The content explores the nature of overanalysis, suggesting it can stem from high cognitive ability or anxiety, and then pivots to a broader discussion on human nature, societal values, and the fundamental purposes of life, particularly concerning relationships and family.
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I'm told that my overanalyzing is
double-edged sword, but I'm suffering
from being this way. Yeah, well, you're
probably, you know, high in openness,
and maybe you're very verbally
intelligent, so you're pretty much stuck
with that. Maybe you've got a bit of
mania to you, too. And I don't mean that
in a negative sense. I find relief when
I drink alcohol, smoke, or take certain
drugs because it slows down my thought
process. How can I use my overanalysis
to my advantage? Well, I would say find
yourself a difficult cognitive problem
to solve. You know, pick a challenge.
Pick a challenge. But you know, you also
might consider
you might consider talking to someone.
You find relief when you drink alcohol.
That might be that might be an
indication that some of what you're
overanalyzing isn't so much a
consequence of excess cognitive power,
but an excess of of high negative
emotion. And so that would be
illustrated in say high trait
neuroticism. We're going to release the
big five aspect scale here later this
month and you'll be able to take that
and it'll give you a pretty good
detailed description of your
personality. And there's two dimensions
of neuroticism, withdrawal and
volatility. And you know, if you're
overanalyzing because you're you're um
what do you call that? Ruminating. That
can be a consequence of high levels of
anxiety. And the reason I'm suggesting
that is because you said you find relief
when you drink alcohol. And alcohol is a
very powerful anxolytic agent,
anti-anxiety agent. And so lots of
people who have high levels of anxiety
do ruminate and so overanalyze let's say
and they find relief when they drink
because alcohol is a primary anxilytic
like felium like bzzodioipines and
barbituates. So the fact that alcohol
gives you relief probably indicates that
some of what's driving your overanalysis
is anxiety and then you could um
exercise can really help with that. I
would also recommend this is something
really to think about. I don't know what
your eating habits are like or your
sleeping habits. But if you are an
anxious person and that's manifesting
itself in say neurotic overanalysis,
there's two things you can do very
rapidly. Three things really that will
help quell that. Um well, four things
even. Number one, get up at the same
time every day. And I would recommend in
the morning because that's when people
generally get up and it's good to do
what everyone else does unless you have
a good reason not to. Number two, eat a
large breakfast, right? Keep it
carbohydrate light, you know. Don't
don't eat to toast and like and Froot
Loops. That's not going to do the trick.
Make it fat and protein heavy and eat
more than you want. You might say, "I'm
not hungry in the morning." It's like
this has nothing to do with what you
want or what your appetite is. It's like
you need to eat in the morning. If
you're an anxious person and you don't
eat in the morning and then you stress
yourself out, your body hyperproduces
insulin. It takes all the blood sugar
out of your blood and that disregulates
your metabolism for the entire day. You
can't reset it till you go to sleep at
night. And I've had lots of anxious
clients who would say fall into the
overanalytic category who were like
virtually cured by eating a large
breakfast every morning. I would highly
recommend that you could try some
physical exercise. Weightlifting is
really good for curing anxiety. And the
other thing you could do, as I alluded
to earlier today, is to make a schedule
and start attending to your daily micro
routines. So, you know, you got to
figure out what your overanalysis is. It
might be cognitive, like maybe you have
a very active mind. You know, you're
fast verbally. Are you fast verbally?
One way you can find that out is to do
something like write down as many
letters words as you can that begin with
the letter S, for example, in in three
minutes. Do that with a bunch of your
friends. And if you're someone who
writes down way more words than anyone
else, then you're verbally fluent and
that might be driving some of your
overanalysis. But my guess is that
you're suffering from some rumination
that's related to anxiety. And so I told
told you what I think the simplest ways
are to rectify that. People like Sam
Harris and Richard Dawkins, they assume
that the natural person is the civilized
creature that you see before you in a
discussion like this.
>> But I don't believe that. I think that
people are far crazier and far more
destructive and and far greater as well
than the typical rationalist approach.
Rationality is a surface facade. That's
all. And the idea that people will
eventually be rational, it's much more
likely that they will be irrational than
rational. You could say for example that
Catholicism let's say for all its
irrationality was as rational as people
can get. If you remove that level of irrationality
irrationality
>> that's structural say then everything
falls apart and people get so irrational
you can't believe it. not more rational,
you know, because they like Harrison and
his crowd think that
we were superstitious for thousands of
years, kind of savage and and and and superstitious
superstitious
>> and then all of a sudden the
enlightenment came along in the
scientific revolution and poof, we got
rational and since then things have been
good. And that's not how it looks to me
at all. I don't I don't buy that. Um,
Um,
I think that our rationality, as I said
already, our our rationality, even our
science is nested inside this larger
metaphysical structure. This is also
something that Carl Jung would be an
advocate of. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> That there's an irrational,
pragmatic, I would say, evolutionarily
determined ethic underneath this
rationality. And when it goes, then all
that rationality goes too. So [snorts]
yes, you can be a non-believer. But the
funny thing about that is too,
you can't be a non-believer in your
action. You see, because Harris's
metaphysics is fundamentally Christian.
So he acts out a Christian metaphysics,
but he says, well, I don't believe it.
It's like, well, yeah, you do because
you're acting it out. You just say you
don't believe it, but you believe.
>> What do you mean? What do you mean he's
acting acting it out? Like what, for
example? Well, he doesn't rob banks,
doesn't kill people, doesn't rape,
doesn't murder, you know. Well, there's
a good case to be made for atheism. I
mean, let's let's make no no bones about it.
it.
>> Um, I actually think it's an easier case
to make than the alternative.
Um, because you could say in some sense
there's been 300 400 years of brilliant
scientists who've been doing nothing but
laying the foundation for an objective
empirical [snorts]
atheism. So, it's an unbelievably
powerful argument, but
but
it's not going to lead to the to the
rule of rationality. See, I don't
believe that. I don't believe that because
because
>> Do you think anything could get you
there? Do Do you think somebody could
lay out a case that could eventually
turn you on this the same way you would
want someone like Sam to come around to
what you're saying? Do you think that
that that's even in the realm of
>> I can't see how because it's it's not
like I haven't thought these things
through. I mean I am a scientist you
know I understand the scientific
worldview. In fact everything that I am
saying and thinking about religion is
nested inside an evolutionary viewpoint
an evolutionarily an evolutionary
biology viewpoint and an evolutionary
psychology viewpoint. So I do believe
there's a fundamental contrast between a
Darwinian worldview and a Newtonian
worldview which is the worldview that I
think Sam Harris and his crowd basically
have. He didn't agree with that. But and
it's complicated. Yeah. But
>> but um see I guess in some sense I'm
more romantic in temperament than Sam.
And I think than his followers too. And
because of that I can see the irrational
and malevolent side of human beings. I
believe much more clearly than they can.
And I also think I have far more
experience with that sort of thing.
science and the scientific worldview in
some sense has won, you know, and and
because it's so self-evident, let's say,
because of what it can produce that
people just will accept it and move
forward with it. But I'm not sure about
that either. I mean, I think there's a
strong anti-science movement afloat now.
I don't think there's any reason to
assume that a scientific attitude of
that sort would be stable. Um, I mean,
it it's only 300 years old, 400. I mean
people don't like it when I say that
because okay fine you can chase it back
to some degree to the ancient Greeks you
know barely but really it was Newton and
Bacon and and Deart and and that's not
very long ago and we take it for granted
but there's anti-science movements
popping up. Well look the whole debate
over biology to some degree is is
profoundly an anti-science movement and
and not unconsciously so consciously so
right. Very conscious very consciously
so. Yeah.
>> So I I don't think that there's any
reason to assume something like that
would be stable. There's no evidence
that it's stable, let's say. Where
whereas there is evidence for the
stability of cultures that were
non-scientific for thousands of years,
millions of years for that matter, at
least hundreds of thousands of years.
>> Yeah. Well, you know, the other thing
that often happens with with with
Dawkins and Harrison and and their crew
is that they attribute war and conflict
to religious motivations, you know, and
I find that quite interesting because
first of all, chimpanzees go to war. So,
you know, we could just lay that right
on the table and say, well, so much for
the religious theory. They're
territorial. We're territorial. You
could consider religious sentiment as an
aspect of territoriality, but the
fundamental motivation for the battle is
territorial and and that's grounded in
like you can see that in animals always. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> That was only discovered, you know, the
chimps went to war in about mid70s and
and and Goodall suppressed it for quite
a while because she thought maybe she
had warped the chimpanzees by by
provisioning them and so that they were
manifesting abnormal behavior. But they
were studied for quite a while and they
do do raiding and they're and they'll
wipe out another colony no problem and
brutally. They seem to have absolutely
no inhibitions on their aggression
whatsoever. They'll tear them into
pieces and chimpanzees are about six
times as strong as an adult male.
They're super strong. And so when they
let loose, they're vicious with no
control. And so unless you're willing to
attribute religious sentiment to the chimpanzees,
chimpanzees,
which I think you could to some degree,
by the way, h
>> how can we make that jump for a chimpanzeee?
chimpanzeee?
>> Well, because the precursors to
religious belief are in place. So, for example,
example,
animals organize themselves into a
hierarchy. You could call it a dominance
hierarchy, but it's it's not exactly the
right way to conceptualize it because
dominance sounds like power, right? And
and that's sort of the social justice
warrior, postmodernist claim that all
hierarchies are based on power. But
France Dewal, who's a a Dutch
anthropologist who studied chimps for a
long time, has noted that the brutal
chimp dictatorship tends to be unstable
and end in a very violent, mean manner.
Well, so if you're a brutal chimp leader
and you're always tormenting everyone
and you don't do any reciprocal grooming
and you don't have any friends, then one
day two chimps who are nicely bonded
together, 3/4 your size, wait and ambush
you and tear you into pieces.
>> And so one of the things DeWalt has
noted is that the the stable chimpanzeee
troops tend to have a leader that's
quite pro-social. Lot of friends, a lot
of social bonds, a lot of mutual
grooming. And so you could see even
there imagine that imagine that there
are sets of hierarchies among
chimpanzees and there's different
principles of leadership at the top.
Then you could imagine a competition
across time. Which principle of
leadership is going to produce the most
stable and functional chimpanzeee
hierarchy. Well, that is exactly what
does happen. And so there's there's some
>> there's some shape that the top of the
hierarchy starts to ch to take. And you
could think about that as the beginnings
of an ideal. It's even more complicated
than that because let's say you get a
stable hierarchy set up and then this is
what happens in human beings. It doesn't
happen in chimps or it does but only to
a limited degree. You get a stable
hierarchy set up and then there's some
pattern of behavior that emerges that's
that reliably moves men to the top of that.
that.
>> Okay? They leave more offspring. So what
happens is that the male dominance
hierarchy, the male hierarchy, forget
about dominance. The male hierarchy
becomes a selection mechanism. It
promotes men to the upper ranks and then
the women peel off the top because we
know that human females do that.
Chimpanzeee females don't. They're
promiscuous maiders. The dominant males
are more likely to mate with the
females, but that's because they chase
the subordinates away. It's not because
the females are choosy. So the reason
I'm telling you this, it's it's really
important because
>> imagine that there's a reliable pattern
of behavior that will move you up a male
hierarchy across time. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> Well, what that means is that men over
time have become biologically adapted to
that pattern. The hierarchy is there.
It's stable. It exists across millions
of years. And so it acts as a selection
mechanism by promoting men. And so the
men who have the genes that are most
likely to get them promoted put those
genes forward. And so we get more like
the group ideal as we progress through
time both biologically and culturally.
And then we also start to articulate
that group ideal. And that's partly what
a religion does when it when it's coming
up with the idea of an ideal. There's a
there's a distinction made between
countries that rule by the ruler, who's
God, and countries that are ruled by
God, who's not the ruler. Okay? So,
strip it for a minute of its religious
language. [snorts] And imagine this instead.
instead.
Imagine that what we consider God is the
abstraction of the ideal by which people
have to orient themselves to produce a
functional society. It's an abstraction,
right? So it's just sort of the the
basic underlying truth of how we are
able to function as a group of people.
>> Yes. Properly. And you can't identify it
with any one person because when you
identify it with a person then the
system gets corrupted because the person
gets inflated. Let's say
>> this would be like the pharaoh basically.
basically.
>> Yes. Exactly like precisely like that.
That that's exactly that that's the
canonical story in the Old Testament.
Yeah. is the pharaoh is the earthly
ruler who demands everything that you
should provide to God. What's God? Well,
we'll we'll can speak about it from an
evolutionary psychology perspective.
>> God is the idea of the abstract ideal
and you separate it out from from the
actual ruler. Just like in in in in our
society, the idea of sovereignty is
abstracted from the president, right?
The president comes and goes. The
sovereignty of the president remains.
The sovereignty of the president is a
very abstract idea because it's
disembodied, right? It's disembodied.
Now, how we were chimps for God's sake.
How long do you think it took us to
figure out how to disembbody the idea of
sovereignty from the individual? man, it
was like well
well
>> it was
>> it was maybe up until maybe it took us
till 150,000 years ago to start to start
formulating that you know in in some
articulated way in some abstract way I
think we could recognize it before then
and the way you recognize it is through admiration
admiration
right if you meet someone that you
admire there's someone you want to
imitate and what it is imagine this
pattern that will move you up the
hierarchy and then you see people who
manifest different elements of it and
you see someone who manifests an element
that you don't have and something in you
responds to that with with admiration.
It's unconscious, right? Cuz it pulls
you towards them. It's not voluntary. I
want to do a video directed towards
young women because I'd like to tell
them what lies they're being taught and
are going to be taught. And there's a
couple of lies. And the first is the
first lie is you're going to have a career.
career.
Okay? No. A tiny fraction of people have careers,
careers,
>> maybe 2%.
>> Okay. Most people have jobs. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> And the definition of a job is an
activity that you get paid for because
you wouldn't do it voluntarily. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> Okay. So, first of all, you're not going
to have a career. You're going to have a
job. Second, most jobs aren't very
desirable. They're not very meaningful.
They're not the center place for your
life. And even if you have a career like
um for example, if you go into law,
you're going to find that it's very very
demanding and very very difficult and
very very stressful and very very
competitive and you're not going to find
the fulfillment of your of your desire
for example for inter intimate close
interpersonal relationships in a
competitive domain like law.
>> It's just not going to happen. And if
you go and be a doctor, then you're
going to be looking at 60-hour weeks.
And I and so careers are careers are
exceptionally demanding. You're never
done. You're always working. And jobs
are are people pay you to do jobs
because the jobs are difficult and
unpleasant and require responsibility
and and difficult decisions. Okay. So
that's the first lie. The second lie is
that career or job is actually the
fundamental purpose of life. And that's
not true. The the most important thing
in life is your family, your
relationship, and your children. And you
might not know that when you're 19
because what the hell do you know when
you're 19? You don't know anything. 7
[snorts] years ago, you were 12. You
don't know anything. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> And what you don't understand is that by
the time you're 40, if you don't have a
family and children, you are one lost soul.
soul.
Because as you get older, you know, and
I mean, I've had a very good career and
it's still going just great guns and I
don't expect it to end, you know, unless
someone gets particularly irritated with
me for another 15 or 20 years. But I can
tell you that despite all that, despite
the fact that I'm absolutely fascinated
by my job and and my my career and and I
and I'm in a very fortunate position
because it's an extraordinarily
interesting job.
Ever since I had kids, they were the
most important thing in my life. And as
I get older, that just becomes more and
more and more clear. And so, Western
people, Carl Jung commented about this
at one point. He thought that because
the the fundamental archetypal hero of
Western culture was Christ, and Christ
died when he was in his early 30s, that
we really didn't have a good model for
the latter half of life. It's a very
interesting kind of idea, but um I I can
I can say with with virtual certainty
that if you're not orient if you're not
situated with a family in the latter
half of your life, you're especially if
you also don't have a partner, you're
one lonesome, isolated, miserable creature.
creature.
>> I imagine the rates for people like that
are quite high, aren't they?
Well, and and increasingly we're going
to have a society where there's a
tremendous number of isolated old women
who have no one. Now, that's partly
because men die young, too, compared to
women, you know,
>> but um you know, you were talking about
this famous feminist who didn't have
children. It's like not having children.
And you'll wake up when you're 35 if
you're not careful, if you're female,
and you'll think, uhoh, I don't have any
time left to have kids. And that is not
fun. That is not a good realization. and
then maybe you'll be on the assisted
reproduction carousel for the next 10
years. And believe me, that's that's
like having a near fatal disease. That
is not entertaining. Life in some ways
isn't that complicated. There are there
are fundamental like people think, well,
what should I do with my life? Okay.
Well, the first answer to that is do
what other people have always done
>> unless you're certain that you're
exceptional in some manner. And and even
if you are, you're probably only
exceptional in one direction, not in
all. So what do you do? Well, you get as
educated as you can so that you can make
yourself useful. So that you have a
skill or multiple skills that other
people will pay you validly for
>> and not only be because of that, but
because you need to contribute to your
own maintenance and to the and to the uh
what health and survival of the broader
community. Okay? So you have to do that.
Get your act together. get yourself a
trade or or get educated,
>> then you need a job,
>> then you need an intimate partner, then
you need a family.
>> It's like, and if you miss any of those,
>> then you're in trouble. Now, you might
not think so because you might be
cynical about it or or prematurely
cynical, which is so many young women,
you ask them at 19, well, do you want to
have children? They think, well, I don't
think so. It's like, you don't know what
you're talking about.
>> Yeah. And why people have decided that
you should be some sort of authority
about it is is nothing but an index of
how pathological our culture has become.
You don't know anything. You're a child.
You haven't read anything. You haven't
accomplished anything. Your parents have
taken care of you up to this point. And
you you can pronounce on something as
profound as how society should be
constructed. It's absurd. And it's
dangerous for the for the women because
they don't understand where they're
headed. And other women lie to them.
They don't sit the 19-year-olds down and
say, "Look, you know, like you should
pursue a career. You're smart. You've
got something to offer. Um, and and
society needs your intelligence, but you
better look the hell out because women
have complicated lives, and they also
have to have a family, and you're going
to struggle like mad to figure out how
to to balance those two things. And
nobody's going to help you." The thing
about movies, for example, is that
movies, there's only really two types of
movie. There's a there's romance and adventure
adventure
and romance is a young person's game,
>> you know. I mean, you can you can get a
movie now and then that's about two old
codgers falling in love and that can be
cute and it can be touching and movies
like that actually are made quite
frequently, but fundamentally romance is
is a young person's game. And the reason
for that is obviously it's the precursor
to having children.
>> Mhm. Now, that's the other thing that
that seems to be missing from the
conversation so often on the left. It's
like the purpose of romance isn't
lifetime happiness. That's first of all,
that's insane because you're just not
going to find a person that's going to
make you happy. That isn't what the
person is for to begin with. But second,
the purpose of romance is to is set up
the precondition for for having children
and and doing it properly. And so and
and and and that's another reason why
it's associated with youth. And if our
our culture is so self-centered that we
actually believe that the purpose of
romantic relationships is to make the
two people who are in the relationship
fulfilled and happy. That's completely
crazy. No one in their right mind ever
thinks that. [laughter] I mean the
reason that you have a relationship with
someone over the long term, it's
complicated, but part of it is
in sickness and in health, you know.
Part of it is that life is punctuated by
tragic circumstances of of monstrous
magnitude and you're just more robust
and resilient if there are two of you
manning the ores rather than one. >> Mhm.
>> Mhm.
>> So so that's a huge part of it. And of
course because our culture is also so
youth obsessed we never think about the
last half of our life. A huge part of
the utility in having a partner is
companionship but and also the
maintenance of sanity. I mean you need
someone around
So that every time you manifest one of
your uncontrollable weaknesses, they
slap you on the side of the head and
tell you to behave. And you you you do
that for each other in a in a
relationship that that that where where
communication is actually where
communication actually occurs. And
because of that, the two of you are much
less likely to walk into a pit and you
stabilize your your household so that
you can produce children that won't
drive you crazy, that won't drive other
people crazy, and that have a half
decent chance of growing up to to have
fulfilling lives. And we're so immature
in our response to to intimate
relationships that it's just it's just a
neverending cause of absolute amazement.
For me, it's like we're we're stuck
we're stuck in the daydream of a naive
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