[Music] Hey fellow G&Reers, those of us like our spirituality with a twist. As you can see, we're joined again this week by uh our anthropologist on call or on retainer. I don't know which one you prefer, Daniel. You like it? Like I maybe you like retainer better. I can't remember. Yeah, it's on retainer for sure. I think I'm on call because I call him. But uh Ryan Davenport, thanks so much for coming back. Brian to chat some more with us. Sure, absolutely. We've been doing things on um cults and uh again, we got this series we're working on and and as we've been saying every episode, this is sort of our way responding to what's happening in the world around us. Um, we were talking a little bit off mic and I wanted to give credit to you, Daniel, and I'll do it in maybe every episode going forward because you really hit on this way of talking about things that are happening now to frame it more within this kind of notion of the psychology of cultness and how it's sort of taking things over and that's been our slant. So, anyways, we got to this uh like in the episodes we're doing, we started talking about uh conformity from the social psych point of view, but then also like what does it mean when people start to descent? So, we had sort of a big conversation about that last week and uh I got a couple of things I wanted to share uh a little bit further about this and Ryan and Daniel were really nice. Thank you too for being willing to talk about these other sort of issues around this for maybe a short but sweet episode on the meaning of descent. So, um all right. What I think what I got going on is just a couple other like one study in particular that was like really striking. Cool if I share it now with y'all? Go right ahead. Sounds good. Okay, this one I think really kind of But before you do that, Eric, make sure uh if you enjoy if you enjoy our material, uh you know, subscribe and share our work. It definitely helps out, you know, in the algorithm and and whatnot. It costs absolutely nothing. Uh we are, you know, funded by ourselves. We do our research. We try to present materials that we think are useful. And you know, as we're dev diving on this series of social psychology, the more people that we can reach, uh, the more that we can kind of help break whatever spell that, uh, we believe that people are in, uh, even ourselves are in a spell. So hopefully we'll break out of this, too, and we'll just be totally free and not even embodied anymore. But until then, ultimate spell of like non-corporality. That's That's right. That's right. Until then, uh, you know, hit the subscribe button. It definitely helps out. Uh, and anyways, thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. Um, all right. I wanted to share, you know, one thing on the power of this, you know, what happens when people descent just from one of these classic social psych things that we didn't get to last week when we were recording. Um, and then also, um, a little bit about the consequences of this, which are pretty interesting, too. And then we can maybe pull it back to our we each have our own spiritual perspectives, and we'll tie it all together in one neat bow at the end. It'll be beautiful. All right. So the big study here, you know, we looked at these things where you sort of people get pressured into giving wrong answers to questions just because of the pressure of like the social conformity idea in the social psych world. And there are some pretty interesting studies that involve just people misidentifying colors. So you show someone a color and it's obviously red and you get other people in the group who are confederates they would say people who are conspiring as part of the study you know part of the project to say that the red thing is orange and you see whether or not people will go along with that and it's like really interesting you know the human response to this once you start introducing this thing of disscent. Okay. So, if you have no pressure at all, you just got somebody just answering, "Is that red or orange?" Of course, people get it right like all the time, like the number of wrong answers is like 0.85% or something. Whatever you would misidentify that, I don't know. But nothing happens there. So, that's one of the things, right? Um, so with no pressure at all. If you put people in a group in this study and you get other people kind of conspiring to give the wrong answer in a weird way, kind of amazing in this one, the number shoots up to 70% of people will give the wrong answer just under the pressure of it. I don't know how that fits into your kind of 33% Daniel that you've been talking about. Maybe there's 30% of the people that resist. You sort of like that number, right? That magic third from Malcolm Gladwell idea from Malcolm Gladwells. the tipping point. So you still get people who will resist, right? But in this one, 70% of the people are willing just to fold and call, you know, orange red or red orange or something like that. But the weird thing that happens is if you show people consent ahead of time, even in another study, so they're doing like two different groups, right? And uh they go into a previous group where someone's just going to disagree, right? and they're going to like uh refuse to go along with this sort of conformity of misidenty. So maybe in that one as opposed to the red and the orange you so blue and people are misidentifying it as green. But if you get a dent there, right, then all of a sudden people start to flip. And it's kind of interesting because we were talking about what kind of descent do you need to sort of break people out of things. And we kind of said, you know, you want it to be consistent and you want it to seem objective and there were all these sort of criteria around this. We talked about a lot last episode, but that was sort of part of it from the social psych point of view. So if you show like inconsistent consent to people, well, they'll they'll um do a little bit better. They'll go to the Daniels uh 33 number, right? Even if there's just they've seen before in a previous study and now you pop them into the new one and everyone is ganged up against them giving the wrong answers, they'll still disagree because they've seen dissent previously is the way this is talked about. And so they'll start disagreeing at more like a 33% rate. But getting to this idea of, you know, consistent descent where they've already been exposed to somebody who's like, "No, I'm not [...] going along with this at all." You know, if you have someone who sort of sometimes agrees and sometimes doesn't, you get 33% once the person gets into the new group. But if they just you have someone in the previous group who's just like, "No, I'm going to consistently give the right answer." Then everything flips and the number of people who are willing to give the wrong answer flops down to 14%. So the numbers get really interesting. The more like you have people being exposed to dissent, they'll start to descent themselves. And especially if that descent is like consistent and there's follow-through on it, then it really is kind of spellbreaking. I don't know what that means for our culture now. But I'm kind of hoping like even if everybody is out there, us on our way with our podcast and then other people doing their own things too, eventually it becomes a thing that will start to snap people out of stuff. Now, you all got any reactions to it? Just out of curiosity. I had a question actually. Um, now when you looked at the study, was there a conclusion on why did they have like a hypothesis or like a discussion on sort of what the researchers thought the reason for these people who were agreeing with the wrong answer was for they discuss that at all or they just said this is the results. Well, they were kind of talking about if you're purposely if you're disagreeing if you're giving the wrong answer because of social pressure, you're doing that because of conformity. Okay. All right. you know the conformity piece and then you had this small group that dissented and then once they dissented then they continued to they basically continued this mistrust right you know going in the future and they be more critical they they idea was that they were exposed to someone else who was also conspiring in the study to give the correct answer not the wrong one and it sort of like snaps the spell okay for the rest of the group well there's only one person who's the subject in the experiment. Okay. Okay. Everybody else is part of the scheme. You know what I mean? Yeah. But then didn't you didn't you say also part of it was like then in the future like it had an effect on them going forward. Yeah. In future groups they would like continue to resist like it carried over like they would resist correctly. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's intriguing. Right. So there's this this action of dissent which seems to like cause like a degree of clarity and critical critical thinking going on in the future, right? Um that then it breaks the spell. Yeah. And it doesn't like it's just you know just the experience around people who are willing to like go no I'm not going to give the wrong answer. Again it's still a setup you know I mean it's one of the people in the group they're all answering wrong and the other person is going to answer right. Yeah. And like I think the other little detail or nuance is if that person who's again part of the experiment, but if they just keep answering right and answering right, it really seems to crack things and even when that person is gone, they're not, you know, the person who was answering right as part of the setup, right? You take that same subject in the experiment, now they're in a new group, they're running solo, everyone's answering wrong. They'll still go, "No, I'm going to answer right." So it seems to carry over into new situations. This is something Daniel and I had talked about before when we were looking at that study from uh the Turkish social scientists where people get a little bit reconditioned almost, right? Yeah. But if you get people that like, okay, we're not going to go along with this, even when that support is there, the the center is gone and they're on their own, they still will resist the group. I don't want to sidetrack this conversation, but just made me think of sort of I think a lot of people think they're dissenting and are actually going along with it. Like they think they're being like uh you know edgy, right? I'm being edgy and I'm going to vote for this crazy bastard, right? Um and uh and but they're not actually dissenting, right? They're going along with with uh you know, whatever their friends are saying, but they they feel edgy. That's not actually true descent because there's not there's no critical thought involved. Yeah. Yeah, I guess in these studies they're trying to get to like, you know, what would you call them? Archetypal simple situations of disscent or something, right? Just to test the thing. But I don't disagree with you. I think it's true. I can remember even thinking that as a teenager. You know, some of the people that you know who are like, I don't know, dressing like they're a roadie for the cure or something like that. If we go back Gen Xy, whatever that would be for other generations. Ryan and I are both Gen X. Daniel's like shaking his head like what the [...] is this? But, you know, you just be like, well, you know, you're just a poser, right? Right. You're not really dissenting. So, yeah, that's a very Gen X term, right? I don't I think the poser, right? That's a very Gen X thing. I don't think I don't think any also nodding along. Yeah, you can still say poser now. Maybe. Uh, but uh, you know, we're not all hip on the Gen Z slang anyway. So, I hear it from my son, but we're not using it. Um, uh, anyways, I think it just says something about the power of it. So, I just wanted to share it because the stats are really striking, right? You know, the person can obviously do the thing. They're going to do it like 99% of the time they're going to do it right. If you pressure them, uh, they'll crack at like, you know, something like a 70% rate. If you show them inconsistent descent beforehand, you know, well, okay, they they do a little bit better. the number goes to 33 and all of a sudden you get people them then being exposed to someone going no I'm not going to go along with this then it really crashes out. So maybe I don't know we were talking earlier Ryan before we were doing even the podcast just about uh are we optimistic or pessimistic about the world and maybe this has a little flavor of optimism. You know what I mean? As long as you have people who are willing to say no that can inspire other people to say no. It's interesting. I'm just I just think about, you know, also this group of people do I can't remember if we talked about this in the last podcast, but you know, you do have this this subgroup of people who like are just sort of let's burn it all down, right? You know, like they're like I'm gonna, you know, I'm going to vote for this person or agree this person because I even though I think they're actually going to be bad for society, but I just want to burn it all down, right? Which is you could argue that that is a means of dissent, right? But is it like is it a disscent meant for critical thought? You know, like I think that's an important distinction is how many people are actually dissenting with reason or are they just going along with another cult-like mentality, another group? I mean, I'm going under the theory and then what you think, Daniel. I'm going under the theory that's just like that's a little doomsday cultish to me. At least that's the position I'm taking for the purpose of these episodes, right? I'm trying to frame it in like okay if our position in this is that the main problem is you know whether you call it a tendency or a vulnerability we kind of discuss this in the episodes coming up to this but you know whatever term you use you know that's the point of like um problem and then you know to the extent that someone's doing what you're talking about Ryan to me that kind of reads like culty and then even like doomsday culty is that how you think about too Daniel or what you have kind of like two different two different threads running at once. One is can you if if you you know ask yourself are you the kind of person that be can be convinced to do something that you know is not right and that's a personal question you know that you're going to and then you have to look back at your life and say when has that happened before has that happened before because part of that is determining what is quote unquote right or not right you know what I'm saying so that's first um and usually if you're willing to put yourself in harm's way for the benefit of somebody else then my guess is that you are not going to be pressured to do something that is not right regardless of situation. That's this is my personal feeling. What do you think Daniel? You think that's like a learned skill though? I mean that's kind of social psych question too and I don't know if we really answered that per se. I don't know. It's almost like in this thing kind of like a learned skill. You saw someone else do it in this controlled way. Okay, now I'm going to do it in the next one. I'm going to descent because I saw someone else do it. Mhm. Well, maybe it's something you can I mean, we have to hope that it's something you can learn, right? Yeah. I mean, learning is always a possibility, right? I mean, this is the implication of maybe a study like this. You can't learn to do it, right? Yeah. And it might be a learned skill, I think. Then then on the other part in terms of the the doomsday, you know, cult identity, like I've heard those arguments made from both sides of the aisle. You know, I've definitely heard like super liberal people be like, "Maybe we just burn it down and start all over again." And I was like, they're like, "What's funny?" I said, "You think you're going to [Laughter] survive?" You think your soft ass is going to survive when power goes out? That's interesting. That's cool. I'm glad you I'm glad you have such high hopes for yourself. Can you hunt? Oh, you don't even know how to handle a weapon. Can you gut an animal? Do you know how to make a fire? Like, how are you going to filter your water? I know these are just basic stupid things from a dumb uh dumb bro, but like that's what we're talking about. And we were kind of interesting about that when you were talking about Iraq too though just to like flash back to other episodes because you saw the society like fall apart. Yeah. I mean that being in Iraq you know when I was there in 200 what four 2003 2004 you know their society had stopped progressing in the early 90s after the first Iraq war after the first you know invad the first war with Iraq you know or in Kuwait and everything else like they had stopped building. There was freeways that were just, you could tell they've been there for years, just stopped. You know what I mean? Buildings halfbuilt, you know? It's crazy. And it's not, they weren't destroyed. They were just not built. They just the the the progress in that culture or in in that society just stopped. And so you see it live, you know, in person and it it um it just changes the way that you view the possibility of society. I mean, you know, I know everybody complains about potholes, but usually someone's going to come out and fix them. Not always, but you know, at some point, you know what I'm saying? But what if that never happened ever? You know, when all the streets were just totally tore up and and what, you know, like it's just the way in which people live in other places gives you that's why that's why traveling is really important. If you can afford it, you know, or make it happen in your life, it gives you a different perspective. And so then when people say, "Well, we have to, you know, burn it all down and start over again." It's like, "Well, go to some other place that hasn't even been built up to begin with, you know." Now, can we say that our society is better than others because it has more amenities? No, I don't think so. But I'm just saying in terms of um you know, possibilities of of sanitation and health care, you know what I mean? Basic kind of like what we would consider normal, other people don't have them in other parts of the world. And I mean, hell, there's leprosy in Thailand right now. Right now there are lepers out there currently. You know what I'm saying? So it's we're not that far away from from like being in a different place. So I there's just so many so many like of these kind of mentalities of like oh yeah we'll just we'll just do this or we'll just do that. It's like who's we, you know, and and what is the cost of that of those decisions in the long run on on other people's lives because what's society? It's a collection of individuals. So yeah, it's just yeah, stupid. We were talking off mic earlier that Daniel's in a feisty mood today and he is. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, there's this this notion of of, you know, you talked about sort of the the left people who are burned all down and then you have, you know, people in the, you know, that Elon kind of cult like mentality where they're sort of like, all right, well, you know, the world is they could be on there, I guess, right or left, like the world's so screwed, we just need to like abandon this earth and we're going to focus on colonizing, you know, which is, you know, equally asine, right? It's equally doomsday, right? Um, I think that's kind of what you're getting at, right? is is two um two sides of that that uh yeah I got no issue with calling all of that doomsday cultish so I'm okay with that whether it's left or right I'm fine with that so I'm totally cool with that I mean the other thing that kind of strikes me is like I I hadn't really thought about until we were talking about now but this idea of descent is a learned skill that kind of inspires me a little bit maybe that is the case maybe we can learn to descent I think we we call that we call that something this yeah yeah yeah sorry to interrupt go ahead please but I think you know From a Chinese medicine or East Asian medicine perspective, we we have a word for that, right? We call that jur. Yeah. It takes some will. It takes will, right? And means will because no one speaks Chinese. So, yeah. Daniel was Ryan was explaining it too. Yeah. Yeah. So, we gota, you know, we have to, you know, that's and the more you do those things, you know, what's whether you do meditation retreat or, you know, whatever it happens to be, you know, where you're you're you're testing your your resolve, right? um the more you test your resolve, it's like any muscle, right? You're able to build it up. Yeah. So, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's it's exercise, it's any kind of discipline, you know, anything that you do repeatedly and especially when it's hard, that's when the that's when those muscles or that those grooves in your brain, if you will, become the that become the strongest because you get you you tell yourself, I can do this. Oh, I've done it when it's hard, so of course I can do it now. Even if this task is insurmountable, you build that confidence in yourself to say like, "Oh, yeah, no, I've done this thing." Or, "Yeah, no, I stand up for what I believe in." Or, "No, I stand up for what I believe to be right." You know, even if even if you don't agree with me like on what we're saying, and we're not being overly political at this point, you know, we're not generally cuz we're talking about principal states of being and understanding and, you know, existing. It's like, okay, if you believe in something wholeheartedly, then do it. But if you don't, then why are you standing behind it? You know, that's always that that that's I mean, we always boil it down, but that's where it ends up that's where the conversation ends up going. Well, I mean, like the will thing in Chinese medicine has to do with like the kidney. If we do a little TCM talk, right? But the idea is when the the kidney system is stronger, you can show more of this will, which can be perseverance. But in a funny way, the vulnerability of that system, you know, we tie this under this idea of the water phase in Chinese medicine is like fear. So I mean, what are what's happening? This has been a kind of recurring theme for us too, obviously. But it takes the will to be able to sense and the thing that's going to stop you is you're afraid. So you need the will to overcome the fear, right? Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. So this brings us back to the you know the other part of the study like the majority of the people are sort of or have a tendency to uh acquies right in social situation right um and so that's so why do people want you know social cohesion and solidarity well they want that stability what they want that social harmony you know they're looking out for themselves and their family right um and so there's this protection mentality right um and so they're willing to sort of look the other way when to Daniel's point, you know, they see something that's wrong, right? And we have numerous examples of this in history of, you know, large communities looking the other way when they knew something was wrong, right? They acquiesed, right? Um, and so there is this process which I know you guys have talked about extensively of you have to cultivate, right? You have to cultivate your will, right? And your your true sense of self, right? And that's not easy. You know, sometimes, you know, when we're talking um when all of us are talking, we talk about it as sort of like it's just what everybody does. It just happens to be something that all of us value and we consider very important. But it's hard work to do that. It's not easy to go against society. Society doesn't want you to do that. Well, even like as far as the doomsday cult thing, I was thinking about this earlier. You brought it up, uh, Ryan. I mean, the real disscent is when you disagree with the cult that you're a part of. It's not like a thing to disagree with other people. That's not the issue. Can I look at like what's happening within my own inroup, right? Yeah. you know and say whatever it is you know and we can all come up with examples recently I won't do it but you know you start saying no that's wrong within my ingroup then you're showing disscent right and that's more powerful I mean it's always more powerful it's more powerful when you know uh you know a a Democratic person criticizes the Democratic party it's more powerful when a Republican person you know uh you know speaks speaks out against the Republican party. That that is that is how that works because it see because you you can you believe them more because they're coming from you believe them to be coming from the inside. You believe them to hold more views that are similar to that and now here someone is like yes I agree with you with on the majority of things. we're on the same team, but on these points, I don't agree with you actually, and I'm going to be willing to come out and put my name to my words and say, "No, I don't believe that or I think that's [...] or you know, whatever the case is." So, it takes more courage um because you are not uh affiliated with we'll just we'll be binary here. You're not affiliated with the other side, right? in in any intent and purpose, but you're leaving yourself on an island to be marooned. Right? So, from a evo psych uh evolutionary psych psychological perspective, this would be very dangerous because if you're going to criticize your own tribe, well, your tribe might not like that and your tribe might kick you out. And now where you're definitely not a member of the tribe down the road, they don't like you. You know what I mean? They're ready to eat your lungs. You know what I'm saying? in your heart or whatever, but it it's a it's a dangerous thing. It feels like you're on a limb by your own. And and you know, this is a this is a place that most people get very scared, right? And so then we go back to that thing between will and fear. And if the fear is is up, then willpower is is going to be down. My yoga teacher and and many uh East Asian philosophies discussed this and I quite love it. It said when your uh when your wants or when your need I can't remember it. Son of a [...] I had it in my head. When your when basically when your when your willingness to say no to your wants is greater than your desire to say yes, you are building your willpower. And so for people who are, you know, looking for some kind of tangible, you know, for people who are listening to this and looking for some tangible things to take away from that, that's what that starts with. and and and we talked about that from the very beginning. That's discipline. You know, that's not it's not the way for every single thing. But if you could say no to things that you don't need more often than the yes to things that you think you do, well, then you're going to start to cultivate yourself in a way that you're going to, you know, move it move down a path that you're choosing as opposed to being chosen for you. Yeah. I'm also like again, I can't I can't stop thinking about because you're talking about I'm really attracted to this idea. This is a learned skill and it has something to do with freedom too probably, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And if I'm willing to like resist and be a free person and say what I know is true in this situation, obviously what's sort of what's at stake is like am I going to call something what it is or am I going to like am I going to pretend like I'm dumber than what I am essentially right interesting you both bring up really interesting ideas here which I think we talked a little bit about last week which is there is there is dissent and there's an internal disscent and then there's external disscent. So sure I think it becomes more problematic when you lose that in that internal descent. You know there's some situations where like you know you're going to descent and you know like your whole family may throw acid on you and you know you're going to die or you get burned alive or stoned alive you know in some some countries and like that's probably not the right move because you know then you you become very spiritual because you'll be all spirit and you'll be dead. Right. Right. That that's what happened. And so there there's you know there there is a little bit of uh understanding that kind of context here is like some people are not in a position to externally descent and so they must internally descent um and until they have the freedom as Eric put it to actually express their opinions without being killed. But like for those of us here you know it's a it's really like it's the stakes aren't as high. No. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's just more of a question of like are you willing to do this? And I'm struck by the idea that yeah, maybe you can learn how to do it, you know. Yeah. The other two studies I had real quick before you I'll get your all's opinion on them is it also had something to do I mean when you extrapolate this out it has something to do with intelligence then too. You know even a study like this like you're willing to like misidentify a color you're being dumber than what you are right saying that before. The other studies around this I thought were really interesting were ones where you would give people tasks to like sort of accomplish, right? And they gave examples of like um you know anagrams that you had to figure out or other kinds of learning tasks, you know, right? And what they showed was when you had people doing it in alternative ways, when you had people dissenting even in the the ways that they were approaching the problems, even if they weren't the best ones, you know, uh you know, people saw this, oh, someone else is doing this in some other way. They got more creative in their own solving problem solving and they got kind of more intelligent in their problem solving. And that struck me too in this you know this correlation uh this interconnection between like dissent and creativity and in a certain sense in dissent and like clear understanding or like something that's almost like intelligence right when you see people like doing things differently and challenging uh you know conventional ways of doing things then all of a sudden you know in a certain sense the spirits the intelligence of the person the the shen the spirit can shine stronger and the person gets more creative and more intelligent and I don't if I thought about that obviously I thought about that question in different ways but it's in the social psych research right that this happens people get more creative and in a certain sense more intelligent so I don't know what do you all think about that I I find that very psychosspiritually interesting right yeah yeah I mean it makes me think almost as the juosition to that of of what What does it take to be in a cult? Right? Um you know, you're following in most cases a charismatic leader, right? And um you are taught in that situation not to question, to follow, right? Um so it is a dumbing down process. Um you know, you're just you're just listening and following. Whereas when you're dissenting in this creative act, yeah, that requires critical thought, you know, and intelligence. Um and and once you do that, um you're just going to continue on killing that hopefully. And the worst first would be like when you are participating in those things in a certain sense you're giving up creativity and you're giving up intelligence. Right. Right. I'm also kind of like really into the idea in these episodes about like it's partially a charismatic leader and it's partially like an ideology too. Well, don't for I mean, yes, but you can't forget the the power of the group, you know, the power of the I agrees, the power of being recognized, the power of having your [...] weak ass ego pumped up by people who are just as dumb as you are. You know what I mean? And like you're going to have you're going to be the smart one of the idiots. You know what I'm saying? Like I just I I just see lots of this, you know, people making like nuanced arguments over nothing, you know, and then yeah, particularly, you know, whatever. I don't even want to call it social media. It's not media, whatever it is, dribble, you know what I mean? Like a public journal of, you know, mental vomiting. But like, you know, people, oh wow, you know, oh, it's really, really smart. Oh, of course you always have the good thoughts. You know what I'm saying? like you're looking for accolades, but you're looking for accolades from people who think just like you. So like you're not even really challenging yourself to have like a substantive conversation in general. It's all, you know, it's one volley. It's I don't I don't know. I I don't I don't find it to be very helpful, you know. Acceptance and comfort, right? You know, it's Yeah. It's so you are now a part of this group. You are accepted by the group and that's comfortable. Yeah. And and I don't I mean I think I would find it more you know genuine if people just said that you know these people I I feel alone in society and these people even though I don't know them I can show up at a rally or I can show up at a protest you know and find comfort knowing that we are passionate about the same thing. And like that's so we're we're bred to be social creatures. Like I don't think there's some like that inherently in and of itself is not a wrong thing, you know, and that's part of a, you know, part of our social psychological, you know, uh, expose that we're doing here on cults. It's like you could just show up and now you're all part of the same thing. And that feels good, you know, because you're not alone because essentially people are just scared of dying, you know, and scared of being a a blip in in the, you know, infinite sands of time and no one will remember them and they won't be part of anything. I mean, I felt when I was in, you know, when I was active duty, like I really enjoyed wearing the uniform and I enjoyed making the same sounds as everybody else around me. Like that's a very powerful thing. It's hard to put that down, you know, for sure. Just like playing sports or any team thing, even if it's a team of chess players like your son Eric, you know, guess is very solo. You're out on an island, right? But I mean, if his budd him and his buddies have matching chess jackets on, they're the Raiders or, you know, some, you know, cool chess guys, you know, whatever. Um, they could be called the Chesticles. That's also possible, you know, but you feel camaraderie and camaraderie feels good because you're not alone, right? and alone isolation and fear and you know we talked about this the kidney the kind of water element in TCM you know traditional Chinese medicine those are all rel those are all related it's all part of the same thing so if you're going to not intentionally build up the willpower that is going to take to disscent and call [...] where [...] is then you're fighting against something that is a deep tend that that we have as a as a deep tendency I think latent within us whether it's a vulnerability or a tendency See, you know, we're scared of of isolation. We're scared of being obliterated. And so, at least during my time here, if I'm going to be passionate about something and there's other people who believe the same thing that I do, then I'm going to go ahead and fall in line with that because that feels better to me than being out on a limb on my own. You know what I'm saying? Does that does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, there's this social anxiety, right? Um that you have like being alone, right? You know, that's that's comforting, right? Um so I guess my maybe my question you know thinking about this to you is sort of so what is what is the answer from like a Buddhist dowist um you know spiritual seeker perspective you know when we look at sort of what these traditions suggest um or some of these spiritual paths what they suggest um when confronting um you know this cult-like mentality. Well, I guess it's like what really strikes me about the social science stuff entwined with this because I maybe like in my experience, I was studying psychology and then I went into things like Zen and it probably was building up for me to some critical mass, right? And I was realizing like say I was I was exposed to these kinds of studies back when I was like in my 20s when I was making these like transitions and I was like well wait a minute if I actually can go through and uh resist things well then maybe I'll get more creative maybe I'll get more free maybe I'll get whatever and I think that like struck me as being like quintessentially important you know um now if you want to get to like a specific kind and I was drawn to these I guess I I know how it was for to, but I was really drawn to the ones that were feisty, the ones that were saying like, "No, I'm not going to comply." Real minor tangent on this, Ryan, you asked the question, it's a deep one, but you and I both had a maybe different experience with Daniel in some ways where I was like sick when I was a teenager and these times when I was supposed to be socialized, I really wasn't. I wasn't like a Tarzan the wolf boy out in some like uh, you know, wild thing that had to be socialized again. Yeah, but like I wasn't like I wasn't out and about. I was like a very isolated solo person and uh you know I don't know how you feel about that but you know there's something about maybe developing a certain contrarian personality when you don't fully socialize in that way. Do you feel those things? Yeah, I mean we we both kind of shared that similarity where I was yeah I was very very sick you know um you know during my certainly during my teenage years you know like deathly ill right and so you know I wasn't exposed to as you mentioned a lot of that and it made me um reflect upon reflect upon my the very nature of of my life and I guess reality at a very young age um and and probably change the trajectory of my life you know I probably had a predisposition to do that anyways but that forced the issue. Yeah, I think Ryan your question, you know, um, so people want to be around other people. That's part of it, right? And in, you know, Buddhist philosophy, there's the three jewels, which are, you know, the we call them like the Buddha, which is the, you know, could be your teacher, the actual Buddha, could be your enlightened aspect of yourself, the soul, if you will, the shen uh that's one jewel, the other jewel. I I don't know what kind of jewels they are, but we're going to call them all rubies for this purpose of this conversation, you know. The second one they call it the dharma. Dharma could be taught is real. It could be discussed as reality. The reality that we're here or the actual reality that's beyond this reality or the teachings that come from your te from that come from your teacher that come from the Buddha that come from your soul if you will. Uh and then the the last one is the sa and the sa is generally referred to as a community or spiritual community but you could also see it as experiences you know shared with other people and whatever. So you need those things. You have to acknowledge your soul, have some kind of ways of learning, you know, and then some of those learnings happen with other beings. Okay. Well, what brings those beings together is the qu is is my answer to your question. So, from this kind of perspective, what is one's organizing principle or maybe we use more contemporary language, your moral compass if you will, right? And if you are not intentional about finding beings who share the same aspirations, the same kind of moral compass or at least are working on that, then you are going to be in SA or in groups or community of a collection of people, which is fine, but that are you're organized around different things. And while on you may agree on some things, you're probably not going to agree on many other things, but if the thing that is bringing you to uh gather with these folks, whether it be virtual or in person or whatever, is anger, well then that's your organizing principle. It's anger. And that can be again on one side we could say that's a rally. On the other side, we could say it's a protest. And you know you can guess which side does which one they do both right? Both happens on both both ways. But it doesn't matter. The organizing principle is anger. Now is there justified anger in the world? Sure. Of course there is. Am I here am I sitting here saying which what what is justified and what is not? No. Because that's I mean that's up to somebody else to decide. But if you're getting together with people to get together with people to influence other people's negative uh outcomes on their life, well then that's you're you're just that you're making somebody else's life worse. That's your organizing principle. You're an [...] You know what I mean? And everybody else who you're hanging out with, they're [...] [...] too. You know what I mean? Like that's what that's what that looks like. And so I think you have to kind of like go to the root level of where where you're at and why you're getting together with people and then think is this is the kind are these the kind of people that I want to actually get together with. What are we going to discuss? Of course you can meet some, you know, a couple nice people randomly at a at a protest or a rally. Of course, because you're going to have some things in common, but when you get down to the deeper levels of your like philosophy and psychology, have you even done the deep dive to see what that really is? Do you share those kind of like deeper moral compasses with these people? If you think one way is north and they think it's it's west, y'all ain't aligning. You're here for a moment, but you're not here for life. That's for sure. It does sort of argue that like if there's a certain part of this that's true, especially if you're just sort of finding your identity. You should you should really make a point of like being with the people who more fit into what your ideals might be. I mean, it does argue to that, right, Daniel? Part of what you're saying. I had to be around people where my goals might initially be fragile. I can remember these feelings when I first started studying Zen. It's difficult. But you're around other people who at least hold that same value. Yes. People may not appreciate what you're doing. My family didn't like what kind of [...] psycho [...] are you doing? And I had to be like, okay, you know, I have to resist that. I had to descent from that group, right? But I also had in the beginning parts especially when I was feeling more fragile in what I would be doing I had you know other people who would be the sa who would support me in that right yeah yeah I mean it's I yeah there is this notion of of being around a a group right of people who are I mean it's interesting because you know almost the way you're phrasing it almost it's like you you want to be around people I would say who are who are also critically critical of thinking who are willing to challenge you because you don't be around you don't want to be around people who are just going to like acquies whatever you say that's like another cult right so just to differentiate that right they they expect you to acquies back right you don't want you don't want that type of yeah you know and I when I asked the question I guess I was thinking of of similarities you know with some of these traditions that you know whether it's a dowist perspective or certain Buddhist perspectives or or you know like a shamanic perspective or whatever you want to call it it requires there's a certain amount of individual cultivation and also a rejection of of social norms to a certain degree you know like you have to like like hey you have to ask yourself do I fit into this you know so for me when it was like you know do I fit into this picture of this you know um you know this person who's going to have like a you know a white picket fence you know you know two kids you know a wife or whatever and and do this nineto-ive job it's like no that wasn't me like that didn't feel right you know like I kind of at a basic level sort of rejected ed that you know um in myself. I'm not saying those things are inherently bad but when you make that that leap into self internal cultivation it requires I would say a separation um from society to a certain degree. Would you guys agree with that? Yeah, that's like every episode of this podcast. Okay. Okay. Just I think we do agree on that because I think it's a precondition almost or something. I think you have to do it. I I I logically can't think of how you can do it otherwise. I'm open to being wrong. I just I haven't been able to figure anything out. Like, can you go along and do what everyone else is doing and be part of society and like somehow become enlightened? I No, I don't think so. I don't see how it's possible. Yeah. I don't know if it is either. I mean, I was going to throw one other thing about to what you you know that I'll just throw it out because it's it was it's striking to me how often again like I'm going a little bit either Zen or Buddhist tantra the things that I've been interested in but they had this thing called the eight mundane concerns. I had some special teachings on it and uh it does get to the what you're talking about and what's interesting about it is it has to be like again maybe it implies that this is learned which maybe I hadn't thought about that enough but they basically say you have to learn how to resist this fear of good opinion versus bad opinion and that fits into even what you and Daniel have been emphasizing sort of about the EVOC thing. It means you're risking the bad of people, the bad opinion of the people within the inroup that you're relying on to overcome these fears of isolation. Yeah. I mean, even in a certain Buddhist sense, that would have to be risking the bad opinion of the people within your own sana because those are the people you're relying on, right? So, you have to risk their bad opinion, too, if you really don't agree with it. Right. So, they say you have to learn how to resist good opinion versus bad opinion. And then they kind of stretch it out. Praise versus criticism. You have to be willing to take criticism and not just do things out of this sort of way of trying to gather praise. You have to risk criticism, right? Yes. You're gonna have to descent. Uh and then they get a little bit more like gain versus loss is kind of another way of looking at this, right? You can't be afraid of like losing the things that you may lose when you're kind of seeking sort of more your own truth, right? You have to be willing to like risk loss, right? And then eventually in the end they say pleasure and pain. You can't be totally just driven by I think you've all been kind of emphasizing this idea of comfort and security is a kind of a pleasure right absolutely and it feels painful to lose those things but in this eight mundane concerns I got it from one of the tantric teachers I studied with you know that and it's a classic teaching right it's like you have to be willing to risk those things right but right at the core you know is the good opinion versus bad opinion praise versus criticism those things are scary right on some Anyways, that's a set of tools maybe at the end of an episode to think, okay, it gives you a chance to screen your own life and go, okay, you know, we all struggle with these things. Obviously, none of us are going to be perfect with this or something. But if you get to the part of tools to look at, you can start saying, hm, well, am I just doing this because I'm afraid of like bad opinion? Am I just doing this because I'm afraid of criticism? Am I just doing this because I have fears of loss or I have fears of, you know, losing the pleasures that I have that maybe aren't really ritually rewarding. Maybe they're just comforts and securities that ultimately aren't really taking me anywhere. That's the eight mundane concerns. So, yeah, that's kind of a toolkit for that. There's a shortcut, Eric. Yeah, you just have to understand. You just have to have the uh the wisdom of impermanence free you from the shekels of constant, you know what I'm saying, views of reality as an unchanging thing. And of course, uh absorbing the wisdom of emptiness will just help all of this. And understanding interconnectivity, boom, you're done. That's it. I mean, easy. I don't even know if that's true if you can't actually deal with this [...] I mean, that's interesting. You know, it goes back to what Ryan was talking about, too. Some people will mouth like, "Oh, yeah, impermanence. Oh, yeah, whatever." But they never face this [...] Well, and some of it what it means to risk other people like not thinking good of you or giving you [...] So, okay. So, all right. No, that's a different thing almost, you know? So, okay. So, I heard So, I was listening to something the other day and I thought it was very interesting. Uh he said that people who shame you in like public public shaming that person you if if you're doing your practice well you should have gratitude for them because they are a teacher of yours. Well why is that the case? What do teachers do amongst many other things? What do teachers do? They help you to see aspects of yourself that you were unaware of. And so this that the the the shame that you are feeling is the arising of your own self as a independent entity as a being that has a reputation. You're aware that you're viewed in public a certain way and this person here is slandering you and nothing that you can do is going to unslander all of this. But is that actually who you are if that thing is real or false? No, it's not. That's not who you are. So they are giving you aspects of yourself of how you are being perceived that you are were unaware of before. So now you have that information. It's kind of a mind [...] in a sense, but I think that it's useful to see that because if not then we're all we're we're dealing with we're we're constantly dealing with those mundane concerns, you know, as as you as you talked about. But the the deeper part that cannot be that that is very difficult to move into real life. And by the by this point in the podcast, if you're still with us, good for you. You know what I mean? You got the top uh 3% of uh whatever. But we're going to just dive for the next, you know, probably five minutes here beyond the level of of most people's awarenesses, even my own. So, you know, good luck for me. But like if your practice is yielding you results, whatever you're practicing, even if you're practicing [...] lifting weights, you know that like eventually reality around you does become a place of experimentation. You know where when you see something outside of you, where does that image get brought into your mind? Where are you interpreting it? It's in your brain, but where in your brain? You can't touch it. You don't know exactly where it is and then when you close your eyes is it still there and not here but I mean it's still in your mind where in your mind is it you just saw it you know what if the image is bigger than your whole body your your brain is you know you have to like wrestle with ideas about like where mind is and how mind operates you know what I'm saying is similarly if you're exercising and you're and you become stronger things in your life become lighter you know your will becomes stronger because you're used to telling yourself I can do this thing I can lift 200 I can 300 400 pound I can do that. All of a sudden you feel stronger because of your ability to do different things. So your life changes as your practice changes. And so from from my perspective, I thoroughly enjoy challenging my uh relative view of reality with ideal we can call it idealistic philosophical teachings from East Asian traditions because they're always kind of poking at the structures that I keep in my mind of myself, of my reality, of everything else. And it always ends up they always end up going back again. coming from the same place of teaching, but they always end up going back to like the very same principles, you know, of emptiness, interconnectivity, impermanence, and impermanence. What I the other day when I was listening to something, he said things are always becoming something else. And I like to think that we call that evolution. And if I can be involved in my own evolutionary process, well then I get to have a hand in a process that's already happening, you know, I get to move that level of of my unawareness to my level of awareness. And now I get to be an active participant. It gives me at least the illusion of control a little bit, which it is an illusion, but it is a thing. And so if I look at that in terms of my relationships, right? Because society is just an infinite connection of relationships. I can have some influence as to where I go with the people around me. And it doesn't mean that I can't have long-term friendships, but depending on who I want in my life now moving forward, the people who are going to help to support me and me, them, and their life, well, then I have to be an active participant. And that means I'm going to have to challenge some relationship structures like we talked about for so long with all the various, you know, polyamory dynamics and whatever else. I have to challenge all those things to see who's there with me at the end, you know, because now they're going to be able to accept me and all of my dichotoies, which there are many, you know, and if the group that I am in is not able to accept that like I'm more conservative about some things and more liberal about others and I'm more of a bro on one thing and I'm more sensitive, which some people might consider effeminite on something else, you're going to have to hold space for all of those if you're going to be around me because I'm willing to do that for you. And I think that when we get around people who we, you know, are gathering with because of anger or because of malcontent or because of what, you know, whatever is going to bring us together, I don't think that those kind of conversations are happening. A and B, I don't think that they're able to really do that for each other because they're not even having substant sub substantive discussions outside of, you know, modern concerns and political discourse only just to sow disruption amongst their, you know, opposing sides. You know what I'm saying? So in summary, the ways in which that you interact with people and the the intention that you go into those discussions and those relationships, right? Even if it's just for a day, you have to be very mindful about because if not, then you'll find yourself with people dressed looking just like you doing terrible things and you will be there to witness it and possibly even participate. Daniel, you bring up like some really important points um which I would categorize under like cultivation, right? Cultivation of self. And so, you know, the reasons why you meditate, you know, why you have a regimen, why you have discipline as you talked about is to kind of build this this will or this year. Um because without without it, it's really hard to achieve anything. Um and it also is hard to achieve like a self-awareness because this is what you're trying to get at. You're trying to you're trying to figure out and I think I don't know if you and I have talked about it Daniel but Erica and I have talked about this sort of you know this this notion of explicating taking layer layer by layer off of yourself like these social layers of what society sort of tried to shape you in to kind of get to the real person right and that is hard work. It is, you know, you know, basically you're taking a surgical scalpel and you're kind of peeling back these layers of like who you really are, like, you know, is this true? Is this true? You know, that's not true. Like, where am I getting caught? Where am I being pressured? Like all these things you have to be conscious of. Um because they, you know, society doesn't, you know, and I'm being kind of critical of society here, is like doesn't really want you to be you, right? Quite the opposite, right? Quite the opposite. Last words, Eric? Yeah, maybe like the last thing I would say is there's a kind of a zen aspect of this too, kind of building on what both you were talking about, which is like on the one hand, you could be peeling away layers, right? Some of this might have to do with things we're talking about uh you know, what am I afraid of? Am I afraid of good opinion or bad opinion, praise and criticism, and all these things? The other part is maybe having kind of a trust that this the more true nature of who you are will kind of like explode outward from the inside. So you can think of it like okay I'm peeling away these things where I have fears and doubts and these kinds of things or like what you were talking about Ryan a lot uh in our conversations as well as you know we talk about this a lot but this idea of like inauthenticities I'm going to peel these things away these things that feel artificial but on the other hand I can have a trust that my own spirit my own if you want to use the word Buddha nature my own shen if you want to be Chinese about it whatever it is will kind of explode outward from the side too. If I give it the chance to feed it, it wants to grow and develop as well. And I mean, that's just another side of the experience I thought I would throw out there. But yeah, thank you all deep. Yeah, very much so. Uh Ryan, thanks for coming on. Eric, thank you so much. Always happy to be here. Yeah. Yeah. And audience, thank you for uh for listening uh or for watching, however you're consuming this. Uh if you have any uh questions, comments, concerns, smash that subscribe button or You can email us at jyn andtantra@gmail.com. Hit us up on the gram uh the jyn andtra podcast or if you you know you see our names you you can holler at us on Facebook or you know whatever the case is. Uh you know this this discussion is ongoing. We're always trying to give you know our own personal perspective and you know uh teachings from wherever we get them from presenting different studies and uh things from social psychology and you know regular psychology and maybe even some abnormal psychology. You know what I mean? Like that's just how it goes. So the whole thing is abnormal psychology basically. Really truly is. Um for Ryan and Eric, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.