Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess so. So I. Do you want to like, lead in and just say hello?
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: You're introducing me. Okay.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: All right. So just don't even have the words to express how excited I am to have my dearest, dearest, dearest sole companion to be my co host for the Labyrinth. And I'm just beyond excited.
Rich was my philosophy professor when I was an undergraduate and from that time we just developed a very deep resonance with one another and have been there, I think, very deeply for one another as companions on this journey.
And I'm so, I'm so grateful to have this amazing human in my life and, and, and your willingness to be a co host. I just was moved beyond anything. I am just so grateful for your willingness to kind of jump on this, jump on this train. So, so, so here we are. That I like to just enter the space with, with another human being and be fully present with them. That is the goal that I have, is that we sort of just enter into, into a dialogue together and see what emerges through that dialogue.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Thank you. Doesn't do justice to the, the gratitude and honor I have for being invited by my very, very, very favorite cosmic traveler, possibly of all time, insofar as we can understand that concept and to, to, to, to partake in this journey with her in terms of who I am and biographically detail wise. I'm Rich Grego. So hello everyone. And I'm philosopher and soldier of fortune, formally a part time professor of philosophy and cultural history at Embry Riddle University where I languish in obscurity and publish numerous, a number of articles of scholar and books of scholarly research that nobody ever reads if they have any sense and full time. However, I'm a lover of Lisa Carley and everything that she represents. And I guess one of my main goals for this broadcast podcast is to share her wisdom, which is considerable across disciplines and subjects and human experiences with the rest of the world.
Because I. And highlight everything that we discuss in that way because I think that's a gift that I don't want to spare the world. So that's my, I guess that's. And that's really in terms of who I am and what I want to accomplish here in very broad strokes, I guess that's what I want to do in terms of. I guess. And if you want me to keep going, what I suppose anybody listening to after hearing this is okay, what are these two lunatics actually going to talk about in terms of the cosmic river they're discussing?
I Think, you know, for instance, our first dialogue, which we've captured in part is on, for instance, AI and education very broadly.
And those are the kind of things, contemporary issues and how they manifest.
Deeper spiritual issues. Yes. As well as the other way around, I guess, which is sort of what I do as a professional. I come from deeper spiritual, deeper philosophical issues and enter and bring them, hopefully bring them down to earth into concrete issues of daily life. I think, you know, we're going to span the gamut of that kind of stuff. So would you agree. Am I doing justice to what we're doing were about.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. I mean, for me, I think that I, you know, I have a background as a journalist and writer and teacher. And so I.
What I have experienced in those spaces is that. And this is my own kind of process is that looking at something that is happening in the moment, that is in the zeitgeist, that is, you know, whatever this is, that that sort of seems to be capturing people's attention and then like giving an understanding of that from our perspective. Right. Our limited understanding and realizing that we have our own biases. Biases. Right. With which we're approaching those things, but trying to sort of wrestle with what that might be. For example, AI we tackled and. And then for me, looking at sort of the broader spiritual implications of what that thing is. Right. Not stopping at, oh, AI is a thing in itself and we should debate whether it's good or bad. Right. But. But that we broaden out the. The contours of that and then see how it ultimately inform, as spiritual beings that are inhabiting this physical body. And I think I'm always trying to kind of bring it back to that level. So I feel in that way we're very, you know, we're very complementary.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yep. I. Well, we know we're complex. I mean, I think, yeah, we're. Obviously, we have the spiritual, deep, profound spiritual bond, which can sound abstract when you talk about it, I guess.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: But I think in a way, we're intellectually very compatible. We think very much the same way and about very same things. And I think our. Our. Our spheres of knowledge complement one another. And I think our modes of approaching those things, even when they're different, are very much alike. So I. I anticipate some. And we know we've done this before.
We're gonna have some very productive discussions, which I hope. And I think, as you know, it's having spent 30 years and you having spent many, many years as a teacher, among other things, I think people, the General public, whoever listens it will benefit from.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: So the other thing I wanted to add to that is I do think that one complementary difference that we bring to it is that, like, you are far more.
I think, because of your work and your background and just your orientation, that you are like Joel, too, right. You guys can quote things and really give, like, a really broad and also deep theoretical context for the ideas that we talk about.
And my orientation, although I am, you know, probably fairly familiar with most of what you guys talk about, my.
My way of.
Of engaging and. And, you know, this is something that I have learned about myself over the years. But, Rich, I know that you already know this, that, like, I.
I think when I was younger, I would engage with, like, say, Kierkegaard or Krishnamurti or whatever, Right. On this very intellectual level, because I think that that is what our educational system teaches us to do, Right?
[00:07:52] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: And so I would put myself in that space and try to limit my occupation with that intellectual space.
But as I've gotten older, I realized that that was like, a friction for me. And not a friction because I couldn't do it. I mean, I think I could do it fine, but that.
I remember when I was, you know, studying psychology, and one of my close friends who happened to be a psychologist had said something about, you know, that I'm very good at sort of keeping things on a cerebral level, and. And that I. Much more. Like, they felt like it was much harder for me to. Or for them to feel the emotional kind of underpinning of whatever it was I was talking about.
And. Yeah, and so I'll never forget that, because this person was very close to me. And. And. And, you know, when people that I value give me feedback, I really want to incorporate it and understand it. And so I started thinking about that. And. And for me, I realized that a lot of times I was sort of using the intellectual frameworks as a way to escape and avoid dealing with the deeper. Like, the deeper emotional, like, waves that were. That were. That actually brought me to Kag Guard in the first place.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Does that make sense?
[00:09:31] Speaker A: So much sense. Yeah. Like.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Like, I loved Kard. I mean, Kirk Guard was my Intro to Existentialism. And.
And I understood, you know, even as a. I think I was introduced to Caregiver when I was 22, and it was like something touched me very profoundly, even though I couldn't maybe understand all of the philosophy or all of the frameworks that he was using.
But rather than try to understand the emotional undercurrent, I was focusing on trying to understand the vocabulary and the framework.
Does that make sense?
[00:10:13] Speaker A: So very much. I mean, if there's one thing. I don't want to interrupt.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: No, no, no, no, please, please.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: It's two things, I think. One thing. Yeah, it's something I, what you're exactly, what you're saying is what, what I relate to so deeply that I've carried that through my entire career in studying philosophy and history.
But philosophy, especially history says has a way of automatically being more concrete and, and grounded. But, but I, I, you know, that's resonated so deeply that not only did it affect me in exactly the same way when I was first learning, when I was first introduced to philosophy, but it's affected me that way through my career, shaping the way I became in a very hesitance, the wrong way, reluctance, the wrong way, cautious is the wrong. I'm trying to think of the right word for this. I became in a very. Okay, I'll say reluctant scholar in a scholar. And I think my, my fourth rate scholarship reflects that. And I also, and, and, and frankly, now that I've gotten to the point in life that I've literally reached old age, I know I look young and spry and like a 20 year old
[00:11:36] Speaker B: matinee idol, but magnificent.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: I'm actually an old man. And, and really like, like if anybody's familiar with the book Siddhartha at the end of the book Siddhartha, which is another bond that you and I share at the end of the book Siddhartha, I kind of feel like, not Siddhartha, I feel like his friend who came when he was sitting by the river and said God, I'm still not comfortable with, with my path. And, and I, and, and, and I find more and more and I'm, you know, I'm doing, I'm. And I got like, I got like maybe six projects out there that I'm doing involved in right now. And, and none of them as fat, you know, as interesting and engaging to me as they've been and they are. And as, you know, satisfying as it is still to, you know, get your name out there in publication or whatever, feel like you're, you're doing something with yourself.
But, but they don't engage me spiritually on a Danny. Profound level. And, and, and that's, and it's it at this point in my life when I'm kind of chronologically challenged and I, you know, I mean, my mortality is not that far away anymore. And so that you can just forget about it and forget about all the opportunities in life that you really will never have again. That I'm, I'm starting to get a little bit frustrated with it because like Govinda, I think that was.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: Yep, yep.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: And feel, you know, in a sense I, I, I, I, I'm on sort of this path that for some reason I, you know, I know where I want to go, but I'm not really sure I'm, I'm doing it. I'm going there the right way or something and, and I feel that way. The other thing I wanted to say in regard to what you say is so much of what you said about when you were first engaging people like Kierkegaard and Christian Marie is Exactly. Interestingly what I just can't. It was some feminist philosopher who was pretty. Who's very prominent. I just can't remember who it was.
Shoot out a bunch of names. I might be, it might be one of them you just happen to be familiar with. Said that she had to some extent as a woman approach trying to approach me which as you know and everybody knows is really truly a man's world even though there are a lot of women in it. I think Anglo American sort of North Indian tradition philosophy is still done in a way that was invented by a bunch of wealthy, privileged white men in a way that they were comfortable with approaching ideas. That is exactly the what you felt alienated from. If that's maybe alienated from is too strong a term but you didn't feel was complete enough for you when you were still they. And that's the only other thing I know I've gone, I've rambled too much but not at all that that's what, that's what that what you said just evokes for me. And I wonder, you know, if that's the case partly your feelings about philosophy that way. And although I'm saying, I'm saying I had the same feelings or because you were a woman in facing that. I just think maybe perhaps women want to approach life in a much broader way than they then you get when you try to shove it inside of these constrained analytic logical philosophical categories. And maybe that's the problem.
I don't know.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think I, I think we've touched on this before, you know, sort of the that you know, how a woman approaches scholarly work or you know, and especially philosophy as you said. Right. The tradition is deeply rooted in, you know, deeply rooted in the whale male Western paradigm.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: In the West. In the West.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: In the west.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: You want to forget that there's a whole world of other philosophic.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. But I mean, I'm saying from what I was introduced to in college. Right. It was, it was heavily a Western male paradigm.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: And I think for me that started to shift when I moved to, toward a study of existential psychology and really
[00:15:53] Speaker A: said that as well. Not to interrupt, but.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Philosopher used, used existentialism as the one thing she sort of related to.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: Exactly. Yep, yep, yep. And, and, but it wasn't through existential philosophy particularly. It was through existential psychology or, or. I mean, I think it's, it's not fair to characterize Karen Horny as a existential psychologist. I don't think that she would call herself that. She's more in the analytic tradition. But I, but I discovered her through that journey. And so when I was doing my master's thesis on maternal anxiety is when I discovered her.
And for me that was like, it was just, you know, revolutionary because I could see where she was approaching the, the same psychological frameworks, but through this more felt experience.
Right. And, and I, so I think for me that that was the big transition and maybe why I ultimately didn't become a scholar, because I feel that and you know, the feedback that I got from my professors and you know, I think even you, when I was in undergrad and you know, my, you know, I was taking a phenomenal phenomenology course at SUNY Albany, which is a graduate level class.
And, and, and so I think that my professors recognize that scholarly kind of undertone in me.
And, and I was trying, I think for many years to sort of adopt that, to sort of wear that. Right. Kind of as a cloak or actually cloak, I think is, is the apt word.
Through my training in existential therapy, that is when I really learned to strip all of that away.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: And to be like, what is the experience of being with another human being, particularly at a moment of either crisis or great revelation or transformation?
And that work that I did in that training, I just, it was absolutely life changing. And I felt like that dismantling that I went through was absolutely essential for me to arrive at. And I say this, I don't mean an arrival as a destination. I mean to be able to acknowledge the place that I am now, which is perpetually, for whatever reason, my soul moves in a very like a spiral, a circuitous way. Like I just don't have a linear way of being in the world. I don't think of my, my, my journeys are never linear. And I think that when you talk about kind of a. Like a male orientation versus a female orientation.
That maybe perhaps that's the difference is that perhaps men are more linear in terms of the way that they approach being.
Right. Our throneness. Right. That men experience thrownness in. In a very linear way where I think women experience it in a more circuitous spiral.
And let me just give one more little piece of framing for that, and then I'd love to hear your thoughts. But so, you know, when we think about sort of the. Like our. Our biological evolution, right. That our.
That men were sort of geared toward looking at the threat in the distance, right. And being able to identify that threat and be able to see it very clearly. Right. And that takes an extremely, like, focused linear.
Right. There is the threat out there in terms of like, literally, like hunting. Right. And okay, so I'm going after this thing that could potentially kill me.
And there's a very particular kind of focus that is required for that kind of work, right. In. In. In. In a. In a narrowing of perspective. Right. It's that fighter. It's that fight mode. Right. So I need to have all of my energy geared toward this object that could threaten me. Right.
Where women, on the other hand, we were biologically, I think, and still I do see that. Where. Where I see that among my female friends, too, we are more biologically oriented to see the nuance and to be aware of everything happening around us because.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: Well, go ahead.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, I was just gonna.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: Evolutionary reason for that is.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: So because women had to serve that function in the. In the nomadic pastoralist group.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Correct, exactly.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: The ones who kept everything together and. And.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Negotiated all the relations between people and.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yeah. So we had to negotiate the relations.
We had to be extraordinarily aware of, you know, like, what. You know, what Mary is feeling and what kind of day Alice is having and, you know, whatever it is. Right, yeah.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: There were a lot of Mary's analysis back in 2 million years ago.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: I'm certain of it.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Neanderthals were fighting the CRO Magnon, but.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Exactly, exactly.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: I get it. Yes.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So. So I think that that orientation is like, how do we then fit that orientation into this?
And I'm just going to focus on Western philosophy. Right. Because, you know, I think we. We can definitely talk about Eastern philosophy as a separate thing, but. But definitely within the framework of Western philosophy. And the. And the reason.
Not reason, but the thinking behind my thinking is that, okay, so, for example, Kierkegaard would ask the question, love is out There.
What is that thing?
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: I need to know what that is.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Right. And so. So everything was geared toward the object of love and then some sort of intellectual framing of what that thing is.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: Right. But I think for women, and. And I don't want to say this broadly. I'll just speak from my own experience that for me, it was. There is this emotion arising within me. I want to understand what it is in itself.
[00:23:16] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, yeah. You're looking.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Does that make sense?
[00:23:20] Speaker A: You're sort of looking at the interiority of it.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Searching through the air or whatever. Experiencing the interior rather than cognitively or abstracting this idea. Yeah.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: Right. Because. Because, you know, still to this day, I love Kierkegaard and. And that. But I. But I always felt that it was like, you know, he objectified the very notion of love. Right. And treated it as an object to try to create some understanding around.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: But for me, it was.
It was. There is this feeling that is arising within me.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: And I want to understand what it is and why it's moving through me and how this feeling that's moving through me is creating an impetus for growth, awareness, awakening, without the need.
And I say that as a need because I feel now, Kierkegaard was desperate. There's a desperation in his writing.
Right. And. And I think that desperation is coming out of. In exactly the same way.
And. And actually, I think this might even bear out for Kierkegaard. We talked about, you know, our nomadic, you know, ancestors, and they see the woolly mammoth on the horizon. Right. And they are. They need to understand everything about that woolly mammoth as an object that exists in the world so that they can conquer it and so that they can.
Knowing is a form of conquering.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yep.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: And I don't think that women view this the same way.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: I don't view love as an object in the world that I need to understand to. So that I can possess it or conquer it or also be afraid of it.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: Rather.
Rather, it is this thing that moves within me that. That I don't even need to name, particularly remember, Adam is the one who named everything. Right. So we, our male roots go to the male desire to name something. Something where a woman. I feel we are about the experiencing of something.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: And not. We don't. At least for myself, I don't feel the. The.
The compulsion at this point to have to name what it is I'm going through.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: And that, in fact, the naming of something actually creates some distance.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because it's making it. It's turning it into a concept which is an object of critical appraisal that you look at.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: From a distance. From an intellectual distance.
[00:26:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: That is so brilliant. I'll tell you why you do it again with so many things.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: I don't believe you. You just always throw me.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. This is why I wanted to do this. Because what I think, you know, you not only, you know, addressed some of some. What you referred to there at the end, I think has been obviously, or ideas that have been raised in different ways, feminist scholars and sociology and philosophy for a long time. But what I thought was interesting, I've never heard it before is this sort of. Because, you know, everybody loves their, you know, Darwinian psychology, right. The evolutionary psychology explanations for. Of things. And I've never heard one that. That explains ultimately you know, the, The, The. The.
The origin story of those differences in gender by which, you know, we. We process information, men from a distance and women via interiority and, and. And interpersonal, intersubjective kind of understanding in the same way in terms of why. How and why that may have been necessary for, for our. Our sort of biological evolution and our psychological evolution, so to speak.
So that. And then hence why Western philosophy is so up and men, because again, men are still, when they're approaching big ideas like that, still are trying to be. Are trying to be hunters on, on the Serengeti plane a million years ago when our ancestors were wrestling with squirrels over.
And we had to survive.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: And. And then women were in these nomadic pastoral groups, the ones that navigated all the interpersonal identities that we needed to do to sustain us. And that. And those in turn engendered this. The. The kind of approaches to even intellectual problems in philosophy or psychology or the social sciences or even the sciences, perhaps the physical sciences that, that make women. Many feminist philosophers and psychologists and sociologists like yourself point out these things today.
And then the last point you brought up was so profound, I think, when you grounded it in, you know, the approach we have to.
To everything. To everything that we desire. Maybe the approach we have to desire because again, for. Perhaps I don't know if that's the right locus of what.
Of what we're talking about. But you, I mean, you mentioned love in particular. But again, love is something much different if you turn it into an object of desire that's out there somewhere that you need to get right. And I think not just our evolutionary psychology, but our consumer culture has also.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: I was just gonna Tie that, force that.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: Right, correct. So it becomes another object out in the world you want to have. Right, right. Just what we're. We're conditioned from earliest. From the minute we can think about anything at all to think like in our.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Our culture. So I just think that, that, that's so brilliant. The, the very primitive, you know, simplistic notion of turning objects of desire into things we want to possess, to then adopting a. More. Approaching it through interiority, sitting with it and feeling it and understanding it from within the process of desire, and then ultimately it turns into something else. Right. I guess, much as. Of course, as you point out, very profoundly. Most profoundly, I think, because it's the most important thing in the world is. Is the case with love. Right. Because if Love you. Because love turns from something that you desire out in the world that you want to conquer into something that you just have to learn to be, which is the ultimate to me, you know, from the, from the inside. I have to learn to experience and be from the inside.
That's. If there's, if there's an ultimate human quest, at least to me, that's it.
You agree.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Disagree with the aspect of love being the.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: Anything I just said, did I. Did I do justice to what you were saying?
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Oh, 100%.
Of course, as always, like, I mean, that's a given. We're reflecting each other.
But I, but I think that's something that, That I did want to touch on when you were talking about sort of the culture. So, yes, we all know that. I think we've, you know, we are. We're all aware of that. But, but the thing that I've been particularly interested in exploring, you know, the last, I. I would say maybe five, six years, it's something that's really been on my mind, and especially because now I have a son who's 21, and, you know, so there, there is that awareness of what are. What kind of spaces are we inviting young men into. Right. We see a cr.
That in our culture, we have Andrew Tate and, you know, we have all of these figures that are really promoting. I think they call it the manosphere.
And, and, and, and we can be very critical of that. Right. Like, oh, they're demeaning women and they're objectifying the world around them and, you know, all of those things.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: But I think that we need to even take a step back from that and have an understanding of why these men, particularly younger men, feel this need to create a space for themselves.
What is that a reaction to and, and to really have a deep. I guess in the same way that I approached our discussion about AI. Right. We can look at the object itself and be critical of it or accepting of it.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: We can do the same with the manosphere. We can look at it. We can be accepting of it or critical of it or whatever it is. But for me, why is it existing and what impulse is it indicating is arising within young men? And I think that we're going like.
And I'm really, really curious about your thoughts on this particular kind of intersection that I feel we're at, because what I see is that there has been broadly with, you know, the women's movement and the rise of feminism and all of those things where. Where women truly.
Our intention was never to silence men. It was to raise everybody up. Right. The feminist project was never about either supremacy over men, nor was it about, you know, kind of shutting men down. Right.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: You're about to say, though, that it's had that effect to some extent. Well, I think intended consequence wise.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: I. Well, I think whether it's an unintended consequence or a reaction from the male, you know, from within the Western culture, from the male perspective, that they have interpreted it that way.
Whether that is the intent or whether that is, you know, I think that that is a byproduct.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: And where that byproduct has come from.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: You know, we can. We can interrogate that question. But. But the main thing that I'm getting at is that I think in some ways, the success of women to sort of start shifting the way that people are oriented in the world as to not treating other people as objects and to having a lived experience of something. Think about how much schools have changed. I mean, fundamentally, schools have changed profoundly. And there are good things and bad things that have changed according to the.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: Many of the critics now, in some ways, or where the beginning of the story, stifling of. Of masculinity. The positive elements of masculinity.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:34:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: But. But realistically, I, you know, I mean, I have some thoughts about that too, but. Sure, you know, but, you know, going back to, you know, our prairie schools, boys were expected to sit in chairs and do their work. Right. This is not a feminist reaction. Yeah, right. In fact, I think it's gone where. Where the. Where the feminine has opened up schools to be more accommodating for boys energy and their need to move and, you know, that anymore. But it's true. Literally, just, you know, we just went through orientation last week and you know, one of the things that we talked about was that boys often need a physical break. Right. They need movement. That's how they can take in information.
And so. And that is absolutely, like, you know, it was just built into our professional development. Let them get up and walk around the classroom. Right. If they need to go take a walk around the class, go.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: And they specifically targeted, not, you know, in a positive way, boys for this.
[00:36:00] Speaker B: Yeah, well, yes. I mean, it was basically anybody that. Everybody is welcome to do that.
[00:36:06] Speaker A: They were thinking about young boys.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: Correct. But it was specifically geared toward, you know, typically boys need to have this movement. So. So any.
[00:36:16] Speaker A: The.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: The. That's a specific example. But the bigger thing that I was getting at was that, okay, so the, you know, men are boys, whatever. Males are geared toward having this object on the horizon that is the biological orientation. Right. Or at least it's my understanding of, you know, what I've read, what I've understood.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:39] Speaker B: That there is the object on the horizon. Right. And in that the male. Kind of the way that the male brain is designed is to sort of figure out the best approach to either obtaining or protecting oneself from the object on the horizon. Yeah, okay. Yeah, But. But the female orientation. Oh, this is actually sort of, kind of rolled into this. So recently I had heard a study about how they showed, like, a very close couple, and they did studies with couples, and they looked at how they argued. Right. So how do you have an argument? How do you. How does the. Literally. How does the brain function during a disagreement? And they had them hooked up to fmris, and we're sort of looking at what's lighting up in the brain. And for women, literally almost all parts of the brain were lit up.
So we're using a whole brain approach to solve a problem where for men, the lower amygdala parts of the brain are triggered, because, again, that's a disagreement is perceived as a threat, and I'm going to either run away from the threat. Right. So you have your fight flight, you know, all those responses. Right. But for women, when we engage in that kind of, what. Whatever it is like a disagreement or something that's very difficult emotionally to talk about, we are employing all the, you know, the. The. The aspects of our brain, the hemispheres, the. The lobes, you name it, the whole thing is lit up. And, and so what I'm. What I'm trying to understand is, especially with this evolution of this manosphere.
Maybe evolution's not the right word.
Manifestation of the manosphere, the showing up of it in the Zeitgeist.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: Right.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: So it's. I think it's very easy for liberals to be like, oh, that's just. You know, that's just. And these guys are. And, you know. But what I. Because I watched the documentary about the manosphere, and what I noticed is that what the men were doing with the women in their lives, with the money that they were earning, with everything in their lives, it was about creating an object.
So it's almost like they're reverse engineering the world around them to be a world of objects that they can then pursue or figure out a strategy to obtain or keep at a distance.
And so what is the deeper. Like. So to me that speaks to something in them is. Is really not.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Is.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: Is longing to be them, to orient themselves in a world that makes sense to them on a deep biological level.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: That's excellent. Yeah. Yeah. And I think. God, there's just so much.
And again, among public intellectuals now right through, you know, scholarly study research in. In psychology and social psychology and stuff like that, on that problem.
Yeah, I. I agree. I think that's the upshot of what a lot of them seem to be saying about that are. Who are sympathetic to the masculine plight, such as it is in. Especially with young men, which what we're really concerned with how they're developing and. Yeah. And their worldview and. And that's. That, I think is a great explanation. And I think it's something like what I hear people like who are dealing with Jonathan Haight, who's the psychologist. He's writing a lot about. About that. All the. All the popular stuff that. And AI, of course, which. Which is not unrelated. Right. That's the thing to get into is what to.
Jonathan hates a psychologist and a public intellectual. Now he's writing best sellers. I think his book on AI along with a couple of other guys. I just can't remember their names is I still. I. It may be the number one bestseller on the New York Times right now. I'm not sure.
But these are the precise kinds of things that they're saying. And then of course, it relates to AI because that's what. That's where they can. That's where all of us. That's where the 20. In the 20th century, everybody goes to build their own world where they can feel safe and comfortable and fulfilled. And that's one of the reasons. That's what AI is doing for them.
[00:41:18] Speaker B: Them.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: And. And the reason why they're growing up in front of screens and all that kind of stuff and prefer screens to other activities. But then. But then there are a lot of other reasons for that as well, and I just. I almost don't. I almost want to save this for when we.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: Talk about it again. I don't know.
[00:41:35] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. I'm very fascinated by it. And.
And I'm. And I'm very fascinated by the idea of, like, as women, because I. I definitely feel. And we can have a discussion about this too. That.
I definitely feel that in many ways this, you know, as I said, this manosphere movement, this thing is a reaction to an actual shift within our culture. Right. They're not reacting to nothing. They're reacting to something.
The Me Too movement. The women refusing to be seen as objects.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: Using the mantle within the culture of I am an object. Right.
[00:42:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: However.
However, then you also have the female influencer culture, which is very much about, you know, like, have. Creating yourself as a brand.
So. So I think that even within, you know, women and girls, there's this conflict.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: That's an excellent point. The creating.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: And so. And so the. The males within the culture are.
I think we are. We are putting them at a crossroads and. And. But not really giving them the tools to navigate that, because we, within ourselves as females are very conflicted about what we want.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: Right, right. You have one of the problems, I think, again, in the polarized dialogue that everything seems to have become now you have these either or things. So you'll have a guy like.
I don't. I hate to even use that. You say the word like a Joe. Well, he. But the thing is, he hosts really great thinkers. Joe Rogan, for instance.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: And he. And talk about the manosphere. He's right. He's right. Right.
[00:43:23] Speaker B: One of the main archetypes, the godfather of it.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. And. And. And somebody who, who, you know, millions of men listen to, young men listen to you hear him and people on. People who come on the show, and they have some serious people. Jonathan Hatesman on his show, and they have serious discussions about this. And there's this. This concern when men talk about how, you know, listen, this is wrong. You know, a lot of. A lot of the.
The issues that the MeToo movement and feminist movement have wanted to address are real issues, and they're very important.
But for whatever reason there had. It has evoked in some ways negative response by our institutions and by our, I suppose, parenting. In our parenting, you would. Again, another issue, another subject you're an expert in, and instead study deeply in our just popular discourse between men and women that has had maybe a negative effect on, on or is resulting in to some extent in a negative reaction among men in terms of how they feel and how they're responding to it.
And, and, and the, the, the, the social. The data shows this. I mean the, the, in terms of the, the indirect data, the data as far as what, what men are doing, how they're, whether they're date. I was going to say how they're dating, whether they're even dating, because. Yeah, they're just not, they're just not.
They're. They're going online and watching porn instead of dating. I mean, literally, you know, this and, and, and that.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: And, and let's just take a pause with that. That's the ultimate of the object out there.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: That, that is a perfect, that is a perfect representation of.
That is an object out there. That one. And I think that, you know, when, when we talk about this idea of how boys and men are sort of relating to the objects in the world around them, I do think that it, it's worth us discussing and you know, I'm very curious to hear your thoughts about this. That like again, you have the saber tooth tiger or the woolly mammoth or whatever it is on the horizon. Yeah. It's a two pronged interaction with that object.
One, I am afraid of it. Yeah, right. I have fear about that object.
[00:46:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: And two, I need to figure out how to conquer it because it can hurt me.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:14] Speaker B: And I think for whatever reason, and maybe the reason is the thing that we can kind of interrogate and look at.
But why have men then approached modern day.
Their modern day of way of being in the world is to objectify the things in the world that both frighten them and then they feel they need to conquer because they're initially afraid of it. And so if you go back to like you were saying, pornography, that is the ultimate example, Right. Of the woman as object that I am afraid of because quote, unquote, that woman may or may not ever engage in these kind of behaviors with me.
Right. And therefore she is to be conquered. And I can conquer her on the screen. I can conquer her in my mind because I certainly could never engage with that in real life. Life.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. That's the exact mentality. And, and I think, you know, the, the strategy, the, the, the strategies. Fascinating book by classic now by historian Gerda Lerner. It's called the Creation of Patriarchy.
She doesn't go interestingly, although she talks a lot about the research. This is a pretty old book. Now from the late 90s, 2000s, I'm not sure, maybe even earlier. But anyway, she, she, she doesn't trace this to and, and talk that much about the sort of evolutionary psychology dimensions of this say that you were talking about. But she starts with the most ancient civilizations and the transit, how they represented this transition from, from
[00:48:03] Speaker B: nomadic or nomadic pastoral to domestic agriculture.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: Domestic agriculture, agricultural.
First cities and the first big irrigation and.
[00:48:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:48:13] Speaker A: Things like that. And, and how, and again, looking at it from a feminist perspective, how again the strategy there was you work this, we're going to work this problem out by having these creation myths and gods and social structures erected on this notion where you have patriarchy. So it avoided that, it avoided what we're going through now because it created an order where men didn't have to worry about objectifying that. You know, there was a way to do it, it was within parameters though. So, and, and there were all kinds of different rules negotiated with different religions and different societies for this kind of patriarchy and how it was going to manifest and how women were going to exact, enact, inhabit within these structures as well.
But they had a way to resolve it. And, and, and I think you're right, what's going on now is we're, we are really groping now maybe with some desperation as a, in not only Western but now sort of global culture increasing for how we're going to negotiate these relationships now without the, the traditional patriarchal parameters. And I think all this stuff is occurring within that, those bounds. Right.
[00:49:29] Speaker B: And I think also the economic conditions, the external economic conditions are also forcing some of that because like I think about, you know, like when my dad was working, right. Like he was with the Same company for 20 years and then was with the same company again for another 20 years, right. And, and that is very rare now for people to have that sort of identity with their job, with their employment because things the, you know, I live in Silicon Valley, right. And like it's very volatile here.
And so what I think maybe gave men that sense of security and that sense of belonging and identity within a particular culture of work which if you think about it, right, Hunting the saber toothed tiger was the work of the day.
And, and it was a very clear and specific thing, right. And so I need to know this as, as whether it's like the tech world, right. Whatever it is, right. I need to understand the nature of what this thing is. I am going to, but now the interesting thing is that with that, with that technological innovation, it's not the Saber tooth tiger, that is a thing in nature for me to understand. Understand.
It is the thing that I created and I built that. Now I need to understand.
Yeah, right. What an interesting dimension that adds to the calculus.
Like, I created this thing, and I don't even fully understand what it is or how to engage with it or. Or I'm constantly. Because now with technology, I actually can control it, whereas with the saber toothed tiger, it was its own thing that was existing in nature.
[00:51:22] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:51:22] Speaker B: Right. But now this thing is still an object out there in the world, but I have created it, and I actually have the ability to manipulate and change it.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:51:36] Speaker B: And so I think that adds another layer of complexity to the. To the question.
But I think I just want to kind of like touch back into this idea of that.
I really do believe that, you know, because I do interact with a lot of young men, and I do interact with a lot of my women friends who are closer in my cohort. Right. That just happens to be sort of the split in my life.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:06] Speaker B: And. And what I notice is that among my cohort of older women friends, we all have this very deep sense, actually, I'd really like to, like, perhaps maybe have one of my friends on the show to. To sort of flesh this out, but we have a deep sense of, like, we are moving in the direction of where we are evolving as a species.
That the way of, you know, having object on the horizon that I felt fight, flee from whatever it is. Right. That that day is passing and that we are. Our evolution as a human species is evolving more toward a whole brain approach to being in the world. And so we can interrogate whether we agree with that or not. But among my older women friends, we all feel it again, it is something that is a felt experience within us.
[00:53:06] Speaker A: Us.
[00:53:06] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. And. And. And we've talked about it like, none of my women friends know each other. I just happen. They just happen to be in different cohorts, and we're all talking literally about the same thing in exactly the same language across the world. Right. I'm talking about my friends in India and here and, like, different coasts and you name it. So. So one, is that in fact true that we are as a species, sort of evolving more toward a whole brain, you know, less kind of threat on the horizon approach?
Right. That's question number one. And then question number two is, if that is in fact the case, then because our female evolution has geared us in that direction, what then is our responsibility or role in sort of helping to midwife men into that place of being.
And I, and, and I want to be cautious when I say this. It is not in any way to say that we are diminishing men's experience and their way of being in the world. That is not it at all. What I'm talking about is how can we sort of midwife that transition for all of us? Because again, that goes back to the original feminist project was to lift everybody up. Up. Yeah, right. Yes. And to. And so this isn't about how do we get men to be like women. That is not at all what I'm saying.
[00:54:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:37] Speaker B: What I'm saying is that how can we translate the orientation, the. As we talked about, the male thrownness in the world? How can we take that and, and help men to feel the. The same kind of identity and connection and purpose to that way of being in the world as they did to. Because, you know, going after the thing on the horizon. It wasn't a selfish project.
They were doing that to feed their fam, to feed the tribe, to feed whatever it was. Right. The builders, the tribe.
[00:55:18] Speaker A: Masculine ideal. Right, Exactly. Ideal is I am a provider. Meaning you have. You have dependents that you're responsible to and for and living for and making those conquests in the service of.
[00:55:31] Speaker B: Right, that is right. And. And additionally to that, because the financial, the economic, the. The employment sphere is so volatile and unstable and, and the incomes aren't matching at all.
[00:55:50] Speaker A: Especially men are suffering in that way too.
[00:55:53] Speaker B: And men are ext.
Suffering. So when we talk about not dating or not seeking partnerships, I think a big underlying reason for that is because they don't feel that they can be that provider.
[00:56:07] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:56:08] Speaker B: It's not because they're sitting at home and watching porn. I think the sitting at home and watching is a symptom.
[00:56:14] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:56:15] Speaker B: That's just what I was going to say. It's the symptom of the deeper problem that they don't have that place to kind of.
What's the word I'm looking for? Like, I see like a flower blooming. Right. Where they can come into their identity as a provider.
Right. For a partner or for their children. That is, I am telling you, like anybody who's listening to this, if you aren't aware of it, it. You can look it up. It's in the news almost every single day. The situation in the Bay Area is untenable, as it is in many places in the country. But the, but the Bay Area specifically is the bellwether.
[00:56:59] Speaker A: Sorry, I was just thinking about how the Fox news commentator would be interpreting what you just said about, you know, because you. You guys are the Bay Area.
The social, Social, Political conditions in the Bay Area, like, you know, considered the, The. The. The locus of all human evil.
I bet, I bet they'd have a different interpretation there about those problems than you, probably.
[00:57:25] Speaker B: I'm sure that they will. Yeah.
[00:57:27] Speaker A: But that's another thing to talk about. I mean, with respect to that view, I think that would be another interesting thing to address in the future. And I love that you came full circle with this discussion. Back to that. There's so much we can take off in terms of.
[00:57:42] Speaker B: Definitely.
Definitely. Yes. Yes.
My reason for wanting to do the show and the vision that I had for it is that it's also a testing of myself. It's a. It's a testing. Not a testing, but like a practice, let me put it that way. It's a practice of being fully present without an agenda in mind. Right. Without a framework, without an agenda. That's. That's the whole purpose of the show, is to show up and to just be really present with the person that I'm with and see what arises and see where the discussion goes.
You know, like we're sitting in a cafe and, you know, we're, we're. We're just, you know, we're shooting the. And we're seeing what comes up and, you know, so, so, yes, but I do love the idea. I think that there's a lot of resonance here between us. Us to kind of continue to explore this. Let's see if it circles back again.
