Arthur Brooks || Love Your Enemies

topics ranging from economic opportunity to human happiness. His most recent bestseller, Love Your Enemies. Love That title, by the way, is a guide to building a better country and mending personal relationships amidst our culture of political polarization. Arthur, I'm so glad to finally chat with you on this podcast. Thank you, and congratulations on the phenomenon litle success of the psychology podcast. I'm an avid listener. I love it.

I mean, I think it's a great podcast, and I'm obviously not alone because it's the number one psychology podcast in the world. Congratulations on that. Thank you so much, Arthur. I don't know if you remember me. You probably you probably don't. There are a lot of people in the room that day. But when you came to the Positive Psychology Center, you gave a talk about three years ago. I I was, can I use the word submitten, That doesn't doesn't mean that's not quite the right word, but

not quite not quite where I was. I was. I was just so impressed with the way that you're able to balance, uh like kind of extreme views and kind of have the nuance about it. Thanks. I appreciate that.

And you know, you're you've been You're a Marty guy, I mean Marty Seligman guy, and so you you know that's and so, and I've been a big fan of Marty's and those of us who are in the kind of the Marty cosmos have a lot in common basically trying to make people better off, trying to lift people up, trying to bring people together, and then the confidence that we can actually do so. And that's actually what I like so much about your podcast. It's not just the

g whiz kind of deal. It's in every episode you have the science, you have the application to your life, and you have the exhortation to share the wisdom with others, and you know that's actually the formula for getting happier. Understand, apply and share, and you do it every day. It's great. Thank you so much. Thank you. That means a lot.

I love your podcast too. Hey. I thought i'd start off with a quote from Jonah Goldberg, who was describing you your character structure, and since this is the Psychology podcast, I thought this would be an appropriate place to start. Jonah Goldberg described you as quote, a strange creature by Washington standards. Heck, a strange creature by bipedal standards. A former French horn player who decided to be an egghead

late in life. He's a unique mix of Catholic piety, data obsession, sertorial connoisseurism, physical fitness, old soul, wisdom, and basic decency. Now, I was wondering, how do you feel about this description of yourself. Jonah's a good writer. That for the listeners who don't know Joanna Goldberg, he's a you know, longtime essayist from the National Review and you know, general public intellectual around town. Also, when he wrote that,

he was my employee at the American Enterprise Institute. So we can if anything is nice about it, we can't take it seriously. There's some truth there, though, there's like a grain. They're great, he's he's fantastic, and he's also a really acute sort of you knows a he's a good commentator, and he's got a great eye. And so this idea of you know, these salient characteristics of my personality are all knit in, knit together into this one

portrait of weirdness. I kind of like it. I like it. Yeah, well, I want to play one thing there, hornplayer. Now you're you're you are, like legit a musician, right, that's a part of it. Yeah, no, that was that was my goal in life. So starting when I was nine years old, I had literally one goal in life, which was to be the world's greatest French horn player. You know, it isn't America great? You know? Yeah, you say, I want to be the world's greatest French horn player, and it's

actually not an impossible dream. So I did nothing but nothing but that, I mean, I basically slacked off in school, did nothing but play in every ensemble, every competition. I started with the best horn players I could possibly find. My sort of lower middle class family made huge sacrifices so that I could do that, and when I was I went to college reluctantly when I was eighteen and promptly dropped all my required courses and was invited to earn my success outside the college, and so I went

pro when I was nineteen. I spent my entire twenties playing chamber of music and symphony orchestras, winding up for a long time in the Barcelona Symphony in Spain. And then only in my late twenties did I start doing my college education, and I graduated from college a month before my thirtieth birthday, left the music business at thirty one to start my PhD. And tell me, We'll tell me about your PhD topic and what department was it in.

It was actually at the Rand Graduate School, which is part of the Rand Corporation of famous old think tank in Santa Monica, as a matter of fact, right, and I went there. Part of it was because I was at the time older than most PhD students that I wanted to, you know, maintain the conceit that I was

working as opposed to just studying. And so at thirty one, thirty two years old, thirty three, I was doing work on public policy analysis, which is when I ultimately got my PhD in with my fields and applied microeconomics and mathematical modeling, and I was doing theater level combat analysis for the Air Force Operations Military operations research. Sorry, what levels? What level? Military? Well? I was doing theater level commed What does that mean? What does that mean? I just

got too wonky by accident. What that means is I was doing large scale military simulations of different theaters of war. I see, that's so weird, that's so cool. That's that's that's that's the terminology for that. Yeah. Yeah, I just learned something new. I love that. I love that. Yeah.

I was doing aircraft survivability using a pretty sophisticated early artificial intelligence modeling a lot, you know, a bunch of mainframes all kind of linked together for large We were running, you know, two hundred and fifty thousand lined four tran models, et cetera, just to simulate war situations that had never actually been fought, and using pretty sophisticated math to do it. And that was a really big departure for me, obviously from playing the French Horn. But it was part of

the cognitive development. You know, the great thing those who are listening to us. The great thing about doing a PhD in any topic is because you get somewhere between four and six years of an apprenticeship in hard thinking, and you know, there's this whole literature, the literature on the ten thousand hours, et cetera, et cetera. But one of the things that's actually true, I don't believe that we should specialize too much. I believe we should be

able to do lots of things in life. But I do believe you have to do something get a lot of reps to get good at it, and that also includes thinking. Most people don't actually have time to think. They actually don't think very much. They kind of do do, go, go, go all day. And when you do a PhD, and you know everything from literary criticism to military operations research or whatever you're studying, you're going to have years to just smash your brain against the wall over and over

and over again. And the most important intellectual thing that ever happened to me was having all those years to learn how to think and learn how to learn. I'm just a much linear thinker than I was when I was in the music business, and I'm persuaded I could have a PhD in almost any topic, and it would have largely given me the same benefit because of the time. Yeah, and well one a lot of journalists say they feel like they get a lot of mini PhDs, you know,

doing the work that they do. There's no such thing as a problem because you basically, small periods of time, don't you know, they're isolated, don't add up to one long period of time. It's the same thing that people who are meditators understand that. You know, I've been somebody who's been deeply involved in contemplative practices for you know, most of my adult life. And one of the things every day, for example, every day, for you know, twenty five or thirty minutes at the end the day of

my wife we pray and meditate together. And it's nothing. Yeah, and it's super important for my equilibrium and for my relationships and everything else. But it's nothing compared to the large scale, long term of multi day silent retreats. And it's because the twenty five minutes doesn't scale when you sum it. You actually have to you have to sit in silent meditation, you have to be quiet for day after day after day, and if you want to think a lot. You know, thinking in many PhDs is not

the same thing as working for several years. That's like a multi year cognitive retreat. I mean, do you are you concerned about the cynicism towards experts that I mean, I'm you know that that seems to be really accelerating to extend to which you know, people think they have they have the truth and that if someone comes in and maybe who did a whole PhD in the topic, I feel like people are not just even not taking

those individuals seriously as much as they used to. Yeah, well my view is that they actually never took them seriously. Good I think at this a lot of I think there's a lot and for two reasons. One is that one of the great charms of the United States is that we don't trust experts. We don't trust elites, we don't trust them. And the reason is because you know, when the Kaufmans came to the United States, they were not landed gentry. You know, we're probably running from some

godforsaken schettle in you know, Eastern Europe or something. Right. Actually, my grandmam escaped the Pagrams in Russia, so there you go, you know, and she was, you know, basically everybody listening to us, almost everybody listening to us, I'm going to assume descends from ambitious riff raff, you know, where they were running away from people who had all the power, from the experts, from the elites, from the people who had the goods, coming to the United States where they

could build it themselves, notwithstanding the fact that they were nobodies. Well, when we're a country of nobody's and the descendants of nobody's, we have a kind of a healthy suspicion of the people of the bodies. And so, you know, you and I have been really, really fortunate, and we've had a lot of privilege to be able to develop our intellect and to get some expertise, you know, the guys with the PhDs, which I just rhapsodized about the PhD. But I understand that that you can get a lot of

conceit with that as well. And so I'm I'm kind of I'm not a populist, but I sort of admire the healthy, the healthy suspicion of skepticism that people have of of people. Q and me too. I love the skepticism until it's directed at me and then I don't want I don't love it. It's funny. I want people to respect me. It's it's it's yeah, yeah, it's funny because you know, one side of my family, you know, practically nobody went to college. And on on the other side,

and I'm a third generation at college professor. Yeah, everybody, Harvard, Harvard, no less, come on, come on, Harvard. I know it's actually pretty interesting Scott, because I remember, you know, I teach happiness at the Harvard Business School. Yes, And the first thing that I tell them when I get in there is that the paradox of the Harvard Business School is that if you don't get in, you're not happy, and if you do get in, you're not happy. So and I know that because I didn't get in when

I was actually trying to get into graduate school. I got my bachelor's degree by correspondence because I was on the road as a musician. And it turns out that Harvard is not looking for graduate students who are thirty year old French horn playing dropouts with correspondence degrees. Weird, right, I mean, it turns out that's not their chordimographic. So I got rejected in like two weeks, and I remember feeling just crushed, like I have no future, It's not going to be any good. And then I get to

the weird things. You know, that life. You never know what's going to have in store for you. I wind up as a professor at Harvard and I'm looking at the data on people who graduated with their MBAs ten years ago, and they're really just said a lot of them, not all of them. Many of them are very happy, but many of them are dissatisfied with the worldly rewards that they were promised and in their lives. And it basically shows that getting in or not getting into Harvard

is not the secret the happiness unhappiness. It lies within each of us. Hence the importance of the psychology podcast. Well thank you ed Well in yours podcast, if I dare say on happiness, I would like to ask you how your approach to the quote science happiness is different from others who are studying happiness, because I feel like you have some unique spins on this topic. There are a couple of ways that that that my approach differs

from from many others. And one of the great things about the science of happiness and all the many experts that are out there, is that there's a multiplicity of approaches, all of which all the good ones of which actually

rely on empirical social sciences. In other words, we're looking for data that are collected appropriately, and we're looking at statistical methods and experimental approaches that are good, and we're actually trying to get as close as we can to the truth as far as we so everybody believes in that, but they're one of the biggest differences that in the schools that are that are forming is that there's the school that basically has as its as its root the

world of psychotherapy, the psychoanalysis actually and those that actually think of happiness as coming out of the psychoanalytic approach of Freud and Jung and the different v Andese schools, their basic raison deetra, their basic objective is to make pain go away, is to make suffering go away, to make unhappiness go away. And so why would you study happiness Because you because life is hard and because people are suffering, and happiness means means crowding out the unhappiness

that people feel. That's one approach. Another approach is not actually starting from the rationalist or humanist psychoanalysis world. It actually starts from the world of philosophy, of theology of spirituality, and that's an approach that basically says, guess what unhappiness is part of happiness because the macronutrients of the subjective well being meal kind of like protein, fat, and carbohydrates are actually enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose. Those are the three

macro nutrients of happiness. And guess what purpose? Meaning in life requires pain, it requires suffering, it requires challenges, it requires unhappiness. One of my purpose in life is to chocolate. That can't be your purpose in life. That's enjoyment, different metro nutrients. You were thinking your carbohydrates were actually proteins, and that's the problem. Who were you to tell me what my purpose in life is? And so so that's those are I would say that those are really the

two big schools. And then and then the psychoanalytic approach. It basically says that they are all different ways that people can you find the source of suffering and try to eliminate it. The the let's let's find out the nature of what it means to be alive approach, which is that second approach which the nature of human life,

the experience of human life. That basically comes down to what you might think of as as you know, the pillars of happiness, which are experiential pillars of happiness, and they're really only four according to literature, faith, family, friendship, and work that has meaning this generative, which is to say, where you earn your success and where you serve other people. And you know, so I'm really subscribe to a second school,

the school of the nature of human life. I don't I mean, I don't want to suffer needlessly, but I have to suffer. And every single one of us has to understand that you're suffering is really a sacred thing. It makes you who you are, It makes you fully alive. Now, it can be too much, you know, it can be too much, It can be overwhelming, it can be post traumatic stress, can overtake post traumatic growth. There's all kinds

of cases. And that's the case. But if we actually want to anesthetize ourselves from suffering per se, we're going to have big problems in the business of being fully alive. And you know that's the adventure is really where it comes from. So and it comes down to that approach.

The school that I subscribe to is you know, it's kind of summed up George Valiant, Yeah, famous psychiatrist here at Harvard who wrote the Or, who wrote many best selling books, but also he ran the Harvard Study of Adult Development, an eighty year longitudinal study of people's lives, and he said, basically, the whole study can be boiled down to five words. Happiness is love, full stop. And so that's it. There's one is Freud and the other is you know love. Well that we're done today. Nice

to have you on the Psychology podcast. Now it's done, No, you know, I I just adored your conversation with your most recent conversation with the dialama. I know you've had multiple conversations, but I love how you talk about how happiness, connection and the fear of being unneeded lies. So the fear of being unneeded lies behind much of our feelings of anxiety and existential loneliness, right, I don't. It's an interesting kind of inversion, you know, it's the opposite end

of what we often about the need to matter. You know, people really want to feel like they matter. But I think it's an interesting spin on it where you talk about kind of the fear of being unneeded, kind of like it's kind of it's kind of like it's opposite poll. Yeah, so, and there's actually a couple of different things nested in that that you begin with. So we think about what is what is dignity? And you know, almost everybody in the West would agree with the following statement. And there's

a reason it's in the West. I'll say in a second, I'm not being xenophobic here, that they that that people there's a radical equality of human dignity. People are radically equal. It's just as human beings on walking on the planet. Most everybody listening to us, especially from the West, would

agree with that. But it's actually really important because that actually comes from from an ancient concept, a Judaeo Christian concept, but from you know, the Jewish notion that that people are descended in the likeness of God, and that God is worthy of respect, and so therefore people are inherently worthy of respect. Dignity is to be worthy of respect. Now that's not true in every culture, in every tradition.

That is certainly not true in the in the cultures that say that that that people are not made in God's image, that doesn't It doesn't necessarily descend. It's not sort of an opinion on the genome necessarily. You know, different people disagree with that, and you find different people around the world. It's like, no, people don't have inherent human dignity. You got to earn it. And I'm like, no,

you don't have to earn it. The problem is depending on no matter which school you're from, East or West, we can all agree that not everybody has an equal sense of their dignity. To not sense your dignity is the essence of despair, and despair comes our dignity is absent when you are a liability, when you're not, when you're when you're not. An asset. To be needed is to be an asset to develop, to be unneeded, to be unnecessary, to be expendable is to be is to

be a liar ability to manage. Think about it within the case of our own children. You know, I got three kids. I thought three adult kids, and I would never have brought up my kids dealing like they're to feel like their liabilities that I'm managing. You know, you get liabilities off the bottom line of your balance sheet as a company. You manage them away as soon as you can. Assets can be tremendously expensive, but you develop them even if you're losing money on them. And that's

how my kids are assets. I mean, they were like they were resource eaters, man. I mean, you should have seen what college bills looked like. It was insanity. But that's because they were huge. They were moral, they were psychological, they were emotional assets. They were assets to the world and assets to my family, and they knew it. And that was the empowerment, that was the dignity that actually came.

That's super important for everybody. And one of the big things that we get wrong in our society today, I believe, is that we treat some people like assets to develop and certain people like liabilities to manage. We treat poor people in this country like liabilities to manage the way that we run our welfare system, the way that we many times that we run our schools, and you know, that's discrimination against poor people, and I think it's really

morally impermissible. Well, I agree. I'm trying to think of it within the framework of some personality research I've done, because people differ in their need to matter, and I've studied the concept pathological altruism where people have an extreme need to matter, and I'm wondering to what extent should we There's two sides of this coin. So there's absolutely I agree with you that we should be treating people as assets, betraying each individual dignity. That's part of my

light triad concept. But from within, it seems the most psychologically healthy thing is not to require your self esteem to be dependent on the extent to which you perceive that you matter in the world. There should be some sort of internal stable acceptance of well, I have dignity just by my you know, being a human. You know. So how do you sort of do you see what I'm saying, Like, how do you kind of manage that? Yeah? Totally, And so I think that that actually gets into a

slightly different dimension. One thing is to be needed by other people. The other thing is to objectify yourself such that you're unreplaceable. You know, this is really different, right, I mean you can have you can imagine that you're running a company, or the CEO of a company, because each one is the CEO of our lives, right, I mean, each one of us is looking to startup li and Okay, so and then you have an employee in your company,

you have somebody who's really going to help you. That person can be organically really really really needed, right, and so you want to develop that person because they're so necessary or that person can be so kind of devious in mouth desent that they can make themselves unreplaceable to you. And we see this in companies all the time, the sort of sycophants and yes men that are following the CEO around, creating problems and then being mysteriously the only

person who can clean them up. That's a very different kind of phenomenon. Now, So the balance that's actually really important, I think for achieving dignity and interurn happiness is to be at once necessary needed, therefore an asset in other people's lives, but at the same time profoundly useless. And this is a different and competing concept that actually comes from Aristotle's notion of complete and incomplete activities or telic

and atellic activities and experiences. So he talks an awful lot about you know, what it means to be a true or a perfect friend. That's not somebody that you're going to objectify. You don't have a friendship with them because you want to buy something or sell something to them. And it's not just because you admire the person. It's because you have a shared love, you have a shared set of values, and it's inherently and it's a completely

satisfying experience just to hang out with somebody. It's useless, and so that's really really important. One of the things that I often write about is the is the importance of having useless friends and having people who consider you to be useless in this profound way. Sound's terrible, right, No, no, it sounds one. I actually because I know exactly what you're what you mean by that? Can I glink it to my favorite psychologist, Abraham Maslow's notion of be love,

b dash love, love for the being of others. I'm a huge, huge promoter of this, you know, and be love. You're exactly right. Maslow has exactly this perfect balance between at once being needed and being useless. He can yeah, yeah, he calls it unneeding love, and he distinguished that from needing love. Yeah you no, no, exactly right. So so you know this is it takes a whole a lot of sort of thought and contemplation to net this out to say, at once, I need to be needed and

at the same time I need to be useless. Because those two ideas are actually profoundly compatible with each other. Oh yeah, and so so easy to misunderstand. It's so easy to misuse, it's so easy to become neurotic about it, such that we become unreplaceable, such that we become artificially useful, and in that way, we can't experience the love that

comes from complete friendships. And at the same time, we don't get the dignity a feeling like like we're needed cosmically in in you know, in some really important way, we need useless things. I couldn't agree more. I want more useless friends. Will you be my useless friend, Arthur? I would be delighted to be used, because I'd be useful to you right now on your podcast. But you're yes, But we share values and that's actually the baseless of

useless friendship. Exactly, but exactly, like a useless friend of me conjures up a friend that we can just like watch a sunset together, like you know, like you know, do some edibles like chill on the beach, like you know, like discuss philosophy, discuss free will, and and there's no it's just it's just there's nothing we're trying to get out of each other, you know. Yeah, no, that's right.

And that's one of the reasons. It's actually pretty interesting you know this literature better than I do, but about about mature friendships. So people in their fifties and sixties and seventies that that men tend to have useless friends on the basis of a shared useless activity. So it's like, we're super into baseball. Baseball the most useless thing ever. And that's the reason it creates so much joy in people's lives because it's a complete activity, and incomplete activity

is one that's instrumental to some greater end. And a complete activity is basically you consume it, and that it is the meal and the nutrition in itself that's useless, and it's really profound and wonderful way. And so men tend to consume useless things together as the basis of their useless friendship, whereas women, especially in their fifties and sixties, they tend to have relationships that are useless but based on a common understanding of feelings. They discuss intimate things.

Now this is important. It's an important distinction because the friendship between women under the circumstances tend to be more enduring, and it tends to be stronger than it is. You know, it's like if all Off, all Scott and I have in common is like love for the red Sox, you know it might endure. On the other hand, you know, it might only endure as long as the socks have a good season, which you never know. Yeah, it's a

good point. It's it's a good point. Well, So with keeping on the notion of love, I'm really curious why you precisely define fear as the opposite of love. So fear is and you know, I say this appropriate humility with a guy with a you know, a union card and in you know, social psychology and emotion specially please don't be insecurity. Yeah, it's you know, I'm an economist, so we're the most imperialist of all the social scientists.

That doesn't mean we know the most. And and fear as a philosophical matter, and if you go back to Laosu or you know, the Apostle John, or you know any of the Aristotle for that matter, fear is the ultimate negative emotion and that's actually a physiological truth as well. So the amygdala, which governs fear, makes us, gives us the responses to fight for lighter freeze, is more potent

than any other part of the Olympics system. It will crowd Fear will crowd out all emotions, positive or negative. So the negative emotions are generally classified as sadness, fear, anger, or disgust, and the positive emotions joy, love, and some people put an interest, which I think is great because you know, being interested is so intensely satisfying. But of those seven emotions, the most powerful is fear because as an evolutionary matter, fear will has to be able to

crowd it everything. You've got to clear the debts with fear because there's a saber tooth tiger around. You need to not be enjoying the smell of those beautiful flowers or those tasty berries or anything else. And so the amigdal will say ding ding ding ding ding is like a fire alarm. It will send off a signal through your hypothalamus to signal to your pituitary gland, thus to your adrenal glands to send out adrenaline and cortisol and

put your pull system on high alert. Now that's an important thing because what that means is that it's the predominant emotion and it's and you can easily see why philosophers and later psychologists would say it's the ultimate negative emotion. It's good for you, but it's a negative emotion, not nonetheless, and so therefore it's opposite has to be the ultimate

positive emotion, which is love. Now that's actually coherent philosophically because you find that what people typically will say, which is hate, is the opposite of love. Hate is downstream from fear, and almost every case, pride is downstream from fear. Envy is downstream from fear. All of these things are fundamentally fear based emotions. You know, you don't hate something, really really hate something that's not a threat. You know, if it's not a threat to hear, it's actually not

worth hating. And a threat is stimulating the amigdala, it's stimulating the fear response, it's you're getting the stress hormones. So both physiologically and psychologically and philosophically, we find that the ultimate negative emotion is fear, and that puts it one hundred and eighty away from love. Yeah, I'm continually amazed how so many things, so many phenomena can can be reduced to the avoidance approach distinction in psychology. Yeah,

oh yeah, oh yeah, no, it's amazing. It's actually one of those one of those fundamental ideas that winds up organizing most of the rest. I mean, yeah, like everything like ultimately reduced to like are you avoiding it or are you go? Are you engaging in it? You know? And that's right. Love is an engaging emotion. Here is an avoidant emotion. So that's another way of organizing this whole set of ideas. But you know, and then there are actually are implications of this for all of our lives,

you know. And again because the psychology podcast, which is understand the science, then work on the applications, and so the application of this is, you know, when you're suffering from something negative, one of the best ways to deal with it is not taking it on on its face,

but looking for its opposite and cultivating that right. And so basically, if you're engaging in all kinds of avoidant behavior, one of the best ways of coping with this and therapy is to actually find something in which you can engage because that induces this cognitive dissonance that you don't avoid everything, and then you you know, it changes your approach to life. Is behavioral matter? Well, the same thing

is true with fear. When people come to me my students, for example, they'll say they're really afraid of something, and what I'll look for is ways that they can love more, that they can surround their lives more in love, which thus neutralizes fear. Perfect love drives out fear. According to the apostle John that and you know, philosophers have said this in non religious context forever and at the same time, but people will say to me, I don't have enough

love in my life. I'll say, let's examine your fear, because you know, the fact that they have a lack of love probably means they have an excess of fear. So let's not look at the love directly. Let's look at the fear and find out if there's something that we can do to treat the level of fear in their lives, and so doing they can create more space for love. I love that. But can I ask you a cheeky follow up question, Yeah, yeah, that's my favorite kind.

Can't you have too much love, which is really fear. Tell me give me an example. You know, do you know how there are people that like that's all they ever every third world is like we need love, We you need love, we love blah blah blah blah blah blah. And they won't shut up about loving and they're obsessed with it. They're obsessed with the word love like it's like the only thing they ever think or talk about, and it's like that's the only thing we ever should

have in the world. And at the slightest sense that like something like a conversation makes someone feel uncomfortable, they're like, we just need more love. Stop the conversation. We need love. I mean, isn't there a point at which that's actually because the person has fear? Like they they they're they're using love as a way to like cover up. Uh yeah, fear for sure. It's nice. Actually not love too. I mean, Paul Blue right, fair Enoughal he has this great book

called against Him. Oh yeah, it's fantastic. He's my homeboy, Paul, my homeboy. He's great. Yeah, he's I mean, he's I mean, it's a it's a fabulous book because you know, it's got to it's on the cover. Is a great coverer too. It's a picture of a heart frozen inside an ice cube, you know, and against empathy. But it's actually the wrong image because what he argues for is compassion and rational distinction. Yeah,

he makes the distinction between compassion and empathy. And what you find is the people who are excessively empathetic, they tend to be insufficiently compassionate. Why because empathy is easy anytime there's any conflict. If you say you need more love, you're twisting the concept of love away from doing hard things. What is love? Corny? To Saint Thomas Aquinas, the love is to wiel the good of the other. You know, there's nothing about about about feelings and love. Love is

a commitment. Love isn't is a commitment to act in a particular way, notwithstanding your feelings. If you truly love somebody and you know, this is the secret to a happy Marrior. I've been married for thirty years. Wow, the secret of a happy marriage is not feelings. It's not feelings. It's commitment, it's action. It's work. Love is work. Love

is the greatest work, is the most satisfying work. But the problem that we have in our in our mondern society, among others, is that we've reduced love to a feeling. And that's the reason that marriages don't last, because we have unrealistic expectations. It's the reason that we have a public policy system that's excessively empathetic and insufficiently compassionate with people,

that treats adults like children. That reduces them to liabilities in our society because empathy is easy, and anytime there's any conflict, you say, well, we just need more love. That's exactly the problem that we're talking about. That is anybody who says that has reduced love to a feeling thus devalued it by understanding it incorrectly. Cool. Thank you so much for getting my question. Like, I feel like you immediately got what I was what I was getting at,

and yeah, yeah, yeah, you totally. It's a great question. It's an important question. It is something we all need to grapple with because we all have a tendency to do just that. Yeah. When when we fail in fear, yeah yeah, sometimes we won't even speak our mind because we're so afraid of not being loved by the other person,

you know. Oh yeah, everybody does that, and it's particularly easy to do given the current cultural currents that we see in society today, where people wheeld power by willfully misinterpreting or taking the worst possible spin on you know, it's the bullying tactics of the current moment of extremism are such that everybody right and left is trying to cancel everybody else, and so everybody's walking on eggshells all

the time. You can't say what you think because people who bear you ill will are looking for an opportunity to not give you the benefit of the doubt. Now, everybody who's listening to this is thinking about either one side or the other. The way to combat that is to look on your own side. So if you're a conservative, don't talk, don't don't don't only be worried about cancel culture on campuses, be worried about the extent to which you actually get no quarter. You give no quarter on

your own political side when somebody doesn't toe the line. Well, well, let's talk about conservatives. Can we talk about conservatives? We can? We can because you we have a very interesting take, because some people will you know, you have like was it bleeding heart? Liberals. Is that can't you have bleeding heart conservatives? Yeah, I guess I am one. I suppose you are fair to say it's I mean, if I

believe that happiness is love, full stop. And furthermore, the public policy issue literally that I care about the most is poverty. But I actually take what are traditionally thought of as conservative approaches. It doesn't really matter if they are. I mean, I believe that the enterprise system is the greatest system in the history of humanity for pulling people out of poverty. I don't believe that because I want

it to be true. I believe that because I've been looking at the data, and we have pulled two billion people out of poverty through largely through globalization and free trade, property rights, the rule of law, and the culture of entrepreneurship since nineteen seventy. You know, that has changed the world to changed my life. Actually, that basic truth, and you know these are my sisters and brothers, and I want the next two billion to be pulled out of poverty.

So that kind of defines the contours traditionally what you be thought of as politically. You know, it's like, oh, that's a conservative guy. But now the reason I think those things is not because they care about capitalism. Actually they care about money. It's because I believe that people should be able to build their lives like I've been able to build my life because I'm a I want to be a warrior for human dignity. So it's complicated, right,

it's complicated. But I but you're adding that level of nuance that that I don't see that prevalent in these kinds of discussions. Yeah, it turns out the political discussions in America that they are not very nuanced. I mean, if the left and the right cancel each other, will there be a center that they'll They'll just be a center that exists. Yeah, that's called ordinary everyday life, and that's where most people exist in the better part of

their lives. People have political opinions, but for most sentient humans, their politics are not the most important part of their lives. The problem is that politics has taken on an outsized role in the American discourse, and it's been contemporaneous with

the retreat of traditional religion. You know, people need moral camps, they need tribes that they can belong to, and you know, as the percentage of Americans under thirty who say they have no religious affiliation has gone from three percent to thirty percent for the last two generations. You're going to see more and more young people who affiliate and who expressively use a framework of moral ideas to say to say I attached themselves to. And it's not going to

be necessarily the United Methodist Church. It might be the you know, the American Democratic Party instead. You know, people need that fundamentally. But then there's also been this this political entertainment complex largely perpetrated by social media and the cable news networks, and what they have done is they've made it really really easy for people to exist in

filter bubbles and caricature. The other side, when they get out of those, you know, when they're actually trying to deal with their neighbors and friends at Thanksgiving dinner and that the soccer games, and that the choir practices, if they still go to choir practices, they you know, politics for most Americans is not the salient feature of their lives.

And I think that's really really good. You know, I'll read these surveys that you know, written by guys like you and me that are extremely you know, sad about the fact that the average American can't name both her senators, and I'm like, right on, man, that's exactly the country I want to live in. It's not that I want people who are apathetic, but I want people who are able to live their lives and live in such a stable, strong, upwardly mobile, charitable and rich country that they don't have

to be thinking all the time. Okay, it is my senator who's going to come and get my stuff, right, God Bless America. That's all I can say. I hear you. There are a lot of people in this in this country right now that don't love America. I mean, I hear the conversations on Clubhouse and things. They wouldn't say God Bless America. They say what has America done for me? You know? But you're certainly saying that you want to to move in the direction where everyone will say God

Bless America. Yeah. Well, I want everybody to to say that they love America. I don't necessarily want people, Yeah, I breaks that properly. You're not a dictator. You're not a dictator. No, I know, you know, I didn't you know what I mean? No, But and and and more to the point. To be quite literal about it, I literally believe in God. You know, I'm I'm you know, I'm I'm a religio. I'm a traditionally religious person. But I'm so happy to live in a country where not

everybody is. I mean, I want everybody to share faith because it's such a source of joy. And I think that my faith is correct, So I would you recommend it to anybody, for sure, But I want to live in a country where we all don't think alike. That's my I want to live in a family where we all don't think alike. You know, in the Proverbs they say that iron sharpens iron. That's such a source of joy.

And this gets back to the original premise of your question, which is that we don't get we're not getting happiness from that, and we really should. We should be, you know, down on our knees with gratitude that we live in a country where you can disagree politically, where you can write something on the Internet saying that the President of the United States is a criminal and a jerk, and there's no knock in the night and no jack booted thug.

But instead we're we're such ingrates that we're saying all the time that this is a terrible, terrible country, isn't it horrible? We're as bad as Nazi Germany. It's just, you know, as Stalinist Russia. It's it's nuts, it's nuts what we're doing it. And it's basically it's ingratitude, and ingratitude is a product of the lack of love, and that comes down to too much fear. And that's where we started. Yeah, there are multiple things there. I want to zoom in on. That's so interesting. This is such

an interesting conversation. So I'm really curious to hear more how your religion and spirituality impacts your approach to human happiness in contrast to like the rationalist humanist approach for instance. Well, so we talked a little bit ago about the fact that there are two basic strands of happiness researchers, one that's on the rationalist humanist, psychoanalytic approach, to the other

that's in the spiritualistical, love based approach. And there's some people who are in the middle who actually don't come down it either. I mean, I don't mean to it's kind of an artificial distinction. But if there is a distinction, I'm firmly in the second camp. And part of this is just because I've made the decision in my life, like every love based decision, like the decision to be a husband to my wife, and with my ambition is that she is the last person I see as I

take my dying breath. That's my ambition. That's a decision, right, that's not it has feelings attached to it, but those are adjunct feelings, and the same thing is true with the decision that I've made about But I think is the right approach to my life, which is to embrace tendets of spirituality, to put them within the framework as well established by people who are more sophisticated smarter than me, and traditions that have gone back thousands of years, and

that I understand that there's certain things that I can't know. I'm an empirical social scientist, and these are the mystery of faith, which is taking things where that are non testable hypotheses on the basis of that faith, but understanding that doing so is actually a very rational thing to do and it makes my life that much better, and that sharing it with others can make their life that much better as well. And also it illuminates numerous sources

of mysteries in life. It resolves all kinds of Gordian knots that are both cognitive and philosophical. There are things that also that I realize that I don't have to solve all the time, I don't have to be tortured by constantly, and it gives me a tremendous source of consolation. So I love it. It's just the happiest adventure in my life. Is my spiritual life. I really appreciate you

sharing that viewpoint. I consider myself more spiritual than religious, but I imagine we both are united and seeking very similar self transcendent experiences. That's right. And you know, some people believe, you know, people I've heard your show, as a matter of fact, believe that transcendent experiences are nothing more than kind of random synaptic signals in the brain, that everything is encompassed by the by the radical and

material we really listen to my podcast, I'm impressed. Actually post is a great podcast and I learn a lot from it. And you know that's important because you know that materialistic view is ly with utterly at odds with this concept that that they're they're they're very well, might be a cosmic consciousness that exists before us and after us and that we're part of, which is I think,

I think that's the most the most plausible view. I mean, we don't know, but you know, and I know that you share the view that that free will can exist, and free will can only exist when there's an exogenous consciousness. I mean, it really can't exist if if consciousness is

nothing more than a part of the brain. Right. Yeah, I'm not I'm not quite a dualist, but I think there's you know, all the evidence and my own intuitions are pointing to this idea that we're all part of one whole of some sort, like you said, cosmic consciousness, or there's something there that that people can witness under

certain conditions such as LSD. But but the certain conditions, Yes, there's a lot of we call them spiritual practices, and and the research is so exciting in that area showing how these spiritual practices, if we can somehow reduce that separation between self and world neurologically through own ego practice,

various practices, it all rise to the same conclusion. You know, this this oneness that's right and that's right, and it's it's all it's it shows up so many age old mysteries, you know, it's it's you know, we always say, you know, there's that that zen question, that paradox, that the question that the master will ask the novice monk what is

the sound of one hand clapping? And and and that you know, it's like one of these it's almost a joke, right, It's like in one of these unanswerable Buddhist questions, it turns out as not a question. The answer to a question, you know, the sound of one hand clapping is your individuality and your separation as an entity from the whole. It is an illusion. It's a pantomime. It is doesn't

actually exist. So, you know, the Buddhist masters, you know that all Alama explain this to me, that this concept that when you feel that you're isolated, that you're an isolated individual, that your consciousness is that nothing more than a vestige of your physical brain, and that you exist

out there as a unitary entity. That is an illusion, and that illusion is this radical individuality can be resolved by seeing yourself as using a different metaphor, you know, an individual tree, for example, an aspen tree is just one shoot off the same root system. It's one entity, but it looks like an individual. So to say, what is the what is my individual nature? What is what is Scott's individual nature? It is the same thing as the sound of one hand clapping. It looks like a thing.

Excuse me, not a thing. Excuse me, speak for your damn self. I'm joking. I'm joking, Nook. They're saying some really really cool things. And you know, when we talk about self trins and experiences that we call rally around you see, I think art and creativity has a lot of potential to unify the species, you know, in lots of ways. Can you share some of your thoughts on how creativity, art and music conturbuts to our sense of

well being and happiness? Yeah, I think about that a lot because of my obviously, because of my background of the arts. My mother was a painter, and we have you know, we're all basically artists and academics in my family. And almost everything that I study now as a social scientist stems from observations and questions that I had when

I was in the arts. And one of the things that I find is that when when I have a and I come to a particular conclusion on the basis of data analysis and research, that I can find these fundamental truths embedded in the work of the greatest artists in the world. I actually have a series of videos that I've done called The Art of Happiness that looks at these really big ideas in the search for happiness and finds their metaphors in the work and lives of artists.

And in point of fact, I actually became a social scientist because of the world's greatest composer. When I was a kid and when I was a working as a professional musician, my favorite composer was Johann Sebastin Bach. And there's nothing extraordinary about that. I mean, everybody knows who almost everybody knows who Bak is, and Bach is half of the world's favorite composer. But the interesting thing about Bach is not the fact that he was just a

great and fertile and productive composer and productive person. By the way, he had twenty kids. Now that's pretty productive. The interesting thing about Bach was his philosophy of his work. And I remember reading this quote near the end of his life, and you know, surrounded by his kids and grandkids, surrounded by love. And he was a very religious guy and knows a deep, deep, deep Christian And he was asked by a biographer, Hair Bach, why do you write music?

You know, it's weird because you know, all of us who have been able to do something with our lives and achieve some things and some success. People always ask you, Scott, what do you do when they meet you, But they never ask you why do you do what you do? And you need an answer, You morally need an answer.

And Box's answer was immediate, apparently, he said immediately to the person who's interviewing him about the like seventeen forty nine or something when this happened, he said, the aim and final end of all music is nothing less than the glorification of God and the refreshment of the soul. Woweh, I know. And so for people who are not religious, don't be distracted by that. He said, the point of your work is sanctified service. That's the point of your work.

And I heard that I was still in the music in this. I'm like, can I say that? You know? I'm out every night on stage. I don't feel like I'm refreshing souls. And I don't feel like I'm glorifying God. And I literally went in quest, in a vision quest to find that what I could do, what I could do professionally, so I could do it wasn't actually so it was I wasn't using the hallucinogens, but I didn't

have an ayahuasca experience. But through through my meditation and my prayer, through the search for cosmic truth, so I could find my answer to box question, so I could actually find what and I became literally I mean talk about the from the sublime to the dismal. You know, I became a social scientist because I felt like I could refresh souls and glorify God. And Scott, I feel like I'm doing it right now. I mean, it's unbelievable to me. I mean, I'm just I'm so happy. Not

all the time. I'm not, you know, a particularly happy person. I'm so happy to be able to do something. If somebody's listening to us right now, they're like, those are good ideas, those are things I want to take on board. Those are life enriching ideas. These are ways that I can actually love a little bit more then that in some weird little way, I've composed the kind of a little box pintata, and I got it because of box? Why not because of box? What that's an answer to

your question about how the creativity informs the science. Well, I love it. I feel like that. You just explain why I do everything I do. Well, everything I do, there's always that ten percent You're like, what the fuck was I thinking? But the other ten percent is like paying the rent. Yeah, well, you know, we're still human at the end of the day. But no, I I love that, you know, my intentional purpose that explains why I do that. Love it? Love it? Love it? Can

you you know? Kind of ending this interview today, can you tell me about your upcoming book on strategy Strategies for getting Happier as we aag because you make a very interesting point. You say that as we get older, our sense of attachment to achievements makes us more susceptible

to noticing our long term decline. Wow, that's really profound. Well, what happened was I started a personal research project to understand how I wanted to design the second half of my life because I realized there's not very much stuff out there for that. You know, I teach Leadership and Happiness at our business school to talk about people who are launching their careers on how they can use the

science of happiness. But there's very little. And you know, you're twenty years younger than I am, but you're going to get where I am, and you're going to need everybody your age is going to need something that's based on the science, based on truth, and based on philosophy,

and based on wisdom. To talk about how after you're fifty years old you can design your life where the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are not, you know, deciding whether or not you're going to retire happy and go and go to the grave a happier man than than when you were younger. You shouldn't have to leave it up to chance. There's got to be some signposts,

you know. I had some very profound experiences with older people when I was about the age of fifty that suggested that if you leave it up to chance, some really bad things can happen. You find that there's certain dynamics that are really really solid earlier in life. You find that people generally speaking from the early twenties until the early fifties, they gradually decline in happiness, not profoundly, and then in the early fifties to about seventy most

people increased dramatically in their happiness. And those are those are strong empirical tendencies. But after seventy or so people break up into two big groups. Half get happier and half gets sadder as they get older. Now the group that gets sadder, here's the weird thing they have in common. They tend to be the strivers and the high achievers. That's the paradox of it. And that's the thing I

kept finding. And so you know the work of Charles and Carrol Holahan at University of Texas at Austin, who do work on the burden of high achievement, and basically if you read their work, what it comes down to, at least my of their work is this, like law of psycho professional gravitation. The more you do with your life, the more you know when it's in decline. If you don't do anything, if you don't live up to your potential, you don't know the slightest idea you're in decline because

there's no bump that you're coming down from. On the other hand, if you do a lot. I mean, if you're you know, you know, Scott Barry Kaufman, and you've got the most important psychology podcast, well, sooner or later, this is not going to be the most important podcast. Sooner or later, this is not going to be the thing that you have right now, and you're going to actually suffer more from the loss. This is condiment and Taversky,

this is prospect theory. And then there's the rich large phenomenon where all the stuff that you can do, I mean, why are you so successful right now? And the answer is that you're You're you're cranking on your fluid intelligence, which is your analytic capacity, your ability to solve problems, your building that's going down the hill, that's going down the hill as I mean it does here, it goes in your forties. You're not forty yet, are you. I am? I am okay, you look good of that hair. I

could have President of the United States with that hare. So, but you know, in your forties it declines. In your fifties, it's like really getting low. But there's another curve behind it called your crystallized intelligence, which is based on the stock of stuff you know and your ability to use it not solving new problems, but assembling information by yourself and others from earlier in life. That's wisdom, which is

actually a virtue. And so one of the things that I talk about is, you know, when people feel like they're in decline and they're very depressed, those who get worse and worse and worse off after age seventy, it's because they regret what they think of as their only success curve. So the key thing is jumping off. You know, Scott Berry Kaufman's success curve under Arthur Brooks's success curve.

You know, one of the greatest things in my life was I mean, I read my early academic papers for right when I finished my PhD. And I literally can't understand the math anymore of what I was doing. I mean, it's left me behind. I've left myself in the dust. But now I'm teaching, I'm writing, i'm speaking, I'm doing what I'm doing with you, trying to explain things clearly in in a way that people find inspirational. And I'm

better at way better at it. You know that at Columbia, where you teach, Harvard Wright teaching, the best teaching evaluations are uniformly for professors from over seventy These are not pity evaluations. It's because they're the best teachers. Because that

relies on crystallized intelligence. So I talk in the book about how you can jump from your understand your fluid versus your crystalized intelligence curve, get into the liminal space between them, and to get on your crystallized intelligence curve. What are the techniques for doing it, what are the joys of doing it? How do you do it well? I mean, frankly, I think I think I actually cracked the code to getting old and loving it. Oh wow, I can't wait to read this, you know, especially my

editor says the same thing. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm you know, especially as my fluid reasoning is notably declining by the second. I can't wait to read it. By the way, you said, my podcast is inevitably not going to be the most important psychology podcast. Do you know something? I don't know. What are you talking about? Arthur Brooks, He's like, are you coming for me? I know, No, it's just the same ends of time my friends. Arthur's like, it's all a matter of time. You're no longer a top.

But no, I'm joking. Look, I love talking to you today. You are such a breath of fresh air in our society that has such polarization, but also such extreme views on things that doesn't incorporate spirituality into the discussions, doesn't treat people as sacred. I've been arguing we need to start treating people sacred. I feel like you would agree with that absolutely. Yeah, I really, I really appreciate you, Arthur and wish you wish you well. Thank you, Scott.

Congratulations again on the podcast, and thanks to all the listeners. Who are you making this the most popular thing because it should be because it's high quality and you're doing a great key. Thank you so much. Thanks thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the

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