know, so and it's certainly not something you should be thinking about yourself God. It's like who knows what you're up to, you know, maybe some of you will be great people, you know, good luck with it. So so I want to walk you through what I think these ideas mean and I'm not asking you to believe anything. I tell you it's like don't hack away at it man. If you can see where it's flawed, I can't I've tried so because I don't want to be standing on Sand and so what I've tried to do is to look at human history and prehistory and to see what it is that we need to move forward and we have to be United with our history human beings are historical creatures. And so if there's a divide between us and our history, then all sorts of weird ideas are going to invade us, you know, it's like it's quite funny because again with the rationalists it's you know, they basically think that if we dispense with religion, everybody would turn into Rene Descartes, you know, it's like we'd be all rational. It's like are you out of your bloody mind? Look at the new age people? You know, that's where we'd be going first. It's like we'd be like Shirley what's-her-name McClain who I read once believed that the reason that there were so many allergies in San Francisco was because of aliens. It's like, oh that's a much more likely place for human belief systems to end up then. Poof were already made two cards. Like that's not going to happen. You know, one of the things you said, which I just loved he said the purpose of religious structures is to stop people from having religious experiences. That's a smart. That's a smart saying. So anyways, so we're going to walk through this and you know, what I what I've come to believe is that the archetypes were going to talk about because I believe they archetypes a pretty good way of thinking about them constitute the It'll presumptions of human being you can't not presume them. That's why the religious you can't escape from them. Now. That doesn't mean they're right, but it means that there is right as we are. And how right or we well, we don't know, you know, I mean there were people that I read somebody in the 1970s. He was a journalist who wrote a book called the ghost in the machine, you know, and this was a fairly common proposition at the time his idea was that well, you know, we're animals that have become self-conscious and that basically drove us incurable insane. And so we're like an evolutionary dead end and it's only a matter of time before we extinguish ourselves. It's like that's possible, you know, no other animal has ever become self-conscious. It's a big burden, you know when it does drive people. Kind of crazy and no wonder you know because you have to contemplate your mortality all the time or at least some of the time and also you're completely aware of how useless and ugly and you know, all these other things you are compared to whatever the ideal might be. It's a lot of Burden but it seems to me to that human beings are peculiar in that we can actually choose we have some facility for choice. I think we could decide whether we're an evolutionary dead end or not. And I also believe that grounding are thinking in these ancient ideas makes it far more. Actually far less likely that we're going to fall prey to ideological possession which is extraordinary dangerous and it'll also give us the meta framework to conceptualize what might constitute an ideal and well so the you know, that's a because I wanted I wanted to find out what's an alternative to etiology and nothing is the wrong answer because people can't live on nothing life is too hard you have to see that you're being is justifiable in order to thrive. And given that you're being is characterized by suffering that's no easy matter suffering and limitation. That's the basic truths of life. It's a Buddhist Doctrine for that matter, right and it's it's not it's certainly not something that the Jews would disagree with and it's Central to Christian thinking as well. You know, most religious structures think you're doomed and there's going to be a lot of pain along the way it's like, yeah, that's true. Okay now we've got that out in the open. What do you do about it? well That's the question. So, let's see. What do we have from time? It's 3:45. Is that about right? This old computer? I'm not sure it's accurate. Yeah. Okay. So question. Oh, yeah. Well, the thing is, you know, sometimes conceptualizing a problem brings it into Focus. There are multiple ways things realize themselves, right? You know, you know how it is. If you if you learn something complex, you think you've learned it and then a little later you articulate it more and you think oh, I didn't understand that completely and then you know, you think you've got it then three years later you think? Oh, no, I really didn't quite have that. I'm going to articulate it more so knowledge comes into focus. And so okay. So let's move away from from the this philosophical evolutionary. A moment. I want it. I want to start again with the series of proposition. So it's 300. Okay. Good. Good. Good 338. Alright fine. So now When I first started to construct this representation, I'd been reading heavily a book called The neuropsychology of anxiety. That's written by Jeffrey gray. Jeffrey gray was one of hands Isaac students and Isaac was one of the founders of modern psychometric personality theory for a long time. He was the most cited psychologist in the world. And Jeffrey gray was no Jeffrey gray who died recently was he was illiterate guy man the neuropsychology of anxieties that Freed because he was sort of a master of neuropharmacology. Neuroanatomy neuropsychology and animal behavior. So he's behaviorist and cybernetic Theory. Although I don't really think he knew exactly that. He was a cybernetic theorist. He sort of knew it it took me a long time to figure out that he was a cybernetic theorist cybernetics emerged as a consequence of the work of someone called Norbert wiener who was and who was at MIT and he wrote a book called. I think you wrote that I think the book was called cybernetics actually. Anyways, you could look them up and there are cybernetic principles that I extracted out of gray and started to utilize and then I only found out later that they were actually Consequences of whiners thinking now. He infected lots of people. So luria who was a great Russian or soccer neuropsychologist was basically a cybernet assistant. There's a couple of other Russians sokolov and vinegar dova who discovered the orienting reflex, which was like that was like discovering a new planet or a new continent. It's like an important Discovery. They should have got the Nobel Prize for it as far as I'm concerned. It's a big deal. So Norbert whiners cybernetic thought really spread everywhere and it's like pops up Piaget is cybernetic in many ways. And there's Is modern personality theories that are fundamentally cybernetic. So this is basically a cybernetic model and cybernetics cybernetic models hypothesize that active organisms. They basically perform according to the following. schema They pause it at Target. And move towards it and then they regulate themselves. So they don't deviate Too Much from the trail. So that's what this is as far as I'm concerned. So so here's here's the basic framework within which you live as far as I can tell and I don't think you can get out of it. You carry this frame with you all the time and you're looking at the world through it and the framework has a couple of substructures and one is you have some sense of where you are. And that's like a theory. It's a theory of where who you are and where you are. It's a theory of the present. These are the present conditions. Now, you might think you observe the present around you and those are factual observations. And so your conceptualization of the present isn't a theory. It's a fact but don't be thinking that you know, it's a theory you might be wrong about the present the person you're in love with might be having an affair. Right, so there can be massive gaps in your assumptions about the present. You know, you think you're healthy, but maybe you're not, you know, you think your boss likes you but maybe they don't you think your degree is going to be useful, but maybe it isn't, you know, well, it's just it's just it's just a straightforward observation, but it's an important one you could be wrong about now. Okay, because one of the things we're going to try to figure out is where is it that you could be wrong? And what does it mean that you Could be wrong all those places and what should you do about the fact that you could be wrong all those places and then we're also going to try to figure out what happens if you find out that you're wrong. So for example, you're going out with someone you love them. Perhaps they've made promises to you and you know, poof you find out that they've been having an affair with three people for the last five years. It's like hey you're wrong. And so now, where are you? What does that mean that you're wrong? Well, it means a lot of things it means you're means a lot of things that you it might mean a lot more things than it means which is a very strange thing might mean that you're so clueless is just mind-boggling, you know, and that you're blind as a bat. So that's one possibility and that you're like that and you've always been like that. You better do something about it quick. That's a possibility might be that you hooked up with a psychopath, right, which is also something that you should avoid and but that would mean you don't understand people well enough to know when they're Psychopaths or not, or maybe that Fatally attracted to them in some bizarre way, you know, it also means that whatever future you were envisioning that was really a delusion because that's gone. And it also means that you've blown out most of your past at least insofar as that relationship was part of your past because nothing that you thought was happening was what was happening. So then you might think one moment you're somewhere Then you get the realization and the next moment. You are somewhere else. And so one of the things I would propose to you is that those are actually two important places. The one place is the place you are when what you're doing is working. And other places the place you are when what you're doing is not working and I would also say in some weird sense. Those are permanent places and I'll tell you why I think this but I think they're Akin in some manner to explored territory and unexplored territory. And that's their sort of biological basis because we know that animals are territorial right almost every animal has a sketched out territory if social animals have to organize themselves within that tort territory with other creatures. Like them so part of their territory is almost always a dominance hierarchy, but they have a territory and they don't like going outside of it so I can give you an example. So my my parents had it dog and a cat and my dad used to take the dog for a walk all the time, but the cat really like the dog and so it was kind of irritated that the dog would leave and so the cat started following my dad around on his walks. And so it was really interesting because the first thing that cat did was when it was following it wasn't right behind the door. Ugh, there's no way it was going to do that. It would slink along all of the building. So it would follow about 30 feet behind and it would keep one side right against a building and that would sort of zip across the intervening spaces of the houses, right? And you might think we'll why was it doing that and the answer is It didn't know where the bloody Predators were. Didn't know where the big dogs were at didn't know anything about the new places it was going so it was going to stick it side against one hard wall so that the complexity was cut in half and it was going to go really slow on the off chance that some massive Hound came out and ate it so it's been very careful. So that was pretty cool. So it did that for quite a while and then because nothing massive jumped out at eight it and because it started to understand that territory and knew where it could hide it got Little braver and over a couple of months it got to the point where to actually follow the dog because it had mastered its it expanded its territory and mastered its knowledge of the territory, but then I was walking with them one day and they had a root tea and my dad had the dog and he wanted to take the dog a little farther than he would normally go with the dog and so he was taking the dog across the street, but the cat just stayed on the corner and cried because it you know, it was meowing obviously, but it was very upset because it wasn't going out into that. Weird new place that it had no knowledge about and so it was you know, making it fear really known and animals are like that, you know, so here's something to think about this blew me away when I first conceptualized it was one of the things that made me understand that psychologists are always asking questions backwards. I'll give you an example. It's like why do people take cocaine? That's a question right? Think. It's a good question. It's a stupid question. The question is, why doesn't everybody He take cocaine all the time. That's the question because we know what cocaine does right it activates the primary incentive reward systems and almost everything you do is in an attempt to activate the primary incentive reward system. So you've got this white powder in there it is. It's like you should be nose deep in that stuff non-stop, but you're not why what's wrong with you people, you know, so so that's one example of where Psychology's got it. Got it backwards. We know why people take intoxicating drugs. It's dead simple. Sometimes it reduces their anxiety. Sometimes it reduces their pain. Sometimes it cranks up there incentive reward systems, you know and hijacks the system it does it biochemically perfectly obvious. So that's one example now another example is this how do animals learn fear? It's a prime behavioral question. Right? It's the wrong question. because it presumes that the the standard animal is calm. Why would you presume that why wouldn't we presume instead that the standard animal is terrified and that the animal only learns how not to be terrified with difficulty and under very restricted circumstances. Well, that's a much better way of thinking about it and it makes a lot more sense because the Animals in Danger, especially if it doesn't know its territory so so here's how you teach an animal to be afraid if you're a behaviorist and I'm not making fun of behaviorists a lot of what I've learned about psychology. Is actually real has come from behaviorists like their rigorous scientists and and they learned an awful lot from analyzing animal behavior that was incredibly profound and they laid the ground for modern Neuroscience the real stuff not the fmri stuff, you know the real stuff. So, okay. So basically what you do to train an animal to be afraid is you take a rat let's say and the rats in his cage and you put you put a little electric shock pad in the rats cage. So it may be electrifies the Autumn little bit and you turn on a light and you Electrify the bottom and the rat jumps into the air and then you shut it off and then you wait a while and then you do the same thing turn on the light. Then you turn on the the electric shock mechanism in the rat jumps in the air and you do that 10 times and then when you turn on the light the rat goes like this freezes because it's learned Right light equals shock. Everyone knows that you know, that's basic conditioning. So the rats learn to be afraid. Okay, that makes sense except. Here's your experimental box. Right? You got the electrification going on in there. And you grab your rat and you drop me in the cage. What does he do first? He freezes. Because he's afraid he's afraid as soon as you put them in the new environment. That's the normal wrapped. The normal rat is like this and why is that because things like to eat rats so, you know, they don't like light they like it dark and they don't like being exposed and they don't like being a new damn cage because God only knows what's in that cage. And so the a priori rat is this so then what is the rap do well, it's like this for quite a while it can be Really a long time. I'll tell you a story about that. He's like this. And then maybe he sniffs because rats mostly knows most animals are mostly smell oriented. Right human beings are weird because we're visually oriented but almost all animals. It's all smell their whole brains are organized around their olfactory system. So it sniffs and if it can't smell anything rats man, they can smell so there's experiments indicating that if you take a rat and you poison it and then it gets sick and another rat has smelled its breath that rat will not eat the poison that the first Eight now, that's why it's hard to get rid of rats. They're smart and they have great senses of smell. So the rats checking out like is there anything here that smells like something that might eat me so cats for example rat doesn't ever have to meet a cat to be afraid of its odor rats hate cat odor and so you can take rats in there like a box and blow a fan over a cat so that the odor wafts into the box and let's like the rats are all like this because God only knows what a cat smells like to Iraq, but it ain't good. Whatever it is. So the rats like this then he sniffing. He's looking around and if nothing happens, then he starts to relax a little bit but not that much he stole Crouch down and he still like that tentative rat and then he starts to look around a bit and then he starts to loosen up and then maybe he starts to move and his theory is possibly it's safe enough here. So erect that's careful can move and nothing painful or damaging will happen and then he starts to move and nothing happens and then he Ben's a bunch of time sniffing around every corner of the cage and you know sooner or later he thinks rats aren't going to die here now and then he sort of a relaxed rat and then the behavior says you are now a normal rat we can teach you to be afraid. It's like you don't have teach me to be afraid. I know how to be afraid. I have to learn how not to be afraid now. That's a good way of thinking about your brain. So you could think about the underlying motivational and emotional systems in your brain as default on systems. They're like a nuclear reactor like the core of a nuclear reactor. You're ready man, except when other parts of your brain are telling you just to keep it calm. So, but you don't need to learn to be afraid anymore. You need to learn to be hungry. You need to learn how to be calm and secure and that's really worth thinking about because you got to ask yourself. For example. Why are you calling securing this class? What are the preconditions for you not being afraid here. So think about it. Why are you not afraid? Well, the floor is solid. That's a good one. The roof is probably not going to collapse why well, it's actually because you could rely on the structural engineers who built the building that's kind of interesting why you know in the Soviet Union they used to make cinderblock buildings out of old radioactive waste and then of course they put way too much sand in them so that if the Earth went like this once be like collapse and so the typical Soviet couldn't be Reasonably Fearless in this room because the walls were radioactive and if the Earth moved a little bit at whole thing would collapse and so part of the reason that you can sit in here without fear is because the system that regulates our construction Enterprises actually not very corrupt. So that's pretty cool. So, you know, so you think about that that means that one of the preconditions for your relative fearlessness is your implicit belief that the builders who built this building can be trusted and that's really unlikely, you know, if you look around the world How many countries are there that aren't corrupt? I mean, you know, the West is corrupt to there's no doubt about it, but compared to a really corrupt place, you know, we don't even register as corrupt. So what else well, look at the people around you, you know, you guys look a lot the same all things considered, you know, none of you are have painted your face and rainbow colors and you know, you're not decorated with ostrich feathers and you're not wearing some outlandish Victorian costume and none of you are Stark naked and most of you Foaming at the mouth and you know, like fundamentally you're in a uniform and there's some variation of the uniform allowed but not much how many of you are wearing jeans. Rights, like 50% of you. Why are you wearing jeans? It's so other primates. Don't think you're insane. That's why I'm telling you. It's a big part of its acceptable. And so most of you are wearing clean jeans, I presume or they're clean enough. Anyways, so that if they're not clean it's not detectable, which is another sign that you're not completely insane. Right? And so you're manifesting markers like mad that you're basically a normal primate and that you Live in accordance with a set of well-understood implicit rules and that for the purposes of this set of interactions. You're not going to violate them. So everybody can come in here like the terrified primates. They are the first class and they can look around. They see the desks are all in order. So that means order prevails here the desks all face this way. So it's a standard lecture theater, you know, what's going to happen here people walk in they all sit properly in their tables. Most of them don't talk. Another rule how many of you are sitting in the same chair that you said in last week? Right and you know pretty soon you're going to figure out which chair is yours. And then if someone comes in here and sits in your chair, you're going to think that persons in my chair and you know, the reason for that is you're trying to stabilize the environment you've learned that that chair is safe and so are the people around you and so now you feel kind of comfortable in that chair you sort of think it's your chair. And so we do everything we can to structure the environment so that signals that you're safe are radiating at you like mad and that You can be calm enough despite the fact that you're a crazy chimpanzee. You can be calm enough to sit here and not be distracted by fundamental motivational systems that are out of control and maybe listen and attend and like you just think about how much work just think about it how much work went into building this room for you to sit in, you know, it's like they're being universities for about a thousand years. So there's a Thousand-Year conceptual history of the Diversity that's one of the preconditions and then we had to figure out how to make all this stuff and then people actually had to put it together and then you all had to be socialized for like 19 years so that you could sit here relatively quietly while you're listening to a lecture and you know, we had to build the idea of the University into our culture and you know, somebody's got to keep the lights on and look at this technology that works. It's like there are people out there just slaving themselves to death to make sure that this little box that you're sitting in is sufficiently Detectable so that you don't have to be terrified. It's like Good for them, you know and it's all happening. So invisibly that you know, you're probably irritated because your internet connection doesn't work that well or something like that, you know, so so it's really really useful to know that it's a the idea that your normal state is calm and well regulated is highly debatable. It's highly debatable. I would say there's very limited pre conditions under which you are going to feel safe and then I would also say You're highly motivated to maintain those conditions and you're also highly motivated not to go somewhere where those conditions don't apply right? You just not going to do it because that's a different kind of place and I would say that place is chaos the place where the rules do not apply that's chaos and it's a real place that's unexplored territory and people you have your hardwired at an instinctual level to deal. Deal with unexpected exposure to unexplored territory and you do that by going like this. It's a startled and fear your Frozen. And the reason for that is your prey animal and you have sub circuits in you that are millions of years old that are there to protect you from becoming prey and that could be prey of other people. That's for sure, but it could be prey of anything that would like to eat you, you know and part of the reason You might understand is that it's not there aren't that many large Predators around anymore. You know, it's part of the human despoliation of the planet is that mostly people don't like having their children eaten by tigers, you know, so and it's not because there's something wrong with us. It's because that's actually a rather unpleasant experience. And so if you could have a tiger around or not have one you might well choose not to have one especially if you have some, you know certain amount of love for your children who although lovable also happened to be delicious. He's right. So well, okay, so it's a proposition. I want to undermine because I want to start with the presupposition that fundamentally has a biological creature. You're like a wild animal and you're like a prey animal things might happen to you and you're ready for them. And then what we do with societies we construct up an edifice that has multi-level some of its actually instantiated. Right? And the rest of it is cultural and ritual and behavioral so that you don't have to be Prey animal you can be relatively calm and assured that nothing terrible is going to happen to you in the next 10 seconds and that's worth fighting for so. All right, that's probably good enough. So now we've got we've got some basic presuppositions laid down, you know, and so let me just review them briefly one minute. Stability is not your normal state. It's an abnormal State and it's very very difficult to maintain. Okay? You maintain it at least in large part as a consequence of being enculturated? And to be enculturated means to adopt a value system that works for you, but that also works for everyone else. It has to fulfill those criteria furthermore. It should be the kind of value system that allows you to move up dominance hierarchies. If you can manage it a lot of constraints on your value system, if your value system is producing the kind of behaviors that fulfill those criteria, you don't have to be terrified now, it's not just Terror because I've also learned that a lot of what culture is controlling is discussed. That's actually not in the book because I just learned that so what I want to talk more about I want to talk to you more about discussed because we've learned for example that people who are orderly temperamentally which is an element of conscientiousness are very sensitive to discussed. And I think part of the issue is that it isn't only that things can eat us. It's the things can infect us and so we're just as Prone a priority to repel anything that's disgusting as we are prepared a priori to keep at Bay anything that's frightening. One of the things I learned which was terrifying to me. I read Hitler's table talk which was a collection of his spontaneous dinner speeches that were taken down by a secretary. It's very interesting book, but one of the things I realized once we kind of made the discussed orderliness Connection in my lab about two years ago. Looking for the biological basis of conscientiousness forever. Hitler basically used a bodily metaphor to under pin his entire political philosophy. So for Hitler who was hyper orderly bordering on Obsession or bathed four times a day, for example, he was a vegetarian which actually is relevant because he didn't want animals to be hurt, you know, it was sensitive to discussed and that was part of what under light is vegetarianism. He construed the Aryan race as a body like that. Metaphor it's a body. It's a pure body has pure blood. So there's Purity ideas that you know made part of what he was saying motivationally significant and it was under assault from parasites and the parasites were well for him. It was anyone who wasn't part of that body. So it was discussed gone mad. It was really was you know, and so that forced me to modify my theories the theories I'm going to present to you because for me a lot of what Society did was control anxiety, you know and hunger and a lot of other things obviously, but I didn't realize to what degree Society also controlled discussed and how powerful discussed is as a political motivator. So there is a paper published in plos one about three months ago five months ago, maybe more than that. Now it showed that the correlation between totalitarian beliefs in any given geographical Locale and the prevalence of infectious disease. Was about point seven and that was true not only across countries, but within countries if you divided the places up by How likely there were to be infectious diseases in the relevant States .7. So prejudiced xenophobia fear of foreigners. All of that huge chunk of that is disgust sensitivity gone mad. So anyway, so we're going to talk about that too as a part of a control mechanism. Yep. What's that Applause one PLO S100 any it's a public Journal. You can find it look up infectious disease and totalitarianism. There's a lot of work done on that now. This podcast is brought to you and made possible by generous financial aid from Peter kanzler K. Ay n z l-- e-- r-- you can buy his Amazon books at your favorite Amazon Branch, for example, the original texts of lock Hobbs and the US Constitution of Pennsylvania put together into one book for only $15. Thanks for listening.
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