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

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. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.

• 0:28Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. You know, one of the things they don't tell you about having kids is how humbling it's gonna be. I was putting my oldest son, he's 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 the shelf that didn't have any pictures and it happened to be a copy of Ego is the Enemy, which he grabbed off my shelf and put in his room. And so I started reading from a random page in Ego is the Enemy. As of course would happen,

• 1:13Ryan Holiday?

  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. I just went straight to ego and was asleep almost before his head hit 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 work, 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.

• 1:54Ryan Holiday?

  I was trying to tell him, dude, this book, this book paid for your house. 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 maybe just sold, trust me, I'm lying, I was driving from, I yeah, I just sold it like, like a few weeks before, but I was driving from Northern California, I was picking up a car uh for my parents and driving it back down to Los Angeles and then I was gonna drive it from Los Angeles to to Texas. And I I'd texted Neil Strauss, who I'd gotten to know a few

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  months earlier. Actually, Neil Strauss was was the man who introduced me to one of my favorite novels of all time, John Fonte's Ask the Dust. But anyways, I just started to get to know Neil, and I texted him and he said, hey, uh, when you're driving through, we should, we should go out and have dinner. And so, uh, I I drove, and I I was there a little early, and we were meeting at Cafe Hibana in uh in Malibu. And so I was sitting at the bar waiting for Neil, and uh, there's another guy sitting there, and we we started to get to talking, and he was telling me about himself. And uh, I don't remember what I said, I don't really remember what he said, but it was just funny, you you're talking. And then uh, it happened that uh, that that he was also having dinner with Neil, Neil being famous for uh, bringing groups of

• 3:21Ryan Holiday?

  people together often uh, without a heads up. He Neil did this to me. Uh, 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 so Scott and I go way back, uh, 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. Um, you may be familiar with with Scott because he gave me a wonder, I I interviewed him briefly, and he gave me a a great quote in uh, Perennial Seller about the creative process. And and actually,

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  in in addition to all the things that that Dr. Kaufman is a uh, 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 Altucher at James's Club Stand Up New York.

• 4:50Ryan Holiday?

  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's 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 Barry 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 Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius, which you can preorder, or 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,

• 5:35Ryan Holiday?

  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. You know, 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 it began at a bar at Cafe Hibana in Malibu, California, in either late 2000, I think, I believe it'd be late 2011,

• 6:14Ryan Holiday?

  before I even had a vision of writing about Stoicism. So here we are, my conversation with Scott Barry Kaufman.

• 6:23Ryan Holiday?

  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?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  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 cutesy little things on the internet, like toilet paper at the bottom of a pyramid of needs, or a wifi battery, these sorts of things. And, you know, first of all, Maslow 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 Maslow, it'd be equivalent to you, like, listening to people talking about the Stoics in, like, a really character chured way that, you know, is totally misrepresents the actual writings, because you just nerdily

• 7:29Speaker 01

  went through and read in great detail what they actually wrote. Right. And I nerdily went through and read what Maslow actually wrote, and I can say unequivocally 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 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

• 8:14Speaker 01

  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 above is like, "Congrats, you've unlocked self-esteem." Right. Yeah, you move up. You don't move up anything. So that's why I reconceptualized it as a new metaphor for, I think, the spirit of it, which is a

• 8:36Ryan Holiday?

  So, and you reconceptualize it around this concept of transcendence, but what does that mean?

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Yes, and also the idea of a sailboat as a better metaphor for life. And I always, I wanted to get your thoughts on that. But this idea that Maslow really 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 sails and have the spirit shift from a spirit of fear to a spirit of exploration. And that's the needs of the sailboat. And my revised hierarchy of needs are things like exploration, universal love, and like humanitarian spirit

• 9:21Speaker 01

  and, and purpose. And from my sailboat metaphor, the, the, the seabird is transcendence. So transcendence is like the perspective of the seabird. So the seabird can, 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, 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, or setback. They can pause all the boats at once. And then you have to figure out what are you going

• 10:03Speaker 01

  to do there? And transcendence is this perspective of, 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 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.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Or this attitude, because there are a lot of good gurus, but 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 in my book about the difference between unhealthy transcendence and healthy transcendence. To me, healthy transcendence is one where there's this great synergy between self and world. What is good for you is automatically good for the world. You know, you're what you love to do, what brings you joy, you know, Ryan Holiday loves, 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.

• 11:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, the Stoics talk about this idea of sympathy, 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 sort of fingers on the same hand, that we all have a role to play. And, you know, Marcus talks about how if you hurt, if you hurt one person, you hurt yourself. And then I think more sort of 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

• 12:01Ryan Holiday?

  you for it. And that, that strikes me as sort of a similar idea to this idea of transcendence.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I think the Stoics 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 or the other. So you may see a lot of pressure, you know, everywhere, like to serve, right? Or if you, let's say you're born and you're raised in a, in a really deeply religious group where your own needs are kind of put to the side and you're supposed to, you're told to serve, 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 form of arson that many people are not aware of. But I think that, yeah, with the Stoics and with the humanistic psychologists,

• 12:54Speaker 01

  I consider myself a humanistic psychologist. 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 ourself. 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. You know, it's, it's having a great sense of yourself without the ego. You know, I think you can have a good sense of yourself without the ego and in the service of realizing the good society.

• 13:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Do you think there's kind of a distinction in that sense between like sort of passion, which I tended to find as sort of being selfish about like meeting your own needs? And then purpose, which is also very satisfying to realize, but it's, it's by definition bigger than oneself. 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.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  You nailed it. You nailed it. In the, 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, in a Russian nesting doll sort of way.

• 14:14Ryan Holiday?

  Not in a pyramid.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  No, definitely. Yeah, I think the listeners get that at this point, that I'm like a wherjik 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, self, what is a healthy self-esteem versus an unhealthy self-esteem? What is an integrated connection versus unintegrated connection? Because ultimately, I don't think there's anything good or universally good or bad in this world. You know, it's all about how you integrate it. And I think there's a B, a being version and a D deficiency version of everything. And this is the framework, which profoundly shaped my own worldview and which Mazel talked about, D versus B needs and, you know, what it's like when you're motivated by your deficiencies versus whether or not you're motivated by growth.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  So to answer, that's 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, of integrating 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 and there's a humanitarian sort of spirit there because I ask in the book, did Hitler have a purpose, right? I say like, well, in one sense, someone can say, well, you know, 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.

• 15:40Ryan Holiday?

  Well, no. And look, I think 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 there's rhetoric and demagoguery around some plan, you know, whether that plan is kill all the Jews or or, you know, having stealing extra land from Russia for Germany or, you know, restoring grandeur or, you know, what making America great again, whatever thing is that 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

• 16:22Ryan Holiday?

  to do with that and everything to do with their own neuroses or psycho psych, was it sociopathy or or just just whatever the childhood wound that they're playing out on this grand Shakespearean scale.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Totally. And this this framing might 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're always perfect. Not always they always were moral and 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 similarities. 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

• 17:21Speaker 01

  in the service of agency, whereas the moral exemplars tend to be agency in the service of pro sociality.

• 17:28Ryan Holiday?

  I'm writing that down. I love that. No, it's it. There's a there's a great quote from from Byron, the poet, and he says, tis cause makes all that halloes or degrades courage in its fall. It's like, what are you? What are you doing it for? Why are you doing it? And and and and the the a bad person can be pursuing a good cause and find some redemption in it. But it but it but an evil person pursuing an evil cause, even if they are successful, it's ultimately not something we really admire.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. And and an interesting of those that in their head, well, they admire it, you know, in their head, they think that's the most worthy goal possible is is the agency is is well, in the most extreme, you know, character turn version, it's world domination, right? Right? You know, I even 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.

• 18:31Ryan Holiday?

  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, with Marcus, they become emperor. But but sort of, you know, Marcus is constantly trying to he's like, it's like, imagine if if you're Hitler's peer, like, you're both at the same head of state in World War Two, you kind of look around and you go, am I like him? You know, like, I think you 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, like, how can I be different? How can I not go down the same road as them?

• 19:13Ryan Holiday?

  And I think, like, yeah, 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. I don't think you would actually want to live in that head, right? Like, I don't think let's let's scale it way, 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.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Wait, 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.

• 19:54Ryan Holiday?

  Not trade places, like be president. I mean, he's not president. I mean, you have to live inside his head.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  That mental space.

• 20:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  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 an objective data set. 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, that is, is the thing that inspired him along the path that he took. And I think that's, that's an objective sort of reading of, of, of, of his headspace. Now, I'm not the type of person where I listen to a Hitler speech and I, and I get excited and think, wow, what a man, right?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  I think, well, 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, and different people are inspired by different kinds of leaders and have different goals. Again, it's, 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 having power over society.

• 21:30Ryan Holiday?

  Well, no, and I think, I think that is actually the, this, like a Shakespeare was, was dramatizing Trump. And I think, again, from an objective data standpoint, he is a Shakespearean character. What the, the way you would render that character i- i- is you have someone who's utterly obsessed with power, with courage, with boldness, with, you know, that, that idea of what a sort of a male leader looks like. And then is.

• 22:00Ryan Holiday?

  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. 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's trapped by it and can't break free of it.

• 22:45Ryan Holiday?

  And I think in that sense, what's interesting about Trump is that when I say not be fun to be him, is that, sure, most of the time, it's probably clouded by a bubble of illusions and delusions, but there must be moments in the White House at 3:00 a.m. when he's texting with Sean Hannity, where the reality pierces through. And that's probably deeply painful, even if not painful in our sense.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Oh, deeply existential painful. Now, I don't get the sense he has a lot of existential crises, but I think he does at a subconscious level. That's the interesting thing, is I don't think he lays a night consciously having existential crises, but I think he must, if he's human. 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 if we peered open and people discovered, or I discovered, and I realized and came to the conclusion that I wasn't as great as I think I am, well, that would be worse than suicide.

• 23:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. All right. So on slightly happier topic, when we talk about sort of purpose and

• 23:59Speaker 01

  I am a positive humanistic psychologist and you won't know it yet.

• 24:02Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right. So when we talk about, when we talk about purpose and 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?

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Specifically, what? What is, how does what integrate?

• 24:16Ryan Holiday?

  Like, what gets, what do you wake up and you go, this is my purpose, or, you know, this is how I am making a tiny dent in the universe.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Gotcha. So I, I've been trying to bring back a perspective on psychology that I really think has been neglected in the field. In, in their own time period, in the 40s to 60s, the humanistic psychologists, not just Abraham Maslow, people like Eric Fromm, Raul May, Carl Rogers, Karen Horni, who was a psychoanalyst who challenged Freud. They were fighting the modern psychology of that day, which was veiling humans either as a cauldron of destructive impulses, which is Freud's idea, destructive and sexual impulses.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  So everything could be reduced to that, or we were these like rats in a box and only

• 25:13Speaker 01

  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. They really challenged. They said, no, there's something to be a whole human being who is experiential alive. 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 few different aspects of psychology are siloed into their own boxes. Even in psychology departments, you rarely see the social psychologists working with the personality psychologists, for instance. And it comes to some cases, they quite frankly hate each other. And I think that's really unfortunate. Or evolutionary psychologists, I have deep respect for what they're doing, but I think they focus too much on the muck of humanity.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  If you crack open David Buss's most Latest edition of Evolutionary Psychology is like four or five editions already. Chapter is like rape, aggression. It's like, it's like a laundry.

• 26:10Ryan Holiday?

  He has a book called The Murderer Next Door, doesn't he?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. It's like a laundry list of like, the greatest hits of, of the worst of humanity throughout the course of our evolution. And I've been like, well, hold up, you know, things like awe are also, you know, AWE, the awe experience, that's part of our DNA as well. Altruism is part of our DNA. And usually altruism, though, evolutionary psychologists will talk about altruism, they will do, but then they'll be like, it's actually really selfish, you know? I'm like, you know what? No. I think sometimes there's actual genuine, like, pro-social motivations. It's such so cynical, you know? Such a cynical view of humanity as opposed to a realistic view of humanity. Now, I'm not trying to be a Pollyannaish, in my view.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  But I think that, just like Maslow, really wanted to put a realistic understanding of both the bad and 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.

• 27:04Ryan Holiday?

  So going back to this, this concept we were talking about, the sort of stoic 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 in this. So, so it's like, 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, not political, not even a biological argument.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  It's just observation. It's just your observation.

• 27:48Ryan Holiday?

  Right. Like this, this must be hard. It's interesting.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah. And, 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 Stoics is justice. And so it's hard not to look around the world and see injustices and, and, and point them out, especially right now. But people see, I, 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, and I don't think it's everyone. It feels like there's a percentage of the population that has got themselves in a place where. They've, they're just utterly, it's almost like a badge of honor to be indifferent to the experiences of other people.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Great questions. And first of all, you follow me on Twitter?

• 28:36Ryan Holiday?

  Of course.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  I had no idea. I'm honored. So there's so much to unpack there and so much to get into. I obviously I don't have, you know, I can't tell you, well, here's, okay, you listen up. Here's the secret, the secret to the universe, but there are needs, this is part of the hierarchy of 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 theory of motivation. So there are needs that evolved 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

• 29:19Speaker 01

  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 in our country don't feel like they are really treated like they're fully human still, you know, even with all the strides we've made. And so when you're, when you're, when you're at that, that that, that legitimate, genuine deprivation, it, it does make it more difficult to shift your whole pre potency structure of motivations and just care about self actualizing. This

• 30:03Speaker 01

  is why I think the hierarchy of needs is very relevant today in this era. You know, these needs are pre potent. Now, our tribal impulses are also very, very pre potent. Our power impulses are very, very pre potent. 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, we'll never really understand how it is that we ever transcend it. So, you know, power is, the, the whole structure of social media, for instance, is all revolving around social status and tribalism. You couldn't design a system to, 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 worst, I mean in terms of tribalism and status.

• 30:47Ryan Holiday?

  Most vicariousness and attention seeking and all of that.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  And divisive. Yeah, yeah. Divisiveness, not, you know, 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. So 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

• 31:34Speaker 01

  possibilities for themselves as well as others. Oh, you mean I, I actually can try bonding affiliatively with that Trump supporter? I, I'm convinced they must be evil because they are a Trump supporter. So I won't even, like, just be opening up your mind to the possibility that there could be a higher nature that you can connect with another human about.

• 31:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, where it's, you know, like you, 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 made up number. But the point is, they see the same video and their impulse is we're almost paradoxically to defend the perpetrators or to, to attack the victim of the thing. Does that come from a place of?

• 32:41Ryan Holiday?

  Them beings, where does that come from? Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't, the people who you watch the George Floyd video and your impulse is to try to contort 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. Like, where does that come from?

• 33:09Speaker 01

  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, 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, there do exist 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 exploration and revision and are able to revise their world models in light of new evidence. And also, just, yeah, the compassion element is important here, too. And I'd be remiss if, would be an incorrect model

• 33:53Speaker 01

  if we ignored that from the equation. I wrote an article called "The One Personality Trait That Is 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 is 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 that, you know, 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.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  So I think that the trait antagonism is an important part of the story as well.

• 34:41Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  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 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 bunch of different topics. I mean, it's very easy to activate someone's defenses.

• 35:21Ryan Holiday?

  So, last question, just to sort of wrap up. I was curious. So you left Penn relatively recently, right, to to sort of pursue your writing? I remember getting an email from you about this.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Wow, we have not caught up in a while.

• 35:34Ryan Holiday?

  No, I bumped into you at James Altucher's house, which you I think you'd just just done it. This was like a year ago.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  So I left Columbia. So I was

• 35:41Ryan Holiday?

  Columbia, there we go.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  I was at Penn, because back in the back in the day when we knew each other more, no, we still know each other. But you know what I mean? Like, you were on my podcast, like, I think, twice before. You know, I've kept in touch with you over the years. And 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 as of right now. Yeah, I'm trying to be, as they say, a public intellectual.

• 36:13Ryan Holiday?

  What was that? I'm just curious. 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.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there's a lot of freedom to be outside of it. But I would also say some of it was COVID related as well. 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'm in 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 health wise. So I may return. 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.

• 37:00Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  I don't like hypocrites, so I don't want to be one myself. And that makes sense. But for right now, at this point in my life, it feels very freeing to have a first of all, I have a podcast that's 100% unproduced. You know, I listen to a lot of these podcasts that are that are produced and I cringe. You know, they they sound so fake to me, you know, it's like you hear the corny music or anything. It's like, okay, today we're going to discuss. There's a certain format to it. I can't explain it. Do you know what I mean? There's like, but I just, I have this podcast, the psychology podcast, which is just recently got ranked by terrible. The number one science podcast in the world. And 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.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  I want 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.

• 37:53Ryan Holiday?

  Do you do I 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, has great professors from Adam Grant to Professor Duckworth and Seligman. And I've always kind of seen you as a little bit of an outsider. Do you identify that way?

• 38:12Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I've been an outsider ever since I was in special education as a kid. So we can go back to my early childhood and auditory disability as a kid. I was 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.

• 38:34Ryan Holiday?

  It's, yeah, I sort of see that myself too. But but then I'd be 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 that tension ever?

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Well, I feel more comfortable being an outsider because of my past, but I also, I mean, am I really an outsider though? Because it's like, it's interesting, because 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 Greene's books and you suddenly realize, well, you have all these secret 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 maybe I could show people there's a middle way.

• 39:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I don't I don't know if it's if it's so much antagonistic, it's just like there 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? Right? 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.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Do you do you have any examples of like, something you you feel like a little you notice within yourself feeling a little bit not like resentful? Yeah.

• 40:03Ryan Holiday?

  Well, for me, I mean, for me, it's it's obviously, I love, you know, being self taught. I love owning my own platform. I love, you know, not having any sort of responsibility. I have autonomy over my career and life. But then, and I'm sure you see this, there's 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 that's a tension that exists, I think, for any ambitious person who has that outsider

• 40:48Ryan Holiday?

  tendency.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  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 oddball in the sense that I I mean, I I always lived in a fantasy world when I was a kid and would run around in the class in a Superman cape, just not caring at all what the kids thought. And, you know, and the teacher would be reading like a book or story and I would be in detention all the time. And I I just feel like I'm driven so much by intrinsic motivations that it's just that's just 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.

• 41:30Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, that makes I mean, that's the way to that's the way to do it is sort of be comfortably in your own universe.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. And there was certainly downsides to it, though, of course, you know, everything, everything in life is a trade off. But, you know, choosing the the good life that you've chosen works for you and then owning it, I think, is a beautiful thing.

• 41:51Ryan Holiday?

  I agree. Scott, thanks so much.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Thank you, Ryan. I've always loved talking to you.

• 41:55Ryan Holiday?

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