The Daily Stoic - Scott Barry Kaufman - How to Use Psychology to Solve Real-World Problems

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

On today’s podcast, Ryan talks with Scott Barry Kaufman about passion versus purpose, what psychology can tell us about our political leaders, how to foster empathy in other people, and more.Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., is an author, psychologist, professor, and podcaster. Kaufman hosts The Psychology Podcast, the number-one psychology podcast in the world. His new book, Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization, reimagines the idea of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.This episode is brought to you by Amazon Alexa. Amazon Alexa is the perfect system to use to set up your house with Smart Home functionality—and with the new Amazon Smart Lighting Bundle, it’s easy to get started. Just connect your Amazon Echo Dot with your first Sengled color changing light bulb and you’re on your way. Visit Amazon.com/dailystoic to get 20% off the bundle.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Scott Barry Kaufman:  Homepage: https://scottbarrykaufman.com/Twitter: http://twitter.com/sbkaufmanInstagram: http://instagram.com/rydercarrollFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScottBarryKaufmanSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. of necessary for living good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com. podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs

working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together, they discussed their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty. So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wonder yet.

Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. Hey y'all, I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo. Just the name of you. Now I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Kiepa Bag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a bag love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started, and there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the Baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast.

I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know, so I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you.

Because on Baby This is Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This is Kiki Palmer. No topic is off limits. Follow baby this is Kiki Palmer whatever you get your podcast. Hey prime members, you can listen early and app free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today. Hey it's Ryan Holiday welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke podcast. You know what the things they don't tell you about having kids is how humbling, it's going to be I was putting my, all the sun is almost four down to bed, a little less than a week ago and he was pretty tired. And so I, we just read a book with pictures and I didn't want to read another book with pictures because it was just gonna, he wouldn't go to bed because he'd be too

excited. So I grabbed something from, shelf that didn't have any pictures. And it happened to be a copy of, of you go as the enemy, which he grabbed off my shelf and put in his room. And so I started reading from a random page and he'd go as the enemy. As of course, what happened, he fell asleep in about eight seconds flat. And I thought, oh, okay, he must have been really tired. But then the next night, I tried it again.

I didn't even pick up a different book. It just went straight to Ego. And was asleep almost before his head at the pillow. I think it was six consecutive nights that reading him something I had written, put him straight to sleep, which of course is a bit ironic, given the title of that book, you know, you work very hard on something, you think you do a good

job and it manages to impress your kids only in the sense that it's so boring that they go directly to bed. I was trying to tell him, dude, this book, this book paid for your house. So how do you not find this interesting? And of course, he was already asleep. Almost 10 years ago now, this is before I'd even put out any books. I hadn't even, I don't even think, I'd maybe just sold, trust me, I'm lying.

I was driving from, yeah, I just sold it like a few weeks before, but I was driving from Northern California. I was picking up a car from my parents and driving it back down to Los Angeles and then I was going to drive it from Los Angeles to Texas. And I texted Neil Strauss who I'd gotten to know a few months earlier. Actually, Neil Strauss was the man who introduced me to one of my favorite novels of all time John Fonte's asked the dust. But anyways, I just started to get to know Neil and texted him and he said, hey, when you're driving through we should go out and have dinner. And so I drove. I was there a little early and we were meeting at Cafe Habana in Malibu. So I was sitting at the bar waiting for Neil.

And there's another guy sitting there and we started to get to talking and he was telling me about himself. And I don't remember what I said. I don't know what I remember. He said, but it was just funny here. You're talking. And then it happened that he was also having dinner with Neil, Neil being famous for bringing groups of people together, often without a heads up, Neil did this to me. A few years later, we were supposed to have lunch in Malibu and Rick Rubin showed up.

So that was Neil. But anyways, the guy I was sitting next to at the bar, Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, as it happens, is my guest on the podcast today. So Scott and I go way back. He's had me on his podcast a few times. You may be familiar with his name if you haven't listened to his podcast or if you haven't read any of his awesome books. You may be familiar with with Scott because he gave me a wonder, I interviewed him briefly and he gave me a great quote in a perennial seller about the creative process. And actually in addition to all the things that that Dr. Kaufman is an expert on creativity is one of them, he wrote a book, The Philosophy of Creativity, and another one, Wired to Create,

Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. He's a psychologist. He was previously at NYU at the University of Pennsylvania, most recently at Columbia University. His new book Transcend, the new Science of Self-Actualization, is a sort of a reimagining of Maslow's hierarchy, which we talked about in the interview. But it's funny, I heard about Scott's new book. I was in New York doing the launch for Stillness, and I was doing an event with James Altature at James' Club standup New York. And so James said, hey, why don't you come over a little bit before we'll talk, and then we'll walk across the street and go over there. And I walk into James' apartment, he has a beautiful apartment there on the Upper East Side,

Upper West Side, I don't remember. But I walk in and guess who's sitting there? Scott Berry Kaufman. So this was meant to be. I was really glad to talk to him. He's a great writer. He also had me on his podcast. I don't know how the timing is going to overlap, but he had me on to

talk about the new book, Lives of the Stilics, the art of living from Xeno to Marcus Realis, which he can preorder. Whenever this comes out, it may already be for sale. But Scott, great guy, he calls himself sort of a humanist psychologist. His point is to reimagine psychology, not merely to look at what's wrong with us, not look at us as a pile of neuroses or urges, but to study psychology in a way that helps encourage human flourishing, whether that's in the form of creativity or happiness. And so I'm very excited to talk to Scott today. It's just so funny. You never know where life will take you, how you'll get introduced to someone.

And so this conversation is a long time in the making. And if you can, at a bar, at Cafe Habana, in Malibu, California, in either late 2000, I think I believe it'd be late 2011, before I even had a vision of writing about stoicism. So here we are, my conversation with Scott Barry Cough. There's a weird question. I hope it doesn't come off as hostile, but why should I care about Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Like I hear people bring it up all the time and they always, it's usually kind of done in this like, almost like they're recognizing a pattern like they'll hear something and go, oh, that's Maslow's hierarchy. But what

am I actually supposed to do with this information? Yeah, it's a great question. And I think it's important to recognize that a lot of Maslow's writings have been misunderstood, misrepresented. You know, you'll see cute, see little things in the internet like toilet paper at the bottom of a pyramid of needs or a Wi-Fi battery, these sorts of things. And you know, first of all, Mazzo never drew a pyramid and most people, I don't think anyone knows that because even in introductory psychology textbooks, it's misrepresented. If you actually read the writings of Mazzo, it would be equivalent to you like listening to people talking about the Stoics in like a really character-chored way that you know is totally

misrepresent sexual writings because you just nerdily went through and read a great detail what they actually wrote. And I nerdily went through and read what Mazda actually wrote and I can say uneivocally, that it's very rich ideas for how to live one's life in a growth-oriented way. I think he was one of the first developmental psychologists, and I don't think he gets credit for that. But he talked a lot about how human development is constantly this two-step-forward, one-step-back dynamic

that we're always having to choose the growth option, but we always have our our depravations can rear their head at any point. We're all seeing that right now with COVID, of course, but he just made it clear that we could return to our basic, you know, the deprivation of our basic needs, but he didn't view life like a video game, and I think that's just a gross misrepresentation of the whole theory. He never viewed it like, you know, you reach a certain level of connection. And then some voice from both is like, grads, even locked self-esteem. Right.

Yeah, you move up. You don't move up anything. So that's why I reconsensualized it as a new metaphor for, I think, the spirit of it, which is a statement. So in you read conceptualize it around this concept of transcendence, but what does that mean? Yes, and also the idea of a sailboat as a better metaphor for life. And I always wanted to get your thoughts on that. But this idea that it massively emphasized dialectical between security and growth. And we need a boat to be secure to a

certain degree or else we don't go anywhere. But if we're just secure in life, we're going to be stagnant. You know, we eventually have to open those sales and have the shift from a spirit of a fear to a spirit of exploration. And that's the needs of the cell boat in my revised hierarchy of needs are things like exploration, universal love and humanitarian spirit and purpose. And from my cell bone metaphor, the seabird is transcendence. So transcendence is like the perspective of the seabird.

So the seabird has that freedom. The idea there is that, you know, life is not this trek up a mountain or up a pyramid, but it's to be experienced. And there's a vast, through the vast unknown of the sea, and we never know when the winds or the waves will come crashing down on all the boats, and it almost didn't matter what direction each of the boats were going in in their own purposeful direction. There can be a great tragedy or setback. They can pause all the boats at going in in their own purposeful direction, there can be a great tragedy or a setback. They can pause all the boats at once and then you have to figure out what you're

going to do there. And transcendence is this perspective of wisdom, of integration, great integration. Like if we can really integrate within ourselves and we can integrate harmoniously with the world, Maslow, co-opted a term from the anthropologist Ruth Benedict, it's called synergy, where what is good for you is good for the world. That's really what transcendence is, is not being above others. It's, this is what I refer to as healthy transcendence. It's not having this sort of guru attitude necessarily, or this attitude, because because there a lot of good gurus when I'm saying like there are a lot of gurus who really abuse their position of power

that really stand on what I call pseudo transcendence. It's actually their self esteem needs that are being actualized in the guise of transcendence. So I talk a lot about the difference in unhealthy transcendence and healthy transcendence. To me healthy transcendence is one where there's just great synergy between self and world. What is good for you is automatically good for the world. What you love to do, what brings you joy. Ryan Holiday loves right, Ryan Holiday is a writer. You enjoy the process. You enjoy the mastery and that transcendence is an outgrowth. It's an emergent property,

but it's not what you're shooting for. Yeah, the Stokes talk about this idea of sympathy, the sort of the sort of interconnectedness of the cosmos, which seems kind of abstract and whimsical for, you know, such sort of a hard-nosed philosophy, but it's like maybe the major through line through the philosophy that we're all fingers on the same hand that we all have a role to play. And Marcus talks about how if you hurt one person, you hurt yourself, then I think more interestingly

and urgently he says something like, if you help the common good, then you have, you participate in the benefit, like even if they, they don't thank you for it. And that, that strikes me as sort of a similar idea to this idea of transcendence. Absolutely. And I, I think this docks also another commonality there is that I think they were really into a deep integration between self and world. And what you do is you see a lot these days you see people kind of pushing one extreme way there. So you may see a lot of pressure everywhere like to serve, right? Or if you, let's say you're born and you're raised in a really deeply religious group where

your own needs are kind of put to the side and you're just supposed to, you're told to serve, serve all the time. I argue in my book from a psychological perspective, how unhealthy that is and how that can lead to vulnerable narcissism. I have a whole section on a former narcissist that many people are not aware of. But I think that, yeah, with the Stokes and with the humanistic psychologists, I consider myself a humanistic psychologist. So what I'm trying to do is bring back that psychology,

which kind of got lost. Is this idea of a deep integration where we still have a deep, a great sense of self, we don't lose our self. My version of transcendence of healthy transcendence is one that's, I think, a good integration between Eastern and Western notions of self-actualization. It's not one exclusive to the other.

It's having a great sense one exclusive to the other. It's having a great sense of yourself without the ego. I think you can have a good sense of yourself without the ego and in the service of realizing the good society. Yeah, do you think there's kind of a distinction in that sense between like sort of passion, which I tend to define as sort of being selfish about like meeting your own needs, and then purpose, which is also very satisfying to realize, but it's by definition bigger than one

cell. So like to me, purpose is a way to transcend the selfishness and the ego, but then still be productive, still achieve things, still, you know, experience the pleasures of mastery, all of that. You nailed it, you nailed it. In the chapter on purpose in my book, because I try to build, in my book, I try to build each need very carefully on the next in a Russian nesting doll sort of way. Not a pyramid. No, definitely.

No, I think the listeners get that at this point that I'm like a word chick to the pyramid. You know, when I get to the Purpose Chapter, which is a later chapter in the book, what I tried to do by that point is have gone through, you know, selfless, what is a healthy self-esteem versus an unhealthy self-esteem? What is an integrated connection versus an unintegrated connection?

Because ultimately I don't think there's anything's anything universally good or bad in this world. It's all about how you integrate it. I think there's a being version and a deficiency version of everything. This is the framework which profoundly shaped my own worldview and which Mazzo talked about, D versus B needs. What it's like when you're motivated by your deficiencies versus whether or not you're motivated by growth

So to answer it as a long-winded way of answering your question because once we get to the purpose chapter We realize that the healthiest form of purpose is one where there's already You've done the hard work of Integrating at your healthy, you know healthy self-esteem Connection you're no longer being driven or motivated by, oh, I need to connect with people or I'm lonely. And there's a humanitarian sort of spirit there. Because I ask in the book, did Hitler have a purpose?

I say, like, well, in one sense someone can say, well, Hitler satisfied your need for purpose, Scott. And I'd say, well, here's the thing, but did he do it in the most growth-oriented fashion? And I think I hope that's a rhetorical question. Well, no, and look, I think you do see that in these sort of these tyrannical leaders where even though there's ostensibly, and this goes to your point about gurus, yes, there's rhetoric and demagoguery around some plan, whether that plan is kill all the Jews

or having a stealing extra land from Russia for Germany or restoring grandeur or making America great again, whatever thing is, there is usually a reason that a populist manages to tap into something that people think they want or need, but at the core of it, it has nothing to do with that and everything to do with their own neuroses or psychosyopathy or just whatever the childhood wound that they're playing out on this grand Shakespearean scale. are playing out on this grand, Shakespearean scale? Totally.

And this framing might be helpful. So I looked in the Psychological Literature on moral exemplars. That's like this, the technical term for them. What is moral greatness? Like, and you find in these individuals who make the history books in terms of doing something that we consider morally great humans,

it's not they were always perfect, not always they always were moral in everything in their lives. But their agency, they had very, very high agency, but their agency usually was in the service of of of a pro social purpose. Whereas the tyrants in these studies, they there's there's some really neat studies distinguishing what is the difference between a tyrant and a moral exemplar and the similarity. So there's a similarity between the two and that's they both score about equally as high in agency, but the tyrants tend to be agency in the service of agency, whereas the moral exemplar is tend to be agency in the service of pro sociality. I'm running it down. I love that. No, it's it. There's a there's a great quote from from Byron, the poet and he says, his cause makes all that halos or degrades courage and its fall, it's like, what are you doing it for? Why are you doing it? And, and, and, and,

that a bad person can be pursuing a good cause and find some redemption in it, but it, but, but an evil person pursuing an evil cause, even if they are successful, it's ultimately not something we really admire. Yeah, that's right. And an interesting thing is that in their head, well, they admire it. In their head, they think that's the most worth and goal possible, is the agency, is the most extreme character-turd version, its world domination. Right? is, well, in the most extreme character-turd version, it's world domination, right?

Right. You know, I, you see that archetype over and over again in movies, right? That's to them, that's a very worthy goal, because it's, but it's such a selfish, the ultimate goal for them would be the ultimate selfishness. Although, like, what's fascinating about the Stoics and Stoics are sort of these up close and personal observers of power, either advising emperors. In one case, at the Marcus, they become emperors, but sort of, you know, Marcus is constantly trying to, he's like, it's like, imagine if you're a Hitler's peer, like you're both at the same head of state in World War II,

you kind of look around and you go, am I like him? I think you, a naturally self-aware person would be worried about that. And so Marcus is constantly kind of trying to look at his predecessors, these evil, awful emperors, and try to wonder, how can I be different? How can I not go down the same road as them? And I think, we think, sure, maybe Hitler admired himself or that, you know, but the truth is I don't think actually anyone would want to trade play. I don't think you would

actually want to live in that head, right? Like, I don't think let's, let's give it way, way, way down. I don't think Donald Trump's having fun day to day., that's probably actually existentially and psychologically miserable existence because it is so wedded to and at the mercy of all these forces. So let's unpack that because it's really fascinating. So I certainly would not want to trade places with Donald Trump. That's true. Donald Trump- No, trade places like be president, I mean, he's not president. I mean, you have to live inside his head that mental space. Yeah. But I don't aspire to

his goals. And it's interesting because he aspired, you know, I heard stories that he used to listen to the tapes of Hitler. And I say this in a non-controversial way. I say this in a bit of a directive dataset. If you want to understand his motivations, what he really gets excited and is inspired by people who are powerful. And it doesn't matter the morality of the power. It's just the power itself, that is the thing that inspired him

along the path that he took. And I think that's an objective sort of reading of his headspace. Now, I'm not the type person where I listen to a Hitler speech and I get excited and think, wow, what a man, right? I think he will, he killed all my ancestors. You know, what a colossal jerk,

which is obviously an understatement. But so I think that it's interesting because I'm really interested in individual differences and different people are inspired by different kinds of leaders and have different goals. Again, it's the agency in terms of agency. Or do you use, you know, are you a really like passionate strong Agentic assertive person who has in your head a better vision for what the good society could look like You know my book is a lot about transcendence in the service of the good society not just Power over society. Well, no, and I think I think that is actually that this like a Shakespeare was was dramatizing Trump And I think again from an objective data standpoint. He is a Shakespeare was, was dramatizing Trump. And I think again, from an objective data standpoint, he is a Shakespearean character.

What the way you would render that character is you have someone who's utterly obsessed with power, with courage, with boldness, with, you know, that idea of what a sort of a male leader looks like. And then is in a sense impotent, right? Unable to actually wield power effectively, he walks the halls of power, but seems to be, ineffectually unable to utilize it

to do what he's talking about. It's forced to sort of tragically, comically do nothing but brag about and talk about and manage the public relations of his regime whose accomplishments are actually quite small. There's an argument that Kaiser Wilhelm in the First World War is a very similar character, Churchill renders him this way, is that he's raised to be this thing and then finds reality so lacking that he sort of trapped by it and can't break free of it. And I think in that sense, what's interesting about Trump is that when I say it would not

be fun to be him, is that, sure, most of the time, it's sort of probably clouded by a bubble of illusions and delusions, but there must be moments, you know, in the White House at 3 a.m. when he's texting with Sean Hannity where the reality pierces through and that's probably deeply painful, even if it's actually painful in our sense. Oh, deeply, existential, painful. Now, I don't get the sense he has a lot of existential crises, but that he's I think he does at a subconscious level. That's the interesting is I don't think he like lays a night consciously having existential crises, but I think he, you know, he must, if he's

human, I mean, maybe one would make the case, he's not human, but I believe that all humans are human is that he in his gut feels that there's this, that if we peered open and people discovered or I discovered and I realized and came the conclusion that I wasn't as great as I think I am, well that would be worse than suicide. Yes. Yeah. Yes. All right, so, so I'm slightly happier topic when we talk about Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, so I'm slightly happier topic when we talk about purpose and I'm a positive humanistic psychologist and you wouldn't know it yet. Right. Right. So when we talk about when we talk about purpose and when we talk about sort of the public good, what do you see that being for you? Like how does that integrate in your own life? Specifically what? What does how does what integrate? Like what gets, what do you wake up

and you go, this is my purpose or? Oh, you know, this is how I am making a tiny dent in the universe. Gotcha. So I've been trying to bring back a perspective of psychology that I really think has been neglected in the field. In their own time period in the 40s to 60s,

the humanistic psychologists, not just Abraham, Asill people like Eric from Rolmay, Carl Rogers, Karen Hornay, who's a psychoanalyst, who challenged Freud. They were fighting the modern psychology that day, which was viewing humans, either as a cauldron of destructive impulses,

which is Freud's idea, destructive and sexual impulses. So everything could be reduced to that. Or we were these rats in a box and only external reward, that's, we only responded to external reward. And that's it, there was nothing like an internal motivation. It was all external motivation, and they challenged that, and they reached out.

There's something to be a whole human being who is experiential live. There's something like that. Now, in modern day psychology, I have a lot of criticisms as well, and I feel like we've really lost the spirit of that humanistic psychology. A lot of the different aspects of psychology are siloed into their own boxes, even in psychology departments.

You rarely see the social psychologist working with the personality psychologist, for instance. And in some cases, they quite frankly hate each other. And that's really unfortunate. Or evolutionary psychologists, I have a deep respect for what they're doing, but I think they focus too much on the muck of humanity. If you will crack open, David Buses most latest addition

of evolution in psychology is like four or five additions already. The chapter is like rape, aggression. It's like a laundry. Is it called the murder next story, doesn't it? It's practically. Yeah. It's like a laundry list of like the greatest hits

of the worst of humanity throughout the course of our evolution. And I've been like, well, hold up. Things like all are also, AWE, the all experience. That's part of our DNA as well. Altruism is part of our DNA. And usually altruism though, evolution like colleges will talk about altruism,

but then it'll be like, it's actually really selfish. And I'm like, you know what, no. I think sometimes there's actual genuine, like pro-social motivations. It's such a cynical view of humanity as opposed to a realistic view of humanity. Now, I'm not trying to be a polyanish in my view, but I think that just like Maslow really wanted

to put a realistic understanding of both the bad end that the potential for higher levels of human nature. I want to do that in my own lifetime. So I feel like that really drives me in my work. So going back to this concept, we were talking about the Sir Stoke idea of sympathy. You tweeted something this morning that caught me. You're talking about a study that was showing how hard it must be to be a transgender person because you walk through the world and the entire world has evolved to really only see two gender identities and this so so it's like a you know a millisecond in our evolutionary perspective, we just don't have quite the ability to see them the way they see themselves. And I thought it was it's sort of a thoughtful take on just like what that must be like for someone not not Is not political or not even a biological argument? You're just like

Confirmation. Yeah, you're observation. Right. This this must be hard It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and it's been interesting to watch people sort of respond to stuff We've posted either on my social or on Instagrams because that you know this core virtue for the Stokes is justice and so it's hard not to look around the world and see injustices and and and Point the amount especially right now But people see I guess what I'm asking you is why is this so hard for people to do to just care about other people like what what, what, and I don't think it's everyone. It feels like there's a percentage of the population that has gotten

themselves in a place where they've, they're just utterly, and it's almost like a badge of honor to be indifferent to the experiences of other people. Great questions. And first of all, you follow me on Twitter. Of course. I had no idea. I'm honored. So there's so much to unpack there and so much to get into. Obviously, I don't have, you know, I can't tell you, here's, okay, you listen up. Here's the secret to the universe. But there are needs. This is part of the hierarchy needs and why the hierarchy of needs is important, not in a pyramid sort of way, but still the original idea of the hierarchy of needs. It was actually a hierarchy of pre-potency. That's what it really was if you look at Maslow's writing, but theory of motivation. So there are needs that evolve to be more pre-potent than other needs. And when they're severely deprived,

they really can overtake the whole person. And they dominate the whole person. And they narrow our worldview and they make us focus specifically in those things. You can see how if you're severely deprived of a basic sense of feeling like respect in our society, feeling fully human, and a lot of people, a lot of African Americans, people in our country, don't feel like they are really treated like they're fully human still, even with all the strides we've made. And so when you're at that legitimate genuine deprivation,

it does make it more difficult to shift your whole prepotency structure of motivations and just care about self-actualizing. This is why I think the hierarchy of needs is very relevant today in this era. These needs are prepotent. Our tribal impulses are also very, very prepotent. Our power impulses are very, very prepotent. This is why I go in great depth in my book on these basic needs because if we don't really truly understand them and their operation and how they work, then we'll never really

understand how it is that we ever transcend it. So power is the whole structure of social media, for instance, is all revolving around social status and tribalism. You couldn't design a system to bring out the worst in us any better if you if you intentionally tried to set out for that goal. You know or when I say the words I mean in terms of tribalism and status. Yeah, tension seeking and all that. And divisive. Yeah, yeah, divisiveness, not you know and and and motivating us to want to get likes, to say things

to get the likes, that ends up being the motivation as opposed to what we truly believe. So many people are not saying what they really believe and think. They're saying what they think will get them more social status among their in-group. And if that, that's the deprivation world, you know? The growth world, the being world of human existence, which I really try to get to in my book and just talk about it to some people don't even know it's possible. They're so stuck in the deprivation world that they don't even realize there are higher possibilities for themselves as well as others. Oh, you mean I actually can try bonding affiliatively with that Trump supporter. I am convinced they must be evil because they are a Trump supporter.

So I won't even, you're like just opening up your mind to the possibility that there could be a higher nature that you can connect with another human about? Yeah, where it's, you know, like you watch a video of some sort of, some, something being horribly, something horrible being done to a person. And I think if you're in any place of self-actualization that hits you in a vulnerable place because you've created room to be vulnerable, right? It doesn't threaten your identity to say like, that shouldn't be happening to that other person. I don't like that.

Then there's this weird reaction that seems to be coming. It's maybe 20% of people or 15% of people or some may not have number. But the point is, they see the same video and their impulses almost paradoxically to defend the perpetrators or to attack the victim of the thing. Does that come from a place of them being, where does that come from?

Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't, the people who you watch the George Floyd video in your impulses to try to control your mind, to convince yourself that this person deserved what was happening to them or worse or not as worse, but or just at the very least that it's not as bad as it looks. Where does that come from? Well, cognitive dissonance. There's a very well-known phenomenon in psychology where we have to change, we try to change our beliefs, or change reality. If the facts, we change it to conform to our prior beliefs. And we feel very uncomfortable when those things are out of line.

But they're like you said, they're due to just a small proportion of people that are capable of transcending that. Like there are people who are able to live in a constant state of people that are capable of transcending that. Like, there are people who are able to live in a constant state of exploration and revision and are able to revise their world models in light of new evidence. And also just, yeah, the compassionate element is important here too. And I would be remiss if it would be an incorrect model if we ignore that from the equation. I wrote an article called the one personality trait that was ripping America apart.

I wrote this article for Scientific American and I presented a lot of studies to make the case that what we're seeing a lot of right now with the populism, and it's not a traditional Republican versus Democrat fight. We're seeing something very different, a different animal right now. And you're seeing a lot of people who have very antagonistic personality.

They have getting very excited by certain ideas. And so, that certain leaders are putting forth. And it's empowering them to unleash a more magnified version of that potentiality that already exists within themselves. So I think that the trait antagonism is an important part of the story as well. Yeah, and I think it takes, it takes real discipline because those are seductive, tempting, like really effective, high valence emotions. It really takes discipline not to be pulled by those forces because it's always more convenient to not be compassionate. Yeah, you're right. There's what I say I said once like there are a million ways to trigger and activate someone's defenses. It's far harder to actually try to connect with a person

when you're talking about topics specifically like politics or you're talking about religion and a whole whole bunch of different topics. I mean, it's very easy to activate someone's defenses. So, last question, this is sort of wrap up. I was curious. So, you left Penn relatively recently, right, to sort of pursue your writing. I remember getting an email from you about this. Wow.

We have not caught up in a while. No, I've been to you at James Altiger's house, which I think you just just done it. This was like a year ago. So I left Columbia. So I was there. I was at pet because back in the day when we knew each other, more, no, we still know each other. But you know what I mean?

You were on my podcast like, I think like twice before. You know, I've kept in touch with you over the years. I was at Penn for a while and then I went to Columbia, taught at Barnard College, as well as Columbia Psychology Department. But now I'm independent of academia at the right now. Yeah, I'm trying to be, as they say, a public intellectual. What was that?

I'm just curious. I'm always curious when people make leaps like that. What was that? I'm just curious what I'm always curious when people make leaps like that. What was that leap like? Because I imagine there's a certain amount of safety and security in the teaching model. Yeah, but there's a lot of freedom to be outside of it. But I would also some of it was COVID-related as. I mean, this COVID really shifted a lot of my priorities and also just, you know, I don't want to go back to New York right now. So there's, I mean, California on the beach at the moment. And I just don't think that New York is the safest right now for me to be a health wise. So I may return. I mean, I don't want to,

like, you know, put myself in a situation where like I will keep a critical if I ever return to academia. Right. I don't like hypocrites. So I don't want to be one myself and I'm sure. But for right now, um, at this point in my life, it, it feels very freeing to have a, first of all, I have a podcast that's 100% unproduced. You know, I, I listen to a lot of these podcasts that are produced and I cringe. They sound so fake to me. It's like, you hear the corny music and it's like, today we're going to discuss. It's just format to it. I can't explain.

Do you know what I mean? There's like a turn. But I just have this podcast, the psychology podcast, which has just recently got ranked by Charitable, the number one science podcast in the world. And it's just me unleashed in a sense with a guest, you know, just talking about whatever I want to talk about, I don't, I don't try to filter the conversation. I want it to be thoughtful and compassionate, but besides that, you know, it's like whatever, you know, like anything goes, any topic goes.

So I'm enjoying living that life right now. Do you identify that way? I've always kind of read you as being, even though you're an academic, you were at Penn, which, you know, as great professors from Adam Grant, to Professor Duckworth and Saligman. And I've always kind of seen you as a little bit of an outsider. Do you identify that way? I thought outside ever since I was in special education as a kid. So we can go back to Marley Child, and in auditory disability as a ever since I was in special education as a kid. So we go back to Marley childhood when an auditory disability as a kid,

I was put in special education. I always, I've always felt like an outsider. It's just, I think it just makes it easier. When you're an outsider as a child, it makes it easier for you when you become an adult to own that outsider status. It's, yeah, I sort of see that myself too, but then I'm curious, like, does it, is it ever also feel a bit antagonistic? It's like, there's this part I think of the outsider that also really wishes they were an insider. Do you know what I mean? Or at least was rejecting

the overtures of the insider? So do you feel that tension ever? Well, I feel more comfortable being an outsider because of my past, but I also, I mean, am I really an outsider though? Cause it's like, it's interesting. Cause in my head, I like that sort of spirit, but in reality, like, I'm very good friends with lots of academics, I collaborate, I still do research, I'm friends with a lot of people. I don't really have that many enemies that I know of.

I know you'd read Robert Green's books and you're suddenly realized, well, you know, well, you see great enemies. But, you know, not that I know of, like I really try to make connections with people and I don't really live an antagonistic life. Maybe that's a misnomer that you have to, if you're an outsider, you have to live

an antagonistic life. I may be able to show people there's a middle way. Yeah, I don't know if it's so much antagonistic. It's just like there can be like some resentment that it's like, Hey, my stuff's just as good. Why am I not getting this or that? Like I feel that sometimes it's like you like being an outsider, but there's also, you know, sometimes some insecurity that comes along with it. Do you have any examples of like something you feel like

a little, you notice within yourself feeling a little bit not resentful, yeah? That's so for me. I mean, for me, it's obviously I love being self-taught. I love owning my own platform. I love not having any sort of responsibility that I've got autonomy over my career in life. But then, and I'm sure you see this,

there's always kind of like a hidden social hierarchy of where people fit as far as, let's say, like media coverage or opportunities to get invited to this or that. So it's like, you sort of like where you are, but then you're like, well, but I'm better than so-and-so, why am I not getting X, right? Not that this is a healthy emotion, but I think it's,

it's, that's a tension that exists, I think, for any ambitious person who has that outside or tendency. I totally hear you. I just don't feel that emotion too much. I'm trying to think through examples, honestly. I've always been a real odd ball in the sense that I, I mean, I, I always lived in a fantasy world when I was a kid and it would run around in the class and a Superman keep, just not caring at all what the kids thought. And, you know, and the teacher would be reading like a book or a story and I would be in detention all the time. And I just feel like I'm driven so much by intrinsic motivations that it's just that's how I enjoy living my life. I don't try to worry too much about what other

people are doing in terms of the social status hierarchy. No, no, that makes I mean, that's the way to do it. It's sort of be comfortably in your own universe. Exactly. And though it's certainly downsides to it though, of course, everything in life is a trade off. But choosing the good life that you've chosen works for you and then owning it I think is a beautiful thing. I agree. Scott, thanks so much.

Thank you, Ryan. I've always loved talking to you. If you're liking this podcast, we would love for you to subscribe. Please leave us a review on iTunes or any of your favorite podcast listening apps. It really helps and tell a friend. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and add free on Amazon music, download the Amazon music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.