The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 449. Trauma and the Demolition of Faith | Ronnie Janoff-Bulman

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with social psychologist and author, Ronnie Janoff-Bulman. They discuss how most implicit beliefs are consciously unknown to those who hold them; the human reactions to fear, disgust, pain, and the destruction of hope; why people blame themselves for truly random events; what the experts get wrong about motivation; and the difference between proscriptive and prescriptive morality. Ronnie Janoff-Bulman is Professor Emerita of Psychology and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is a social psychologist and the author of two books and over 90 published papers. Her first book, “Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma,” has been cited over 9,500 times. She was awarded a National Science Foundation grant for her research on morality, which serves as the backbone of her recent book, “The Two Moralities: Conservatives, Liberals, and the Roots of Our Political Divide.” She is the recipient of teaching and mentoring awards and is the former editor of Psychological Inquiry, an international journal devoted to advancing theory in psychology.  A mother and grandmother, Dr. Janoff-Bulman lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with her husband of over 50 years.  - Links - 2024 tour details can be found here https://jordanbpeterson.com/events   Peterson Academy https://petersonacademy.com/    For Ronnie Janoff-Bulman: Shattered Assumptions (Book) https://www.amazon.com/Shattered-Assumptions-Towards-Psychology-Trauma/dp/0743236254 The Two Moralities (Book) https://www.amazon.com/Two-Moralities-Conservatives-Liberals-Political-ebook/dp/B0BX1JDL8C/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=qQoj5&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_r=138-3764402-1287437&pd_rd_wg=H5RDI&pd_rd_r=fccdebc5-a090-4e01-b536-33c552e5005f&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk 

Hello, everyone. I'm talking today with Dr. Ronni Janow-Buhlmann. She's a professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She's a social psychologist and the author of two books, one from about 30 years ago called Shattered Assumptions, and the other called The Two Moralities, The Origin and Fall of Right and Left Politics. Why did I want to talk to Dr. Janof Bullman? Well, I'm very interested in both angles of her work. First,

because the notion of shattered assumptions is associated with the idea that there's something like a hierarchy of values in our beliefs, in the structure of our beliefs, that we have some beliefs that are more fundamental than others, those would be beliefs that many other beliefs depend upon. And so I wanted to talk to her about what it might mean

that the assumptions that orient us in the world are organized hierarchically, right? So that some things are deep and other things peripheral. And so that the deep things are in some sense the most real and vital. All of those topics we're gonna talk about in the discussion with Dr. Ronny Janoff-Buhlmann. So I'm interested in your two major works.

I wanna talk to you about shattered assumptions and I want to talk to you about the political divide. And I think we'll start with shattered assumptions. And so why don't you start by letting everybody who's watching and listening know what you meant when you discussed shattered assumptions and why you felt that was a reasonable way of approaching the problem of traumatic injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, right? Profound disillusionment, even. Okay, I mean, that's work that's now 30 years old. I should say that. But I'm a social psychologist, not a clinical psychologist.

And I did a great deal of research on victimization back 30 and 40 years ago. And what I was finding was some commonality, actually a great deal of commonality, false victimizations, things that we would now call trauma, rape victims, loss of loved ones early, accident victims, loss of loved ones early, accident victims, natural disaster victims.

And at the time, the clinical literature really was somewhat problematic from my perspective because it was looking at people as pathological as opposed to the situations as pathological in some sense. And I kept hearing the same thing from people across these domains, which was I never thought it could happen to me, which was kind of surprising at the time, because we assume people know bad things happen, right? But it led me actually to do some work and further research. And I posited this notion of shattered assumptions based on a sort of people's finding that what we now know as implicit cognition, at the time there was no work really, or very little work on implicit cognition. At the time, there was no work really, or very little work on implicit cognition.

But finding that basically people's beliefs about these fundamental beliefs about the world seem to have gotten shattered. Beliefs about the world being meaningless, meaningful, not random, benevolent, people being worthy. All of a sudden, people really questioned these very, very basic beliefs that they didn't even necessarily know they had. And it led me to this notion of shattered assumptions, which now, if I wrote the book now, would be a little easier to claim

because of all we now know about implicit cognition, right? These are implicit beliefs. And these beliefs actually were not necessarily illusions. I mean, they were these sort of working models of the world, a good enough world. And after these negative events, they did seem to get shattered. People had a sense of their own fragility, their creatureliness. You know, we have, we're humans and species with symbolic systems, and yet we're food for worms. You know, that notion of fragility, terror, so forth and so on. So basically, I was writing it in some ways as a corrective to much that was out there in these very distinct domains. So there would be a literature on rape victims, for example, or literature on natural disasters.

Now I should say there were wonderful people working at the time, clinicians who certainly as much as I did and probably lots more, but they had a very different perspective. Social psychology I think is a very different perspective. Social psychology, I think, is a very healthy way of viewing the world because it normalizes as opposed to pathologizes. And that's where I was coming from. I don't know if that sufficiently responds to the question. Okay, okay. Oh yeah, yeah, well, it's definitely a good start. Okay, so now, you mentioned something that I'll just get you to clarify a bit. You said that if you were writing this book today, with what we know about implicit cognition,

that your argument would be easier to justify. So just like flesh that out a bit before I ask you some other questions. Well, the notion, well, the fact is that now we have implicit beliefs that people don't necessarily know they have. So it's easy to argue that when something happens and the inner world gets shattered, that these very fundamental beliefs now, which really are at the base of our conceptual world, can be impacted by real-life events, even though we don't know we hold them. Do you see?

And at the time... Okay, got it. Yeah. Yeah. See, at the time, that wasn't necessarily clear. People would say, well, we know we hold them. Do you see? And at the time. Yeah, see at the time that wasn't necessarily clear. People would say, well, we know what we believe. Everybody knows what, you know, what's, you see? That's all I meant by that, Jordan. Yes. Okay, okay, okay, good. Well, I presume that's what you meant.

Okay, so now let me run an idea by you and you tell me what you think about this and see if it's in accordance with what you believe. So I've been what you think about this and see if it's in accordance with what you believe. So I've been trying to think about this in part neurologically, because I'm interested in why anxiety and terror might be radically disin... Anxiety and terror and pain radically disinhibited

by the shattering of belief and hope destroyed at a fundamental level. Okay, so now you believe in something approximating a fundamental level. So let me explain what I think that might mean, and then you tell me what you think about that. Okay, so in the landscape of implicit cognition, there are hierarchical dependencies. There are some presumptions that we make,

they might be implicit, upon which many other presumptions rest. That's a good definition of fundamental. Here's a way of thinking about it. Imagine that you track the citation count of a scientist's work. Well, the more, if the discipline hasn't become corrupt, the more citations, broadly speaking, that a given scientist has, the more their work is fundamental to the field. And the reason for that is because much other work in that field depends on those publications.

Otherwise they wouldn't be massively cited. And so then you could imagine that in a system of belief, there are levels of dependency. Those levels of dependency have a bedrock, and at that bedrock, everything rests. That seem reasonable to you? Absolutely, absolutely. Oh, okay, good.

So let's, okay, so let me go a little farther with this, and you tell me if you object to any of this. Okay, so I've come to understand that that implicit structure through which we see the world is equivalent to a weighting system. It looks to me like it's equivalent to the statistical weights that large language models extract. Yeah, that makes sense to you too. Okay. Okay. So then we have to filter the world through a system of weights. That's how we prioritize our attention. We have to prioritize our attention because there's too much information. There's way too much information. There's way too many

possibilities. So we prioritize and we do so in keeping with our axiomatic assumptions and they have a hierarchical structure, structure of dependency. Now if something happens to us that violates those assumptions, then it blows the weighting system, it demolishes the weighting system that we use to prioritize our attention and everything comes flooding back Okay, do you know Karl Friston's work by any chance? Not well, so okay. Okay. Well, this is an exciting thing so Karl Friston has a model of Perception that's very well developed and he's a very well cited neuroscientist. He invented most of the, what would you call it? The procedures that people use to investigate MRI images,

for example. Right, okay. So Friston's a very well-established neuroscientist, and he believes that both anxiety and positive emotion are related to entropy control. So this is different than terror management. It's a very different idea, although they're analogous in some sense. So anxiety signals the collapse of a system of orientation so that hierarchical waiting is no longer possible, so that way too many things impinge upon you at once.

And anxiety is actually the signal that that happens. Technically, it's the signal that that's happening. And so it's the flooding back of chaos, right? And that enough. Okay, now the consequence of this, we know the psychophysiological consequences of this. The psychophysiological consequences are an acceleration of the stress response, right? Exactly.

Hyperpreparation on the psychophysiological side, right? And that is sufficiently stressful to be physiologically and neurologically damaging. Right. The hypervigilance that comes with trauma is clearly consistent with that. Right. Right. Precisely.

The thing I would say that's interesting is one doesn't even need to... I mean, obviously there is a weighting system and the accuracy at the very top levels is absolutely essential and at the fundamental levels, at some level, you can have some illusory beliefs. Because it's very dangerous. I believe I can swim, and I'm a great swimmer, but I go into a pool and I can't swim, I'm in trouble. If I think the world is more benevolent than it really is, that's really a fundamental belief that's not going to get me into as much trouble

but can guide me in a positive way, okay? One of the things I was going to say is I'm not sure you need to even posit the weighting system in the case of trauma because I think what, although I don't think we would disagree about this, what is being shattered and disrupted is the base of the fundamental, of the system, the conceptual bedrock of the system. Yes, absolutely. Once that's shattered, and the anxiety is really a double duty anxiety. First of all, understand living in a world that does seem more dangerous all of a sudden

when you've been sort of horrible things have happened to you, right? There's this real world phenomenon, and on top of that, you have lost the guideposts to survive you, right? There's this real world phenomenon and on top of that you have lost the guideposts to survive it, right? The conceptual system that orients you, as you would say Friston's work would talk about. So you've kind of, so you now have this double, this anxiety that's quite remarkable that leads to what really a sense of terror. It's not- Yeah, well, there's two things that happen in Friston's conceptualization. And I wrote a paper about this with some students of mine too when we were trying to tie anxiety

to entropy. It's not only that anxiety mounts, that's bad. That's terrible, right? And it does result in this state of psychophysiological hyperpreparation, which is physiologically devastating across time, right? It can cause brain damage. It does in fact make you old because you're burning up excess resources. The other thing that happens though is that it destroys hope and that's also an entropy

problem. So, Friston characterized positive emotion as a signal that entropy in relationship to a valued goal had decreased. So imagine that you pause at something of value and then you move towards it and you see yourself moving towards it and that's happening validly, then the diminution of the distance between you and the goal is signaled by dopamine release and it shows that the probability that you're going to attain that goal is increasing. And that's what hope is. Now, if you blow out your value structure, or if it's pulled out from underneath you,

because your assumptions are shattered, then your conceptualization of, or even your belief in the possibility of a valid goal also vanishes. So not only are you subsumed by anxiety, you're overwhelmed by hopelessness. Yes. No, there's no question. I mean, and I talk about that actually in the book, but I don't talk about, I only have a few pages on the neurophysiology of trauma, because you have to remember it was published 30 years ago. Right, of course. So the research was 35, 40 years.

We have learned, or trauma researchers, and I haven't, by the way, done research on trauma for many years, but trauma researchers have learned a great deal, as you're pointing out, about some of the physiological, neuropsychological bases or ramifications and consequences of trauma, which is not something that, you know, that long ago we knew much about. It is interesting though that from social psychology, we do think about emotions as signals. I mean, you don't even have to posit the physiology or neuroscience you can say, you know, your emotions are sort of the

experiential automatic signals about how you're operating in the world. Yeah, they're navigation guides. Yeah, navigation guides. So we're just very similar, but we're talking about at different levels of analysis there. Yeah, okay. So now let's go to the idea of the shattering. So there's something else I want to weave in. So imagine that you have an aim and that it's predicated on a set of values. Now imagine that those values have a hierarchical structure

in the way that we just described. So there's something at the bottom. Now the question is, structure in the way that we just described. So there's something at the bottom. Now, the question is, how would you characterize that structure? So I have a hypothesis for you, and you can tell me what you think about this. It's a hypothesis that I've developed fairly extensively, but I'm working on it in detail in the new book that I'm working on right now called we who wrestle with God. So I think that The That a description of the structure through which we look at the world the hierarchy of values through which we look at the world

I think that's literally what a story is See a story so okay, so so a story Like if you go to a movie and you watch the protagonist hero or villain Here's what you'll see you'll see a sequence of situations In which the aim of the character becomes clear. Right, now when you watch that, what happens is that you infer his aim,

and you adopt that, you embody that, this is literally how you understand it, you embody it, you come to see the world through that perspective, and you experience the emotions that are part and parcel of that aim. So that's a form of exploration because it means you can go to a movie or you can watch a piece of fiction, you can adopt a temporary aim, it's like a game, you can adopt a temporary

aim and in consequence you can explore the consequences of that aim but also have the experience that goes along with it it's the same thing that people are doing by the way when they go to a sports stadium and They and they watch someone aiming at the goal, right and being skillful in their approach, right? They adopt the aim which is the goal. That's why they identify with the team and then they embody the emotions that are appropriate to that aim. Okay, so I think this is a fundamental, so I figured this out in part 30 years ago,

when I was looking at the neuropsychology of expectation. Right, there's a big cognitive psychology literature on expectation. The idea of- Social psych is all about it, right? Right, right. All expectations. But there's something about that that's wrong

because we don't expect in the world. We desire. We desire, right? Our expectations are specified by our desires and that's a useful twist because it brings in, it integrates motivation. See if it's cold cognitive expectation, we're prediction machines, but we're not. We're motivated machines. We're pursuing our desires.

And so our aims are motivated. And so we're upset when the outcome doesn't match our desire, not when the outcome doesn't match our expectation. That's very interesting. I guess I agree in part. I do think that, I mean, there's such a huge litigate in psychology on expectation that doesn't necessarily, let's assume you're responding to somebody

on the basis of a stereotype, for example. You're responding based on expectation. You generally operate to confirm it, but I'm not sure that's based on a desire. So I'm not sure all of it is motivated. I think some of it is, some, much is motivated. I agree with you, but I think much is, there is a great deal that's not motivated cognition. The bulk of our human functioning is, but. Okay, well, so I think we can solve that conundrum

given the framework we're already using. So imagine that we're seeing the world through a hierarchy of value, right? With something, okay. The farther down the assumption hierarchy you go towards the base, the more motivation is involved. If you're just playing on the periphery where things don't matter, then it's expectation. But if you go down into the depths, then it starts to become highly motivated.

And that's, that's because part of that motivation is the fact that as you go down into the depths the world like your stability depends on the What on what you desire making itself manifest? Or at least not being radically violated, right? Right. That's right. Just ability depends on your working models actually working right And and I do agree, you know, it's interesting when you talk about motivation, because when I was doing the two moralities book,

of course, all of that is funneled right through motivation. I mean, the two fundamental notions of approach and avoidance. I mean, that is really how we organize our lives, right? So I believe in motivation, please, for sure. Okay, okay, okay. So the expectation model came out of the cognitive and the neurophysiological literature of the early 60s, and it came out of cybernetic modeling and it came out of

Neuropsychological modeling and early cognitive science and the notion there again as I said was that people were rather cold prediction machines expectation machines That's where the notion of something like working model came from. But I believe that there's a serious flaw, the fact that that doesn't incorporate motivation, the fact that it's expectation rather than desire, it does two things. It's a fundamental flaw because it takes motivation out of the picture. And that's a big problem because we're highly motivated. And the second thing it does is it obscures the fact that what we're not modeling we're telling a story.

Those aren't the same thing and this is... I agree. Okay, okay. Now, let's go to say I agree in part I just wouldn't paint the entire picture that way. I do think there is much where we are not, you know, so many things are operating without our awareness, okay? And I'm not talking about Freudian unconscious. We have automatic, you know, mind time, you know, system one system, two kinds of operations. So much of that, it won't necessarily, it is automatic. Now you can still say that automaticity derives from a

system that's fundamentally motivated, okay? But I do think in its operation there's a kind of automaticity to so much that we do, that so much that at least, you know, I don't have any problem saying it's consistent with a motivational model, but I feel like that, in fact, as it operates, it does look like pure cognition in many cases. And that we're just confirming expectations because that's how we can operate in the world. Okay, okay. That is motivation. Okay, so let me take that a little part bit, because I'm going to reformulate it, and I'll tell you why. And I'll tell you why I think that's in keeping with your theory.

So confirming expectation. No, testing our fundamental narrative hypotheses. And why? Because we want to make sure that the foundation is remaining intact. Is that automatic? It's automatic until the assumptions are shattered and then automaticity. Well, so that's the thing. So that's the key that shows you that even the automaticity is dependent on the

integrity of the model that's motivated, right? It's automatic within the assumption. It's automatic within the Maintained assumption, but the story is invalidated when the okay So so let me tell you let me tell you a story and you tell me what you think about this because I think this is A story it's a fundamental story and it's germane to your hypothesis. I want to put forward the hypothesis that the framework of meaning that shattered in the case of trauma is a, it's a naive framework. Now, it might be implicit. It's a naive form of faith. And we know that naivety is a risk factor for trauma because we know that people who are dependent are more likely to be traumatized.

So, okay, so here's the naivety element of it. I want to tell you, I want to bring in a fundamental story. Since I think these assumption networks are stories. Okay, so I've been studying the story of Job. And the story of Job is the story of suffering. Yes, and meaningless, right. What seems like random events, right. Well, or worse than random, malevolent. Malevolent, that's right.

Right, so worse than random. Okay, so this is how the story sets itself up. So we're told at the beginning of the story that Job is a good man. And so, and we have the testimony of God Himself on on Job's account. And so God is up in heaven bragging away, so to speak, about how good Job is. And his sons come to observe, and one of whom whom is Satan and Satan says, I don't think Job's that good. I think he's just fortunate.

And God says, no, I think he's good. And Satan says, why don't you let me have a crack at him and we'll see if he's good. And so God says, yeah, okay, do your worst and in Consequence and that's the malevolent element. Let's say at least the arbitrary element But perhaps the malevolent element job loses everything that he's worked for virtually everything he works for He loses much of his family. He's He's he becomes very ill and not just deal but but ill in a way that's disfiguring and shameful.

And then his friends come along, his friends, and tell him that, well, you know, if he had been a better guy, none of this would have happened. So really it's his fault. And then Job has a response, and this is why I'm bringing up this story. Job's response is to insist that despite proximal evidence, it's a requirement to maintain faith in the essential goodness of the individual, especially an individual who's been conducting himself ethically, which Job has been, by his own testimony, by God's testimony.

We know Job is a good man. And Job's wife tells him when she observes his suffering, she says, there's nothing left for you to do but shake your fist at God, curse him and die. And Job says instead, and he insists this to his friends, he refuses to lose faith in his essential goodness and he also refuses to lose faith in the essential goodness of God. And there's something, it's something like this, and this is what's relevant to the Shattered Assumptions notion, is that in order to stabilize the structure through which you view the world, it is necessary to adopt as axiomatic the notion

that whatever happens to you if you conduct yourself ethically is the best thing that could happen regardless of the proximal evidence. And also it's necessary for you not to lose faith in the essential goodness of being itself. And those are religious proclamations, right? They're proclamations of a kind of religious faith. Right. That's right. Well, and it seems to me too that...

And tall orders at that, right? Oh God! Yes! The tallest, in fact, the tallest of them all. Yes, the tallest, in fact, the tallest of all. Exactly. Well, it's interesting, because the Book of Job is one of the books that really sets the stage in the biblical corpus for the story of the crucifixion, because the crucifixion story is the story of Job expanded even more thoroughly.

Right. Now, these shattered assumptions that you described, they seem to me to be identical to axioms of faith, conceptually speaking. Right? They're a priori commitment. Yes, at some level, except, you know, they develop, you know, the way we think we should need to think about them is these develop from early infancy, from childhood. I mean, these are, they're based in, you know, it's not like somebody's taking a leap of faith. Faith is based on, you know, you don't need sort of, validity in the world is irrelevant. Do you know? That's what faith is about, right?

faith is about, right? Things don't have to—there's no proof, right? You take a leap, an act of faith. These are fundamental beliefs based on experience. They're not just, you know, sort of pie in the sky. They're not things that, you know, I want to believe that. These are not desires. They're based on, let's say, the infant who is getting good enough parenting, not great parenting, good enough parenting, realizes the world is predictable. The child cries, the mother or the father come and help. The world becomes meaningful, becomes benevolent. It's good world. I'm getting fed.

I must be worth something. I mean, these are very rudimentary kind of beliefs, but it starts there and it builds and what comes first obviously gets confirmed. I do think, though you were calling them naive, at one level it's what allows us to wake up in the morning and approach the day. Okay? Yeah, assuming our assumptions haven't been shattered. They haven't been shattered, that's right. But even if they have been shattered, what is also important to recognize is people that started with these positive assumptions actually do better in coping with the shattered beliefs because they actually have something to kind of move back to.

If you start with very negative beliefs about the world, if you start with, you are going to be more prone to possibly a realistic view of the world being bad, if that's what, you know, when bad things do happen in the world, right? To good people, right? Bad things happen to good people. Then nevertheless, you are going to be more prone to depression and anxiety, just, you know, living in the world is harder. So some of these are what seem like illusory beliefs,

are, you know, are what allow us to be. You talked about motivation. It allows us to be motivated on a daily basis to function and operate and, you know, love and care. And, you know, so I do think, and they have long-term consequences when bad things happen. Because what happens after the shattering is people try to rebuild these assumptions in the best cases. And by the way, most cases, not the cases that all go to psychologists and whatever.

If you did huge community surveys, which we did, you find lots of people have gone through some really horrible things and don't necessarily go to a clinician. Now everybody goes to clinicians. 30, 40 years ago, that wasn't the case. People coped. They did well enough. They had people who cared around them. Their own sort of internal worlds allow them to deal.

One thing that I found that was fascinating, for example, is that self-blame was remarkably common after all of these things. Even when I was, I did some work with people who were paraplegics or quadriplegics from being shot randomly on the street, or just truly random events, you and I would unquestionably call random for the victim. And these people would still gaze in some self-blame. Now why?

It's not... And by the way, the only literature that talked about self-blame were rape victims because everybody was blaming the women anyway, right? Just because victims blame themselves doesn't mean they're blameworthy. So why blame? Why engage in this in ways that seem inappropriate given the true situation? It's because that allowed people to get some sense of control, to start believing the world isn't random, to start believing the world isn't random, to start believing the world is not as bad as they thought, taking some of the blame on themselves. Now, the sad part of that is, of course, other people could then blame them more if they

were blaming themselves when that is not appropriate or legitimate. But what we do in terms of our own coping, I think, is really kind of fascinating. And that was something that was surprising to me, seeing all this self-blame. But there are lots of other ways people cope. You know, they think of worse cases. But people would, you know, sort of try to rebuild assumptions. Of course, initially, there's a lot of numbing and people can't kind of deal with the situation. But over time, you get all the intrusive thoughts, right?

Not the denial, but the intrusive thoughts when you're ready to work on it. And our brains or human species systems are remarkable at working on things that need to be solved even when we're not consciously doing it, right? And over time, what I found is people did remarkably well. That doesn't mean they barely returned to the same, as you would say, naive assumptions, but they turned to more positive assumptions about the world and were sadder but wiser, and now felt that they could basically incorporate the negative events in a broader sort of belief system that was still fundamentally positive, right? Okay, okay, so let's take a bunch of that apart.

The first issue I'd like to address there is probably the notion of illusion. So I spent a lot of time looking at Shelly Taylor's work, the necessity of positive illusion. Yeah, well I am not a fan of the idea of positive illusions in the least. I think it's one of the most dangerous philosophical ideas ever put forward by academics. And I know it's allied with terror management theory too, that we need to inhabit a world of something like necessary fiction. It's predicated on the idea that reality itself is so unbearable that if we ever saw it in its unvarnished form, it would demolish us.

No, I'm not there either. Okay, so a better model, perhaps, is... Well, go back, yeah. Yep. No, no, go ahead. No, I was going to say one thing is you were talking about the hierarchy of belief earlier. Go back to that. Illusory beliefs at the very fundamental level, which allow you to have some positive motivations,

getting up in the morning, dealing with life and so forth, those actually could be very good. They're very strong, positive motivation to move ahead, to act in the world. You don't want illusions at the higher levels. If you do, you actually will not be able to deal with the real world. As I was bringing up before, if I have an illusion about what a good swimmer I am,

and I jump into a pool and I can't swim, that's pretty damn unfortunate, right? So I do think, you know, Shelley and others didn't make this distinction about using hierarchy, but go back to what you were talking about earlier. If you incorporate it into a hierarchical system, illusions at the bottom could be wonderfully and positively motivating. As you move up, they're very, very dangerous, right? Okay, so let's focus on that, because I don't think that the proper replacement for a naive optimism

is a functional illusion, because I don't think that the retooling produces an illusion. So let me explain why. If you are dealing with people with an anxiety disorder, you could have them organize a hierarchy of fear, things they'll avoid, right? And then you can get them to rank order the severity of that fear, things they'll avoid, right? And then you can take, you can get them to rank order the severity of that fear, and then you can get them to start working on, let's say, the least severe fear.

And you can start to expose them to that, right? You can have them imagine them being in that situation or start acting it out. Now, that exposure is predicated on the idea that if they face what plagues them, they'll prevail. And that's a faith in learning itself because we learn on the edge. Everything we learn is on the edge. Everything we learn is in consequence of some minor confrontation with something we don't understand, some minor retooling of our assumptions and some growth. Right.

Go back to assimilation, accommodation. Exactly. You do that with a certain degree of trepidation and excitement. You learn when you need to accommodate an facility, right, okay. Right, right, okay, so here's a fundamental assumption that's not illusory. If you face the world,

forthrightly and voluntarily, with faith in your ability to prevail, the pathway forward will make itself known to you in the best manner possible. It's the axiom of learning itself. It's what we facilitate in our children. And you can make an assumption that it's not unreasonable to make the assumption that the cosmos itself is established on that principle.

And I mean that in that deep sense. So the terror management theorist characters, right, deriving their theories from Ernest Becker. I loved Ernest Becker's book. I loved Ernest Becker too. But he's also deeply wrong. The hero myth that Becker lays out is not an illusion. It's actually the fundamental principle by

which adaptation takes place. Because confronting a sequence of minor traumas, let's say, is exactly what fortifies you. It's the principle of medicine itself. A little bit of the poison is what strengthens you. And it's also, but it's also the nature of learning. And so to have faith in that capacity above all is not illusory. In fact, it's faith in the fundamental mechanism by which people formulate their adaptation. And that's, see Becker, Becker,

there was a whole literature that Becker didn't know of, that he didn't pay any attention to. And so he went astray in his fundamental presumptions and so did the terror management theorists and consequences. But you've got to say, you've got to believe also that not everything works on faith. I mean, there, if, you know, the fact that you can't swim, I'm going to go back to this example again,

and you jump in the water because you think you can do it, you know, faith is not gonna allow you to survive, okay? That's stupidity, right? Well, that's stupidity, but that's what you're saying. But it sounds like stupidity, but that's what you're saying. I mean, the fact is, I think, you know, it's all a matter of opinion, but I think we learn by being

exposed to situations that are new that we are able to assimilate if it is too different. Or we can assimilate it because it works, or we can accommodate our structures to basically incorporate it. If there is too much of a disconnect, it can't happen. And in some ways, that's what's happening in trauma. That's right. In trauma, the disconnect is at the bedrock level. Whereas in much daily life, the disconnect,

I don't wanna talk about small traumas. It's sort of interesting, Jordan, that the word trauma gets so overused now, right? Yes, that's for sure. I get a call from a podcaster in England that wants me to talk about all the people being traumatized by the Queen's death. This is an old woman that you could expect would die, you know? That's really, I don't call that trauma, right?

And you probably wouldn't either. We now live in a world where the word has gotten so overused that I feel it demeans it in a way that people who really are traumatized and go through your trauma, you know, sort of aren't being recognized for what they have to go through. Right, of course, it's careless.

It's very careless. Okay, so let's go back to the notion of assimilation and accommodation. Okay, so I wanna go back to the notion of assimilation and accommodation. Okay, so I want to put a neurological spin on that in relationship to what we're discussing. Okay, so you said, and rightly so, you said that we can bite off more than we can chew, and we can neither assimilate nor accommodate. We can't digest and we can't adjust ourselves because the mouthful was too big, right? We've taken on...

The challenge is too great. So here's something... You tell me what you think about this because I think this is like the coolest idea ever. So we're attracted towards optimal challenge by the sense of meaning. It grips us. Okay, so instinct is the...no, meaning is the instinct that puts us on the edge of optimal change. Okay, if we talk about meaning as assimilation. Yes, yes, okay. Well, I would say meaning is the motivation that puts us on that edge. Okay. Right, and it's something like... okay, so now it grips our attention, right?

It activates positive emotion, right? And it does something like optimize anxiety because zero anxiety isn't the right amount. You wanna be a little bit on edge. A little bit, right. Yeah, a little bit, optimally, optimally, right? Just like you are when you're preparing to play a game with an optimal opponent, right? There's a challenge. Okay Meaning signifies the presence of an optimized challenge

Okay, and that and and that meaning that's not the illusory consequence of a delusional belief designed to protect us from the anxiety of death. Instead, that meaning is a signal that we're on the developmental edge that will best prepare us for all challenges that we might confront in the future. That's fine, yes. Okay, okay, but that, all right, but that, so, in a hero's story, back to Becker, in a hero's story, the hero takes on something like a maximal challenge. Now, Becker claimed that we identify with those heroes in an illusory manner to fortify ourselves

against the anxiety of death, sort of narcissistically elevating ourselves. But the alternative view is that no, as a proper sojourner forward, what we're doing is taking on exactly the optimized challenge that expands our skill, that expands our knowledge, that retools our maps, and that makes us optimally prepared when all,

for the future, even if all hell breaks loose. That seems reasonable to you. I mean, I don't think we go through, I don't think all these things we do in life is based on trying to deny death, which is of course Becker's notion. So I do agree with you. I mean, there is this sense of, yes, the challenge,

we like the hero stories, we learn from them, we kind of, life is not simply on a daily basis about denying death. There's no point that we do, I mean, I think we frequently do deny death, but it is not the essence of motivation, which of course is what he would claim. Well, and I would also say- I'm somewhat disagreeing with you,

that the challenge is extremely important in terms of moving forward, both as individuals and as species, you know, so I don't disagreeing with you that the challenge is extremely important in terms of moving forward both as individuals and as species, you know. So I don't disagree at all. Okay. Well, the model that I talked about earlier, the Friston model, the model that I worked on with my students as well, the entropy control model, that's also an interesting and compelling alternative to the death anxiety model because the fundamental enemy In the entropy model isn't death per se death is a consequence of unconstrained entropy too many things going wrong at once do you in Right, and so we're trying to constrain and regulate the chaos of our lives and we do that The question is how we do that. Well, we can do that with illusory and naive beliefs,

but they're subject to shattering. Or we can do that. So let me offer you, let me tell you another... I think the key to shattering is not that they're illusory, it's that they're bedrock. That's the shattering of illusions at the upper level wouldn't matter. I mean, that would be very, very unfortunate for dealing with everyday life, but it wouldn't

shatter our assumptions. I mean, that, you know... Right. Well, I meant that they're illusory. The only reason I meant that they were illusory is because they're susceptible to shattering under dire circumstances. Right. That's all I meant. That's right. No, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. susceptible to shattering under dire circumstances. Right, that's all I meant.

That's right. No, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And they are, to some extent, illusory because they tend to be positive, right? Well, they tend to be naively positive. Naively positive. Naively, okay. So let me tell you another story.

This is a cool story. So, so there's a story at the end of the Exodus adventure. And the reason I'm bringing these stories up is because I believe that the assumption structure that we see the world through is a story. And so I'm looking at the bottom of stories, at the most fundamental stories.

Okay, so- Well, our lives are narratives. I mean, there's a very good- Yeah. There's no question, our lives are narratives. I mean, there's a very good- Yeah. There's no question, our lives are narratives, right? Right, right, right. Yeah, the question, that's well, and that's a hell of a thing to say

because it begs the question, you know, is life itself a narrative? That begs the question of whether reality itself is best construed as a narrative. It seems to me that it's highly likely. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I meant we live our lives as narratives and when something doesn't fit, we have to make the plot work. Right.

Right, right, right, right. So the Exodus story, yes. The Exodus story. Okay, okay. So yeah, so there's an event that occurs at the end. It's quite, it's a remarkable story. So the Israelites are, they've made it most of the way through the desert and they're, but they're still bitching and whining and complaining. They're longing for the previous tyranny, right? So that's the previous set of assumptions. They don't like to be lost, which is where they are in the desert when their assumptions

are shattered. Yeah. Right. That's exactly right. The desert, that desert sojourn is the shattered assumptions that are a consequence of leaving the tyrannical state. It's exactly what that represents. I mean, I might not say they were traumatized. I would say that they are, but they are very anxious. Well, they're lost. But nevertheless, go ahead. They're lost. They're lost. That's right. They turn to Moses and Aaron and yes, okay, right. Right. They're lost and they're out of water in this scene.

Okay, and they get all bitchy about this. They're sick of eating the food that they have and they're lost and they're hopeless and they're longing for tyranny and God gets tired of their complaining. Their faithlessness, let's say. Their rebellion against movement forward. And he sends a bunch of poisonous snakes in to bite them. And so, the Israelites get bitten by all these poisonous snakes and they get kind of sick of it after a while.

And they go ask Moses, who they know to have a connection with God, to intercede. And Moses agrees and he goes and has a chat with God. And then what should happen is that God calls off the poisonous snakes and the Israelites move forward. But that's not what happens. And what happens instead is insanely profound. And you know that healing symbol of the physicians that's a staff with a serpent around it?

Okay, so this is one of the variants of that symbol. Okay, so God tells Moses, take the bronze of the Israelites and cast a staff. So that's like the rod of tradition. That's like the fundamental axiomatic assumption. Put that in the ground. And on that, put a bronze serpent. And have all the Israelites look at this.

And if they look at it, then the poison won't affect them anymore. Now this is very interesting. It's very interesting, because God could just call off the snakes, but that isn't what He does. He fortifies the Israelites against poison, and He does that by voluntary exposure. Right, okay. Like aversion therapy, right. Precisely like that. And that is the therapeutic approach, that approach of exposure that every single psychotherapeutic school has converged on in the last hundred years.

It doesn't matter whether the origin, the psychoanalyst, the cognitive psychologist, the behaviorist, the existentialists, they all come to the same conclusion. Get your story straight and confront what challenges you. That's the pathway to redemption. Okay, so here's a cool twist on that story This is this has to do with what beliefs are fundamental at the core not illusory in the Gospels Christ Says to his followers that Unless he is lifted up like the serpent in the desert. There's no possibility of redemption in the desert, there's no possibility of redemption.

Now this is a very weird narrative twist because first of all, it begs a variety of questions. The first question being, why in the world would Christ refer back to that story? The second question being, why would he assimilate himself to that figure? It's very unlikely, right? A serpent on a pole. Okay, so this is the conclusion, and this has to do with the validity of beliefs, I believe. And it's the antidote to the notion

that we need illusion to survive. So, a snake is a pretty bad thing, and a poisonous snake is worse, and a poisonous snake in the midst of a desert is even worse, but it's not the worst thing. What's the worst thing? That would be like a metasnake. What's the worst possible thing? Well, the worst possible thing is something like an amalgam of the tragedies of life.

You could throw some malevolence in there just for spice. Right? So the worst possible thing is the core of mortality and the fact of malevolence. All right? It's the full confrontation with that that's illustrated in the gospel narrative. And so the notion... Yeah. Okay.

Well, I'll just close with that and then I'll let you respond. Yeah. Yeah. The idea there, it's something like this. The idea there is that faith in your ability, faith in the human ability to fully confront the limits of mortal experience and malevolence is the proper foundational axiom. And it allows for the existence of evil. That's right. Okay, so... That's right. No, I'm totally... I mean, so you know, that's right. You're saying essentially

that these illusory or, as you're saying, naive beliefs at the fundamental level allow us to function in the real world. That's right. I mean, this is a very mundane way and simplistic way of saying what you've been talking about. But one of the things I do want to bring up is when we're talking about things that are illusory, in part they're illusory because they're overgeneralizations. If you say the world is benevolent, you have these beliefs,

part of it is just it's an overgeneralization of in general things are right. It doesn't take into account all the bad stuff that we know happened. But so at the fundamental level, what we're talking about these overgeneralized beliefs, when people actually end up managing and coping successfully with trauma, they still end up having some beliefs that are essentially less overgeneralized. They're beliefs that are positive, that now can account for these negative events. But it's interesting to talk about it, that cognitively we cannot, as you know all too well, we cannot actually sort of respond to every single little thing in the world.

Most of our beliefs and all of our knowledge involves some overestimation, overgeneralization. Abstraction. Some abstraction. You know, and when you get to that very top of that hierarchy, then you may be, the things may be very, very specific, right? But the further down we move, the greater the general, the generalizations. Yeah, yeah. Well, and you're pointing out that I don't think there's any difference between noting the undifferentiated and overgeneralized quality of those initial beliefs

and naivety. That's the same thing. It's the use of an insufficiently detailed map. So the map that the aura, aura too optimistic and naive story. So the problem with the belief structure that's amenable to disruption by trauma is that it doesn't take into account the existence, let's say of tragic randomness and outright malevolence, right? And so, and that works fine until you encounter it,

but it doesn't work at all once you do. And once you encounter it, having those beliefs actually enables people to actually rebuild the assumptions. And you know, the only problem I have with the word naive, and even though it's, I think, sort of accurate, is there is a kind of almost person blaming, victim blaming about, naive-tay feels like

sort of pejorative. Do you know what I'm saying? As opposed to if we use the cognitive word over generalization instead, it doesn't feel quite so negative. But yes, in terms of, but as a descriptor, I think you're right, it doesn't feel quite so negative. But yes, in terms of, but as a descriptor, I think you're right, it's naive. That's right. You know? Okay. Well, so that's interesting too, because this is an ancient argument, right? The difference

between, let's say, ignorance and willful blindness. Right. right. Right, right, right. Absolutely. You can imagine that someone... Okay, so, God, let me tell you a story about that. Okay, but we will read the other book sometime. We will, right away, right away. Because I really need to know what you think about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do that right away. Maybe we'll just close with this,

with this part with this. Freud talked a lot about the Oedipal relationship that was characterized by an overbearing maternal presence and too much dependence. Right? Now we know that people with dependent personality are more likely to be traumatized. Now, but, let me elaborate on that.

I'm not sure that's true. But okay, we'd have to deal with that. That's a whole different discussion. Because you're traumatized if you experience basically sort of unusual out of the ordinary events, right? That super challenge you. But people who have the most, people that already have negative assumptions actually often traumatize less.

I don't think the negative assumptions are a sign of a more differentiated worldview. I'm not a fan of the notion of depressive realism. It also could be part of dependents, you know, dependent people. But anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry, I apologize for interrupting. Well, let's see if I can lay this out properly. People maintain their undifferentiated viewpoints

longer than they might, because when they're faced with minor incidences of disconfirming evidence, they turn away. They don't process it, right? That's the willful blindness. Now, I'm not sure it's willful blindness. Let's say that is cognitive conservatism. If we changed our cognitive schemas

every time there was something that didn't fit, it would be a problem, right? I mean, things have to build up to change. And that's what, like, you know, look at scientific revolutions, look at Kuhnian stuff, you know, the notion that we're not going to make a change every second based on one disconfirming stuff. I mean, I actually love Cole Popper. Youper. The notion is we should be cognitively conservative when it comes to our schemas or our theories. It should take a lot to turn them around, but we should ultimately be willing to turn them.

That would be dependent on the degree of their axiomatic fundamental. Yes, exactly. So the notion should be that the deeper you go into the axiomatic structure, the farther down you go, the more absolutely overwhelming the evidence has to be in order to move that assumption. Yes. Okay. Absolutely. We agree. Okay. Okay. And so I think the cognitive conservatism, that's the stake in the ground, right?

That's the bedrock of something like tradition or cumulative experience. Yeah, you can't let one deviation at the periphery destroy the center, right? That's a catastrophic mistake. But it isn't only that people are unwilling to change their central beliefs because they're cognitively conservative. They're also prone to turning a blind eye, even to repetitive information that indicates that there's an axiomatic error.

Right, no, I think that's what... Okay, that's fine. I mean, we could talk about politics now. How we turn our... Yes, well, let's do that. The confirmation bias... No, I was going to say just at segueing, the confirmation bias, we only want to listen to things on our side.

We don't want to actually be exposed to the other. We kind of live in our silos. We confirm what we believe. I mean, this is part of how we live our lives, unfortunately, right? Yes, I totally agree. The fact that we want to confirm what we already believe and expose ourselves to stuff that will confirm it is a very major part of how we construct and live our lives. Right, right. And that's not, while you tell me, and that's not, that's not,

well, you tell me what you think about this, that's not merely cognitive conservatism. That's also active turning away from- Also motivational. Okay, good, fine. Right, that's, and that goes back to what you were saying earlier, that's motivational, right? Right.

That's part of a desire. Right, well, why, first of all, you know, if we've organized ourselves politically, we have somewhere convenient to put malevolence and it's not within us. It's in the opposite of our ideological belief. So that's a lovely thing to have. Plus we've organized the world in a relatively,

what would you call it? Oversimplified manner and that means we don't have to think and that we're on the side of virtue. So that's pretty convenient as well. Let's talk about the political landscape then. So that takes us to your other major book. Yeah, and actually that's the one that was recently published. That's within the last few months as opposed to 30 years ago.

Right, right. That's the two moralities. That's right. Well, why don't you lay that out first, lay out your thesis, and then we'll discuss that in some more detail. And jump in when I overstate this, or go on too long. So I do think that moral psychology is a very helpful lens, an invaluable lens for understanding our political differences. So let's start with motivation.

When the fundamental motivational distinction for humans is, or for any animal, is approach and avoidance. Very simply, pain, pleasure. We approach the good. We want to avoid the bad. I actually ended up using these two ways. I first have to talk a little bit about morality and my understanding of the moral map a little to move on to politics. Have at it. Have at it.

Okay. So if you think about approach and avoidance, I sort of make a distinction in morality between two kinds of morality. One is prescriptive and one is proscriptive. Prescriptive is based in avoidance. These are the things we shouldn't do. You shouldn't lie, you shouldn't steal, you shouldn't cheat. We all know that, right? Is that the same as conscience?

That's proscriptive morality. Well, conscience is sort of an internal mechanism that allows us to know the rules and the norms and pushes us in the right direction, yes. But proscriptive morality is about not doing the wrong thing. It's based in inhibition, constraint, and so forth. Prescriptive morality is doing the right thing. It's a difference between not harming and helping, right? And our default moralityities based on interpersonal interactions

who we're interacting with don't harm, i.e. don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat, and help, right? Be kind, respect others, you know, help them, right? Now that difference, and by the way, motivationally, not harming and helping are not the same thing. They're not just opposite sides of the same coin. They're opposite in many ways. The child who is told not to take somebody else's toys and doesn't take the toys isn't necessarily good at sharing his or her own. So the prescriptive and the proscriptive are really quite different.

And in fact, children learn proscript morality, the do-nots, much more readily, quicker, more quickly than the do's. Okay. I've mapped the moral domain based on that, and I'm not going to go through the personal and interpersonal domain. What I want to move to is the group domain. So group-based moralities that are proscriptive or prescriptive. Proscriptive morality, the shorthand for that is protect. Protect from harm, okay? The morality of protecting from harm versus providing for well-being, okay? Instead of proscriptive and prescriptive, they're very wordy words, right? So,

let's think about morality as rules and norms that facilitate group living. In part, they're based on protecting from harm, the group, protecting the group from harm in this case, and providing for the group. Those are the two basic tasks for group living, right, defending and providing.

And when I've looked at this, these two moralities, which by the way I should also argue motivationally, what is the most difficult part of do not, if your temptation has to be inhibited in the case of the proscriptive or the protect. The enemy of prescriptive morality, the provider, is not having to tamp something down. It's not temptation, it's apathy, it's not caring, right? So what I've, if you look at liberals and conservatives, they don't differ in terms of how much they think you should be helping or they may say you should help different people. But both groups believe you shouldn't harm

and you shouldn't steal and lie and cheat and you should help your neighbor and you should be kind and respect other people. Where you start seeing huge differences is the group-based morality, which in the case of a proscriptive group dates morality, the protect protecting the group looks like social order you know what people are after is social order stability and security of the group and in the case of More of a prescriptive. It looks like social justice providing for the group So everybody is is cared for a shared communal responsibility So we have this social order and social justice, which are quite different, but it turns out those are not correlated. They're negatively

correlated. Every other area of morality, protecting and providing are highly correlated. Okay. So I want to move to this. How did you determine that they weren't correlated? So I want to move to this. How did you how did you determine that they weren't correlated? Well, because we took large samples of self-described Liberals and conservatives, okay, and you can see what their their support for these various Beliefs police as a social order we have there are constructs that Underlie that and we you know have, I mean, in the book,

we talk about all the confirmed effect, all the statistics, but what's important for me to go back for one moment is, I actually believe that both liberalism and conservatism are morally based. Now I'm on the left, but I believe very strongly that liberals and conservatives have to work together to preserve our system.

I do believe— Well, you said why. You said why in some sense, right? Because you need order and you need provision. You need order and you need—and in many ways, you cannot—we're not going to preserve a democracy with just half the country, you know, opting for it, right? I mean, if you look at any presidential election about half the country votes Democrat half Republican now I do want to put this claim here, you know, I do think that the people that wield these

Ideologies are not necessarily moral and I want to say that you know MAGA if you are a MAGA conservative where the core of your political belief now is based in a big lie, I'm not opting for, I'm not saying that these are moral, I'm already precluding morality there, okay? But I think there are huge numbers of conservatives in our country that, and your country as well, right? Are you Canadian, correct? I'm Canadian, yeah. Canadian, right. Lots of conservatives that I disagree with

probably in terms of policy, but I'd be happy to sit down and talk about it. We'd find out there are lots of things that we'd agree about, okay? We'd find out that we both care about family, we care about community. Liz Cheney's a great example of this. Everybody I know on the left says, I'd be happy to sit down with Liz Cheney.

She has integrity. I don't agree with her about any policy, but she has proven that she is a person that's moral. Okay? So I do want to say, I'm not talking about the MAGA conservatives right now. We only have to go to the global party system, the global party survey of 2,000 experts on parties and elections who now have claimed that our Republican party in the US is an alt-right party. It is no longer considered a mainstream Republican party. The Democrats are considered a mainstream liberal party. So we're now talking about a party that isn't even really a mainstream conservative party.

But let's put all of that aside, all right? There is a reason to believe that half the world, half the US, half the Canadians probably, are tend towards a conservative, half tend towards a liberal. These are not, I don't believe as Hibbing and his colleagues do, that politics is inherited. I do think there are some temperamental differences early on that can lead people to want one direction or another. You know all the literature on threat sensitivity for conservatives. Threat sensitivity, we talk about that as if that's necessarily a bad thing. That's not necessarily bad. Somebody has to be sort of alert for threat, right? We know when you look at eye-tracking, for example, studies,

conservatives are more likely to look at the negative, etc. Liberals are more likely to look at the positive or at least don't differentiate. Liberals are more, the psychological attribute that defines liberals is openness. So you have openness versus a sensitivity to threat. These do lead to very different kinds of policies and concerns, okay? There's no question. Unfortunately, you know, I think a lot of social order could, in fact, if you have an interest in social order, you could actually believe in working towards greater

equality, which basically is really, would help social order a great deal, but in fact, what most concern have moved towards instead are abortion, social issues, abortion and same sex marriage and, you know, doctors, suicide and prohibitions. These are based on constraint and they are based on prohibition. That's exactly right, which is proscriptive.

Yeah, I'm sorry, so yes. Well, so that's, I wanna make sure that I've got the argument exactly right here. And so let me lay out what you said and tell me if I've got it correct. The best evidence that I know of for distinguishing between conservatives and liberals is temperamental, right? The liberal types, the progressive types are higher in openness and lower in conscientiousness, especially orderliness, right? And then the conservatives are the reverse of that. Low in openness and high in conscientiousness,

especially orderliness. And so they see less possibility and potential compared to the liberals, which is why the liberals tend to be open border types because they see beyond the constraints something like Potential that can be creatively engaged with whereas the conservatives are more likely to think no That's a place where all hell can break loose and the problem is yeah Well, the problem is they're both right

can break loose. And the problem is, well, the problem is they're both right, because what's beyond you can be very promising and engaging, and what's beyond you can do you in. Well, let's think about what would be the attributes that Concert will be looking for. Strength and power, okay, you're talking about threat, trying to protect from the group, right? Strength and power, socially defined roles, everybody knows where they fit, you know, for stability. Tradition is looked at and culture, you know, as markers to fight self-interest, et cetera, et cetera. Liberalism, it doesn't really, that's not what liberalism is about at all. Liberalism is about equality, greater equality for groups, providing resources for groups.

Very different kinds of interests here. Liberalism wants regulation. Liberalism want regulation in the economic domain. We want people to have, we believe in sort of entitlements that help people, you know, social security and welfare if you need food, and you know, believe in trying to establish greater equality, right? That's the economic domain. Conservatives actually really are more interested in unfettered capitalism, right?

The unfettered economy. They want autonomy in the economic domain. Conservatives, given the interest in socially defined roles, culture, tradition, and so forth, they focus on norm adherence, strong norm adherence. Norm adherence and strict rules really is a social domain. They want regulation around things like abortion and same sex marriage and things of this sort. And they want autonomy.

We have policies that are completely mirror image. One group wants regulation in economics, liberals, and the other wants autonomy there, and conservatives want regulation in social domain, and liberals want autonomy there. So you get this crazy thing, which is why people have always said, why is it that conservatives really, they want to be so strict about abortion, but don't touch the economy? Well, it's because it's not their domain It's not you see it's not where the morality The morality doesn't touch that for them. That's it's not a relevant domain. So okay, so let me ask you. Well, that's okay That's okay. Let me ask you this

I'll put a good word in for the conservatives I know and I know you have been doing that as well with regards to the necessity of maintenance of social order, but there's also another difference that seems to me striking, and I don't think the conservatives are very good at playing this out. The reason that the conservatives with integrity want autonomy in economic matters is so that individuals rather than the state can bear the responsibility for provision. Right, well why is that? Okay, I understand the argument but why is that better? People, here's the thing, the conservative mantra is equal opportunity, equal opportunity. I guess

I'm very tired of hearing that because you never have equal opportunity if people are not starting at the same place Right. What's equal opportunity if somebody has a lot of money? They've inherited from their parents and somebody has nothing you say is equal opportunity. There's not it's like running a race with some people Starting, you know a lap ahead, you know, so even this notion of individuals should be responsible It's not that liberals don't think that it matters. Well, it's not just individuals. It's not just individuals.

It's not that individuals don't believe that I... I mean, you're right. People are also responsible. But, you know, I love, you know, the notion that picking people up by their own bootstraps and how important that is. And you go back to Martin Luther King and he says, well, you know, some people don't even have boots. You know, it's important to remember that we just, you know, we start in very different places based on social policies in the past, right? So it's not as if people who work hard shouldn't also do well. It's that lots of people who work very hard

still can't get ahead. So this notion of individuals should be responsible, for those who can make it without the help, great. But you want, I think, I believe in communal, you know, sharing and sharing communal responsibility. I believe in that, you know, maybe that's, that is a liberal belief that it's not each person for him or herself and you make it or you break, it's that we have a responsibility to each other. We're in this game together, we go around once in life, you know, help each other. And that includes having a system, government, right?

That's what we got, helping those who need it. You know, and I don't think that's inconsistent with people also working hard, right? Okay, so this is what I would recommend for the time being. I think we should continue this discussion of the political on the Daily Wire Plus side. I'm happy to do that. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that.

Yeah, yeah. So that's a reasonable, we've covered a lot of material, that's a reasonable place to draw this part of the conversation to an end. For everybody watching and listening Thank you for your time and attention first of all on the YouTube side Yeah, I didn't know it is already 10 of 6. Thank you. Yeah. Well, there we go. That's that that's the consequence of Of an engrossing conversation. Okay, so for everybody watching on YouTube, thank you very much for your time and attention. I'm going to continue this conversation behind the Daily Wire Plus platform, Paywall, and so if you want to join us there, please do, and we'll hash out some more of our discussion

with regards to conservatism and liberalism. Thank you very much. Dr. Janof... Is it, sorry, Janof Bowman? No, it is Janof Bowman. It's Janof, is it, sorry, Janof Bowman? No, it is Janof Bowman. It's Janof, okay, yes, okay. And yeah, thank you very much for walking me through your thoughts on shattered assumptions and your political ideas.

We're gonna continue that. And thank you to the film crew here in Scottsdale for making this possible and to the Daily Wire Plus people for putting this all together. And feel free everyone to join us. And the film crew here, yes. Right, right. So thank you and we'll take five and we'll re-establish contact on the Daily Wire Plus side.

All right, bye everybody. Yep, yep.