Here Come the Warm Feels

that's studied by psychology and sometimes by neuroscience. But it seems like territory where we just assume we've got all the basics down right. We know what all we know happy, sad, we know contempt, we know disgust. You know, there's a broad range of basic emotions, and we just think it's intuitive that, yeah, we we've got names for all of them, we understand basically what they are, we've felt them before.

But there is of course something that we all know that that there is a a feeling understanding gap that we can feel things without necessarily understanding what they are

or why we're feeling them. It's why we're sometimes like surprised by our own emotions, Like when you discover without realizing it, that you've been falling in love with someone, or you discover without realizing it that someone actually really gets on your nerves and you know it's finally all coming into focus, or you know, all kinds of feelings like that that you can feel for a long time before you have any kind of cognitive awareness or ability

to describe or put a name to it. And it makes you wonder if there are whole emotional states that we go through. We feel them, but we don't necessarily have a language for them, or or an understanding of their relationship to external stimuli and the symptoms they produce in the body and the mind. Yeah, there's a great deal of complexity to this because on one hand, yeah, there's just the awareness of self being able to enter at least into moments of awareness, moments of self awareness.

And then there's of course this idea of being aware of your awareness and how that changes your ability to self reflect and you know, varying degrees of awareness as well.

But uh, you know, I was I was thinking a little bit on this, and I feel like, to a certain extent, it's kind of like transparent anatomical overlays that you'll find in like an anatomy book, you know, where like the base is the skeleton, and then you have like a transparent overlay that then puts um I don't know, the circulatory system, and then you you know, add other systems or muscular layers on top of that. You're getting very tool album art on me, right, right, I know

your mind. Obviously this has also been a explored in in tool album art as well, yes, by the excellence of the excellent visionary artist Alex Gray, of course. But there is actually something pretty interesting about that art, which is that it layers real anatomical strata of things you would see like muscles and blood, vessels, nerves and all that, with other things that are non physical. They're you know, abstracted layers on sort of concepts of the soul on

top of the body and another transparent overlay, right. And so I can't help but think about that in terms of feelings, language, and awareness, because there's certainly the experience of an emotional state that we have, and then there's another transparent page that we can put on top of that, representing like a person shaped word cloud that provides a definition and an analysis as well of what I'm feeling, though perhaps uh, you know, we also needed a second

overlay to really have captured that second part, you know what that what our culture is saying about what we think we're feeling and how we should feel about it. And then on top of all of this, we have awareness and the awareness of awareness, and the knowledge that this entire page is going to turn that this state, whatever it is, if it is going to be fleeting, no matter how much we want it to last forever or how much we dread that it will last forever.

And I think it can sometimes go something like this, Right, I feel something, and then my language gives that feeling a name, say sadness, And then my culture tells me that say sadness, that sadness that I'm feeling is inappropriate for my gender or inappropriate for a given situation, etcetera, and um. And then I yearn for other labeled emotional states and somehow this uh, this linguistic tag does not summon the emotion I want. It doesn't generated out of nowhere,

and then I'm sad and ashamed for being sad. Um. So basically the short of it is, there's there's this relationship between how we label our emotions and the emotions we feel. Uh. And also it does that thing that that language does. Right, We're able to tag something for further study. We're able to take something that is difficult to explain, we put a single label on it, and then we can discuss that label in comparison to other subjects,

other examples, etcetera. Well, Yeah, once you name something, you can start to figure out what it is and what it is not. Uh. If you didn't have a name for the thing, it's a lot harder to start trying to describe the characteristics it does or doesn't possess. Yeah, And like as a as a parent, I have encountered this.

You know, where my son is feeling something and either you know, he doesn't have the self awareness and self reflection to really think about it yet, or or perhaps he doesn't even have a good word, a good description for what it is he's feeling, and you have to sort of try and try and walk them through what they're feeling and try to get them to identify it so that you can discuss it so you can get to the bottom of it to whatever extent you can.

I think that naming of things, especially naming of internal states can have tremendous and often well tremendous positive and negative power. One example of positive power I think of is I'm not going to say who, but just somebody I know. At one point when they became aware of the cycle logical concept of rumination, uh, you know, the process of repeatedly going over cycles of negative thoughts in

your mind and entertaining worst possible scenarios. Just becoming aware that that was a concept that was already known of and had a name had a lot of power for this person to help them overcome when it was affecting them, because suddenly they didn't just think, oh, I'm doing this terrible thing again. They thought, I'm ruminating. This is a psychological symptom that's negative, and they felt it was easier to break out of the cycle after knowing the word

for it exactly. And it come back to sadness for example, like it's one thing that's to realize I am feeling sad, but then language allows us then to focus in on more specific versions of that, saying, you know, not only am I feeling sadness, perhaps I'm feeling the particular sadness of loss or rejection or homesickness or defeat or alienation um.

And and then we can we we can better utilize our our own minds and even uh resources, either in the community or in just sort of the the general human um in a world around us, to try and figure out how we should react uh and or solve

the situation at hand. Yeah, exactly. I mean that makes me think of another thing you're sort of alluding to there, which is that when you have a name for an internal state, that helps you find other people who also experience the internal state because you sort of have a common search term or something that you can use to get together and figure out Oh okay, and you can compare your experiences with others uh. And of course, you know,

again this cuts both ways. I'd say overall, is probably a positive thing to have names for internal states like this, because it can help people find solidarity get advice from

other people who feel the same way they do. But it can also lead to you know, people finding one another based on like anger based or you know, negative internal states and and building a kind of negative solidarity of stoking one another's bad emotions, right, or what happens when you have a legitimate emotional state, but the terminology end up using to describe it is is not helpful, say, say that you end up using like say, highly religious

terminology to describe these things that in some cases may not provide a lot of tools for dealing with it. Like what if you broadly categorize various emotional states as being sinful? Um, well, then that means that you're only ways of really addressing whatever you're feeling lie within the religious doctrine that you are in which you're classifying everything,

uh and limits you in that respect. Or believing that say a state like depression or something consists of having a demon which you know you can certainly understand why it could feel that way. And yet on the other side, there are examples of personifying negative emotional states that can be liberating, you know, being able to say, personify one's

fear and then reject it. So it's it's it's certainly when you're talking about human emotional states and our awareness of them and our dealings with them, there's a great deal of complexity here. There's not necessarily a one size fits all. We're not going to be able to unwrap all of these questions today, but we will discuss an emotional state that has largely gone unnamed, at least in

the English language. Yeah, at least if this group of researchers that we're gonna be talking about today are onto something. So I came to this topic today of of emotions that we don't yet have names for, by reading an article and eon by the psychological anthropologist Alan Fisk, who is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

And in this article, Fisk summarizes a bunch of research that's been going on in the past few years of a lot a lot of which he's been a co author on um, which he believes identifies an extremely imp hortoned, everyday emotion, not something unusual, but something we all know, we feel all the time, that's incredibly important to our lives, that's been with us all along, but that he argues, has not been recognized as distinct and unified as an emotion in itself, and instead has been called a lot

of kind of other things in its different facets. And the term he uses for this emotion is karma muta k a m A m u t A. So what exactly is karma muda? As Fisk would argue the term karmamuda comes from ancient Sanskrit, in which it means moved by love. So this emotion of karma muda is a social emotion, and Fisk describes it as an emotion evoked

by the sudden intensification of communal sharing. Now, this doesn't just mean sharing in the sense of like sharing your toys or sharing your kitcat bar, or you know, sharing the payout from the bank ice uh, though all of those could probably be moments that would evoke karmamuda. But

this is a broader sense of sharing. This is what Alan Fisk has called another work communal sharing relationships, and that's briefly defined in one of his papers as relationships quote in which participants feel that in some distinctive way they are equivalent, belong together, care for and trust each other. So it's sort of like a strengthening of social bonds

and a signaling of trust and mutual caring. This is why you do trust falls at your place to work, right, you know you would think that this makes me think of a funny thing I kind of want to come back to and later in the episode, which is like ways that if this is truly a unified emotional experience in the way they're describing ways that it is definitely

exploited in in like in business and in media. One thing that I know you and I have talked about before is all the things that love to tell you they're your family, but are not your family, like your workplace that says like we're a family, and it's like, I understand that can be a nice thing to say, like you're trying to say, you know, you should feel belonging here, but you know, people actually have families that

are families. Or you know, if Olive Garden says when you're here your family, that there's something in common there. They're trying to do something to you. What is that thing they're trying to do. Yeah, they they they're they're co operting the idea of family. Or and here's another one. The Sawe family that Shank saw Massacre um UH series franchise will sometimes pull that one out and they're like, I don't know, maybe maybe it is, but probably not.

Oh no, Drayton's being manipulative. One he says that he's trying to turn leather Face into a bitter old woman

hater like he is, but okay, okay, okay. So there there are lots of separate emotional states that we recognize that Fisk argues actually all share the features of this one unified thing that he's proposing, this unified state of kama muta, and so different examples of words people use for this thing that he actually says is all the same thing is being moved, being touched, team pride, patriotism, being touched by the spirit burning in the bosom, the

fields like that, or he says also when evoked by memory, it's nostalgia. So that's a lot of ground to cover. I feel, for instance, I feel nostalgic when I think about movies from I feel a sense of communal belonging, when I am saying church, where I'm in a yoga class, and when I'm hugging my wife and child, I feel something that I might describe as his loved belonging or

to some extent, you know, structural completeness. Yeah, there are obviously a lot of different scenarios here that he's saying are all going to evoke this one emotion he's talking about. So maybe we should drill down into the details of how he describes this emotion and it's emptoms in order to understand better what exactly it is he's talking about.

All right, let's roll through it. Well, wait, no, maybe we should take a break first, and then when we come back, we can we can look at the features he lists. All right, we're back. So we're talking about karma muta, and we're gonna begin to roll into the six features that occur together in this broad categorization of emotional states rights, as argued by the anthropologist Allent Fisk.

So there's been a bunch of studies on this. We we're gonna look at a few of the studies individually and in a moment here, But just to start off

at the top level, what are the main takeaways? Fisk argues that karmamuta is described by six features that occur together, and he says, so, first of all, it's evoked by quote the sudden intensification of communal sharing and again sharing this not just like sharing materials, but this thing that I mentioned earlier, Situations where participants feel in some distinctive way that their equivalent belong together, care for and trust

each other. Broadly, situations that we describe as examples of love and to a certain extent, you could you could think of this as a you can think of communion as an example of this, right um, or you could think of a potluck dinner as an example of this. You know, I don't know. I guess one of the things is that it has to spark that feeling right for it to be real. You could have an overly ritualized version of anything that is then devoid of the

emotional residence. It makes me think of the Eddie Izzard joke about us singing Hollelujah and the Anglican Church. No, no offense to Anglicans. You know, I have great love for the Anglicans, but you know he's got this whole bit about them singing hu. I think the point he makes is a good one, which is that like something that's supposed to be an overwhelming outpouring of spontaneous joy, can,

if ritualized in a certain kind of way, become rather drab. Yeah, that's a good point because on the other end of it, um, when people come together in song like that is a that is a great way to potentially feel this shared emotional state. Absolutely, because we're becoming one voice. Okay, so it's evoked by this sudden moment of communal sharing where you feel a belonging, a trust, and a love with other people. But the next point he says is that

it very crucially, this emotion is brief. He says, it typically lasts less than a minute or two, though it can keep repeating in rapid succession, so like you'll get a burst of it. It's less than a minute or two long. You can do it again, but it's not something that you know, lasts all day. And I think this is one thing that, uh, that makes it very important here. It's distinct from love itself the way Fisk describes it. Uh. Fisk says, the important distinction is that

love is an enduring sentiment. It's more like a kind of like semi permanent state of affairs that sticks with you, but beyond the moment to moment. Yeah, I mean, it's always important to remember that the love endears even as a variety of emotions play out. Uh. Not to say that love is impervious to fleeting emotional states, but it

does not inherently vanish when happiness stades or anger seeps in, etcetera. Yeah, and that's one of the really interesting and special things about love right, that you can like love somebody even when you're angry at them or something like that. But but in contrast to that, he says, karma muta is this intense, momentary flare up of emotion that occurs when love is shared. So when something happens that signals that the sharing of love has intensified. And again, this love

can be between two people. It can be between a deer and a dog, It can be between it. Seriously, you know all these videos on the Internet of like a deer and a dog playing together. In fisks terms, these are pure karma muta porn. We're we're just watching these moments of like of social reciprocal trust and ending between you know, species that you might not expect or something. Or it can be not even that personal. It can be between a large group of people who feel solidarity

and common purpose. A big thing that features into this is the invocation of common muda and political context, like say in a demonstration or a march, people will often feel the exact same symptoms were about to get into that that are described as typical of karma muda. This you know, burning in the bosom for for a feeling of togetherness with all these people who share a common purpose. Now on the detail of it being fleeting, uh, I wonder if it is fleeting, because like other emotional states,

it kind of eludes awareness. I always come back to the Cormick McCarthy quote. I think this was from all the Pretty Horses, Uh, that goes quote. If you want to see it, you have to see it on its own ground. If you catch it, you lose it. And where it goes there's no coming back from not even God can bring it back. And the metaphor that he's exploring here is that have a snow flake that you cannot catch the snowflake. You can only experience it in the moment, and you can't catch or keep it. And

that's often what it feels like with happiness. Right You're feeling good, then you think, hey, I'm feeling good, and then you then it begins to run away. You know. It's like, don't look directly at the happening happiness, or you will scare it. Uh. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I mean, one of the things is that I don't think you can improve a moment of happiness by examining it, but I do think by examining

happiness generally, maybe that can be a good thing. Like if if you try to look at any individual moment and become analytical about it, it undercuts the emotional power of it. But maybe it is good to have a pre existing uh understanding or awareness of emotional states that come from examining previous versions of that emotion. Oh. Absolutely, I think understanding the fleeting nature of happiness is key

to being able to have a healthy relationship with happiness. Um, Like you, you don't get happy by by thinking about wanting to be happy, right, But I also don't want to make it. I don't want to imply, though, that happiness is disrupted by awareness that you would necessarily just remain on this happiness high if you weren't able to then to self reflect on it, because I don't think that's the case. I get the impression that these bursts of common mouta, if we're going to to use that

that term, um, they are supposed to be bursts. Yeah, Well, like all emotions, I mean, all these emotions are fleeting. That's what makes again these individual emotions different than these longer sentiments or states that we hold in our minds. Like love, right, I mean it comes back to sensory information as well. It's like when you taste of strawberry,

you're not happy for six years straight. Following the year it's a burst of flavor, a burst of understanding, And you know, it makes sense to that our emotional states would would follow similar patterns. Okay, what of the next four characteristics. So we've got that it's evoked by the sudden communal sharing. We've got that it is brief and fleeting. Uh. The next thing is, of course, that it feels good.

This emotion is inherently pleasurable, and people seek whenever, whenever they're able to repeat it, they want to keep having it over and over right, And if you can monetize it, all the better, right, No, all the more evil. Um So, So it feels good. It's naturally pleasurable, even though, and though there's a thing that it's often part of a bitter sweet kind of feeling, something that we do have a name for, that it feels good even when being kind of in the near proximity to or the context

of recognizable negative emotions like sadness. Yeah, we've talked about this in the show before in context to say, nostalgia. Um, there's something else we talked about recently. They're being like the bitter sweet aspect to it. Um was it? Oh

it was thankfulness? Oh yes, of course gratitude. Yeah, absolutely, there's a sense of it is a vulnerability to these moments, uh, such as like embracing family members, Like there is like this sort of hyper like meta feeling, like all the all the possibilities, all the potential potential and an actual past and future, joys and sadness and tragedies all just bundled up into a single snap of the finger. You know, you kind of feel all of that at once, which

can be overwhelming. Like imagine if that didn't that wasn't just a burst, that would be I mean, if it can be overwhelming even as a burst of emotion. Okay. The next thing that the research has found here is that kamamuda is accompanied by a very consistent, characteristic set of physical sensations in the body and physical symptoms and behaviors. So one is a warm, fuzzy feeling in the center of the chest. Another is is tearing up of course

is crying moistenus in the eyes. Another is being choked up lump in the throat, which often goes along with the tears in the eyes. Another is chills or goose bumps. Uh. One is a smile or putting, putting a palm on the chest. And one is the expression, especially in English

of awe. Yeah. Ah is a big one because when we when we we we coup awe at the side of a kitten, we are we're generally inviting those among us to share in this moment with us, or we are you know, we're signaling solidarity with you when we with the kitten, with the kitten or the you know, whatever the cute embodiment happens to be. That's a good point.

We should come back to that in a minute, because I feel like cuteness doesn't fit into this framework quite as obviously as most of the other things that trigger it do. But I think there might be good reasons, and I think you're definitely onto something there. Uh. So the next thing is that it actually is a motivating emotion. It motivates devotion, and Fisk says, uh compassion to communal sharing, also known as loving kindness. So it generally like what

these studies have found. One of the studies I was looking at so is if you show people video of two people having like a communal sharing experience that causes this emotion in the viewer, the viewer also feels an increased sense of community with the two characters, these these other characters being observed. And then another one is that there are common types of expressions across many languages that

that basically translate to something like this. It means like being moved in its various translations, or being touched in in various translations. Like that all often refers to something having to do with this idea. So I want to say, at first glance, in reading about this, I resonate strongly like I know exactly what he's talking about. But I don't know if it is that we needed a new

term for it. Maybe we did. I'm not sure if I'm decided on that issue or not, But I'm not sure what term you would use otherwise, Maybe you could just try to lump it under one of these sort of capturing it pre existing things like like feeling moved or something that might be kind of broader than than what exactly this is talking about. But this, this experience, in all of the aspects of it that he lists feel absolutely real in my own experience, Oh absolutely, the

the the, the emotional experience is certainly real. Any disagreement we have is just about like, to to what extent this categorization is useful, To what extent we can actually group all of these things under this big umbrella of Kama muda. Yeah, I think I'm undecided about that, but we can explore it more as we go on. By the way, none of this is to be confused with the Mooda scale. The Mooda scale, yes, which any anyone out there who is a pro wrestling fan might be

familiar with. Mooda scale is an unofficial means of measuring how much blood a pro wrestler has bled via blading or juicing. That's when a professional wrestler will intentionally cut their forehead with a razor or sometimes there is more like a hard juicing technique where it's by actually bumping into something, but they will intentionally usually uh cut themselves on the forehead. The blood will flow, the blood will mix with with sweat and create quite a visual display

of a bloody face or crimson mask. Is it's sometimes called I feel like this is not something you're supposed to do in the main circuits right um or it's not done as much these days, certainly in modern pro wrestling companies like mainstream pro wrestling companies, because of course, there are a number of objections one can make to intentionally bleeding all over the place, right, But on the other hand, it is a highly physical performance and therefore

people will get busted open accidentally, and sometimes the show goes on just bite a little blood. Now is the

Muda scale named after? Does it come from Sanskrit? No, it comes basically it's of Japanese origin because it's referring to a pro wrestler, legendary pro wrestler out of Japan by the name of Keji Muto, who would also perform, especially in the United States, has the Great Muda, And it's referring in particular to a nineteen nine New Japan Pro Wrestling match with Hiroshi has in which Muda blades and just gets a really brilliant crimson mask all over

his face. His face is just covered in blood and so a lot of like Kane, Yeah, it does have that kind of It reminds one a lot of various um, you know, uh, face painting, Uh scenarios, but it has such an impact on pro wrestling fans of that time period they kind of decided this would be the starting point for considerations of any blade job. Uh. You know, where is it on the MOODA scale like a three here of four? Does it go beyond the type of blood letting that that Muda shows off in this match? Um?

So yeah, it's different from Karma Muda. But at the same time, I think the given scenario, like this match, you could have the performer themselves feeling a sense of Karma Muda. You could have the audience viewing this spectacle, uh, certainly feeling this communal sense of Karma muda. You know, you're all a part of this big sporting event. It's kind of a almost a you know, it's not quite patriotism, but like a unity of love for the performance or

for one of the two or both performers. Oh. I think it's absolutely there in fan communities of things, you know, people feel a solidarity with their fellow fans based on their shared interests. There's an there's an inference of kind of like shared values and common cause, even if that might not necessarily be the case, kind of feels that way, right, Like when if you're a pro wrestling fan, if you knew what the Muda scale was, you knew who the great Muda uh is, then perhaps when I mentioned it,

you al too a little bit of that. You felt this connection to me and you knew that we we shared something in this uh, this brotherhood of blood. All right, on that note, we're going to take a break, but when we come back, we will jump back in to the karma muta. Than alright, we're back. I figured we should just take a brief glance and a few of the studies out there in UH, in the journals about karma muda, this this emerging idea of this this unifying

emotion based on the intensification of communal sharing. So the first one is that I wanted to bring up is by fist at all in Emotion Review published in twenty nineteen called the Sudden Devotion, Emotion and Karma Muda and the Cultural Practices whose function is to evoke it? And this paper UH briefly just it argues that quote, cultures have evolved diverse practices, institutions, roles, narratives, arts, and artifacts whose core function is to evoke karma muda. And it

also argues that karma muda quote mediates much of human sociality. Uh. And I think this is probably right, right, I mean whether whether or not like the term is the right term to use. A huge amount of media and culture and art is based on this. It's like watching people in the act of this sudden intensification of communal emotion

and bonding. Yeah. Like, I'm reminded of the very Super Bowl ads that come out, like the really emotionally manipulative ones that have like animals coming together, people in their pets, etcetera. Um and and yeah, it brings people together, perhaps in the you know, so you can sell a product to them, but still the the the images themselves, the idea of the story, the music, it all comes together to create this, uh, this shared feeling. Now, this paper in particular does specifically

mention cuteness as one of these cultural models. And we certainly discussed cuteness on our our podcast in the past, especially as it concerns monsters and the cutification of formally horrifying monsters. Yeah, this is an interesting question, like why does cuteness seem to evoke all the same psychological and physiological symptoms as comma muda brought on by more traditional stimuli, which would include either like communal sharing between one person

and another, communal sharing between observed others. Um just to go quickly to another paper and then we can come back to this. Because this has to do with cuteness. There's this other one called too cute for Words. Cuteness evokes the heartwarming emotion of comma muda, published in Frontiers and Psychology in twenty nineteen, and the authors they're hypothesized the cuteness is a type of stimulus that makes people feel an automatic sense of communal sharing with the cute

entity just based on the aesthetics of cuteness alone. It's it's in line with some of the biological theory about the nature of cuteness, which says that cuteness is a series of visual skima designed to make adults feel like obligated to take care of the cute thing and to watch out for its best interests. So the cute face asks you for help without any words, and you just feel compelled to comply, And it's the assumption of that relationship.

They hypothesize that that provides the kamma muda link here that's why cuteness feels in a way communal. The latest cultural example of this, I think would be the child m a k a. Baby Yoda from the television series The Mandalorian, which spoilers please, yes, now you have you haven't been on the internet, so I don't know what you're talking about. It's impossible to avoid the spoiler that there is there is a creature that is unofficially called

baby Yoda in the show. Um, it is never called that in the show, just called the child or the asset and um, and yeah, you look at it, and it really, uh, it really pulls out your heart strings. It's really it is really cute. And uh it shares us some screen time with none other than Werner Herzog, the acclaimed German director and occasional actor, also very cute wealth uh more, well, no, he's he's menacing. Let's let's make no too. Let's not lie about that for awhelming

and collective murder. But but he I think he explained it well via Indie Wire when he's talking about sharing screen time with with the child, he said, it is a phenomenal technological achievement. But beyond the technological achievement. It's heartbreaking. And apparently, when he learned that they were going to shoot alternate takes of these scenes in case they wanted to replace the puppet um child with a c g I child, he reportedly told them, quote, you are cowards.

Leave it an ultimately. But but yes, um, the child is very cute and the show is is terrific as well. But to come back to that that paper, uh, the sudden devotion emotion Um. This is what they had to say about cuteness in karma muda quote. The fact that cuteness, vulnerability, and need evoke karmamuta makes sense given our assumption that the phylogenetic source of karmamuta is maternal bonding to newborns.

The generativity of human karmamuta makes it flexibly adaptive. This explains why karmamuta occurs in response to babies, kittens, marriage proposals and weddings, rituals of solidarity, religious moments of union with divinities, homecomings and reunions, the kindness of strangers, sentimental narratives and cinema, addiction, recovery groups, keen spirit, moments in war and sports, oratory marketing, choral singing, making and listening to music, dancing, rowing, and so forth. I see it though,

I see it. Yeah, there is this through line and like all those things they mentioned that I would not have unified in my mind before, but now it's it makes sense to me. This concept is interesting to me because there is something I feel that's similar when something is very cute versus when I have like a moment of personal love and connection, versus when I'm I'm part of like a political moment that feels positive and significant with many other people. Like, those things seem so different.

What would be unified between them? Why are there these similar sensations in the body and kind of feelings in the brain. Well, there's a way to bring these together, Joe, and that is a baby Yoda. Obviously it's got my vote. That thing is going to be used to sell the world's awful ast atrocity. How baby Yoda is a holy, blameless creature. Okay, to look briefly at another paper that Fisk was involved in. Another one is Fisk at all?

In Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture in seen called the best love story of all time, Overcoming all obstacles to be reunited evoking Kama Muda and basically here they just point out that if you go back through the history of literature, one of the most common types of stories is that beloved people are separated and then they have to overcome overwhelming obstacles in order to get back together. Yeah.

I mean, that's the ram the Ramayana right there at the story of rob and Sita separated and then brought back together following military conquest and adventure. Yeah. I mean, it's there all through ancient literature, you know, the novels of the Greco Roman period. You have tons of stuff like this. But then to go into like you know, modern manipulative cuteness cinema, I just think about how much of a sucker I've always been for stories of people

being reunited with lost pet. It's just an undefendable weakness. I remember when I was a kid, the end of the movie Homeward Bound. You remember that movie. I wasn't a huge fan of my sisters loved it and would watch it over and over again, you know, I saw multiple times because I was a kid when it was

out and big and out on video. I think it was a good thing for parents or teachers to put on you know, uh, and it just destroyed me, like this sudden upwelling of uncontrollable happiness and tears at the scene spoiler alert where this fictional trio of pets two dogs and a cat you know, after a great journey,

are reunited with their fictional humans. There is an excellent Futurama episode title Jurassic Bark that evokes the same sort of feeling in me every time I really watch it, even though it is it is you know, it is a comedy as a farce, and despite the fact that it expressly dodges such a reunion, like the reunion between the human and the dog does not occur, but it has such a bitter sweet ending where it is it is shown that the the the reunion wanted to happen,

I guess you could say. And another weird example of this uh that and I know you've seen this is um uh And this one probably works due mainly to the musical choice, but the ending of the Simpsons episode Radioactive Man, in which the director returns to Hollywood after this grueling experience of filming on location in Springfield where everybody, the politicians, the townspeople, they're all taking advantage of these poor Hollywood types. And then he comes back and he's

welcomed back into Hollywood with open arms. And then the Bill Withers classic lean on Me begins playing. Uh, and then they you know, they pan out and it it it's it's a satirical moment, but clearly they're you know, they're they're playing with this idea of you know, of of Hollywood versus small town morality, etcetera. But since they're playing lean on Me, it gets me every time, Like it makes me feel all the fields. Despite the satirical nature of the content, that song is like the perfect

karma muta song. It is, yeah, lean on Me when you're not strong. Yeah, it's it's about trust and depending on each other. Yeah, it's just pure, uncut common mood. Uh. And I would also say there seem to be major genres of internet media that are based entirely on exploiting people's desire to feel common mooda like emotions at the push of a button over and over again. It's like your you know, your cocaine button in the rat cage, except it's karma muda, you know, the the upworthy style

of stuff. The video is titled like he almost kicked a turtle into the trash compactor, but what happens next will melt your heart. Yeah, and you want to click because yeah, I'm like, okay, I'm I want to have my heart melted. Let's do it. Yeah. But this kind of content is incredibly potent for virality. You know, when there are these like studies about what kind of content actually goes viral. Uh, there's a reason that these media companies went for content like that, because that stuff hits

the button. I mean, I think because of our negative view of virality, we often tend to think of like kind of nasty memes as being the most viral content. But this karma muda exploitation video stuff is hugely viral. Yeah. To come back to the corna McCarthy quote about about the snowflake and the fleeting nature of the feeling. Uh, one solution is, oh, well, well, it's all right, there

are a lot of snowflakes in the air. I will just run around all day catching them and do nothing else, just to get that hit after hit after hit of good old fashioned common motive feeling. Uh. So, Luckily, there's a there's a there's a machine in my hand with a program that is designed to do nothing but just keep clicking. Yeah. I mean, I guess I don't know. Maybe maybe there are downsides that I'm not thinking of.

I mean, I guess it's better that people keep watching stuff like that they go down some horrible radicalizing YouTube trail or something and end up a member of the anti human Front or whatever, anti human but pro baby Yoda where you end up in landing. I guess yeah, okay, okay, sorry, next study just quickly. This is one called Moment to moment changes and feeling moved match changes in closeness, tears, goose bumps, and warmth time series analysis, published in eighteen

by Schubert at All. This study looked at the moment went to moments sensations like body sensations of people experiencing what the researchers believed to be karma muda, as evoked by video clips showing scenes meant to display these intense communal sharing relationships, these moments when these relationships intensify and uh.

The study found strong and consistent cross correlations between clips that people scored with karma muda associated words like moved or touched distinct from clips that were judged as merely happy or sad. This is like a separate thing than being happy or sad, and that the Kama Muda clips were associated with this with moment to moment physiological symptoms or sensations of tears or moisteness in the eyes, goose bumps or chills, and feelings of warmth in the center

of the chest. So again back to what we were talking about earlier, there were a couple of studies that looked at a cross cultural analyzes basically like is there a similar thing going on across different languages and cultures. There was one study that looked at UH the United States, Norway, China, Israel, and Portugal published in the Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology in teen by Cibit at all Uh, and this just generally did find that there was there was a lot

of consistency across the different cultures. And then there was another one published in the journal Emotion in twenty nineteen by zike Field at all UH looking at nineteen different nations across fifteen different languages, three thousand five dred and forty two participants to see if there was consistency about which types of experiences evoked karmamoda like emotions h to

read from their abstract quote. Our results are congruent with theory and previous findings showing that karma muda is a distinct positive social relational emotion that is evoked by experiencing or observing a sudden intensification of communal sharing. It is commonly accompanied by a warm feeling in the chest, moist eyes or tears, chills or pilo erection, feeling choked up or having a lump in the throat, buoyancy, and a zilaration.

It motivates affective devotion and moral commitment to communal sharing. While we observed some variations across cultures, these five facets of karma muda are highly correlated in every sample, supporting

the validity of the construct in the measure. So it looks like this is, at least according to this research we're looking at so far, this is a pretty universal emotion and that we might have some different words for it across different cultures, but there's something pretty consistent going on about like what types of things we can see or be a part of, and what kinds of feelings it gives throughout the body, and what kind of behaviors it triggers in us afterwards. So what do we learn

by naming and characterizing an emotion? We sort of started off by talking about this a bit. Yeah, and you know, I have to say that this my initial reaction to this topic, not being familiar with the the particular concept, with the named concept of karma muta, my initial response was what good does this dois? Why do we need this? Uh?

Be and and uh you know, And I'm I'm not to say that I was completely biased against it, but because I'm but the thing is, I'm clearly already experiencing these emotional states, right, but for more nuanced reasons, with more nuanced terminology, do I really need to catch all Sanskrit term to refer to them? Uh? And uh And That's been something I'm just trying to to figure out now. Now.

Certainly I'm not opposed to bringing in Sanskrit terms or Sanskrit Loan words or or you know, words from say Hindu or Buddhist u Um religion, you know, because I think that a lot of times these are very useful terms, such as things like say Brahmin and sam Sara. I think these can be incredibly helpful and and they certainly stem from a language and a culture that devoted a tremendous amount of mental energy to contemplating psychological and metaphysical concepts.

But in this particular instance, does kama muta like really help us out? I could not help. But but think about another case in which we have reached out to another language for a term that we have they were lacking in English to describe an emotional, very specific emotional state, and that is the German concept of schadenfreude, which is

the pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune. Like, we don't have a specific term for it, like a single word for it in English, but in German, uh, they have it and and it is kind of useful I think, to be able to take schadenfreude out of the German language and then use it as a way

to reflect on how we're feeling about things in our life. Well, the fact that we now have a loan word for it in English, I think that makes it much easier for us to recognize when it's happening, to say, I am feeling schadenfreude and not something more useful like actual sympathy. To be able to draw a line between sympathy and schadenfreuda despite the fact that they are very they're very connected, Like, you know, it's the kind of the flip side of

the coin. Um, you know, we can this gives us again the power to label, to discuss it, to pull it aside and UH and even then lean into the more positive UH side of the coin, to lean into sympathy. But that brings us back to karmamuta because instead of going from broad to specific, as we're feeling with with schadenfreuda, how about how does karma mouda help us? How does it help us to be able to go instead of from the large too small, to go from the small

to the large. Well, I mean, I think one thing, if they're on the right track. I mean, obviously these researchers could could maybe be wrong about this, but you know, it looks like there's a body of research building up here that's pretty supportive of the idea that this is

actually a fairly consistent phenomenon across cultures. There are these like things linking all these disparate UH phenomena, and there are of course plenty of emotional states that are broad, like happiness is extremely broad the situations that cause happiness or or you know, you can't list them all, right, But then again, nobody's coming along and saying, Hey, I want to tell you about this new concept. It's called happiness.

The only one thing that did come to mind that reminded me a little bit about this though, um is via a say, partial understanding of serotonin or media overuse of serotonin, the discussion of serantonin serotonin, we end up reminding ourselves of neurotransmitters in regard to any given emotional state, you know where, So what do you mean. I'm saying like, nobody's gonna come along and have to explain to you

what happiness is. But at some point in your life someone, like much later someone might have come along and said, hey, let me talk to you about that happiness and what you're and let me tell you about serotonin's role and

how you're feeling. Are you saying like giving you a good explanation of serotonin's role or oversimplified oversimplified version, which I think is the version that we often encounter, uh, certainly just in the media at large, and perhaps we encounter for the first time, combined with sort of they need more serotonin than I can be happy, right yeah. Or it's also just kind of like when you first

hear about it, you may have it. You will probably have an incomplete understanding of it, and that may also lean into this this understanding of it. So on one level, it's kind of a making something familiar new again with new terminology. I wonder if karma mutas kind of it kind of provides that it kind of takes this sort

of broad you know, area of the fields. It gives them a new term, and then ultimately it does allow us to to potentially analyze it a new to think of it in a new light without actually recategorizing it

is something drastically different. I mean, I think again, if the researchers are on the right track here, I think one thing that could be useful about it is that you when you identify a phenomenon where a bunch of things that previously looked unrelated are actually very related, new cause and effect relationships occur to you as possible, and

you can start testing for them. So, for example, one thing that that seems to come out of this is that uh karma muda seems to at least in some of this research motivate a sense of increased community with the objects of whatever you're watching. So if you watch a you know, video of two people having this this moment that makes you feel the karma muda, you feel increased community. You don't just feel the fields in your chest and all that. You feel increased community with the

people in the video. And I think another potential way to look at this in a positive way would be when you don't understand what's bringing people together. Say you turn on the news and there are some protesters and you don't agree with what they're protesting about, or you're on the other side if they're protest and you need

to understand them. Or if you, like me, are not a like team sports person and you find everyone else in your city is obsessed with the local soccer team um or let's say you're not a religious person and you see footage or you see friends and family engaging in a religious experience. We're going to church and and you and maybe you don't completely understand what they're doing.

But if you if you define it all under a kamma muta, you can look to the examples of comma muta that you do engage with and then potentially have a better understanding, or at least some understanding of why people are united in protest here, why people are in a house of worship here, or why people are all wearing the same color and going to a colisseum here.

Right to understand that. You know, you might not get what people like about sports, but there's some similarity in the feelings in the body and the pleasure that pervades your brain when you experience cute kitten videos that other people do when they're part of a team sports thing. Yeah, everything is baby Yoda. Basically, that's the thing to drive home. If you don't understand it, just remind yourself that's baby Yoda to you. All right, So there you have it.

Karma muta. Obviously, we would love to hear from everybody about this because this concerns a broad categorization of human emotion that we can all relate to. Uh, So, hit us up with your examples, your thoughts, your contemplation on what we've discussed here. Does the term karma muta? Does that help you? Uh? Or do you feel like it is in some way a hindrance? I don't know. We're

open to discussion on all of that. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find us wherever you find your podcasts. Um the Mothership is no longer with us, but you can still go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and that will redirect you to the I heart Media listing for our podcast. But wherever you get the podcast, just make sure you rate, and you

review and you subscribe. Uh. These are the three acts of devotion that help us out in the long run. Huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode, it or any other, to suggest topic for the future, just to say hi, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

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