Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: The Reason You Can't Make Things Happen is Learned Helplessness. Fear Of Home Invasions. Enforcing Covid19 Mask-wearing Rules.. or Not?

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

Learned Helplessness.Getting over an irrational fear of home invasion.Any value in Fundamentals program in BJJ?How hard should you enforce the mask-wearing rules at work as a leader.Keeping Doctors and people in power accountable for misconduct.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Janko underground podcast number 17 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Take two. The first take that we just did, which you all don't get to hear, Echo Charles had a coughing attack. There it is. Seven seconds deep into the podcast, he started coughing uncontrollably. He's still kind of coughing a little bit. Well, good evening. It was a good evening until you had a level nine coughing outburst.

Are we good? Good evening, Jocko, thank you. Look how smooth that was. We're all clear. All right, what's up, everybody? Hey, so going down the rabbit hole, little rabbit hole of the psychological experiments. Those things can be, there's some revealing going on. And I know you like that word revealing.

Yes. Reveal. So last, the last U.G, we talked about this experiment called the Ash experiment, where they took the eight people put them in a room, seven of the people were actors. they would make an assessment of something and the seven people would give the wrong answer and then the eighth person who was the subject of the experiment, oftentimes they would give a wrong answer too.

They just kind of fit in conformity, right? Conformity. Interesting stuff we can learn about ourselves and we can learn about a team and a group so it's stuff to pay attention to. Another experiment I think that gives us some good information about ourselves and about others.

and I've talked about a version of this one, but I hadn't heard this particular version. There's a psychologist in late 1960s. Name is Martin Seligman. I think that's how you say it. And he was actually looking at operant conditioning of dogs, like Pavlov's dogs where you ring a bell and then you feed them.

And eventually they get to a point where you ring a bell and they automatically start salivating. They know what's coming, right? So how do you condition animals and then how well does that work with people? And he was doing a different experiment where he was ringing a bell and then the floor that these dogs would be on would give them an electrical shock. I'm not going to talk about the humanness of this experiment. It doesn't sound real humane to me to start shocking dogs, especially because I like dogs.

So here we are. We're shocking dogs. But that's what happened. We're reporting on it. We're not doing it. We don't support it, actually. No. So they're shocking these dogs.

And ring a bell. bell, shock the dog. Ring a bell, shock the dog. And eventually the dog's behavior was as if they got shocked, even if they didn't shock them. They're so used to getting shocked, getting tense, that they would act that way, even if it didn't happen. Okay. So does that experiment. And then he puts a wall like a, like a divider in this, in this room, this dog room with electrical floors. but one side of the of the floor, the other side of the divider, there's no shocking on the floor.

So now he puts those dogs in there and starts shocking them again. And they don't jump over the wall. They don't jump over the wall. The bell rings, they get shocked. They're like, they sit there. And they get shocked. They don't, and the wall's not high.

This isn't even a challenge. This is just like a very low effort escape. So what's going on? Why aren't they just trying to get out of there? So then he goes, okay, well, let me try it with some fresh dogs. So then he took fresh dogs, put him in there. And as soon as he shocked him the first time, you know what they did? They all freaking jumped over that divider.

And oh, okay, cool, it's safe over here. So this is not something that dogs couldn't figure out. Where we're standing sucks. Maybe over there. We know it sucks here. Let's go to where it doesn't suck. So what it happened was was that they had learned,

the dogs had learned, well, the phrase that they call this is learned helplessness. You learn that there's nothing you can do about your situation. Hey, look, we're getting shocked. That's just the way the bell rings.

We're going to get shocked. There's nothing we can do about it. And they lose the bigger view of the world. So that's a very interesting thing to figure out. And the way that they take that view, and again, these are views. They take this idea and some people apply it to the way it impacts humans, right? And one of the ways it impacts humans, one of the examples that they talk about. And again, these aren't, this isn't a fact.

This is what? This is a hypothesis that some people believe. Some people believe that, like, clinical depression comes from a situation where people no longer feel that they can control anything that's going on around them. They don't have any more control over their fate anymore. Their perceived absence of control is what it ends up being. And then what do you do? What do you do to fix yourself? You don't do anything because you don't.

think that anything you can do will help your scenario. And that kind of reminded me, again, this is why this, this story stood out to me. It reminded me of that story that I also told on the underground when I was in Iraq and there was that family living in this one room house, big room, but it's one room. And they had a sewer trench, just raw on the floor sewage in between like their kitchen prep area and their dining room table. And, and, you know, I was confused. And, you know, I was confused by it and why would you not try and fix it? And I thought maybe there's some of

this in effect there. Think about this. This is 2003, 2004. For generations, the Iraqi people had been beat down by this tyrannical leader, Saddam Hussein, where they had no control of their fate. And just what it was is what it was.

They had no will. had no will to try and figure out how to escape the situation that they're in, or at least obviously some of them. And what this boils down to also, then the other thing that stood out to me about this experiment, it's the opposite of extreme ownership, right? It's the opposite of extreme ownership. With extreme ownership, you look at a situation,

you go, look, this is on me, I'm going to take control, I'm going to fix it. If you don't think that way, if you have learned helplessness, Then you think there was nothing I can do about it. Nothing I can do about it. This is nothing I can do about it. And you can get, you can, that, that attitude can get beat into you.

And it might, look, man, life is going to put some things on you that are going to be out of your control. And sometimes you fight, you know, you're young and something happens and you fight against it doesn't matter. It doesn't help your outcome. And then that happens again. You don't make the football team, whatever. You try to game. weight and you can't. I'm just thinking of like things you might have faced that beat you down, right? Yeah, thank you. But it happens everybody. Right? Oh, my parents are getting divorced.

I try and help. I can't. I'm just at, oh, now I wanted to live with my dad. Now I got to go live with my mom. Nothing I can do about it. My mom's my mom's not here very much. She's working all the time. I'm by myself. Nothing I can do about it. The food that I'm getting is. Isn't good nothing I can do it. You see where I'm going with this? You can learn that nothing you do is going to have an impact So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast So if you want to continue to listen go to jocco underground.com and subscribe and we're doing this We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms so we are not subject to their control.

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