Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. Sick Society Makes YOU Sick (Loneliness Industry Podcast)

1. 00:02 Hi and welcome to the loneliness industry, a philosophy podcast where we look at the real reasons behind loneliness and disconnection. If this is your first time here, my name is Jordan Rain, a philosophy graduate with a
2. 00:13 severe allergy to self-help gurus. Now, this week is part two of the interview with Sam Vaknan, one of the world’s
3. 00:19 leading voices on narcissism. Now in episode 11, the episode before the first part of our interview, I looked at
4. 00:26 Western spiritualism and the narcissism embedded in its values and beliefs. Now in that episode, we looked at how this
5. 00:33 phenomena could be explained using Hegel’s master slave dialectic and Van’s idea of the covert and overt narcissistic cycle. And it occurred to me that only one of the theorists I used
6. 00:45 was dead. So I decided to ask Sam, who graciously agreed to be on the podcast. But before we begin with part two, a heads up to those of you who are new here or who are tuning in exclusively
7. 00:56 because of our special guest. Now, you’re likely used to seeing Sam on psychology podcasts where the format is different. Philosophy podcasts are about discussion rather than just asking short questions to trigger a monologue.
8. 01:08 Philosophy is about grappling with the ideas. So, longer questions, interjections, and the questioning of foundational assumptions are part of the course in this format. And with that out of the way, this is the part of the
9. 01:19 interview where we move into psychology, western spiritualism, and the social forces that foster narcissistic
10. 01:25 adaptations. Let’s go. And in your work, you describe narcissism not as a fixed state, but as a kind of psychological cycle. So, I’m especially interested in how the covert narcissist often longs to become overt
11. 01:37 and how overt narcissists may collapse back into an a covert state, especially after a failure to main power or
12. 01:43 control. um which seems to me like this dialectic tension. Um so could you walk us through this internal cycle how these two states relate and and what drives the shift between them?
13. 01:55 I wish I could I could claim credit for this. Okay. But I I can’t. This is actually the mainstream nowadays. In the 80s there
14. 02:04 was the misconception that there are two types of narcissists. Overt narcissist and vulnerable overt narcissist. Uh but
15. 02:12 today we don’t see it this way. Today the mainstream the orthodoxy is that all narcissists are sometimes overt and sometimes covert and and what what induces the transformation or
16. 02:22 transubstantiation if you wish is what we call a state of collapse. A collapse is simply the inability to secure an un
17. 02:30 uninterrupted flow of narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply is a fancy phrase for attention. Attention could be negative. Attention could be positive. Attention could be brought on by be by
18. 02:42 being pro-ocial, communal, moral, hypermoral and so on. Attention could be brought on by being antisocial, criminal
19. 02:50 and but attention. It’s the economy of attention. Again, there is a confluence here between social media which is based on an attention economy and and narcissism which is based on an attention economy. And so when the narcissist fails to
20. 03:07 obtain narcissistic supply and I’m talking about a regular flow narcissist supply the narcissist collapses and transitions from an overt state to covert state. Regrettably there are
21. 03:20 relics relics of the previous period. So many people still still call the overt
22. 03:26 narcissist grandio whereas all types all all conditions of
23. 03:32 narcissism involve grandiosity. The covert narcissist is also grandio. Yeah. Grandio martr if I understand you.
24. 03:38 Yes. His victimhood could be grandio huge victimhood. Yeah. Yeah. And similarly we call the covert
25. 03:44 narcissist vulnerable when actually all narcissists are vulnerable. The overt
26. 03:50 narcissist is vulnerable which is why overt narcissists are very hypervigilant, very aggressive, very
27. 03:57 brittle and fragile because they’re vulnerable. I mean just look at Donald Trump.
28. 04:03 So uh these transitions are seamless and u the problem we have in the profession is that scholars and academics study overt
29. 04:14 narcissist because they usually study student populations. So they study overt narcissist. They don’t come across
30. 04:20 covert narcissists. Whereas clinicians come across covert narcissists
31. 04:26 exclusively because a narcissist would never attend therapy until he or she
32. 04:32 experienced a collapse until he or she have have transitioned has transitioned into covert state. So that’s why there is this illusion that there are two
33. 04:43 types and so on. M. Now, the overt narcissist, the covert narcissist, I’m sorry. You’re right that
34. 04:50 the wet dream of the covert narcissist is to be an overt narcissist, outgoing, um, and extroverted and life of the
35. 04:58 party, the center of attention, a go-getter, defined, a bit defined, a bit reckless.
36. 05:04 And that’s the wet dream of the covert narcissist or the wet dream of the narcissist in the covert phase.
37. 05:10 And the wet the wet dream of the overt narcissist is
38. 05:16 uh a neverending flow of narcissistic supply at the same level the same sort
39. 05:22 of regulated flow. Both both of these are fantastic. The covert narcissist or
40. 05:28 the narcissist in the covert phase is highly compromised. The def the defenses of the narcissist are down. There’s been
41. 05:35 failure, usually systemic failure. There’s shame. There’s a lot of shame. there’s a sense of defeat and so on. So this kind of person is unlikely to be a go-getter and a happy golucky center of of the life of the party. So this is a
42. 05:52 fantasy. It’s a fantasy defense. Similarly, the overt narcissist when the overt narcissist imagines himself to be
43. 05:59 in into the future, he says, “I’m going to be as popular as I am today. I’m going to be as famous as I am today. I’m going to be as brilliant as I am today. I’m going to there in the case of the overt narcissist there is the suspension
44. 06:11 of time. The overt the overt narcissist is a temporal.
45. 06:17 It’s like he doesn’t recognize for example that he’s going to get older. A somatic narcissist the narcissist who
46. 06:23 deres narcissistic supply from his body doesn’t recognize the passage of time
47. 06:29 and the ravages of time is a suspension of time. And of course time is inexurable. reality is harsh and pushes back. And so naroscissists are cast into the outer darkness of the covert state and rebound. They rebound by
48. 06:45 constructing a new fantasy, a delusional fantasy and by superimposing it on on
49. 06:51 themselves and others around them. It’s all a transition between types of fantasies in effect. Right? So to move to the shift um from
50. 07:02 the micro to the macro here. So we often on the loan industry we’re often exploring how power dynamics on on the
51. 07:08 micro level as we just talked about are mirrored on the macro level. We’ve covered this a bit in what we’ve already talked about but again there seems to be
52. 07:15 this this dialectual dialectical tension between vulnerability and grandiosity. So how does the shift in tactics after
53. 07:23 failed avertness play out on a societal scale? In other words, um do you see ind
54. 07:29 institutions or industries exhibiting similar moves shifting from overt to covert strategies to retain power?
55. 07:37 Yes. The core problem is is the fantasy. When you live in fantasy or when you adopt fantasy as the organizing
56. 07:43 principle and is the hermeneutic principle, the explanatory principle, at that moment you open yourself to attack
57. 07:51 because it’s a fantasy by definition. It’s counterfactual. It’s concocted. It’s not grounded and it’s not
58. 07:58 self-efficacious. Fantasy is never self-efficacious. Never allows you to accomplish outcomes in reality because
59. 08:06 it’s devoted from reality. So the minute you adopt a fantasy, the minute you become a figment of a fantasy,
60. 08:12 participant in a fantasy, um the instigator of fantasy, you open yourself to attack. You’re vulnerable by
61. 08:19 definition. At that very second, you become vulnerable. This vulnerability
62. 08:25 is conscious because you are confronted with messaging from reality. You’re
63. 08:31 confronting with the signaling of reality on a constant basis. So when the narcissist constructs a
64. 08:37 fantasy, the narcissist at that moment becomes vulnerable to the messaging and signaling of reality. And the only way
65. 08:45 to restore a modiccom of control and to restore the cognitive distortion of grandiosity is by denying reality or ignoring reality. And if this this doesn’t work,
66. 08:57 destroying reality and I mean physically literally destroying it. That applies to collectives. Everything in in in psychopathology is applicable to
67. 09:08 collectives because collectives have they create a hive mind. There is the cult mind, there is the mob mind, there is so it’s a hive mind. It’s a single mind. So you could have collectives.
68. 09:22 Very often you do have collectives which come up with a fantasy. Everyone migrates from reality to the fantasy to
69. 09:28 the collective fantasy. Then reality pushes back and the only the only outcome or the
70. 09:36 only way to cope with this is to deny reality. So that’s the first thing they do. They deny reality. It never works
71. 09:43 because reality is there even after the denial and then they destroy reality. That’s why all narcissistic fantasies
72. 09:51 end in devastation in a wasteland. Are you are you referring to gaslighting on a societal level or on a on a collective level here as in denying reality?
73. 10:02 It’s not gaslighting although I know the term is being used rampantly. It’s not gaslighting because the instigator of a
74. 10:08 fantasy usually believe in it. Yeah. So they cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy. For you to
75. 10:15 gaslight someone, it needs to be premeditated. And you need to maintain Yeah, you’re right. You’re like, this this is I know the truth to be I know the truth, but I’m manipulating.
76. 10:26 To be able to tell you that something’s different from the truth. I have to know the truth. Yeah. Yes. Okay. It’s Mavelian. It’s manipulative.
77. 10:33 Gaslighting is Mavelian. So I know it’s real, but I’m going to lie to you. I’m going to deceive you. I’m going to
78. 10:39 create an alternative reality for you because I want something from you. Whatever it is, you’re talking more about you’re talking more in terms of delusion. Am I understanding correctly? Okay. So, how does rule rule by delusion?
79. 10:51 Please elaborate on that. I’d like to hear more. So, in terms of on the societal level here,
80. 10:57 delusions religion is a prime example of delusions are anxolytic. They reduce
81. 11:04 anxiety. They’re also anti-depressant because for example they cater to the grandiosity of people. You’re the best.
82. 11:10 You’re the greatest. You’re you’re amazing. You’re you’re a change agent. You’re participating in the making of
83. 11:16 history. You are you is a catering to grandiosity. Yes. And so delusions fulfill multiple
84. 11:23 psychological needs and allows allow people to be a lot more functional to to
85. 11:30 create an internal locus of control. the belief that they are in charge of their own lives and empower them. Delusions
86. 11:37 are empowering. You could even say that delusions are therapeutic. They’re form of therapy
87. 11:45 because they get rid of multiple mental mental health problems and so on. And they make you feel agentic. You develop
88. 11:52 a sense of agency, personal autonomy, strength, resilience, and so on so forth.
89. 11:58 This comes back to them being adaptive, doesn’t it? Um, sorry. Does this come back to them being adaptive in some way in in that it helps
90. 12:05 you function within a certain system regardless of whether it’s completely delusional? It helps you function within it. All mental constructs and all psychological processes are adaptive or they won’t survive.
91. 12:16 Even pathological narcissism is adaptive. The the problem with these with these adaptations that they start
92. 12:23 off as positive adaptations but then they they become devotional reality and they hinder they hinder the capacity to act in and on reality in order to secure
93. 12:34 positive outcomes a capacity known as self-efficacy. So the delusion starts off as a
94. 12:41 narrative. All delusions and uh have an underlying narrative. The narrative is
95. 12:47 fantastic. agrandizing anxiety anti-depressant
96. 12:54 and creates a sense of belonging and acceptance. So a cohesive collective
97. 13:00 channel these narratives channel energy. They’re hermeneutic. They’re they’re
98. 13:06 explanatory interpret interpretive. They make sense of reality and life. They they pro afford you or provide you with a goal or goals set of goals. They imbue your life with purpose and meaning. So they all generate meaning.
99. 13:22 And indeense, delusions or delusional fantasies are therapeutic. Absolutely therapeutic. The problem with delusional fantasies, the only problem, as I see, is that they
100. 13:34 have nothing to do with reality. The more divorced they are from reality, the bigger the daylight between the delusional fantasy and reality, the more uh therapeutic they are, the more potent
101. 13:47 they are, the more powerful they are. So actually to benefit or to enjoy the benefits of a fantasy, a delusional fantasy, it needs to be really crazy, really out there, you know, really
102. 13:59 delusional. And religion again is the greatest example because it’s really stupid nonsense from A to Z, you know, but because the
103. 14:11 stupidity and inanity and nonsensical nature of religion is so radically
104. 14:18 extreme, it is a major success in the sense that it gives your life meaning,
105. 14:24 is therap therapeutic, makes you feel good, connect with other people, etc., etc. And some people say why why live in reality? I mean reality does nothing for
106. 14:36 us. Fantasy is the thing we need to live in fantasy because it works internally, externally but we’re healthier for it. Yeah. We be we feel much better in it. We
107. 14:47 there’s a sense of well-being, improvement in our lives. People, religious people, talk to religious people, they will tell you, you know, I
108. 14:53 used to be a drug addict. I used to be a junkie. I used to be a criminal. I found Jesus and now my life is wonderful. I
109. 14:59 feel connected. I feel I feel a sense of belonging. I feel happy. I have a family. I’m functional. I have a job. I’ve never been healthier physically.
110. 15:10 I’ve never been healthier mentally. It works. Yes. The benefits of delusional
111. 15:17 fantasies are all internal. The problem is it’s unsustainable.
112. 15:23 It’s never sustainable. even individual funds are never sustainable.
113. 15:29 It also raises questions about the pursuit of happiness if this is how we achieve it. But that’s a bit beyond the scope of of what I want to talk about cuz um while we’re on this topic, would would you mind addressing Western
114. 15:41 spiritualism specifically and how the narcissistic cycle from vulnerable from grandio to vulnerable and back again plays out in that. I would appreciate the definition of
115. 15:52 western spiritual. Ah yeah, well said. Um, so I’m I’m talking about things like uh manifesting everything has a per the idea that everything has a purpose. The idea that you know whatever happens to you, your stub toe, your dead dog, these things
116. 16:04 are all lessons uh designed specifically for your betterment
117. 16:10 as you as you’ve just demonstrated. Yeah, obvious I’ve given away my sighting. I’m not a fan obviously, but yeah. Well, what you call what you call western spiritualism.
118. 16:22 First of all, it’s uh it involves a mechanism. It involves a psychological process which is considered pathological be beyond the age of 2 years and is known as uh I’m
119. 16:34 not kidding. That’s and it’s known as magical thinking. Yes. Oh yes, absolutely.
120. 16:41 Magical thinking is when you conflate or confuse internal events and entities with
121. 16:47 external events and entities. And in this very narrow sense, magical thinking
122. 16:53 is pseudocychotic. It’s a bit like psychosis. Yes. What we have in psychosis is the psychotic confuses internal voices,
123. 17:00 internal images with external ones. And similarly, by the way, the narcissist confuses external people with
124. 17:08 internal objects. So there is a confusion there. And uh this so-called spiritualism is magical thinking. And one form of magical thinking is is
125. 17:19 action at a distance. Another form of magical thinking is a belief that wishing or wanting something somehow
126. 17:26 coaleses the forces and energies around you or even objects physical objects around you to conform to your wish or or
127. 17:34 your dream or interruption. This is called a midstream advert and
128. 17:40 it’s where I get to say I’m advertising myself here. This is where I get to say your support would be much appreciated
129. 17:47 as this podcast can only continue thanks to the assistance of people like you. So if you’re watching on YouTube, do click
130. 17:54 join underneath the video. Um signing up there means that you can support the podcast whilst getting exclusive videos that are coming up in the future along with the chance to join our upcoming discussion group along with helping the podcast happen. You can also support us
131. 18:06 on Patreon or via the donation button on www.theonelinessindustry.net.
132. 18:12 And if none of those are possible, but you’d still like to see the podcast keep going, the usual subscribing, liking,
133. 18:18 and especially sharing any of these videos, still a great help. So, thank you. And with that, on with the podcast. Uh, so there there numerous forms of
134. 18:30 magical thinking. There is negative magical thinking where you believe that if you wish someone ill, they’re going to die. Or if you just think bad thoughts, they’re going to somehow manifest or materialize. And this gives
135. 18:42 rise to obsess obsessive compulsive features. People become obsessivecompulsive in order to defend
136. 18:48 against bad thoughts, bad intrusive thoughts and so on. Magical thinking has
137. 18:54 no redeeming features. It’s not only a divorce from reality, not only hind obstructs your self-efficacy, it’s even not therapeutic. Is is not is
138. 19:05 not redeem the redeeming features of a delusional fantasy. It’s just simply saying waving goodbye and and migrating to Laalin. The second feature in this so-called
139. 19:17 spiritualism is aggrandisement or self aggrandisement. The it it endows the conforming or the
140. 19:26 adherent. It endows the adherent with supernatural forces or forces. it um it uh everything around the adherent
141. 19:37 is intended to cater to the needs and wishes and dreams of the adherent. Mhm. So law of attraction, the secret, you
142. 19:44 know, all this nonsense, but also personal relationship with God. God is taking a personal interest in your life,
143. 19:52 rearranging the events in your life, sending you secret signals that only you can decode and decipher, and so on and so forth. We have path serious pathological
144. 20:04 conditions where the same applies. For example, consider erottomanic delusions. I in erottomic delusions. You convince yourself that a celebrity is in love
145. 20:15 with you. And then everything the celebrity does or says, every song they release, every appearance in in a gala dinner or whatever is actually a hidden
146. 20:27 secret signal between you and the celebrity. She is professing her love by singing this specific song on this specific day at this specific hour. We see a commonality between this and
147. 20:40 the belief for example that the universe is sending you messages or that God is interfering in your life and signaling
148. 20:46 to you somehow or or you know so it’s really sick this is a myasma this is
149. 20:52 really really sick and while when we discuss fantasy I pointed to some redeeming features there are none here none this is the exploitation of the
150. 21:03 mentally ill and the gullible and the feeble-minded by people who are unscrupulous and and
151. 21:09 you know criminal. Absolutely criminal. It’s it’s good to hear that from the horse’s mouth. Psychologically speaking,
152. 21:16 yeah, the summary sounds like it’s pathological. How do we get there though? Because um I
153. 21:22 see a lot in this I unfortunately worked for someone called practica in in Germany and was involved in the
154. 21:29 spiritual community through this hal practica. I’m not quite sure what the English word would be, maybe naturopath. Um, and I saw a lot of these people who were very disempowered, very isolated,
155. 21:40 um, who essentially had been dealt quite a rough hand in life. And it seemed to
156. 21:46 be their way of feeling like they could reempower themselves. But the manner in which they used it, it was was really to
157. 21:53 sort of not have any sympathy for others. It’s like, you know, I’m on my mission. I have my purpose. And, you know, they’re quite happy to talk about,
158. 22:00 you know, the bad things that happened to them, but they’ll learn from it. someone else has a bad experience, they don’t want to hear. And it seemed to me to be, this is what reminded me of covert narcissism. It’s like the
159. 22:11 disempowered but yet hoping to be special and sometimes already quite self-obsessed, often because they’re in
160. 22:18 trauma, offering them this faux solution to their disempowerment.
161. 22:24 And that was what I saw going on in that community, which which made me very sad because they were the very people who you would have thought had empathy
162. 22:30 because they had quite terrible lives themselves. But no, it eradicated that and gave them a feeling of self-importance, which is why I wondered about the narcissistic cycle on that level. Yes, I think you’re very right to
163. 22:41 identify these people with covert narcissism. These are self- aggrandizing narratives.
164. 22:48 This is what is called in in clinical psychology competitive victimhood. They are competing for victimhood
165. 22:55 victimhood badges, you know, and uh they need to take people down a peg. They
166. 23:04 they they need to establish a hierarchy. They they they because they claim
167. 23:10 rights. When you when you declare your victimhood ostentatiously, when you weaponize it, when you communicate it
168. 23:17 and so on, you’re claiming rights. Victims have rights. And these rights impose obligations on other people. And
169. 23:25 so there is coercion involved, however subtle. And there is aggression
170. 23:31 involved. It’s a form of externalized aggression, however subtle, however disguised, you know, and of course there’s no empathy because you can’t afford to empathize with your competitor or your user, you know, and
171. 23:44 it’s self aggrandizing because whatever has happened to you has rendered you special, unique, and and so on. And so you see this in, for example, victimhood
172. 23:57 movements such as the empath movement. I’m an empath. I’m a super empire. Super empath. I’m a super galactic supernova. Supernova empire, you know. So, so yes, I I fully agree with you.
173. 24:11 Spirituality affords one both a sense of community ironically.
174. 24:17 So, you belong, you’re accepted on the one hand, but you you belong and you’re
175. 24:23 accepted on your own terms. It’s as if the message is I’m willing to
176. 24:29 I I’m I crave belonging. I crave acceptance. I crave the embrace and the containing and the holding. I want to be with like-minded people or like
177. 24:40 experienced people. I I wish to resonate and so on so forth. But only on
178. 24:46 condition that they recognize my uniqueness, superiority,
179. 24:52 specialty, uh specialtity and um only on condition
180. 24:58 that they grant me certain rights if only the right to be heard
181. 25:04 that they then won’t grant others. This was the the burning point for me. It was it was like a group of people that all wanted to be recognized and seen. that part I don’t have a problem with because as you pointed out earlier we need this
182. 25:15 but then the refusal through this lack of empathy to to see others and I did find too that there’s a lot of virtue
183. 25:21 signaling in this it’s you know I’ve I’ve been through so much but I’ve got here so I’m never going to complain so
184. 25:27 you’re not allowed to complain and you know I think we’re returning we’re reverting to the beginning of this conversation there could not be there 8.3 billion on this planet people on this planet it’s
185. 25:39 very difficult to be seen is very difficult to garner attention.
186. 25:45 You need to escalate your behavior or you need to stand out by virtue of belonging to an exclusive arcane group or you people are desperate to be noticed and they will do anything to be noticed. Some of them will become serial killers. Some of them become
187. 26:02 vegans. Some of them become it’s not even narcissicism. I think there I agree with you that there is desperation to be seen. Yes. And you did point out to it is a you’re a psychologist. We know that
188. 26:14 this this this reflections is it’s vital to the formation of self. There was another thing this is actually not on my
189. 26:21 list but it comes to mind and I think it was Carlos who said um because it was the time where people were very interested in eastern spiritualism and western spiritualism has kind of adopted it and said you know so ironically destroy the ego because it’s exactly not
190. 26:37 what they do. However, Yung said, “You actually have to have this healthy ego.” And you talk a lot about healthy narcissism. You have to have this healthy ego before you can even consider
191. 26:48 destroying this ego or you’ll just fall apart. You’ll just be this fractured mess. And in order to to form this
192. 26:54 healthy ego that we need from the start, we need this mirroring. And you’ve said in one of your interviews, you know,
193. 27:00 this isn’t this isn’t going on sufficiently anymore. that we are to the point of a certain critical mass of
194. 27:06 being having been atomized where we’re not getting those reflections in the places we would expect but we’ve got all
195. 27:12 this technology to do it somewhere else. Yeah. Uh ironically I think these movements
196. 27:18 are destroying the ego the ego in in psychoanalysis in both
197. 27:26 Freud’s work and Yung’s work. Jung emphasized processes such as introversion and and narcissism as
198. 27:32 healthy processes. Yeah. That gave rise to what he called the constellated ego.
199. 27:38 And Freud begged to differ. Freud thought that introversion and narcissism are actually delterious processes that
200. 27:44 should somehow abate after age 2 or 3 years old when you transition from narcissistic libido narcissistic life
201. 27:51 force to an object oriented life force. So there’s a big debate there. But both
202. 27:57 of them agreed that a constellated integrated ego is a foundation of mental health because
203. 28:04 ego functions are crucial. One of the most famous ego functions is reality
204. 28:10 testing. The ability to embed yourself, ground yourself in reality to good effect.
205. 28:17 And what these so-called spiritual whatever movements are doing, they’re
206. 28:23 taking away your reality testing. They’re impairing it. They’re casting you into the outer darkness and oblivion of delusions and fantasies and magical thinking and so on. And by doing this,
207. 28:36 they are disabling your ego. That’s a very good point, Sam. It it reminds me of something else you said
208. 28:42 too about about intuition, which um you explained in one of the videos in layman’s terms is something to rely on
209. 28:48 in terms of when seeking a good relationship. And I find that you very close to western spiritualism is a lot
210. 28:54 of the self-help stuff. And a lot of how it seems to work to me is just saying, look, okay, you know, poor dear, you’ve
211. 29:01 done some work, but you don’t know how how wrecked you are. You know, you’re actually more [ __ ] up than you thought. And it’s it’s decoupling you
212. 29:08 from your intuition as well. That is that is also destroying the healthy ego. It’s like, no, your intuition, you
213. 29:14 thought you’re sort of halfway screwed, but no, you you are just wrecked. You need my help. I’m going to position
214. 29:20 myself as the person that helps you and the only person that can see accurately what’s deeply wrong with you. And again,
215. 29:28 we see this as you’ve mentioned this destruction of the healthy ego. I cannot rely on myself to know the extent of
216. 29:34 this problem. I can only rely on external figures. I’ve I have no idea now. Um and this leads to fragmentation
217. 29:41 as well. I would imagine this is the the primal primal scene of uh of psychology in general that it started started by studying pathologies
218. 29:53 and only pathologies not normality and well there were very very very beginning you had people like wound wound and others they studied healthy people they did interesting
219. 30:04 but then Freud took over and not Freud was an extension of the Paris school and the French German a French Austrian and later French Austrian school confronted the German school. The German school
220. 30:16 which was also the American school American German school that has has
221. 30:22 studied almost exclusively healthy people. Interesting. But then the was he didn’t he have a lab in Leipzig? Was that him? Yes. Yes. And at the same time you had
222. 30:33 Jane and Shiao in France in hotel Sria and other places and they were studying
223. 30:39 only uh sick people mentally people they decided to mentally yes without the yard stick of normal this is why it’s interesting yeah and so
224. 30:50 and and then the French Austrian school took over became dominant for 60 years
225. 30:56 almost and and that is it contaminated the field it polluted the And uh we have no clue what is what is normal. We have no clue. We really don’t. We really don’t.
226. 31:07 We absolutely don’t. And we tend to pathize more and more additional behaviors. Yes. Gab mate has talked about this um among others that that if if everyone in the world sat down in front of a psychoanalyst and said, you know,
227. 31:23 diagnose me, we’d all get some combination of things from the DSM. And I remember that they were they were they
228. 31:29 had suggested um uh including introversion and I thought oh my god
229. 31:35 that’s in my list of diagnosis introversion is is pathology now and I wonder too it’s just because the measuring stick seems to be how well adjusted are you to a usually sick society and if Americans are writing
230. 31:47 things you know we have the ICD here in Europe but the DSM there the extroverts take the cake every time so the introverts will not be as well adjusted to that society pathize it. It’s it’s
231. 32:00 fascinating to me. Without a normal, we’re just rudded a ship here. Yes. We don’t have a benchmark.
232. 32:07 No, I’m not aware of any other discipline. I mean, psychology is a pseudocience for reasons. I I agree with you. I’m I’m in the middle of a psych degree and it just philosophically speak I’m like how
233. 32:17 there’s no grounding for this stuff. No, I object all the time. I mean they camouflage it with statistics and
234. 32:26 but it’s it’s nonsense odd inter it’s an interpretive art in some cases we did
235. 32:32 this experiment we deprived everyone of cabbages they behaved in this manner and we’ve interpreted it as such and well
236. 32:38 you could have interpreted a number of other ways it’s literature it’s
237. 32:44 simply literature was a great author yeah yes I mean I think young as well and humor as well. Doski was the best psychologist ever. Even in a pseudocience, you need some rigorousness even as Yes, you do.
238. 33:00 And you don’t have it. How can you have this? If you don’t have the baseline, if you don’t agree on what’s healthy and what’s normal and how could you develop even a pseudocience?
239. 33:10 This is the thing. And the next episode I’m doing is is is is on the fact that so many of these things and speaking of
240. 33:16 Freud, it is nonfalsifiable when I say, you know, you’re just doing this because of a subconscious drive to do whatever.
241. 33:22 And you know, me as the analyst here and you as the client is I’m sitting on my high horse telling you you’re doing this
242. 33:28 because of your subconscious. And you can scream at me until you’re blue in the face saying, “No, that is no. You
243. 33:34 know, I love my dog. I didn’t deliberately kill my dog cuz of my subconscious. I genuinely love my dog.” And I go, “No, subconscious hatred of
244. 33:42 your dog.” Um, that is not falsifiable. That is a pseudocience that applies to all psychology. I mean, Freud is Freud is considered Freud is considered outside outside the pale, you know, it’s beyond beyond the pale beyond the pale.
245. 33:58 But but even the most modern psychology is it’s not falsifiable and it’s not
246. 34:04 replicable. Yeah. 81 80% of psychological studies are not cannot be replicated. That’s a replication crisis. And it’s not falsifiable. It’s not
247. 34:15 fossil viable for survival because your raw material is mutable changes all the time. If I were to study you right now, imagine that I were to study you and the study would be rigorous. It’s double
248. 34:26 bind and and we have we it’s it’s clinically randomized and I’m going to
249. 34:32 make the I’m going to create the most amazing rigorous methodologically rigorous study of a group of people. Okay, a hundred of you group of people I
250. 34:43 can never repeat this experiment because you are changing you’re even changing as the a result of
251. 34:49 the experiment. Yes, absolutely. If I if I study the sun, it is not impacted by the fact that
252. 34:56 I’m studying it. You are. You are. And then I I conduct the experiment
253. 35:02 today and I invite you tomorrow to repeat the experiment. Are you the same person tomorrow? Something happened to you, broke up with your lover. I don’t know what you know. It’s stupid. It’s not the same raw
254. 35:14 material. So it frustrates me deeply as well. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m studying in Germany, too, Sam. It’s even worse as you as you know. I do want to get on to Christopher
255. 35:26 Lash cuz um I should have guessed that you had read him as well, but I didn’t realize that until I listened to another one of your videos yesterday. So, yes, you’ve also read Christopher Lash who argued that society itself has become
256. 35:37 narcissistic. And this is in the ‘ 70s. Um and while he doesn’t frame it as as a clinical thing, he suggests that
257. 35:43 narcissism operates both in social structures and in the individual shaped by them. So what are your thoughts on
258. 35:50 that and on the way narcissistic values are transmitted between systems and psyches?
259. 35:56 We’ve kind of touched on this but if you could do it directly. Yeah. Christopher Lash was one of a
260. 36:02 member in a very big group many of whom many of whom preceded him by one or two decades. I would just mention for example Eric from or Alusa himself
261. 36:15 and so on. So he was he was well embedded in a a general view of society
262. 36:21 which claimed that society is being pathized. It’s being pathologized by
263. 36:27 transitioning from substance to performance that is readable. It’s being pathized by transitioning
264. 36:34 from agency to manipulativeness that is alru. And it’s being pathologized by
265. 36:40 transitioning from empathy based society and institutions to selfishness if you
266. 36:47 wish or egotism which is lush. But the core the core argument was that
267. 36:54 now individual pathologies are induced by collective pathologies rather than the
268. 37:00 other way around. That was the core argument which was a major revolution because yeah that’s fascinating. Up until the
269. 37:07 60s, the belief was that individuals are the seat of pathologies and if we have a sufficient number of pathologized individuals, they’re likely to form a path pathological collective.
270. 37:18 Whereas this offers and I can I can mention many more like Fuko, Michelle
271. 37:24 Fuko. Oh yes, I’m a big fan. Yeah. Yeah. This these scholars claim that it’s we
272. 37:30 got it all wrong. It is anomic. Yeah. Doine. Yes. Emiline anomi.
273. 37:37 Yeah. It is anomic pathize seek dysfunctional
274. 37:43 delusional societies. Yeah. That induce pathologies in their
275. 37:49 individual members. In other words, all mental illness is collective and societal and cultural never individual.
276. 37:58 This is exactly the view of a lot of sociology and philosophy that the individual is a symptom of society. I do
277. 38:04 actually remember when I If you’re from the Jurassic epoch, I’m Cretaceous. It’s a long time ago. Um,
278. 38:10 but reading that um the book was called um the symptoms the individual as the symptom of society or something very similar to that and that just sort of summed up the entire perspective in one
279. 38:21 cover of a book. Uh whereas whereas psychology just focuses on it’s the problem is in you. You know, it’s
280. 38:28 irrelevant that your dad beat you with a stick. It is irrelevant that soldiers shot everyone in your family. you are
281. 38:35 the problem. Which just strikes me as phenomenally shortsighted. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not only short-sighted, it induces pathological dynamics. Yeah. If you keep telling someone that he’s or she is the seat of the problem, you induce guilt.
282. 38:51 You induce shame. Yes. This creates bad dynamics actually. But I think I think the I think both parties
283. 39:00 are getting it wrong to some extent. I think what happens is we are conflating and confusing medical conditions which have psychological outcomes
284. 39:12 with pure psychological conditions which have no bodily involvement and I think the DSM should be purged if we take the DSM should be purged completely
285. 39:23 for example schizophrenia should never be in the DSM it’s a medical condition end of story
286. 39:30 it’s a brain abnormality biochemical mainly. Yeah, it should be in in a medical textbook, not not in the DSM.
287. 39:36 Yeah. Bipolar disorder should never be in the DSM. It’s a biochemical condition, pure and simple, etc., etc.
288. 39:42 Yeah. If we were to remove these, the conditions left
289. 39:48 are mostly mostly uh induced by society. I would
290. 39:54 say too I think that thinking of things like depression which to me is is a logical reaction that’s not a pathology
291. 40:00 either. It’s a logical reaction to a terrible state of affairs. Yes, they are mostly these conditions.
292. 40:06 So if we were to remove schizophrenia and bipolar and so on, we we’re going to be left with a a much reduced DSM
293. 40:14 and all the conditions in the DSM which have no medical background, biochemical background, brain abnormality background, neur neurodedevelopmental background and so on. Autism should be removed completely from the DSM. If you
294. 40:26 do this, what’s left is relational, societal, cultural. Take
295. 40:32 for example narcissism. Narcissism is 100% relational and and
296. 40:38 narcissism is also also has pronounced cultural and
297. 40:44 societal dimensions manifest differently in different societies and cultures and so on so forth. If you were to isolate a
298. 40:50 narcissist on an island with not a single individual there most of the manifestations of narcissism would vanish. The person would no longer be diagnosed as a narcissist cannot be diagnosed as a narcissist. Psychopathy
299. 41:02 of course is a societal construct is of course not a mental illness. I mean absolutely not a mental illness. So and I think this is the source of the confusion. That’s the source of the
300. 41:13 debate between these people because they refer to pure medical conditions
301. 41:19 as psychological conditions or psychopathological conditions and then they say you see each individual individual. Yes.
302. 41:25 It’s individual. It’s not societal but they are not psychological condition. Yeah. And if all was left with society
303. 41:31 induced issues, then we’d be only left with a map of what we’ve done wrong as a
304. 41:37 culture. Yeah. Yes. There there is. Of course, don’t forget that uh psychology has emerged
305. 41:45 from highly conformist, conservative, and traditional societies. Trust me, I don’t forget that. I live in Germany. Yeah, actually that that does bring me to to
306. 41:56 my next question which I’m not entirely sure if I will include this question. Um
307. 42:03 you’ve spoken about people becoming robotic in the past, right? And about how technology is being developed to, you know, give the robotic what they believe they need. Uh correct me if I’m wrong on that, but anyway, I’m living in
308. 42:14 Germany and to be honest, it does I’ve lived here for 10 years in total, but I moved here I moved back here 5 years ago
309. 42:20 after Poland. It feels like the end state of this you know
310. 42:28 the idea the inner world the inner world and feelings are are just devalued and feeling them feelings themselves are seen as weak and just somehow um inferior and it seems that there’s a
311. 42:41 systematic trying to rid oneself and other people of them right so that you become ideally the ideal seems to be a
312. 42:49 purely functional kind of individual and that’s applauded if you if you never flip out, you never get upset, you just
313. 42:55 you do your thing. Empathy also seems dead here. And and compliance isn’t it’s
314. 43:02 not just about the power structures telling you to follow the rules. I’ll get shouted at by random strangers telling me what I have to do and can’t do with my dog. So, you know, is this the trajectory of where Western values are going to lead us if things don’t shift?
315. 43:20 whenever people first of all Germany might may be an outlier. Well, I think it is this is I don’t think it’s typical of all western societ. That’s why I think it’s I think it’s the end state which is you know
316. 43:32 it’s debatable. This is all anecdotal evidence that I have here. Yeah. I think people are willing to trade
317. 43:40 personal autonomy even identity for safety. I think the overriding is
318. 43:46 safety. Yeah, for sure. uh especially when the world is uncertain when there is a lot
319. 43:52 of indeterminacy and unpredictability and people the people react to this with
320. 43:58 anxiety. Anxiety is intolerable and one way to reduce anxiety very efficaciously
321. 44:04 is by suspending your agency
322. 44:10 by by transmitting your agency to to external agents. So you could transmit
323. 44:16 it to the state, you can transmit it to a charismatic leader who is authoritarian, you can transmit it to a dictator, you can
324. 44:23 but the minute you offload the minute you you get rid of your of the need to
325. 44:29 make decisions of the need to make choices that’s a huge relief. It’s anxolytic.
326. 44:37 But at that point of course you become less than human less than human. And this is also unbearable, intolerable, unsustainable. So here the
327. 44:50 the state or the collective or the charismatic leader or so they introduce a compensatory fantasy.
328. 44:57 So actually delusional fantasies that we kept mentioning throughout this conversation have to do they they are a compensatory
329. 45:06 mechanism. They have to do with a reduction in humanity. the the the the
330. 45:12 less human you are. Yeah. In the sense that the less personal autonomy you have, the the fewer decisions you make, fewer choices you make, the fewer awareness, the the lower
331. 45:22 your awareness of other people or your willingness to incorporate them into your considerations, in other words,
332. 45:28 less less empathic you are. Yeah. And so on so forth, then you feel dehumanized. You feel objectified. You feel you feel reduced. And there’s a need to compensate for
333. 45:39 this. So the compensation is a collective delusional fantasy.
334. 45:45 Let me put it this way. I come to you and I say listen the world is very dangerous, very hostile, very risky, indeterminate, uncertain, unpredictable.
335. 45:57 Nothing you can survive. So I’m offering you a deal. You let go of 50% of your
336. 46:04 humanity in the sense that I will render you a robot. I will convert you into an
337. 46:10 automaton. I will provide you with with uh a list of instructions and directions and
338. 46:17 algorithms. I will render you into an algorithmic manifestation. Okay?
339. 46:23 So that you don’t feel bad about it. I’m going to integrate you in a collective.
340. 46:30 This collective is a shared fantasy. It’s a delusional fantasy. This collective will compensate you for the
341. 46:37 missing parts. Whereas you will not be able to decide any longer, the
342. 46:43 collective will. Whereas you will lack empathy, the collective will simulate empathy. Whereas you will be will not be agentic,
343. 46:54 the collective will be agentic. You will not have your personal autonomy. You will regain it through the collective.
344. 47:00 and your sense of uniqueness and specialness will be derived from the collective.
345. 47:06 A collective is a fantasy. It’s a delusional fantasy. It’s not a real collective. Very often it’s not a real collective. I’m wondering too going back to Okam’s razor cuz you mentioned fear. And I mean
346. 47:18 I do really think that fear seems to be a driving force here. I mean you know they’ve had a horrible experience of you know what will happen when when things go wrong. So fear driving this
347. 47:29 conformity to I think rules seem to be seen as the solution. So fear uh is is
348. 47:36 quelled by going if I follow this recipe nothing will happen which is of course a fantasy but I don’t
349. 47:43 think the fantasy is necessarily about collective because like I said this is anecdotal evidence but um from what I’m
350. 47:49 seeing it’s it’s more of what you referred to earlier of people preferring really not to have anything to do with other people. It’s just like I’m scared.
351. 47:57 I know nothing will happen, which is the fantasy. It’s not true. If I follow these rules and just do as I’m Where did you get the rules from? Who gave you the rules? Yeah, exactly. Now, who gave you this rule? Ah, I the institutions, the law makers.
352. 48:11 Yes. Yeah. This is the compensatory. Ah, are you saying Yeah, the institutions and the collective are the collective. Aha. Okay. I’m following now. I’m following.
353. 48:22 The nation state, the nation state is a fantasy. realize it. Yeah. Oh, God. Yes. Shame. Yeah. It’s a complete fantasy. These are all fantasies, counterfactual, completely delusional.
354. 48:33 And yet they are prescriptive. Yes, they are prescriptive. They afford you with a prescription. At the same time, they’re
355. 48:40 also procriptive. They prescribe certain thing. Yes. So, they narrow, they constrict your
356. 48:46 life and this endows you with a sense of safety, a sense of stability. Here’s the
357. 48:52 thing though, Sam, because I think I think in most of the cases you’re right, and that’s what I see playing out here. But of course, you know, I’ve made broad sweeping statements about German culture, and that is not every person. Not everyone yells at me about my dog.
358. 49:05 There are some good people here. Um, so it can’t be that everyone reacts the
359. 49:11 same to going, okay, if I follow the recipe, I can quell my fear. There will be some people that go, “Yeah, okay. I’m
360. 49:17 promised that I can quell my fear by following the recipe, but either I don’t believe that or I’m just not prepared to
361. 49:24 give up my autonomy to that extent or my creativity or all of the other things that that costs you.”
362. 49:30 Yeah. So I think there are different reactions and then we come back to the beginning too that some of us will react
363. 49:36 to this isolation not with not necessarily joy but with despair or some other thing because I think we do react
364. 49:43 differently to the prices that we have to pay for these for participating in these fantasies.
365. 49:49 These are these are the rebels and it’s a statistical question. Normaly normaly
366. 49:55 what is normal is defined by numbers. Yeah, it seems that people are choosing aloneeness or loneliness that’s
367. 50:01 substantiated by numbers. Similarly, most people are conformist or or choose
368. 50:07 to belong to collectives that is substantiated by numbers. People are more and more prone to shared fantasies.
369. 50:13 70 million people voted for Donald Trump. So this is seems to be and and equally
370. 50:20 you have Oban in Hungary, Netanyahu in Israel, Modi in India, in Turkey and so on. But I agree with but again again not all of them you know not all of them you have rebels to have an effect but yeah you have rebels but and dissident and but what we and
371. 50:36 artists and artists but what we’re doing we are pathologizing them the collective is pathizing them yes we’re pathologizing the outliers and this is this is why the loneliness
372. 50:47 industry I’m pretty sure that a lot of the listeners we’re all outliers it’s you know it’s it’s people like me uh not all of them are necessarily early artists or or philosophers, but those that react
373. 50:58 differently. You know, those that would not just follow the recipe to get rid of their fear. Um those that say, “Do you
374. 51:04 know what? This atomization is actually painful, not joyful, and I would rather talk to someone than a computer. I’ve
375. 51:11 just structurally been deprived of the means of doing that.”
376. 51:17 Yes. So, for example, if you’re if you’re defined, if you if you defy the rules, you’re
377. 51:24 Oh, yeah. If you’re a child, it makes me like a chef. If you’re a child at school
378. 51:30 and you disagree with the with the head mistress, there is a diagnosis for this. Would you believe
379. 51:36 oppositional defined disorder? That’s a child who keeps fighting with his teachers and head mistress.
380. 51:42 Y that’s how it’s defined. Yes, it is. And it doesn’t say footnote. As long as a teacher isn’t
381. 51:49 bashing said child or ranging said child, it’s unqualified. oppose. If you dare
382. 51:55 oppose, you have oppositional oppositional divine disorder. Yes. You know what? If you’re a bit ambitious
383. 52:02 and consequently you’re self-centered and you’re a bit abrasive and a bit, you know, exploitative maybe and so you’re a
384. 52:09 narcissist. We are pathologizing everything. Internet addiction is pathologized. Nicotine addiction is in the Listen,
385. 52:16 I’ll give you a number. The first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1952 was comprised
386. 52:22 of 100 pages. The text revision of the fifth edition of the same book
387. 52:29 is 1,100 pages. Yes. Yes. 11 times.
388. 52:35 Have we grown 11 times more crazy? Yeah. Or are we pathologizing every
389. 52:41 conceivable behavior? Well, I I actually talked about this in another episode too, how um in terms of connection and
390. 52:47 you’ve talked about, you know, the fact that the atomization is deliberate. This is not an error in the system, it is the system. And that you actually mentioned the lone wolf, which I re mention a lot too, how
391. 52:57 it’s it’s applauded. It’s held up as the ideal. The word codependency seems to me
392. 53:03 as what you know, Fuko would say, how we pathize the opposite of the thing that society wants us to follow. So, we want
393. 53:09 everyone to be an atomized lone wolf. Therefore, anyone who’s deeply intimately involved with someone will be called codependent. We need new words to to um make sure everyone understands if
394. 53:21 you don’t follow the values that we hold dear, you’re sick in the head. You know, you’re not just a rebel. There’s
395. 53:27 something wrong with you. There’s a good argument to be made that with the exception of the aforementioned
396. 53:34 medical conditions, psychotic disorders, uh, autism spectrum disorders, bipolar
397. 53:40 disorder, with the exception of these where we can trace a genealogy or a
398. 53:46 provenence in the brain and in genes and in the body except these conditions, we
399. 53:52 should burn the rest of the DSM. A excellent argument to be made for this
400. 53:58 is the rest of a DSM is about social control. It’s a societal a societal thing
401. 54:05 construct not real science. Yeah. It’s it’s the manual of get in line. It’s the manual of behave how we
402. 54:11 want you to behave. Yeah. Homogenization. Homog. Absolutely. Yes. There was one video
403. 54:17 where you actually opened with this. It’s like Yeah. It was I’m totally paraphrasing it’ll get it wrong.
404. 54:23 Something along the lines of Yeah. Too much self-help and introspection actually can be counterproductive because I think this is this is the driving engine of of of YouTube as well. So many people will write to what do you
405. 54:35 expect? What should we do about this? And it’s like well be you. Try being you
406. 54:41 because the message is always under no circumstances be yourself. Try being yourself. Just do that cuz that’s you
407. 54:47 know you can if you haven’t been too trained out of it and you know undermined in terms of
408. 54:53 your faith in yourself. Try being yourself. But psychology and psychotherapy are meant to keep you at optimized. Absolutely. and in doubt and in shame. Yes. But you see in the past if you were
409. 55:06 a bit distressed or unhappy a bit or something you would go to you talk to your best friend. Yeah. Yeah. It’s been outsourced to family. Talk to family has been outsourced. Yeah. Yes. So now
410. 55:16 you know that in there was a study about the number of uh number of friends. So in 1980 a typical American individual
411. 55:25 Yeah. had uh 10 point something close friends like best friends. Wow.
412. 55:32 The question was phrased this way. If you if you had a shameful secret that was knowing at you and you know how many people would you feel comfortable to share it with?
413. 55:43 Yeah. And they said 10 people in 1980. The same study same study
414. 55:49 same study has been repeated in 2020. Yeah. And the result was fewer than one.
415. 55:56 Wow. Fewer than one person. So wow. And who took this who took the
416. 56:02 place of this vacuum? Nature doesn’t tolerate a vacuum. Who took the place of the vacuum? Therapist. Therapist. Yes. I do I do often discuss through my deep-seated issues with CBT, which whose
417. 56:13 underlying assumption is the context that you’re in is fine, but your reaction to it is wrong. Right. So, and
418. 56:19 you deal obviously a lot with people who are in situations of you domestic abuse. Telling someone to react differently to
419. 56:26 that is is not remotely helpful. Um, and I do think that therapy, you know, in the wrong hands, I do know I’ve got
420. 56:32 friends who are therapists and they’re very, very good, but there are certainly there’s certainly a wealth of bad therapists out there whose function
421. 56:38 seems to be bring you in line to what’s what’s expected. And I think it’s no no accident that if you have issues in the
422. 56:45 workplace, and the workplace pays for the therapy, it’s CBT. It’s adapt your
423. 56:51 behavior to fit the environment and not the other way around. CBT is a programming a programming language, of course. Yeah. It’s behavioral adaptation to pro repro Yep. Reprogram you so that you fit again.
424. 57:02 You identify automatic negative thoughts and you rewrite and rewrite the code. Yeah. Yeah. Such as my my boss is a
425. 57:08 dick. It’s like No, he’s not. He’s great. So, no, he act he might factually be a dick, but that’s not
426. 57:15 Oh, I’m a dick. Yeah. I I can be a dick, too. I think we can all be dicks. No, you’re not. This is a negative
427. 57:21 automatic for [Laughter] so yeah and it it harks back to my original argument when I was trying to
428. 57:32 communicate to you that okay it’s systemic and systematic this is not just
429. 57:39 um overt an overt text that that is deceptive and baiting or the whole
430. 57:45 system is constructed and this has to do with capitalism but that’s a topic for No, absolutely. The whole podcast is deliberately going against every capitalist value on that.
431. 57:56 Yes. I just I think I think we agree on a lot of a lot of certainly the outcomes and the state of affairs and the
432. 58:02 deliberateness of it. I guess it’s just yeah the part where we disagree is about whether we’re whether we’re choosing
433. 58:09 this out of joy. And that was just the main beef I had. It’s like I don’t think the choices are as satrian as one thinks. And I don’t think that necessarily any of the choices have joy in them. uh because we can’t escape the
434. 58:21 atomization of the system. It is inherently atomized. It’s not that we can like run to some collective okay
435. 58:27 Western spiritualism but we know what happens there. There’s a choice between yeah follow the the fear rule book to avoid fear or go and hang out with with the people with
436. 58:38 crystals in every orifice. Um that’s not much of a choice and I don’t find either
437. 58:44 of them joyful. H I understand we have a theory in psychology about attitudes and motivations and we we derive attitudes and motivations from behavior.
438. 58:56 Yeah. And we say if someone keeps doing the same thing for decades then there must be what we call cexis. There must be positive emotional investment in this.
439. 59:07 So it develops there’s some kind of that does something for touchment bonding with the activ with
440. 59:13 the activity. Yes. So that that that effect can be the numbing of pain as we know from addiction stories. It might be pain level. Yeah. Whatever the whatever the plus is.
441. 59:24 Yeah. Numbing numbing of pain. Numbing of pain is is good for you. It’s like you like it. People like numbing of pain. So even that would be a positive positive emotion. Positive. Yes. People like cocaine.
442. 59:35 I think I think we’ve exhausted our viewers. Yeah. I think we Yes. Thank you so much
443. 59:41 Sam for your time. It has been absolutely wonderful talking to you. Um, and thank you for elaborating on a lot of the theories I’ve been fascinated with for for a long time. It’s great to get this depth. We should we should do it again
444. 59:52 sometime. I I would love to. I would love to. Maybe next time we could focus on capitalism.
445. 59:58 Let’s do that to all this. Yes. Um, I don’t know if you checked out the podcast. It starts with Yeah. I just go through the values the core values of capitalism one after the other systematically and debunk them with philosophy and a bit of psychology. So
446. 60:11 capitalism is rootable evil loneliness are the inevitable outcomes of capitalism. Well that’s my whole that’s my whole that is my whole stickick why I had to do all of those first to go this is why
447. 60:22 we’re lonely. Yeah. You know yes fantastic to talk to you again Sam. That
448. 60:28 was seriously you made my day. Yeah. Thank you. Made my day. Now I hope you guys found that at least
449. 60:34 interesting if not enjoyable or or both. I intend to host more interviews around the topic of loneliness and I’m
450. 60:40 currently digging out philosophers, academics, and professionals in the field to bring to you. Now, if there’s anyone in particular that you feel might
451. 60:47 be a fit, you keeping in mind that I am a very small channel, do let me know in the comments. Uh, next week will be the
452. 60:54 final episode in the series on narcissism and society. And we look at how institutions themselves use the
453. 61:00 double bind, blameshifting, and other tactics to keep you lonely. Now, if you
454. 61:06 are new here and this was your first time watching and you want to know where to go next, I’m linking two playlists at the end of this video. The one on the bottom is going to be the start of the narcissism in a society playlist and the
455. 61:17 one on the top is going to be the start of the Western capitalist values series. That really is the foundation of this
456. 61:23 whole podcast where we show how each of the Western capitalist values leads ultimately to our isolation. So, if that
457. 61:30 interests you, links are down the bottom. Thank you for listening and I’ll see you in 2 weeks. Bye.
458. 61:41 [Music]