[Music] Hey fellow G fellow G&T teers. Those of us who like our spirituality with the twist. No editing. No editing. That's it. Came out the way it came out. Um so we're in this like we're doing a very gin tantra kind of thing. We like to do these little series and we're trying to do one where we're talking about elements of cult psychology. It's I get a little bit meta on this because a couple of months ago, Daniel and I were just looking at the state of the world and we were like, you know, what how to talk about this. You know, we're not a political podcast. We don't do news of the week. And but there was so much going on and we kind of decided in the end that the idea was well, let's talk about this from an angle where we can all learn together, us learning and you all learning. And it seemed like the inroad for us was to go, okay, maybe the through line through all of this is sort of like cult cultishness, cult psychology. And that could be partially again like the political situation in America, but just all over the place, this explosion of sort of like uh this haze and malaise of like cultiness. So anyways, that was sort of how we got to that. Daniel, I know. You got anything else you want to say about that? It's interesting that we came to that idea, you know? Yeah. tribalism group think isolation you know if we want to use a co term pods you know uh isolation isolate isolative intellectual pods and and I use intellectual loosely so that's uh that's where we are but what what do we have on tap for today my friend yeah so today we've been trying to do we we have been trying we have been doing uh first a little bit where we talked about social psychology as kind of educational tool to snap ourselves out of this of hopefully and then we're getting to like a really one of the one of the really great sociologists one Emil Durkheim and we did our first episode on him last time kind of give some of the basic ideas around this notion of cultishness but maybe just a sort of a description of human nature and from a psychosspiritual point of view maybe things that we all could work on in ourselves even outside of cultiness. So we had done social facts, how we all live within the domain of the social facts of the system that we're in that try to limit our freedoms and push us to be certain ways. And then we talked a little bit about um uh this notion of his different kinds of groups and that's kind of a really important one which is this notion of what he calls mechanical groups. The whole gist of if you're in a community like that, and this is really gets to the the point about the cult part, is these are people where the social facts will try to drive people to be more and more similar to one another. There's less diversity of opinion. There's very then very strong codes of how you're supposed to behave. If you step out of the behavior punishment, probably punishment that will be public that sends the message of like don't violate these rules and codes. And that's kind of the mechanical part. And the other one was sort of the organic one. And these are groups where there's more diversity and less cohesion then. So the ups and the downs of this I guess for Durkheim would be when you get to these mechanical groups, people are more the same. They're more likely to follow similar kind of patterns and thoughts and codes and behaviors. And so they coalesce more. And that's what the cult tries to do to make people coalesce. And then the more organic group thing that he's talking about, there's more individual differences. So there's less of this sort of commonality of thought, harder to punish people, probably greater freedom, but in a way like people are less bonded together. And the problem that he's he kind of tries to talk about with this, which is our subject matter of the day, is a thing called anime. Now, Daniel pointed out that this is not anime, which would be Japanese cartoons. Anime, you know, is uh his term for this feeling of kind of like a lack of cohesive social meaning bonding people together that people feel isolated and splintered and sort of without direction. So, we're going to talk about that a lot. And he he covers it actually kind of pretty intensely in this book called suicide where he really tries to talk about what happens to people when there's sort of this lack of this bonding thing together. Either one of you got any initial thoughts of this before we start diving into it. No, keep going. You should. You should too, Ryan. Um um yeah I mean it's I don't want to take away from the conversation but it's just when we look at the um mechanical and organic you know it's like when to contextualize this right um when Durkheim was thinking about this he was thinking all right well I'm thinking about how societies go from you know smaller traditional societies to more modern societies right and then so he was he was actually thinking about this as kind of societal society's change and he was looking at it from a a perspective of concern because he was looking at the society he was living in, right? Um and seeing things starting to fragment, right? Um so contextualizing sort of he's doing a bit of critique of his own society here. Um now there certainly are problems which we discussed last like frag fragmentation. Right. Right. Right. Right. Um there's problems with this notion of looking, you know, certainly going from, you know, what we call like an evolution of society thing. We hit upon that last week and we're not going to go into it because you can use some of these ideas, some of these ideas are still pretty valuable and used in anthropology and and sociology, but it's just kind of contextualizing how he's thinking about this. Yeah. Yeah, I think for us, we talked about last week. I think the big thing, but what we're trying to do with this is just say, yeah, you have like if we peel it away maybe from like the details of his particular context, right? There's still a power in the ideas, right? Yeah. There's still they're still applicable, you know, because because he's I mean he's the critique I mean effectively it's a critique of organic of the organic societies, right? He's looking at this what's happening in the time frame which he's living which is you know like you knowund and some years ago, right? Um and those that that degree of fragmentation is obviously still happening today and I think that's kind of where we're going to put the focus, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the thing is well first of all you know he gets into this thing which I think matters to all of us as clinicians you know so he writes this book about suicide right bold title for a thing. And part of the point he makes in that is that you know we tend to think of those things as like something like that as being an individual act. And I think a lot of times it happens in our culture too. You know, if someone is depressed or even to the point where they might have suicidal thoughts or tragically even act on them, you tend to frame that as an individual thing, right? Sometimes we'll even frame that as like a neurobiological thing or something and we'll try to conceptual contextualize it that way. So for us as clinicians, this sort of matters, right? But what happens uh that he tries to point out is that the rates of this are always like statistically changing. So if it was just a question of individual pathology, you wouldn't see these statistical ups and downs with it in a way. You have to also see this maybe not exclusively but in many ways then as like a social phenomenon and it's not independent of time or what's happening around people. So it's you know uh it's kind of that social fact thing again right in the context of our lives you know there was that big flipperoo like in the as and this is something not the as the teens right this is a big thing for you know Daniel since we've been doing this where there was that massive surge of depression and self harm and suicide rates especially amongst like younger girls right that just surged up right as a social media thing kind of exploded which is definitely in Daniel's wheelhouse right you've been talking about that forever Daniel Right. Yeah. So this whole thing of this and so then you know that fits into the durkheime I guess you'd say understanding these things aren't like personal events. They're things that are uh tied into what's happening in the social thing around people. So he's making that argument right. Yeah. I mean that's Durkheim like classic example of Durkheim is he's always focused on society right. He's always looking at the social the social role in um affecting the individual, right? Not so he's not as concerned about the individual affecting society. He's more concerned about society affecting the individual or the effect of society on the individual. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So then he gets to the point of like and I I saw this as being relevant to our overall cult conversation and we'll see where this goes, right? in the sense that he kind of has these like you know this idea of these different kinds of organ organization of groups right the one that are more like commonality you do more of that thing of like pulling everybody together and the upside of a group like that is that they have a lot of these shared ideas that they're going to have on top of one another. We can look at downsides too and I think it's fair to do that. You know, I grew up in what would probably be more like a mechanistic part of the United States, right? And I can look at the ups and downs of that because if you were sticking out at all from where I came from, you're going to get beaten down. So, we can look at it, right? We did that a little bit last time, but you know there is a way in which there's kind of like an integration of uh people into a community and so you have less a somewhat less of this anime. So people feel more uh entwined and this is something that like the cult can kind of do. It can make you feel like there's this sort of shared mission statement going on, right? So he has like this kind of distinction between like you know uh feeling more integrated into the community around you or feeling more like egoistically isolated. And then for him you know this big question of this word anime then is you know are people have they lost their sense of meaning and then what do people do once they've lost their sense of collective meaning? They're they're kind of like thrown into the wind or something like that. Yeah. So Eric, like I think if I understand sort of your description here, which which I do, um is is um you know, you're looking at, you know, how integrated someone is in to society. Another way of viewing that is like how supported are they feeling you know in society you know um how integrated but how supported like how you know do they feel like they're fitting well into society or do they feel disenchanted in society and that society doesn't really like them or support them right um what happens I think um you from from my readers with this is the less people have that connection the less support they feel right the more isolated they feel um the more likely they are you know they they can commit suicide right or have other you know psycho emotional pathologies right and we certainly you've touched upon this with the explosion of social media and like body dysmorphia and women you know these are we can go through and name a number of these yeah the way I was thinking about it in part is this idea like if you get people into this anom thing if people feel lost then one of the things that can actually happen is you go culty Mhm. Because it pushes you into something where you'll begin to feel like you're part of some collective thing. It's a way of overcoming the anime, right? Yes. Anime. And you can feel then sort of this integration into this, you know, collective group. And at this point, I guess I'm using it not to describe like a whole society, but like subcultures or subgroups within the society. So, you put yourself into this thing really to get over feeling sort of like I mean, in a certain sense like existentially lost or something. He emphasizes a lot this feeling of like collective support but also like collective meaning, right? So I don't know even in like a more diverse group could you not feel supported? I suppose that you could, right? But you lose like I think from his point of view like almost this this feeling of like collective meaning. And what do people do when you feel like you've lost collective meaning? Maybe you just start groping around for things to fill in those spaces, right? Yeah. This kind of comes back to the identity idea, right? um you know when your identity is is weaker or vulnerable right then you become susceptible um to groups which have give you a stronger sense of identity right um that very much connects with this notion of cult right yeah yeah and there's no doubt like on some level it's been interesting for us of all as clinicians to be looking at this too you know like how often it's been sort of this building story if we look at the thing in the United States of like this anime thing, right? And eventually people feeling this lostness and unconnected with. When I was going through this in my mind, I started thinking about when I first heard about like this suicide belt throughout the American Northwest, you know, where it's kind of this thing of like a uh typically like white men in their 30s to 40s to 50s who were just killing themselves in these kind of really strikingly high numbers. It's another example of like people just feeling lost, right? And I I kind of wonder if like, you know, you know, in that sort of lack of lack of support, lack of u you know, integrated feeling that he's getting to in this like anime thing that then again people will be kind of like trying to like find their ways out of this. And I don't know how much of this wound up being people who would eventually gravitate towards some of the culty things that are going on politically, but you know, it sort of makes you wonder, right? I mean I think if we like step back right and look about look at how you know United States has changed you know um you know we see you know more diversity certainly more diversity in ideas but more diversity where people can can be and what they can believe um but that also because of like that diversity you have people who sort of like well it's almost too confusing for me like you know it's like where do I fit in in this right um And I think that can also cause all this social change over the past what 50 years right um can leave people in a place where they have questions about their you know whether it's their gender identity or their religion or whatever it happens to be you know it puts them in a place of questioning um think that makes sense um you know uh Daniel Eric I feel like this I mean this issue is of isolation is one that has been growing as t as as the number of individuals grow in as a population in general and as people become more and more isolated. So on one sense you have the rise of like smartphones, social media, more isolation, isolation from human contact but also increased contact with virtual people. So real people but just virtual to you. So this sort of skewed the way in which that we see ourselves fitting in society right as a whole. Normally your society would be your household, maybe your school, your church, and then people within a general vicinity. But now your society, yes, is those things, but then it's also the greater, right? It's everybody who's on these platforms, you know, and whoever the algorithm puts in front of you. And then that was then uh exponentially skewed during COVID because then now you had the reduction of the face uh interface of persontoperson interaction for a number of years really to where people then went more into these kind of like virtual sort of spaces and it skewed this sense of isolation. But this is a this is that is the kind of like apex of the problem. If we go back and because this is jin and tandra spirituality with a twist this is inevitably a spiritual problem and this is the this is the three-dimensional version of how it looks like when people have no sort of a like we're using the term identity but when they don't have the sense of interconnectivity between themselves and other beings. And so what I mean by this, we've talked about this many times over the p over the years that we've been doing this podcast, but for you know our audience, which is reminder 80% new every time. um that when you don't have a direct experience or desire to see beyond the limitations of yourself and you view yourself as an isolated being just being an individual being what I mean by that is that you believe yourself to only be made of generally material and then maybe whether you believe in a soul or you don't have a soul it doesn't matter you believe that's you period and you're going to exist in whatever way that that you are right now for eternity if you have that view well then you're never going to be able to have deep connection with other not never it's going to be harder for you to have deep connection with other people because you feel yourself to be different I am Daniel therefore I am not Eric and I am not Ryan now for the sake of this conversation and in the three dimension yes that is true but if things are not really separate on their foundational level and I have experience or at least a desire to know if that is true or not true meaning is the separation between me and Ryan or me and Eric or me and the listener whoever you are right now um if if we are if there's a possibility that we share something whatever that something is I don't know but if there is a possibility that that's true then I have taken it upon myself as Eric has and as Ryan has and as many other people have throughout the centuries to find out if that is true or not and that seed of investigation does lead people to to answer that question for themselves. And if they find that yes, there are connections between me and other human beings, then it makes it much a much harder for me to harm other people. And B, more importantly, it makes it much more difficult for me to feel truly isolated for long periods. Truly isolated for a long enough period that I can actually get depressed. and a long enough period that I can get depressed, stay depressed, and think about removing quote unquote my life because I believe that myself to be independent from other people. However, if I know that that's not the case, or if I feel myself, like you said, Eric, uh, integrated in society or supported by society, but but maybe there are not other people who are quote unquote supporting you, but you know that you have a a soul or whatever that is connected with other people. it deeply know this. Well, then you know that harming yourself is the same as harming somebody else. You're still committing murder. It's just on you. And so you don't want to you don't feel like that's a consequence, but there is consequences for that. So yes, on the on the in the realistic kind of like modern problem. This is a version of looking at this in uh from a societal perspective. But as we've said before, society is a collection of individuals and those individual identities make up society's mind as a whole. And so for me, I I'm wanting to kind of like not reenter but re uh enliven the aspect of our of our mission to remind people that the inquiry on self will illuminate many of the answers to the questions that we're asking from an outside to an inside perspective, from a societal perspective to an individualistic perspective. It's like kind of like in the in the Buddha world like there's this funny little phrase where they say like if you if you harm yourself, if you take your own life, you're killing a Buddha, that Buddha is you. You're that Buddha who you're killing, right? They frame it that way. The thing that's interesting about what you're talking about in that Daniel to how I've been thinking about this is I've been trying to going like okay that there's two different sets of issues here like in the the diversity organic situation people can feel kind of isolated and kind of lost right if you have a a an existential mindset that on some level what you're pointing out says that that feeling of being isolated and lost is somewhat illusury right I am actually connected to other people, then you have sort of a little bit of an existential cure for that, right? You and now that might actually be metaphysically true too for our podcast, Jin and Tantra, spirituality with um we're going to say that that's an illusion. We are actually connected, right? That's a major principle of like Buddhist tantra, tantra overall, uh Zen, Dowoism, and all of these great things. You know, there's an illusurary quality to this not being interconnected to the things around you. And actually, if you sit and you meditate on a daily basis about your interconnectivity, you start to feel that. Yeah. You're also given something that is an anom cure in the sense that like I'll I not only will I make you feel connected to other people, I'll give you an overarching existential meaning. As you improve yourself, you're also pulling up everyone else in the collective, too. Why? Well, we're all interconnected. How could that not be the case, right? all the boats can rise, right? But not in some [...] trickle down economic way. But in a way of like, no, this is because we're interconnected. And that's that's a powerful thing. And that's an N anom killer in a way, right? It kind of gets you over that. But I think in the Durkheim world, if you're trying to figure out like what's happening around us, it would be if you get a bunch of people who feel lost in that organic diversity, unconnected, loss of existential shared purpose and so on, right? Well, what are they supposed to do for themselves? If you have a great thing coming in, spiritual teachings are like this, right? They can make you feel connected, but if you don't have connection to that either, then what do you do? And maybe what you do is you start to gravitate towards well I'll start to get into some kind of little what we're kind of talking about some more culty group that will solve that problem for me right yeah and then almost I don't know what you all think about this but almost by definition I would see especially in things like tantra zen dowoism you have to have more of that organic vibe on some level because there has to be freedom and diversity in order to have this now maybe if you're in some monastery out in the mountains of you know China or Japan an or or Tibet. Okay, maybe you do get you're going to get a mechanistic thing, right? But for us as practicing this in the west, right? We're going to be live like I think we're we're more tantricas and less monastics. We want to live independent free spirited lives. That's certainly what we're trying to do here, right? And then on some level, you know, that more like, well, let's beat everybody to be the same and we'll get this marulti solution isn't going to work in a tantric or zen or dowist framework. How's that for some [...] to talk about? Yeah, I mean I you know it's you you bring up a couple of really interesting ideas both of you did and it got me thinking about that process of when because there's an opportunity here when one feels isolated from society. That's actually an opportunity and it could go a couple different ways, right? Um you don't feel like you necessarily belong in society. You don't maybe share the beliefs, right? And that is an opportunity to go within self, right? Um, and that requires, you know, um, hearkening back to one of our earlier discussions on on LAA, but that provides an opportunity to kind of really use reason, right? Um, and and to think about sort of like who you are um, and you know, the nature of reality, right? That's an opportunity. Um, and which is is kind of frightening to do that. You know, requires a pretty bold, courageous move, right? Um and once you do that, yeah, then you can find um you know, a higher state of beings and you will feel a higher state of being rather and you can you can absolutely feel more connected and more open to people. Conversely, you could get to that point of isolation um and and feeling kind of disconnected from society and unsupported from society and then you could like feel like you're falling in a hole and you could desperately want to to just, you know, kind of climb out of that and find something to kind of hold on to, right? Um, so I think there's and I think that's what happens, you know, whether you're being recorded recruited by a terrorist organiz organization or um again that's another interesting definition of what that is. Um, but uh terrorists, right? You know, it's it's so it's a it's that's that's a whole another discussion on what that definition actually means. um even sociologically, historically, but um but you know, you you become vulnerable to these groups who whether evangelical groups, you know, fundamentalist groups of any type, right? Um they provide a strong identity which you can latch on to and it will be at the sacrifice you'll be sacrificing your own, you know, actualization in doing that, right? Um so it is it's kind of an interesting little kind of uh treat, you know, uh where you can go different ways. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think it helps to make some sense of like where you see things unfolding. I think like think of Durkheim as props. It gives you some almost interpretive or like semi-predictive tool around this, right? You know, if people start feeling kind of lost, well, maybe what you'll start to see is cultiness because it's a way of like getting people over that anime, right? Okay, now I'm in this thing. I'm listening to this book uh cults like us as my little research project for our little podcast and it's so funny to like just think back even Trump 1.0 0 or something, right? Because there was that whole you don't even talk about it anymore. There was [...] QAnon like that was a thing at some point, right? And why did that even happen? Well, maybe like in this way of thinking, people felt lost and then you get into this little weird like you were talking about Daniel, online spaces where you get to feel some kind of mechanistic solidarity, social cohesion with other people. Okay, now I feel connected. Even if it's totally [...] wackadoodle, I'm in this space. we can all share a certain like vision of the world, right? I think it's probably like, you know, there's a culty hierarchical aspect to that, right? Whoever these people were who started that, right? And you know, there's certain kind of pressures within the group to all get into the group think of it. But it's a way of trying to overcome this problem, right? Yeah. It's also providing a a description for or an answer for the questions that seem larger than someone's ability to understand from their uh perspective, from their little bunker, you know? It's like all this [...] doesn't make any sense. But now we get these unified theories of the deep state and you know what I don't know whatever whatever I I don't remember what they no one [...] talks about that anymore. It's just gone. That was like a huge thing. Now they're in government. So, you know, you can't blame the deep state when it's you, right? You lose that. That's right. Yeah. You can't blame any Now you got to blame somebody else. Point those fingers back at me. Yeah, that's right. That's right. But I mean, it does give like the other part of the cultiness, which is like the ideological backbone to things, right? All of a sudden now I'm in a shared ideology and I'm not stuck in some wandering anime thing, right? Well, if you're alone, you're going to look for community. And if your individual identity is weakened, then the identity of that community is going to take over yours or you're going to let like Ryan said, you're going to lend yours out to them. And most of the time, these communities that are actively looking to absorb new members are toxic. That's a cult. It's a toxic community that's just, you know, sucking people in. And unfortunately, they're not sucking people off. So people stay angry. You know what I'm saying? Like frustrated. Yeah. Yeah. Frustrated. If these were like orgy cults, you know what I'm saying? Then uh things might be a lot more chill. But uh they're not. That's like the bonobo thing. If we do our sex at dawn thing, the bonobos all get off with each other and then everything calms down. And for those who are listening, knows those are monkeys, not the DJ. There's a DJ bonobo. But these are Oh, is there Well, I don't I don't want I don't want to yuck his whatever he wants to do, too. But these monkeys are like that. Yes. Yeah. And so I don't know. What do you think y'all? Is it kind of like uh I'm always like because I'm a psych person, I'm always looking for a little bit of personality tendencies. So, you know, do you think there's like a like a personality tendency to want to head towards those more like, let's call it mechanical structures to kind of find your meaning versus like, okay, I'd rather live in a space where there's more freedom and the the mechanical thing would feel toxic to me. I mean, I grew up in like, we'll get personal on it because it's Jinandra. I grew up in this space that was very much like you'd say a mechanistic Durkheimian space. Lots of like demands for commonality. If you stood out at all, you're probably gonna be labeled gay, you know. And that standing out at all would just mean like you had, you know, like like socks that weren't straight enough. Socks that weren't sis straight enough and you'd have to fight. Yeah. Over the color of your socks. Yeah. That's totally gay, by the way. Yeah. Just as a cue about socks being a total way to figure out who's gay around you. Just like pull up the pant leg and check out the socks. Yeah. I like literally that's what it was. And I've talked with other people about this, you know, and it is like Trump's America. I'll be honest. I grew up in those spaces. And uh and I've talked with other people about it and they're like, "Yeah, yeah, you know, I you know, my boyfriend grew up in that kind of space and uh if you stood out at all, you're gay. You're going to spend every day of your life fighting. That's it. It's going to be just like a constant thing." Gen X yourself. That was like growing up in like, you know, the 80s and 90s. Like that was a thing, right? I think it still goes on now. I've talked to Jenzers about this. Oh, really? There's still like this intense like homophobia deal like, you know, if you get in the right community, but it fits into the Durkheimian thing. If you stand out in some way, people aren't comfortable with that. That, you know, in those mechanistic things, they don't like it. And there's going to be some kind of public shaming and punishing, right? Like the in the hip-hop culture, you know, there's for a long time it was, you know, you would say something to a dude, then you'd have to say no homo afterwards. Oh, really? Yeah. You like, "Oh, I like those shoes. No homo." Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a thing. You know what I mean? But then, but then it actually got far out because then you're like, "Oh, bro, nice ass. No homo." And you're like, "Wait, wait, what? Hold on. Hey, bro. You want to make out? No homo." I don't think I don't think that covers that. No, but I'm saying But that's eventually I think that's what the dude one dude be saying to the other like, "Wait a minute. I don't Hold on. Hold on. That phrase doesn't mitigate everything that just came out of the first part of that sentence." Wait, you want a cuddle? No homo. I don't understand that. That's, you know, but like but you could cuddle. It's okay. I I'll cuddle with you. But to your point, that's it's it the fact that you that the fact that that has to be acknowledged is a clear delineation that this is unacceptable in this scenario and I have to make an overclaim that I am within the boundaries of whatever it is that is acceptable. Yeah. And I think in the Durkheim thing and I'm like moving this like we're still same subject matter but it's something I did write down in the notes which was that in these more like mechanistic groups right there's a lot of like shame and guilt stuff going on. And so he kind of ties in suicide in the most dramatic form but probably depression anxiety and mental illness being the drivers of that for clinicians. Right. Yeah. To like the kind of shame and guilt things that are felt within those communities. Right. Because if you stick out in some ways, I think I think his understanding would be eventually you're going to feel all of those feelings of shame, guilt, or if you do something that is going to elicit a lot of punishment from the group, you internalize that as shame and guilt against yourself, right? Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because kind of the way we're looking at this, we see a vulnerability with the with organic societies, right? And that being there's like there's kind of you know the the society is the more organic from this perspective it becomes um the more elusive identity can be right um and the problem when you look at more mech mechanic mechanic mechanic what is it mechanical mechanical mechanistic yeah um when you look at those these are like smaller societies right with more stronger social uh bonds and forces which um theoretically decrease individual freedom of choice, right? Um which truthfully as an anthropologist that's there's it's much far more varied than that, you know. So you actually like freedom is highly valued in a lot of indigenous societies. Like if we look at even Native American societies and the old ethnographies written about those um we see that actually freedom is one of the highest values, right? Um so kind of that's not to say that I'm just saying there's a lot of variation even within those. Maybe that makes them not mechanistic in the Durkheim sense, right? Because there's less pressure on people to be conformist. The minute you start saying we're going to let people be free, you're already pushing in another I this is almost like yin-yang kind of [...] at some way on a continuum, right? Eventually you're allowing you're saying okay well we're going to allow individual difference and then you're out you're already moving on some continuum away from that, right? Does that make sense to you? Yeah. Yeah, I mean I I think it's there's there's some limitations within his design, you know, because it doesn't account for the level of diversity. I think it's useful to look at societies that meet those qualifications and those categories um where like you have societies which you know they're very they they reinforce these you know shame and guilt and you can't break these rules um you know just you know my personal interactions um with people who are close to me it's like have either of you heard the term generation and a half? No. No. So gener generation a half means someone who whose parents were born in another country but they were born here, right? Um and so they are in this situation, right? Where they um are kind of the intermediary uh the mediator mediator uh between like their parents and their family and the rest of society. Um, and what happens with these people, right, is that they um they they don't feel like they're enough for the the society that they came from and they don't feel like they fit in the new society either. Um, that's me, Brian. What's that? That's me. This is me. You're just I I thought it might be, but it's also also, you know, my uh my spouse, too, right? So, um and so yeah, this is And so you this the rates for these people, right? um uh is rates of suicide is actually fairly high, right? Because there's a lot of isolation um among them. You know, this is kind of classic, I guess, from that organic perspective, right? Um and so they're like, "Okay, well, I don't really fit in either one of these places. Awesome. Thank you." Right? Um and but that's an opportunity, right? I think that's also an opportunity to kind of go within. Um it's also an opportunity to like end up, you know, in some sort of cult. I guess like the thing with that might be is if I move from another part of the world and I move into an American mechanistic society, I might not find any spot there to fit. Like I would be the perpetual outsider. I don't work there. But you know, maybe if I'm in a more organic space, just using his terms, right? Well, if I'm different and you're different and this other person's different, well, then we can all get along in our differences and maybe that person might feel even more connected. You buy that? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you find a group of people who feel like they don't they don't really fit very well, they can form their own community. That's kind of us. I mean, like I guess I'm really struck by the fact that I grew up in a very kind of conservative mechanistic kind of hostile space. Like that was really clear. My best friend growing up was a guy who was Greek. He was very I can't remember if we talked about this on this podcast a lot before. Maybe we did years ago, but he was just a very darkerkinned guy. you know, even amongst Greek guys, he was just, you know, had a really kind of darker complexion. He looked, you know, you really couldn't tell where he was from to be honest. You know, really dark hair, really dark skin and Greek, so Turkish Greek, something like that. Okay. Probably historically. And like we were in fights like all the time. I mean, he was my my my bro. I was never going to be like, you know, you know, we were tight, right? And there were episodes where we would just, you know, we weren't going to it was a mechanistic place. Yeah. we weren't going to fit into that thing. We had like wild scenes. I remember we were one time on the rough streets of Oak Forest, Illinois, which actually happened to be Oakland Avenue, just by Kinky Dink. And uh somehow we ended up picking this like got into a tossle with these kids on the street and then this it was like Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know, where they're running from the all the people chasing them in the beginning of that movie, Harrison Ford and his guy and there's all the people, right? That was us. Me and my buddy were running like a mile and this mob chasing us, howling and y I was like, "What the fuck?" And we finally got to my my parents house. I This is a weird story to share in a thing, but what the hell? We do that on this podcast. We finally made it to my house. probably if they wanted to catch us and like they probably could have but they just enjoyed the chase and we got to the house and we ran inside and it was all these kids like if you remember the old 70s movies the warriors have you all seen that movie? Yeah. It was like warriors come out and play. All these kids were out in the yard all like just like there like 20 [...] kids out in the yard and my friend Dino ran upstairs, grabbed a knife like a big long and he was standing on the porch like waving at that at them like a lunatic and they were all taunting and that's the story of my life right there. And it was ironic because it really wasn't that dangerous because eventually my mom was like, "What's going on?" And she went on the porch and she just went, "Billy camper, I know your mom and I know your mom. You all have to go home now." And they were like and they all went and they all like slumped home. But that's I don't know. That's what it's like to live in those places. There's a tale for y'all, you know? So, I don't know. I like obviously I have a hostility towards those places. Yeah. Uh so uh full disclosure but you know I think it's also like the funny part about about uh you know I mean what happens to people under these these situations like okay if I go back to the shame and guilt thing let me throw it to you all back clinically you know if you're in a thing where there's demand for the conformity then you then you really can very easily find yourself in the situation where oh I broke one of these rules within this community And now I internalize all this shame and guilt upon myself. I that's very true, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it can be. I mean, I think especially growing up, you know, this is like that's how you, you know, a lot of cultures how you control children like fear, guilt, shame, right? Um, and that, you know, if you don't break out of that, you're going to be stuck in that the rest of your life. I mean, that's Judeo-Christianity right there. That's forget children, that's people. That's that's that's how they control society is via shame and guilt. That's that those are the mechanisms because those are the ones that that you will do on your own. Do that to yourself, right? You do that to yourself. So they just plant the seeds in there and then you flog yourself. No one has to tell you. You know what I mean? You run up against that within your own internal ethos or misguided ethos. Well, I mean, think that's kind of like Durkheim's point, right? Once you get into one of these things, it has a natural consequence to kind of go in these directions, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, I guess like uh you know, as we get to the end of this whole thing, there was you know then two big ideas in terms of psychological damage. One comes from the mechanistic side, one comes from sort of more the anomic side where you kind of isolate don't share values. Uh the the other thing that came up as I was looking at this I thought was interesting just to throw out to you all to get your opinion is sometimes and again it's framed it's complicated and mixed but sometimes in these situations where there is more of that shared social value system in a lot of those kinds of places there's a different way of interpreting your world that can sometimes minimize feeling bad about yourself too. So, I was listening to somebody talk about this. I'll throw the theory out to y'all. You can tell me what you think. But the guy was making the point that like if you get to a lot of times more uh this these communities that might be more mechanistic might be more reli in a shared religious sense like an occult sense, right? Of course, I can violate the things and feel shame and guilt. But on the other hand, if stuff doesn't turn out for me, I have sort of builtin sort of religious philosophical mechanisms to explain that somehow. right? Where I can say, well, you know, God is leading me along this path and therefore even though maybe things didn't work out so well for me, this is not so bad and then I get less depressed actually, right? Because I don't have to carry this blame upon myself or I can, you know, I can put blames on other spots, right? And this minimizes in a certain sense the kind of psychological damage that can happen. Uh, but once you get in these other spaces where it's much more individualistic, then you carry much more burden upon yourself. So, I know I thought it was an interesting idea. I thought I'd throw it out to y'all as we get towards the tail end of this conversation. Buy it, don't buy it. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, you can look at, you know, the book of Job as like a kind of a classic example, right? Yeah. We've done we've done podcasts on on that. You have? Okay. Yeah. Don't feel free to talk about, but we talked about it. It's true. I won't be I won't be redundant about it then. So, uh, it's still relevant. Yeah, it's still relevant. Yeah, it's relevant for sure. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess it's like that's a different way of kind of like framing how this can play itself out, right? And I guess as you get to the end of it, then you know, you start talking about like, I don't know, the ups and downs of these situations, then I mean, there's some fundamental question of like freedom versus whatever the other word is that you would contrast this with. I know there Dallas minded folks. What's on the other side of that continuum? The other side of freedom. Well, if there's more freedom in the organic setting, right? You're able to be more free because there's less being imposed. And on the other side of this, maybe there's a greater sense of like repression social cohesion thing, right? Yeah. Constraint. But you're more constrained, right? Yeah. So what do you think about that in terms of like our mission statement is we're trying to describe okay if we're living in America it's kind of anomic right there's a lot of this enome right how are people responding to this right it seems like part of what's happening is people are cultting out right getting into these little subcults to kind of fix these problems right um but you know we're also trying to help people out on an individual level like Daniel was talking about right ultimately these are individual spiritual questions. So I mean what do you think di I'm trying to get to something. What do you think diagnostically? I suppose if you get people who are in the mechanistic space and you want to help them spiritually free themselves. Do you think we kind of have talked about this in different ways but do you think they ultimately have to break out of that to get a kind of a spiritual freedom? So I I think about this in a couple different ways. I mean, I I think I don't know if we've talked about this yet, but I I think I mentioned it to to you, Eric, um about sort of there's there's how there's cults which, you know, are pretty malevolent, right? I mean, they are destructive um you know, for society and the individual and there's there's cults which are not as as you know, they they don't do horrible things, right? Um so I think there is there's a certain legitimacy. Ryan, could you give me an example of what what what are do you have like in your mind examples? You have death cults, right, for one, right? You know, that's the malevant ones, but what are the ones that are the better ones? Yeah. Well, you could look at, you know, like certain types of religions, right? You know, there's a kind of a fine line between religion and cult as we've discussed before. Um, you know, you know, there's, you know, you could even look like shakers and smaller religious groups, you know, which which are not we don't nearly nearly think of them as evil, right? You know, um, and maybe have like more of a a more of an ideal of freedom. So you could have that within a community, right? Um and and in a religion, um a cult which isn't necessarily like, you know, focused on harm, right? So I think I guess what I wanted to get to is that you can have a group, you know, that you grow up in a more a mechanistic group and it actually creates a solid identity, a firm identity, right? Um and that actually kind of cements the sense of self and the sense of identity, right? which then allows you because you already have a pretty strong sense of identity to explore from that that place, right? To kind of know now I'm going to question this, but I'm coming at it from a place where I actually had a concrete sense of self and now I'm going to question that in perhaps a little little better psychological space. I'm just going to throw that out as an idea, right? Um whereas if you're growing up in a society where you know the identity is put in question um right off the bat, right? your identity is a little shaky. Um, so I do think it is important to have a foundation in which to ask good questions from. Uh, I suppose I suppose I got to the end like thank you too for having the conversation. And I always kind of feel like I get someplace new at the end of our talks. Y and I think for me I went okay well you know as a clinician I tend to think as a diagnostician right and I'm like well if I'm getting to a problem like what you were talking about earlier Daniel if the problem is like anime then I have to find some kind of underlying you know uh uh you know spiritual worldview that like overcomes that anime. I'm going to need to get some kind of sense of like existential meaning, some kind of sense of overarching purpose to my life and that's my way of overcoming my problem. If I'm stuck in a isolated Durkheimian organic situation, I feel that enome well I have a I have a path out of that. My path out of that can be I can like I can get into something that could give the kind of deeper meaning that you were kind of talking about earlier Daniel and that's part of a solution, right? And maybe in another way, if I'm trying to like become a tantrica or a Zen person, I'm in this mechanistic thing. Well, then maybe part of what I have to do is be able to transcend that group, be able to give up aspects of those those aspects of identity and find a newer version of myself that transcends just the limitations of that group. I guess that's how I would think about it. Does that make sense to you all? Yeah. I mean, well, it's an antidote for isolation. How do you two different classes of patients maybe, right? Some people might be coming from some mechanistic place and the diagnosis for that person or the cure might be we got to get you out of this mechanistic thing so you can free yourself out of this. Lose the shame, lose the guilt, lose the feelings of limitation, lose the feelings of restriction. We'll help you get out of that. Right? That might have been a little bit what we had when we had the episode with people breaking out of like the Jehovah's Witnesses or something. I have to get out of this thing to free myself, right? And then on the organic side, on the organic side, I have to be able to find some something that fills that an uh anomy space. I have to get into a like a belief system that fills an existential void, makes me get over my sense of like isolation and lack of connection in a much more meaningful way without collapsing into something that would be culty, you know, not trying to solve that by going mechanistic, but trying to solve that by continuing to work on myself as an individual free individual spiritually progression like what you were talking about, Daniel. I think that's the space I would get to at the end of the conversation for me. Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, I think that's actually pretty well summed up and I think I mean it's it's hard to say you know what's more difficult but I think you know in these um more organic societies yeah I mean that's tough right to to find that right um to find that place like oh this this does resonate with me at a core level like this is true at a very deep level right I know this is is true and I've had to search for it right that's kind of the process you have to go through um for something like that rather than being like, okay, I'm just going to kind of agree and go along with this group because I kind of like this person. Um, and you know, I I'm I'm accepted in this group, right? Um, I think in the organic, you know, that's like, okay, that's kind of that's kind of the options, right? Um, maybe because I like grew up being chased down the street, you know, I I felt like getting out of these mechanical spots were more difficult. Yeah. No, I think it might be individual experience, right? Then you get individual differences in patients, right? What you have to keep in mind that like people have to recognize the situations that they're in to even be able to have these kind of conversations. So if you don't realize that you're in a mechanistic kind of uh society as in if you stick out there's negative consequences for that. There are only negative consequences for that versus an organic one which is far more loose and you have to kind of find your way that like if you don't know that you're in one or the other then the looking searching for the antidote of your for your ALS that will make you and you're probably going to feel similar in each way out of place. you know, one you don't fit in. The other one there's nowhere for you to fit. And so, how do you, you know, you might be looking for a solution for a problem that you might have misdiagnosed and that might just be the solution for the other side of the coin? Do you know what I'm saying? So it's a matter of I think having the conversation with yourself and then or and or with other people who are not isolated with you to give you some perspective so that you can kind of go okay where am I? So like as Eric is talking about us being clinicians or practitioners. Yes. Because we see patients. And so part of our job is to be removed from people's stories in order to help see what it is that they are presenting with a different lens and then provide that feedback to that person just not to change their mind just to give them hey did you ever think about it this way because I'm not related. Did you notice this pattern or did you see this kind of thing because we have a different you know worldview a different sort of education background it's helping us but for people who are listening to this podcast like the idea of identifying the place from which you are coming from is the beginning stage to help finding the antidote for what what your ails are in whichever situation that you're in. Yeah. I love that we got to this spot at the end of this whole thing because it feels like this is like a we sometimes you know we talk about this idea like in the Tibetan Buddhist culture or tantra culture you talk in the courtyard so you feel comfortable with the ideas in the end and this ending really speaks to me personally so thank you too. It's like, okay, you know, part of trying to be enlightened, if we want to use the big word, is you want to be able to like not only help yourself, but help others, right? Right. And there's something powerful of realizing, oh, wait a minute. I came from this kind of Durkheimian thing. That's what I'm trying to deal with, or I came from the other side. And it becomes sort of a little bit of a diagnostic tool for oneself. But in helping others, you're realizing like, oh yeah, this is what this kind of person needs as part of their spiritual path, and this is what this other kind of person needs. And I think that's really helpful actually. I think that's well put. This is what we do like you know as as Daniel has mentioned as clinicians is like okay where's this person at? You know what are the questions I need to ask to help them figure out where they are at right um because you know you you know as clinicians you don't you don't really like I don't care I don't think you guys care where a person's at. you just want to find out where they're at, right? And just help them along, right? Um this is this is what this person needs right now, right? Um in order to to solidify um their situation, right? Because if their situation isn't solidified, um then they're not going to be able to to do too much else, right? Um but perhaps, you know, you meet someone else, right? And they're actually a little, you know, they have a little more concretess to their situation now. They have to actually push a little more, right? And as a clinician, like we're we're looking at that. We're like, "Okay, this this is this is where they need to go, right?" Um, and and kind of find that out, especially because we're not, you know, we're not just thinking about fixing the physical. Sometimes we are fixing the physical, but maybe fixing the physical allows them to have that get back to that concrete place, that more solid place in which they can make make a move um to to actualize, right? Um, yeah. I think it's like in the end of all of it like there's this whole thing in like the tantric Buddhists like they have this thing stages of the path and you know part of that is like kind of an outline of how a person progresses and I've been really fascinated as like a western person learning that trying to extract what I think has the the deepest value for us as western jin and tantra spirituality with the twist people and like all the tools that sort of help us go oh that's where this person's at and this is where they can go from there. I find that all really helpful. So, thank you all for this. This was actually like uh quite clarifying for me at the end. I think what I I got to the place where I what seemed important these ideas to me. Thank you. This is all about your growth here. So, we're happy to uh you know Yeah, we're gonna like uh uh yeah, secretly I I this has a different name. This is Jyn and Tantra. Eric Eric's Journey. Yeah. We uh Daniel and I met before. That's my secret in my mind. The real name for it. Yeah. We we we talk we're like how can we help Eric? And actually that's that's most of what we do all week long is like how can we help Eric? You know he has a lot of needs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But uh more importantly we think about how uh we can get our audience to like and subscribe and share our work uh because you know these are conversations that are you know near and dear to our heart and our work and everything else. And so we appreciate everybody tuning in whether you get this audio video or whatever. Uh if you have any, you know, questions, comments, leave a comment in the YouTube or uh on Spotify or wherever the hell you're listening, Apple podcast, whatever it is, uh please feel free if you have any questions, comments, or you want us to cover something in particular or you want to add to the conversation, we'll certainly bring it up uh on the uh on the show if if uh if you'd like, or if we find it particularly intriguing, which we have numerous times in the past, and you can drop that at uh on the Insta at Jyn and the Jin and Tandra podcast or at Jyn antraaggmail.com. As always, we do this because we love it. For Ryan and Eric, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace. [Music]