Alain de Botton || Love, Sex, Religion and Happiness

excited to have Alan de Bautan on the show. Alan is a writer of essayistic books that have been described as a philosophy of modern life. He's written on love, travel, architecture, and literature. His books have been bestsellers in thirty countries. Alan also started and helps to run a school in London called The School of Life, dedicated to a new vision of education. Alan's latest book is The Course of Love and Meditation on Modern Relationships. Thanks for chatting with

me today, Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Well, I don't even know where to begin with someone like you. The topics you study are about as striking to the core of human existence as possible. Like you don't really mess around, do you? Like? Oh, I'm going to do you know, study like this one archaic philosophical idea and nitpick it to death. Instead, you're like, I'm going to pick the grandest questions of human existence and give people

insight into them. Yeah, that's a nice way of putting it. I mean, I guess I feel that we're all short of time, and I'm quite practical guy, and I want the questions that I look at to have real world applications, and they often come in me from pretty urgent questions that I'm wrestling with. You know, I'm trying to understand myself, the people around me, the world I see around me, and there tends to be often a problem that I want to try and solve. You know, why is this

thing so painful? Why is this so confusing? Why? Is dangerously vague. It's the opposite of an academic exercise. So even though I deal with a lot of material that academics deal with, my emotional motivations are entirely different. I am, you know, putting myself and humanity and the planet on the couch and I'm out for answers. So that explains a lot of the way in which I go about

my work. You know, I'll not spend too long on one topic, I'll rove around, I'll keep it focused, I'll keep the main question in view pretty much all the time. That sort of thing. Sure, that makes a lot of sense. But what were you like as a kid. Did you used to sit in your bed at like age ten and think about death religion? Not at all. But what I did used to do was to tidy things up. I was a kind of tidy kid and a builder kid,

So I love nothing better. I was had a huge imagination and was always building worlds out of lego, and I love lining up the trees in precise symmetry and writing books where you know, everything was kind of neatly laid out. And I think for me it was a way of controlling anxiety. And as I look back on it, and I think that it grew out of that that I became interested in ideas, and I saw ideas and the life of the mind as the ultimate way of

arranging trees in a neat row. I really resonate with that. Actually, I wonder if it has anything to do with OCD. Probably, I mean, sure, why not? You know, I think you can sort of divide humanity by what people do with their anxiety. After all, we all carry a lot of anxiety with us. What are you going to do with it? You know? Do you take it on the stage, Do you go jogging with it? Do you get drunk with it? Do you sing it out? You know? What do you

try and do? And for me, mastering things intellectually is my way of dealing with anxiety. So it's really not coming from any particularly noble or you know, pure place. It's a survival strategy. It's a way of dealing with a kind of mental disorder. You know. Yeah, I think I really the way you put that. So before we get to things like sex and religion, and I would

like to start with Love. That is your most recent book, and I really did find it to be quite profound, you know, per capita sort of thing, Like every page was like a new insight that I got about human nature. And what perplexed me about that is that, I you know, I'm a psychologist. I'm a scientist. I've studied I wrote a book on the science of well sex of meeting. But I reviewed that literature and love, and I thought I understood the science of love. I read your book

and it just really gave me such profound insights. How can your sort of writing and the kind of evidence that you bring to bear on the topic and insights? How's it given me so many more insights than I've gotten from being one hundred peer of your journal articles. Well that's very moving and touching. What you say. Well,

I mean it, I do mean it. Yeah, Well, I mean, look, I think at the end of the day, your job is much harder than mine because I can go off and just have theories and h pothesies, and I don't need to test them tall stringently. I just need to you know, float them. And the ultimate sense of you know, approval is going to be whether they ring a bell with the reader. But we don't have to do, you know,

peer reviewed tests. So in a way, philosophers and writers and essayists have this kind of freedom to run ahead of science. And you know, I like the view that essentially science always catches up because of the burden of proof that scientists put upon themselves. Thank god. It means that sometimes you know, we look sometimes you know, I'm shure this hame to you. You'll read a paper by a psychologist and an aspect of love, and you'll think, huh,

I knew that already, but you won't think that. But for some people might think that, to which the answer is, well, of course, you know it felt true already, but the point of the experiment was to prove it beyond certain, to actually properly prove it. And I don't need to do that, so I can use very kind of fly by night techniques. I can use myself as my first and only test case, you know, so I can just go into my own heart and soul and fish things

out and try them out. That's a kind of freedom, sort of the irresponsibility of the creative writer next to the scientists, which is from where you're staying, I canly imagine, you know, both liberating and a bit madden. Then you kind of think, oh, what are these guys, you know, having all the fun, but you know, there's a price

on every side. I appreciate that. But this idea that sciences catches up with what we have known, what you know, literature, these common themes that are in literature and poetry and philosophy thousands and thousands of years. It's almost like who are science is to think that, you know, we'll ascertain

the truth in one generation. Almost like, maybe we need to be more humble as scientists when we read poetry or great literature that have these themes because the themes, look, I mean, let's be honest, the themes obviously, the themes in the Course of Love are new. But you know, what I think is so interesting about and what I really tugs at my heartstrings when I read this story of this couple that forms the main narrative of your

book is just how relatable. It's almost like you've identified this like temp you call it the chorus of love, but it's like a template that is in our DNA that almost like we as humans were kind of like destined to unfold. It's like destined to unfold. But when we're in it, we don't have that perspective to really see it that way, do we. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, maybe another way of looking at it is to say that it's not just what you say, it's

how you say it. And you know, I came from an academic background, and I was always struck by the way in which you know, it seemed to me that there were great truths in a lot of academic books, but they weren't getting out there. They weren't hitting home because of the way they were expressed. And in a way, that scene is an incidental issue by most scientists, definitely,

but even by many scholars in the humanities. You know, the line is, it doesn't really matter how you're putting it down, so long as the idea is solid, that's what matters. But of course the audience is emotional and is responding with their senses. And in a way it strikes me as a communicator, you've got to make sure not just that what you're saying is correct, but that it's delivered in a form which will hit home and seduce, you know. And that's the word seduction is kind of

a word that's under suspicion in a way. It seems like you would only ever try to seduce with a falsehood, But of course you can also try to seduce with the truth, just as importantly. And I guess what I try to do with this book. You know, it's interesting you mentioned that it's not a psychological treatise. I could have written it as a psychological treatse. I could have

written it as an essay. It seemed to be important to write it as a novel so that it could have an emotional impact on the reader, so that there wouldn't be a need to you know, tick various you know boxes that are company nonfiction and that what could just get sort of straight to the point. And so you know, often as a writer, I'm asking, what's the book book four? What's it really trying to do? And I guess, you know, I don't see myself as a scientist,

so I'm not in that game. So really I'm in the game of trying to make the ordinary reader think and feel. And I've succeeded if I've done that. So it's just I guess it's just sort of underlying priorities, really, and I think we often don't think enough as writers about what our implicit or explicit goals are with our work.

And so, you know, maybe the historian has been laboring for twenty years on a large tone might think, oh, why is my book not in the best seller list, to which my answer would be, well, did you really want it to be? Really? Really, is that really what you were doing? And they might after a moment of reflection and think, well, actually, maybe not really, So you can it's good to clarify ultimately what you're trying to do with work. I think it's a really great point,

and I'd like to let's use an example. You know, John Alaia wrote a book about love recently. There was supposed to be kind of like the latest scientific Summary of love. But the major ricism of that book was, you know that it wasn't I didn't tuget anyone's heart, made it made love dry. I mean, there is a

particular danger of sounding dry right around love. And there's also you know, because moments of love are moments when we encounter our own irrationality most intensely, there can be something a little grating about a you know, from thirty thousand feet view of the dynamics of the heart that doesn't in any way acknowledge that this is a sort

of you know, folly that befalls us all. And I think, you know, it's just almost a rhetorical move that if one allows oneself to as the creator, to admit that one's kind of crazy with everybody else, you know, along with this, it can just create a very useful feeling of identification. So yeah, that's a very clear thing I got from your book, is that we're all crazy that the love is picking the best of the most suffering options, right, Yes,

I mean, look, I'm strung by the way. You know, when I was younger, I'd see lots of relationship problems around, but there was a lot of hope always in me and in other people that you know, it would just take a little bit of time to sort itself out. And obviously, the generation of one's parents, I mean they were crazy, but then they were old, so obviously they were kind of crazy, like like old cars and went

very good, and so old people weren't very good. So you know, we were the modern people, and so you know, what we needed to do ultimately was find the right person, and then soon as we found the right person, then things would fall into place. And then, of course, like every generation, what you discover is hut's a little bit more complicated. And the conclusion is that there really doesn't seem to be anyone having a normal relationship out there.

So we've got this idea of what a normal relationship is. It's a very strong idea, marked by mutual respect, satisfying sex, life, you know, great passion, forgiveness, all these things, and we have it in our minds. And yet you know, you hunt for it in vain, and at the end of the day, you know, that has to force the kind of reflection on our hopes. And so, you know, I've come to the conclusion that really everyone is unbalanced in one way or another. It's not a question that somebody

is not unbalanced, they just all are. That the human

makeup is, you know, really quite perverted. And you know, when I was thinking about religion, I've read quite a lot of stuff by Saint Augustine, and Augustinism starts with this unusual idea that we are all sinners, and you know, we've been marked since the time of our births by original sin Now I'm a totally secular Jew and at the standard at first completely very eccentric, but in a way it's a very warm hearted philosophy because ultimately it says, look,

it's not just you, frankly, it's all of us. All of us are a bit broken in one way or another. We will have all have come through the gauntlet of childhood, We'll all been navigating our emotional lives with quite a

lot of trouble, quite a lot of baggage. And so the issue isn't to try and aim for perfection but to try and understand imperfection and within a couple, explain it to one in a way that is comprehensible, is not offensive, and is early enough, comes early enough in the relationship or particular moments as not to cause you know, lasting damage, because human beings can forgive each other a huge amount. I think, so long as it's explained in

a certain way. You know, if you arrive on a date and say, well, I'm perfect, and I hope you're perfect too, you know you'll be in for trouble. But if two people say, look, obviously I'm kind of crazy, you're kind of crazy too, I think that was a given, and you know, in what way are you crazy? I'm going to come on to me in a minute, But you know what about you that's an excellent starting point for a more realistic and you know, properly ambitious relationship.

I completely agree. I think that. I love that you call out things about us humans that are It's like you're like calling it, you know what I mean? I like it. But let me play Devil's advocate for a second. So I've done some research on attachment styles, and you talk about attachment styles in the book In Kind of your penultimate chapter or so. Could it be I'm just a person thing out there, and then just tell me

if I'm right or wrong. Could it be that your book really is the course of love parentheses when you have a couple that's avoidant insecure, Do you see what I'm saying? Could it be that your book is really just the course of love a particular combination of attachment styles, because when you actually look at secure secure, they actually don't really have that as much drama as you think. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, I mean attachment theory is a big underlying part of this.

At the same time, I'd say you'll know much better than me about how much secure, secure love there is out there. I guess I don't see too much of it around if there is, you know. I mean, look, I do make a claim that this is an ordinary relationship. I think, you know, avoidant and anxious still qualifies as normal enough. So it's maybe I'm looking at a relationship that is an everyday neurotic relationship that is not, you know, dramatic,

but that you know, it's not totally healthy. And I guess I wanted to write a book that I wanted to focus on a couple where things are not brilliant, but they're not terrible. They are you know, interestingly and you know, almost in a banal way tricky. And I wanted to tease out the issues that and you did that. I want to make a very clear you did a very good job of that. And I might even sure what I said is true. I wanted to throw it out there, and I just want to throw that idea

out there because you know, it's funny. A lot of people with like avoidant or anxious attachment style will report, you know, being very uncomfortable around secure attachment style individuals if they're in a relationship. It's like very far into them, you know. Yes, I mean I think I find that fascinating. I find it fascinating how people will say things like, you know, I went on a date with so and so, and you know, they're great, and you know they're they're

really you know, good looking. But I just felt and the language is interesting, you know that people say things I'm you know, I felt they were a bit boring, And that word boring is often used to explain health, yes, like exactly who were not very healthy emotionally or less healthy. And I think the way, it's it's true. I mean, you know, maybe that's a correct word boring, but it's

a lovely kind of boring. It's it's like Switzerland is boring. Yeah, great, and we want more of that, especially US Americans right now. But here's the thing, like that's almost the conclusion of your book, is that, like these two individuals with these attachment they went through this counseling and they almost like the thing that's kind of saved the relationship in a sense, or that I think, not that they were really seriously

I don't think seriously on the verge of divorce. But the thing that really kind of contented them, I should say, is kind of moving towards more of a secure attachment style. Yes, I mean, ultimately, what saved them, I think is a kind of understanding, and understanding requires, you know, a drop

in levels of anxiety, an increase in safety. You know, they gradually acquired the courage to sort of face up to how tricky they were, how their own first responses were really pretty unhelpful, or how their analysis of what the other one was doing was involving them in some pretty bad patterns of behavior. So I don't think they you know. Look, I think it's enormous progress. If someone can go, look, I have a tendency to feel quite abandoned,

and when I do, I get quite controlling. If somebody can know that about themselves, oh my god, that's an advantage. Or if somebody can go when I feel hurt, I just want to be alone and not tell anyone what the problem is. Again, if you know that, if that information is circulating within the relationship, it is the most romantic thing in a way, to be able to give someone a present, to give your lover, the present of

an insight into your own flaws, that is an enormous gift. Absolutely, And you do talk about how intimacy, real intimacy, real love really comes. It's almost like a linear correlation with how much you feel like you're under fully understood by the other person or accept did yes and understood any that's right. And the problem is that we're always, of course, so hard on the other person's you know, bad behavior, and what we call bad behavior is you know, usually

a kind of trauma, a kind of immaturity. But both parties tend to be so ungenerous towards each other's frail teams that what could be a journey of growth becomes

stuck in a cycle of complaints. And you know, it's heartbreaking because so often arguments between couples, for example, are desperate attempts by two people to teach each other things about each other, things that are very legitimate and quite sensible, but the way in which the lesson is delivered is so hysterical, so mad, so doomed to failure, that you know, you end up in kind of cycles of nagging on

one part, shirking on the other, and that sort of thing. Yes, I mean, look, I have a slightly tragic view of life. I think that there are some very dark things right at the center of existence, starting with the fact that we're going to die at a time not of our own, choosing in a manner of potential, you know, calamity and horror, and that our loved ones are always at risk. You know, that's just the kind of starting point. And then on top of that, you add, we've got very little understanding

of ourselves. We're forced to make big decisions way before we really have the data necessary. We have to choose a job, a vocation, a lover in situations of real vagueness, and uncertainty, so we make lots and lots of wrong choices naturally inevitably, and on and on it goes. We're you know, we're fragile human beings. We're trying to navigate with this faulty walnut between our ears, and we've got only that to interpret everything reality, and it's you know,

it's a very flawed instrument. Speak for yourself, Speak for yourself, absolutely. And what's more, it's an instrument that has a really hard time recognizing that it is flawed. It thinks it's giving us accurate and accurate picture of reality, and yet it actually is constantly you know, So we'll go you know, no, it's all your fault. Way before we realize, hey, my

blood sugar is much too low. You know, we'll have a very well worked out hypothesis about why it's you know, what is going on, you know, irrespective of reality, which is incidentally speaking to you as a scientist. You know why science is such an amazing piece of emotional maturity, you know, way before it's anything else. It's a kind of it represents the discovery and the development of the scientific method, is the kind of maturity of the human mind.

Because it requires so many things that don't really come naturally to us. The capacity to admit that we're wrong, the capacity to accept reality even when it's very unpleasant, the patience required, et cetera, et cetera. I couldn't agree more. Have you writ any of irv Alum's work? No, No, you create this feel I think you would resonate with it a lot. He created this field, a big part

of the field, existential psychotherapy. He wrote the text, the main textbook on the outlines the givens of existence in the introduction, and basically, I mean that's he starts with, you know, these existential facts as the starting base for psychotherapy. So it's really cool, interesting, very interesting. So tell me more about your academic background then, well, I mean, when I was a young guy, I dreamt of being a professor of something, and I loved the idea belonging to university.

This is when I was like seventeen or something, and I loved the idea. And then I studied at Cambridge. I did a history degree, which was really a history of ideas and it was sort of fulfilling. And then I'm bought on various misshaping PhDs and gave them up, and I realized ultimately that my mind was not going

to fit in with the kind of academic demands. But I loved You know, there's a broad sway that people, I'm sure you've come across them, who'll say things like, you know, there'll be twenty two, there'll be good students, they'll be curious about the world, they'll be curious about themselves, and they won't know what to do with their lives because they've loved the kind of material they've studied as undergraduates. But they can see what academics doing for their whole

lives and that's not quite right. And then at that point they sometimes think of becoming journalists or whatever, and they are I know, this tribe. They write to me every day asking me what they should do, and you know, I feel for them, and there isn't thank you. There isn't really necessarily a place there should be. You know, in past ages those people might have joined the church maybe,

But today they start podcasts. They start podcasts, or they become like a therapist, or they try a bit of this and a bit of that, and you know, maybe that's fine. That's the liberation of our times. In a way.

But that's where I was, certainly, and you know, I felt my way towards doing what I do now, But it was I think I was in an agony of anxiety pretty much every day in my twenties, just questioning what I was doing, feeling very very isolated, writing books, but outside of any structure, just it was a horrible time in many ways. Yeah, I totally resonate with a lot of what you're saying. There's many things I would have to talk to about it, and I want to

be respective of your time. So let's move on to sex. Is that okay? Can we talk about sex? Yeah? So you make this interesting argument in one of your books about sex, saying that it's really we're kind of thinking

about it in the wrong way. Is that right? Look, I think one of the things that's missed is, you know, Freud made this move where he taught us to think that a lot of things that seemed quite innocent were in fact quite sexual, that the sex motive was kind of everywhere, and that kind of invigorated and frightened a lot of people. I make it a way a sort

of different claim. What's the opposite claim, which is that a lot of sex looks like it's about sex, but it's out of fact not, It's about everything else that we care about in life. And that you know, if you analyze a lot of the pleasure of sex, a lot of it is very continuous with our pleasure in others areas. So we don't become somebody completely different in sex. We're exploring our interests, our desires, our longings in other ways. And so you know, for example, I look at kind

of lingus, what is that? Like? What the hell you know? Why does that exist? Obviously, you know, darwinists that a slightly hard time understanding what it is. Might do turtles not do come the lingus? I don't know, maybe maybe, But you know, the way I analyze it, along with other things, is it's all about trust. In other words, here is this pretty far out so called inverted com is a disgusting thing that the people are doing, but

it symbolizes an unbelievable degree of acceptance. So the normal dichotomy that we suffer so much from between dirty and clean, you know, and who is a good boy and a good girl and all that that is kind of erased in oral sex, where suddenly everything about a person is deemed acceptable, and that involves an enormous kind of increase in pleasure and satisfaction, which is not really a kind of a sensory pleasure, it's a psychological pleasure. It's, oh

my god, this really is acceptance. You know, this really is a little moment of paradise because of what it symbolizes. And so I think, you know, similarly, kissing, you know what is kissing about? I mean, kissing is not that fun looked at purely sensorily. It's the idea of privacy that somebody has allowed us into the most private zone. And it's an idea of acceptance. So it's that sort

of thing that I like to locate in sex. Similarly, take another thing, take the idea of being able to be quite rough with a lover again, Like, what's that doing? What's that again? That's to do with trust. In most of life, we've got to be so gentle, so careful around other people. We've got to withhold our aggressive impulses. Imagine again the feeling of a trust and of mutual loyalty that's built up, and one person can say something very so called add to another can behave in a

rougher way with them that is normally allowed. So all of these things deliver psychological pleasures via a physical medium. Wow, that's really a great, a great insight. And yeah, I just like to think about, you know, contrasts with other animals. You know, once evolutionary psychologists study mating. I think that that's left out. I really do think what you're describing is left out of a lot of the evolutionary psychology

accounts of human meaning. Although David Buss do this interesting paper where he outlines like over one hundred reasons why humans have sex, and he did fight male and female differences sex differences, but nevertheless, there's quite a bit of overlap and variability. The point there is variability that you don't see in other animals because of the psychological dimension. So I just love that you, I really do love you brought that up. You do talk about pornography in

your book. I want to say, I heard a rumor yesterday actually that you are creating a pornography site. Is that correct? Well, the school of life that I run, we yes, we did a pornography site called porn as therapy dot com. I tell you the starting point. The starting point was so we run a psychotherapy division at the School of Life, and we started to see an unbelievable amount of people coming through where pornography was an issue in a couple or an individual life addiction, et cetera,

et cetera. And so you know, what do you do about that? So one of you is pornography is fine, it is actually no problem with it. It's great, just leave it be. And the other view is it's terrible, ban it, block it, censor it, et cetera. And neither the impulse seemed particularly great, And so we were just trying to think about an answer, and I guess our feeling was the things that are wrong with pornography is that pornography excites the sexual impulse in ways that are

then quite unhelpful to the rest of life. It disconnects sex from other things, other responses, patterns of thinking, ways of looking at the world that are then quite important. It cuts it off from communion with another person with intelligence, with sensitivity, et cetera, et cetera. And so we just wanted to kind of recontextualize sexuality in pornograpy and make a slightly different kind of pornography which has nothing to do with it being light or it can still be

quite extreme. In fact, some of the we basically we worked with a porn photographer and some actors and just shop a variety of scenarios as still images. What we like to do a life is not just theorized, but also inact and demonstrate. And so we were just trying to say, what would it be like to think of a better kind of pornography to try and correct some

of the problems that we see in existing pornography. Not to ban it or escape it or run away from it, but to try and somehow work with the impulse that we have and train it in a kind of more fruitful direction. I mean, as a positive psychologist, I can say that's a topic that has never really been studied scientifically. Is the extent to its porn can increase well being? It's a tricky thing, but I mean, of course it can. It must be. You know, look, most people, we know

that it's an enormous release from anxiety. I mean that's why, like anything that's a essentially the root of the addiction is in the capacity to release anxiety. So you know, it can be so good at doing that that it then becomes a problem in itself, but it must have that role. And also I think, you know, to be benevolent towards it. You know, our relationships are incredibly burdened by emotional consequences, by feelings of responsibility, of duty, by

feelings of guilt. And I think that pornography for men and women can be an encounter with a kind of guilt and responsibility free moment of sexuality, and that has a role to play perhaps in a life. Sure it could also of course have darker, sort of not as conducive elements as well. So I guess it's just like humans as well. We're very complex people. Sure, and I think it's look oddly, it's not received that much creative attention, you know, given the fact that this enormous industry, you know,

it's probably fifty percent of the Internet. Maybe I'm exact rating, but it's an enormous proportion. You know, it deserves ongoing serious thought. I mean, there are few people doing this, and you know, we wanted to, We wanted to join in that debate and that investigation. Well, from an intellectual perspective, I had to say, it's extremely interesting you have porn as a cure for a willingliness, authority, seriousness, responsibility. I mean,

these are topics that I appreciate you're doing this. These are topics that probably could get a lot more scientific attention than it currently does. So I think that's great, sounds good. So let's move on to religion. Yeah, you argue that there's kind of this middle we kind of put up this perifrication of an argument that the religion is either all nonsense or it's all not nonsense, that it's all true sort of thing. And you say, you

call us a quote boring debate. Is that right? Yeah, I mean it's boring for me, and I think it ultimately doesn't get to the root of the problem. The really interesting topic is where the hell does this come from inside human nature? You know, where does the impulse to believe come from? I take it as a fact, and for granted that the whole thing's not true, but

it's deeply emotionally true. You know, so long after we've you know, discounted the idea that that there may be a father in the sky, I want to think about that longing for a father. And I think this is why the debate with atheism is so sterile because atheists will spend their time going, oh no, and there is no God and you know, by the way, there is

no angel, et cetera. And I think only you're fine, you know there is actual But I want to go onto the other question, which is, why did we invent angels, Why did we invent sacred days, why did we invent you know, feasts of atonement, et cetera. Where does this stuff come from inside of us? And also where's it gone now in a secular culture? So those are the themes that interest me. Yeah, and then sort of what are the secular themes of religion that everyone would benefit from?

You know, we're studying this topic are in our lab you know, awe, and it seems to be that seems to be like the friendly the religion for a seculars you know, is odd, do you know what I mean? I think that's right. It's a very well, it's a very good work. Good first it's sort of something that everybody can agree on without getting from of it. It's like, oh, yeah, you know, I went to walk in the Arizona desert and felt or you know, so yes, it's it seems

like a very useful starting point. Yeah, and I love you know, your book about religion, Friligion for Atheists, how you talk about all these benefits of religion like building u since community, making relationships, last, overcoming the feelings of

envy and inadequacy, et cetera, et cetera. I always like to look for broader themes in my guests, you know, writings and things and and it really, you know, a lot of these things you're talking about are really lie at the heart of human existence also really contribute to well being. You know, religion, sex, you are you, Sex in a lot of ways can contribute to well being in ways we don't think about love. All these things are simultaneously complicated and also conducive to well being. So

that leads to the last topic today, happiness. You know, you have also written specifically about the architecture of happiness. And is there some way, you know, something we can kind of end on. We can talk about what would be the best way to architect society so that these a lot of these things which are taboo. You talk about a lot of things that are taboo, or a lot of things that bring us pain in life can also bring us the greatest joy. Well, I think that

we are not systematic enough in our search for happiness. So, you know, we tend to believe that we're you know, we're all out for our own happiness, and we're you know, we're doing everything we can, and we sometimes feel a bit guilty that we're only out for ourselves. But I think we're you know, we're surprisingly slack in the way we go about it. You know, philosophy begins in ancient Greece with the idea that our impulses are probably wrong and that we need to submit to them to reason.

And I think that you know, take our two leading impulses around love and around work. So we want fulfilling work and we want fulfilling relationships. But the way we go about trying to find fulfilling work and fulfilling relationships is incredibly haphazard. You know, we don't this thinks systematically about you know, our psychees, the choices between us, et cetera. And therefore we get it wrong. And life's very short

and we make big, big, big, big mistakes. And I think that you know, progress is all about trying to increase the amount of kind of reliable data on which people are basing their big life decisions on and it's sort of heartbreaking in a way when you think about how alone people are with their romantic lives, with their career choices. Despite all the chat et cetera. You know,

we're still quite alone. And you know, one of the things I've tried to do with my books and also with this organization I set up called the School of Life, is to try and give a kind of first port of call for you know, a lot of the hurdles that we're going to hit in our lives. These are unashamedly first world problems. In other words, they are the problems that you have when food and shelter have been

taken care of. Now, most of the planets still struggling with those, but you know, most of the United States and Western Europe has you know, has passed that stage. But we are still in the age of unbelievable emotional confusion, which spills out into politics. You know, what we call politics is really just you know, emotional life, you know, evaporate it and concentrated over a you know, over the

whole land mass. But it's the same dynamics. And and here we're, yeah, we're pretty confused, and I see it as my kind of life's work to just try and figure out a few insights in this area. I love it, and do you There's a quote you say, furnishing your life is an art. Yes, where I said that or how? But that's how familiares No. I don't know. But I've said a number of things at the moment that over the years that I don't really can't really remember them. But do you agree with it? I do you agree

with that? I'm not sure what it means. Maybe it was part of a longer sentence, is the beginning I've left. But look, I think that what we can try and do is, you know, create a sharper beam of consciousness over lots of parts of our mind. You know, most of our mind are sunk in darkness. This is the original idea of the sort of the mind as a dark cave. Mostly it is a dark cave, and we need as much which is possible to kind of shine the light of reason. But we also need a great modesty.

This is where humor comes in. Humor is deeply important because it's the most gracious acknowledgment we can make of our incapacity, of our flaws, of our difficult sides, et cetera. So you know, a sincere and ambitious life is never going to be far from a joke, because you know, that's all we've been, Allie. You know, we haven't been allowed to understand very much. We can't understand very much. Mostly. You know, there's that old expression God love that man

thinks God laughs. In other words, you know, man's thoughts are kind of, you know, very petty things when looked at from a sufficient height. It's so true, and your work does allows us to get out of that perspective. I just want to follow for a second. Isn't the subtitle of the book, The Architecture of Happiness though the Secret Art of Furnishing Your Life? Isn't that your subtitle? It may have been added on by my then naughty American publisher. Oh no, I think it may have. It

may have. I think it's not a title I like or what have identified with. So I know that sounds weird, but you know, authors are fragile beings twisted by the corporate machine who whack on all sorts of things. Look Ultimately, the book The Architecture of Happiness is not about happiness per se. It's about the dependence of our moods on our physical environments our homes more narrowly, but then also more broadly, our streets, our cities, and the natural landscape.

It's the way in which where we are influences how we feel. And this was a very sort of personal book. I live in London, which I know tourists like London, but basically it's one of the world's really ugly cities. And I was living one time I wrote the book in a really ugly part of town, and I was just struck by just how much and happiness was caused by the shape of the streets and et cetera. And I wanted to try and understand what's a well designed space,

what's a space that can facilitate our better moods. And that's what the book is about. I love that. Where do you get your insights? Do you'd rely on your intuition a lot, your own personal experiences? Are you married, for instance, I'm married, and yes I do. I mean, look, I'm my own best first observer, and yeah, I get the stuff mostly from problems. Really like it always starts with a problem. It's like, I'm unhappy here, I'm unhappy there,

I'm anxious about this. I'm anxious about that. My wife jokes that, you know, we have an argument, and you know, twenty hours later it's an article in a YouTube film. So yeah, that's the line. I love it. Well, look, thank you so much for res Jennerius your time, and it really was such a delight for me to chat with you today. Oh it's a pleasure for me. Thank you so much, and congratulations on your work. Thank you. Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with actor Scott

Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just to start provoking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or hear past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast b