Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Saad Truth about Happiness, with Gad Saad
1.7k Plays2 years ago
Has western society ever been more unhappy? Deaths of despair are at historically high levels. Antidepressant use is through the roof. Woke culture is encouraging us to feel guilty about pretty much everything. We are in desperate need of an injection of happiness.
Fortunately, this week Will is joined by just the person to provide it. Professor Gad Saad is one of the world’s most important public intellectuals, and surely its most entertaining. His most recent book is titled, ‘The Saad Truth about Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life.’
Follow Australiana on social media here.
Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.
Buy ‘The Saad Truth about Happiness’ here.
Recommended
Transcript
Gad Saad's Dramatic Origin and Intellectual Journey
00:00:14
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Australiana from The Spectator Australia. I'm Will Kingston. My guest today very nearly never made it to this interview. His parents married in Lebanon when his father was 20 and his mother nearly 16. They quickly had three children and he came along 10 years after that. His mother was dead set on getting an abortion only to change her mind quite literally at the top of the stairs of the clinic.
00:00:38
Speaker
By the way of reminding him that he owed her his life and euphemistically, I might add, how close he had come to being fish food. It was our good fortune that Gadsad's mother turned around that day. He is one of the world's most important public intellectuals and surely it's most entertaining.
00:00:56
Speaker
He's written wonderfully well on a staggering array of subjects, but his latest book is a how-to guide on a topic he is particularly well-versed. Happiness. Gad, welcome to Australia. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. Interestingly, in my recent visit to Budapest, where I was talking about the importance of family,
00:01:16
Speaker
exactly recounted that story that you used in the introduction to point to the fact that when it comes to fertility and reproductive choices, boy, am I lucky to have made it out of my mother's mind.
Impact of Early Trauma on Happiness
00:01:28
Speaker
You've spoken in the past about how your childhood informed your worldview and informed how you think about happiness today.
00:01:35
Speaker
Take us back to those early years in Lebanon and how that has informed how you think about happiness, how you think about about your life today. Sure. Yeah. Thank you for that question. So I was born in Lebanon and I grew up there for the first 11 years of my life. Now there were some difficulties in growing up in Lebanon and that we are Lebanese Jews. So we were part of the last small minority of Jews that had steadfastly refused to leave Lebanon because we were well entrenched within Lebanese society. Then when the civil war broke out,
00:02:05
Speaker
And it's a civil war by which all brutal civil wars are judged against because it was just astonishingly brutal, which often happens when you have tribal identities rooted in religion. And so we had to leave the first year of the Lebanese civil war and luckily we were able to emigrate to Canada.
00:02:26
Speaker
Now, and it certainly informs my existential view on life and that having gone through the horrors of my childhood in Lebanon, I can always contextualize anything that is bringing me down on a given day in light of that background. So if I'm whining to myself about how hectic and pressured life I lead, because lovely people such as yourself wish to grant me their platform to discuss ideas,
00:02:54
Speaker
I will usually stop myself and say, are you truly whining about the fact that people want to talk to you? Remember that you escaped the Lebanese Civil War. And so using that very tragic childhood stressor allows me to always contextualize the daily difficulties that we all face in light of that existential miracle that I was able to escape from. So in that sense, if anything, the childhood tragedy allowed me to appreciate life that much more.
00:03:23
Speaker
Is that something that you do very consciously or do you think that's a more subconscious thing? I mean, it's a bit of both. I think it certainly is operating in the back of my mind without my being conscious of it, but I do willfully often stop myself. Let's say I'm, you know, I feel my breathing is too shallow because I'm stressed about, you know, the looming schedule that I'm facing. Then I'll stop and say, you know, wait a minute.
00:03:48
Speaker
I really am fortunate to be where I am, so it's a bit of both. Sometimes it's working, it's operating in the background, and sometimes I'm willfully considering the trajectory of my life so that I can contextualize my current annoyances in light of the stuff that I faced in the past. It's dangerous to compare historical eras, particularly after you say something like that and you have to compare it to periods of great hardship and war.
Critique of Modern Western Unhappiness and Feminism
00:04:13
Speaker
That being said, it does feel like we are in
00:04:16
Speaker
in a lull in Western society. Deaths of despair at historically high levels, anti-depressant uses through the roof, woke culture teaches us to be guilty about pretty much everything. Are we historically unhappy in the West today? And if so, why? So empirically, and I cite this in my current book, empirically, if you look at, say, US longitudinal happiness data, men's score on happiness has not decreased, but women's score
00:04:45
Speaker
has precipitously decreased over the past 30, 40 years. Now, I argue in the book speculatively, although I think it's quite a plausible explanation, that part of the drop in happiness, at least for women, and here I link it to my previous book, The Parasitic Mind, because there are some idea pathogens that have proliferated that are uniquely detrimental to women's happiness. So for example, in the case of radical feminism,
00:05:12
Speaker
When you're telling women, look, you are indistinguishable from men and therefore any any pathway to happiness that a man might pursue is one that you could equally pursue on many things that is perfectly true. But say in terms of your sexual behavior.
00:05:27
Speaker
that which might be within the fantasy of men may not be that which is ideal for women. So you know, hey ladies, burn your proverbial bras and go and have an endless string of meaningless one-night stands while women woke up and said, well actually that doesn't really make me fulfilled. Now that doesn't mean of course that women are not interested in sexual variety and so on, but it is certainly true that evolutionarily speaking when it comes to mating behavior there are many dimensions on which men and women
00:05:57
Speaker
defer for very clear evolutionary reasons. And so, so I don't think we can generally say existentially, everyone in the West is inherently unhappier today than they were 30 years ago.
Conservative vs Progressive Happiness
00:06:08
Speaker
But I can add on one quick other dimension, if I may, I talk in the book about the fact that there's a lot of research that shows that conservatives are on average happier than progressive slash liberals. And because you mentioned the woke dimension,
00:06:24
Speaker
And I offer, again, a speculative argument as to why that might be the case. Conservatives, by the very nature of the word conserve, they do wake up existentially thinking that there are things that are worthy of conserving, certain deontological principles that are worthy of conserving. On the other hand, the progressive wakes up existentially angry because the current world is a bad world. And just around the corner, there is unicornia, which
00:06:53
Speaker
If only we can eradicate the current sexist, racist, misogynistic, transphobic status quo, we'll get to Nirvana. And so I think that there is something to be said about how political orientation might result in different views on happiness. That's really interesting. I want to go back to that, but first I want to dive a little deeper on the lens of gender and particularly around women. So you are very good friends with Jordan Peterson.
00:07:22
Speaker
john peterson has been called up in the past for making the seemingly very obvious point that men and women are different biologically psychologically and that can therefore lead to different outcomes statistically it feels like this debate is now got very very polarized and silly and as you can see from what you've said
00:07:42
Speaker
The outcome is that women aren't happy, many women aren't happy. How do we have this debate better around feminism without resorting to these extremes on both sides?
Gender Debates and 'Idea Pathogens'
00:07:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the things that I talk about in the previous book in the parasitic mind is that all of these idea pathogens, and again, for the benefit of our listeners who may not be familiar with my
00:08:03
Speaker
previous book i argue that the same way that human beings on other animals could be press it by actual physical brain worms. Humans can be press it by another class of brain worms these are i call them ideological brain warms or you know idea pathogens so postmodern ism is such an idea pathogen radical feminism social constructivism.
00:08:24
Speaker
So there's a slew of these idea pathogens that lead us down the abyss of infinite lunacy. But then the question, and I'll come in a second to your agenda question, the issue becomes, why do these idea pathogens seem so intoxicating to so many people that they are readily willing to be parasitized by these?
00:08:44
Speaker
When you come now to the feminist issue and how people view the sex differences, equity feminism was a great idea. Equity feminism basically says that there shouldn't be any institutional or legal reason why men and women should not be treated equally under the law. And I think most reasonable people would say, yeah, of course, sign me up. I'm an equity feminist.
00:09:04
Speaker
The problem arises with many of these idea pathogens is that they start off with a noble goal. And in the service of that noble goal, if they need to murder and rape truth, then so be it. And so then radical feminists come along and say, well, if we really wish to eradicate this sexist patriarchal status quo, then we need to promulgate a message that men and women are indistinguishable from each other.
00:09:30
Speaker
Well, that can't make sense, right? I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I could be all in favor of the idea that men and women should be treated equally under the law whilst also recognizing that we are a sexually dimorphic species. There are evolved innate sex differences that define our species. And to negate that means you're simply negating common sense and reality. And that's why that opens the door then to the fact of
00:09:55
Speaker
the current latest addition to the US Supreme Court when asked during her confirmation hearing, what is a woman? And she answers, well, I can't answer that. I'm not a biologist. Well, that is so insane that it even beats the legendary God-sad satire, right? If a sitting US Supreme Court judge does not have the epistemological confidence to state what a woman is, we're in trouble. And so this is,
00:10:38
Speaker
Is there any form of persuasion where you can get people who are inflicted by that sort of idea of pathogen to see sense? Or unfortunately, is it so deeply enrooted that they're too far
Mind Vaccine and Evidence Building
00:10:47
Speaker
gone? Yeah, no, fantastic question. So here, if you'll forgive me, it's going to be a long technical answer, but hopefully that will prove informative. And the answer to your question
00:10:47
Speaker
This is what happens when you have a bunch of idea pathogens that completely hijack our neuronal circuitry.
00:10:59
Speaker
relies on at least my interlocutor, the person I'm trying to convince, here's the mind vaccine against your parasitic ideas, as long as they don't go, I don't want to hear it. So as long as they are honest enough to at least grant me the courtesy to
00:11:17
Speaker
vaccinate them against the mind parasite, then I think we're good to go. So what is the mind vaccine against these parasitic ideas? So in chapter seven of the previous book on the parasitic mind, the chapter is titled How to Seek Truth. I basically argue that the way you do that is through the building of normological networks of cumulative evidence. So that's a mouthful, so let me break it down. So let's suppose I want to convince you that
00:11:42
Speaker
Toy preferences have a sex specificity, not due to social construction, but due to very clear universal biological reasons. In other words, boys prefer certain toys, girls prefer certain other toys, and that's not because mommy and daddy are
00:11:59
Speaker
sexist patriarchal pigs, which is literally the argument that typically is promulgated by social scientists. The reason why we have these gender roles is because Johnny's taught to play aggressively with the truck and Linda is taught to play gently and in a nurturing way with the pink doll. And that starts the trajectory of gender roles. So nothing could be further from the truth. So now I come along and I want to vaccinate you against that level of imbecility. How would I go about doing that?
00:12:27
Speaker
Well, so how do we build a network of cumulative evidence? Okay. And so I'm not going to build the whole network, but I'm going to give you enough lines of distinct evidence so that the epistemological vaccine becomes clear. So, okay. I can go to developmental psychology and
00:12:43
Speaker
demonstrate to you that children who are too young to be socialized in other words by definition they haven't yet reached the cognitive developmental stage to be socialized into preferences already exhibit those sex specific preferences so already that serves as a.
00:13:00
Speaker
death nail to the social constructivist argument, but I'm not going to stop there. I'm going to drown you in a tsunami of evidence. Okay, the next piece of evidence in my network might be from comparative psychology. Comparative psychology refers to demonstrating that a phenomenon holds true across species, hence the comparative refers to comparisons across species. So I can show you that vervet monkeys, rhesus monkeys, and chimpanzees
00:13:25
Speaker
their infants exhibit the exact same sex-specific toy preferences as human infants. Well, now it's seeming to be quite unlikely that mama and papa vervet monkey parents are also under the purview of the patriarchy. All right, so that
00:13:42
Speaker
That already, it's a mic drop, but I'm not going to stop there. I can get you data from across cultures, because you might say, oh, but that's just a Western standard. Well, okay, how about I find you cultures in North Africa and sub-Saharan nomadic cultures that have nothing to do with Western culture, where they have the exact same sex-specific toy preferences. Well, then you might come to me and say, oh, yeah, but Dr. Sad, but that's all contemporary. What about in the past?
00:14:07
Speaker
Well, I could get you data from ancient Greece and ancient Rome, where on funerary monuments, on mausoleums, children are depicted playing with the exact same sex-specific toys as we have today. I'll do one more, although there's many more such evidence. How about I get you data from pediatric endocrinology whereby little girls who suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which is an endocrinological disorder that masculinizes little girls' morphological features and
00:14:37
Speaker
preferences and behavioral patterns. Well, little girls who suffer from this endocrinological disorder have a complete reversal of their toy preferences. Their toy preferences are akin to those of boys. Well, look at how many lines of evidence I got you data from across animals, from across cultures, from across species.
00:14:55
Speaker
across many methodologies and disciplines, all of which triangulate to proving the veracity of my position. So how do I vaccinate you against stupidity? I build you that network and hopefully I turn you,
Intellectual Humility and Knowledge Limits
00:15:11
Speaker
I flip you. And so that's why I said that the only way for me to be able to implement that strategy
00:15:17
Speaker
is as long as you don't go la, la, la. If you're not willing to hear how I'm building the nomological network, then you're irredeemable. There's no way for me to reach you. But as long as there is a little light of intellectual honesty in you, I'll flip you. And by the way, that's one of the reasons why it's quite difficult for people to cancel me, because I've built all of my nomological networks. So before I take a position very confidently
00:15:45
Speaker
often times in a sarcastic style and larger than lifestyle. That's because I have the confidence of having built the normological network prior to engaging you or engaging all of social media. So good luck to you if you try to come after me to cancel me because I'm going to literally drown you in a sea of evidence. So I think
00:16:05
Speaker
Now the only difficulty in what i'm proposing is that it takes effort to build those networks most people are. Cognitive myzers therefore they don't have the proclivity or the ability to build those networks but that's why there are people like me who.
00:16:23
Speaker
are willing to be in the public eye and engage in these debates and one last point and I'll see the floor back to you. What these nomological networks of cumulative evidence also allow me to do is it allows me to have the epistemic humility of knowing what I know and knowing what I don't know so if you were to ask me well hey what's the downstream effect so far of the legalization of marijuana in Canada.
00:16:46
Speaker
then I would say, hey, that's a great question. But unfortunately, it's above my pay grade, meaning that I haven't built the nomological network for me to be able to convincingly offer you an answer. And therefore, I'd say, I don't know. And so knowing what I know and knowing what I don't know allows me to avoid ever having people cancel me because my positions are really well-founded. Yes, I'm glad that we are ideologically aligned because they're not a series of positions I particularly want to argue against.
00:17:16
Speaker
For me, what I reflect on when I listen to you there is how you pull from so many different disciplines, and you mentioned this, and this is something you bring up in the book. You mentioned the importance of being a polymath, the importance of drawing from those different disciplines, and the importance of that in the context
Value of Life Experiences and Curiosity
00:17:32
Speaker
of happiness. Can you expand on that for me?
00:17:33
Speaker
Right, so think about, so that I discuss it in the chapter where I talk about variety as the spice of life, as the saying goes. And so I explain variety seeking in many different domains.
00:17:48
Speaker
But the one that I spend the most time on is exactly the one that you mentioned, being a polymath, being an intellectual variety seeker. Look, let's bring it back to me personally. There are an enormous number of opportunities that I've been able to live because I am a polymath, meaning that I'm not someone who is a stay in your lane professor.
00:18:10
Speaker
that only speaks about a very hyper specialized topic and only about that. And I never deviate. Now that might make me interesting for a very, very minute audience that shares my research interests. But then the second that I were to step out of that hyper specialization,
00:18:27
Speaker
I would have nothing to say and nothing of importance to say. On the other hand, if I'm a broad thinker, if I'm a synthetic thinker, if I am someone who seeks conciliance, which means unity of knowledge, then I'm able to traverse many intellectual ecosystems, not only enrich the people who reside in those ecosystems, but be enriched by them. And so at the end of the day, I look back and say, my God, I was so
00:18:55
Speaker
happy and enriched to have gone to Hungary to speak at the Family Demographic Summit because I met so many interesting and fascinating people. And that has made me feel a lot more enriched than had I only spoken to fellow professors who are interested in the very, very narrow specific research areas that I might be interested in. And so I think the world is such a vast, exciting place. You could always order the same meal at your favorite restaurant.
00:19:22
Speaker
But boy, are you losing on all kinds of other great meals that you might benefit in trying. And so I think an open mind, a polymathic mind can only lead to greater enrichment. And certainly at the end of your life, when you look back, you could say, I went to Jamaica a hundred times because I love Jamaica. That's great. Or I visited 100 countries. In almost all cases, I would like to think that the latter is a greater pathway to happiness.
00:19:52
Speaker
You quote Bertrand Russell in this chapter and Bertrand Russell said that, let me get this right, the secret to happiness is let your interests be as wide as possible. Now, you're obviously a naturally curious person. My question would be, can curiosity be cultivated or is it an innate characteristic? Great question. And it exactly speaks to the proverbial nature versus nurture debate. And so let me answer that.
00:20:16
Speaker
Academically or philosophically first in a general way and then i'll i'll link it to the specific curiosity angle. On most human phenomena we are in extricable mix of nature and nurture and here i like to use what's what i call the cake metaphor if you take the ingredients that you use to make a cake to bake a cake here are the eggs.
00:20:37
Speaker
here's the sugar, here's the butter, here's the flour. You're able to isolate them prior to baking the cake. Now I'm going to bake the cake. If I tell you please point to the sugar, please point to the eggs, you're unable to. It's an inextricable mix. So for most human phenomena we are really a melange of these two things. Now it might vary how much is due to heredity, how much is due to environment, but
00:21:02
Speaker
it is a bit of both okay now when it comes by the way to happiness and then i'll come to the curiosity question about fifty percent of individual differences and happiness scores come from our genes meaning that about fifty percent of what makes me sunny and you less sunny.
00:21:18
Speaker
I'm saying that hypothetically. I don't literally mean it that I'm sunny. It's just because I was born with a sunny disposition because of the random combination of my genes. But the good news is that that leaves still 50% up for grabs. That means that half of our differences in happiness scores come from the willful decisions and mindsets that we adopt. Okay. So now when it comes to curiosity, I think there's definitely innate
00:21:41
Speaker
differences in individual drives to curiosity, probably best captured by one of the big five personality traits, openness, right? So openness to the world, openness to meeting new people, openness to navigating new intellectual landscapes, and hence being intellectually curious is captured by that trait. But to your point,
00:22:01
Speaker
There are ways that we could improve willfully our curiosity drive. So let me take a personal example. I'm a voracious reader, but much more so in nonfiction. And I'm willfully aware that, I mean, compared to the average person, I've probably read even
00:22:20
Speaker
more than the average person in fiction, but I think I'm willfully inadequate in my fiction reading. So if you were to point me to the 100 greatest novels ever written, I would be ashamed to say how many of those 100 that I've read. So I'm willfully aware of that. I'm willfully aware that
00:22:40
Speaker
I am lacking in the capacity to enrich myself by not having consumed all these great literary works. And so I try, to the best of my ability, given my time constraints, to say, OK, every six months, I'm going to at least try to get through one of them or something. So yes, there is individual innate differences in our curiosity pension, but that does not stop us from willfully trying to improve, irrespective of where we originally started from.
00:23:09
Speaker
I want to get into a couple of the key drivers of happiness that you identify in the book. But before we do, there's a couple of, I guess, meta questions that I have. The first is around religion. So religious observance has declined across the West over the last half a century. Do we need organized religion to be happy?
Religion, Belonging, and Happiness
00:23:28
Speaker
Well, so certainly the research shows, as I cite in the book, that there is a moderate effect, positive correlation between happiness and religiosity. Now, I can offer a very earthly, non-supernatural set of reasons as to why that would hold true.
00:23:50
Speaker
Being religious, all other things equal, offers me greater commonality. It offers me a greater sense of belongingness within a tightly defined group. Those are desires and needs that we all have.
00:24:05
Speaker
But the good news is that I am able to find or cater to those needs, not solely through religion, but for most people it's a natural way to organize their lives around these religious affiliational groups.
00:24:23
Speaker
on an abstract philosophical level, no. I don't strictly need religion to cater to those needs, but I recognize, even as someone, while I am very much rooted in my Jewish identity, I'm not a very religious person, I recognize that the default value of humans is to be believers. And here
00:24:45
Speaker
I mean i think the explanation is i mean it's both very profound and i think very obvious we are the only animal that we know of that has the ability to recognize that there are on a.
00:24:57
Speaker
continual death sentence, meaning we are aware of our mortality. Now, when I have high cholesterol, I go see my physician and he or she says, okay, let's put you on some statins to reduce your LDL score. Unfortunately, there is no pill to take for the looming death that awaits us.
00:25:17
Speaker
And well, wait a second, there is a looming pill, or I mean, there is a pill for the looming death. It's called your favorite religious narrative. Please believe in my religious narrative and I can assure you, you will be granted eternal life. And so I think just that is such a powerful selling point that it becomes very, very difficult for people to be non-believers. The other thing I would say is that there are so many cruel vagaries that happen in life.
00:25:45
Speaker
that are otherwise existentially difficult to bear, that boy, it is nice to have the, well, God works in mysterious ways to always serve as an explanatory mechanism for why little Timmy, who's only four years old and is the definition of innocence, why he was stricken with leukemia and died. Well, that's because God wants to call
00:26:07
Speaker
his angels to be closest to him. So I understand the functional value of religion and once you do, and as an evolutionist I do, then it becomes very easy to understand why there would be a positive correlation between religion and happiness. Yeah that does make sense and I think it was very powerful in the book where you say notwithstanding all of that,
00:26:29
Speaker
you can find spirituality in its broadest sense in a variety of other ways. This is a conversation we've had with Peter Bigosian, Constant Kisson, Tom Holland in recent weeks. Everyone recognises that the decline of organised religion has led to a vacuum, particularly around community, around that sense of purpose. And I think that's why that part of the book really resonated with me, because I think this is something we're not talking about enough, with that vacuum there. And I think that actually creates a happiness vacuum
00:26:57
Speaker
What are ways in which people who can't bring themselves to believe in a deity, how are they feeling that vacuum, both in terms of a moral framework and a sense of purpose? Yeah, that's a great question. Look, so I wake up every day with a gleeful anticipation for the looming day, right? Now I'm going to speak to Will. Later I'm going to hold a Zoom meeting with really bright, inquisitive students. Then later I might think about
00:27:24
Speaker
the book prospectus for my next book and so there are an endless number of ways by which the magisterial nature of life manifest itself it might also be serendipitous stuff a fan comes up to me who recognizes me and then we get caught up in a.
00:27:40
Speaker
Incredibly surprising twenty minute profound conversation where i just connected with this completely random person and i walk away feeling really enriched and invigorated by it so i think there are ways by which we can fill that gap by recognizing them just the miracle of life right so yesterday i was on another show.
00:28:02
Speaker
where I was asked, OK, leave us with some profound, happy wisdom at the end of the show. And so let me mention it here using a statistical argument. So women are born with roughly one to two million ova at birth, but only about 400 ova are fertilizable, meaning that from the onset of menarche, which is the onset of a
00:28:26
Speaker
Girls menstrual cycle to menopause is about 400 cycles. Okay, so remember that number 400 now in a single Ejaculation of a man there's I mean it varies across men but the average is about 250 million spermatozoa so for you and I to be sitting and having this conversation let's just calculate those probabilities a single egg led to you being born and
00:28:53
Speaker
and 250 million spermatozoa, one of which connected with that ovum that led to you. Never mind the statistical improbability of how your parents met.
00:29:08
Speaker
and that they had to have the desire to conceive on that day for you to be born so the statistical likelihood of any of us there's about a hundred and seventeen billion people that i've ever lived of having ever survived it or not survive but existed is just astronomically small.
00:29:26
Speaker
Boy, what could be more spiritual than the statistical argument I just gave? So yes, we wake up certain days and we're pissed and we're depressed and we're angry and we had a fight with our colleague. But again, keep that statistical calculation in the back of your mind and then say, thank God or thank Darwin or thank Cosmos that I'm here because the likelihood of me being here is infinitesimally small.
00:29:51
Speaker
Yeah, that is very uplifting with the slight caveat that that show stole my final question. So I'll have to work out another final question in the next 30 minutes. That is on the whole a very uplifting point. There are two things that you propose in the book, uncontroversially that contribute most to happiness and that is your choice of life partner and your choice of career.
00:30:12
Speaker
When I read this chapter, I reflected on just how seismically both of those realms have changed in a very short historical period. So if we take them in turn, you met your wife the old fashioned way. Increasingly many, perhaps most, depending on which study you look at, young people meet their future partner through apps. How does that play into the story at all? Do you think about that, that change and whether that makes a difference?
Online Dating and Relationship Dynamics
00:30:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. I mean, I think the most.
00:30:38
Speaker
fundamental way that it leads to a change is that the stories of how you serendipitously met are somewhat less uplifting and romantic when it's me sift. I mean, I've never done it. I guess I'm too old. I don't know if it's right or left or whatever it is when I'm sifting through that, because then I'm, I'm engaged in a willful shopping for a mate, right? It doesn't seem quite as magical and mysterious to contextualize
00:31:08
Speaker
that kind of robotic search or automated search to how I met my wife. Maybe I can recount how I met her because of then contextual. Okay. Thank you. Uh, so here's how my wife and I met and which then speaks to your question of how things have changed. I was heading off. I headed off to the, to the gym and I was doing some weights and a gentleman passed by and he
00:31:35
Speaker
you know, made a salutation, said, Hey, professor, how you doing? I said, Oh, hi. Nice to see you. Whatever. And so another gentleman whom I'd never met had overheard that salutation comes up and I looked a lot younger than, so I looked like I was 12 years old, no white hair, no white beard. And so he comes up to me, he says, I couldn't help but hear the gentleman dressed you as professor. Are you really a professor? I said, yes.
00:31:59
Speaker
He said, oh, which field? So I tell him. And then he says, oh, well, I'm the CEO and founder, president of a, it's kind of like a telemarketing media company. And so I've got some funds to have some, I'd like to, you know, implement a in-house executive education program for my executives. Would you be interested in coming, maybe offering, say, six courses, you know, every Saturday you come by?
00:32:25
Speaker
One week we'll do psychology of advertising, psychology of decision making, consumer psychology, whatever. I said, sure, that sounds great. We came to an agreement. We signed a contract. And then on that fateful first lecture, I arrived to the company's headquarters.
00:32:42
Speaker
And as the elevator door opens, the person who greets me ends up being my future wife. She says, oh, are you Professor Sadas? Yes, let me take you to the room where you'll be delivering your lectures. And then I also tell the story there as relating to those original interactions of what are some of the cues that I picked up that suggested that she's a definite keeper. And so at around maybe the, I think it was maybe the third class, I was stricken with
00:33:12
Speaker
bad bronchitis. I used to be asthmatic and so whenever I get a cold it usually migrates to my chest and then I'm sick for the next six weeks. And so I was having a difficult time breathing, I was coughing a lot and so when I called for a break, unbeknownst to me, my
00:33:29
Speaker
wife-to-be goes downstairs and comes back up with a hot tea and gives me the hot tea and says, oh, I hope that this will make you feel better. And so I thought, goddamn, this is someone considerate, kind, altruistic. She seems lovely. But of course I had my professorial hat on. So even though there are no ethical issues, I mean, it's not like in the university setting, but I was very, very professorial, very proper. And then
00:33:56
Speaker
I can't remember. I don't think I mentioned this in the book, but I'll mention it now. So it'll be some exclusive content. She was asking me, oh, you know, I'd like to meet you to discuss whatever some theory that I was covering in the course. And I thought, oh, my God, she's she's such a inquisitive person. This is so delightful. And then later she tells me I didn't give a damn about anything. I was just trying to get some extra time with you. So but so just to recap, if that guy doesn't say,
00:34:25
Speaker
Hey professor, how you doing? If another guy doesn't hear it and on and on, uh, my wife and I would have never met. So I think it's in that sense, in that romantic spiritual sense that doing the robotic search online maybe makes us lose a bit of that magic.
00:34:41
Speaker
Yeah, I unfortunately can't help but agree with that. The other question I have around relationships is divorce rates have never been higher. This is an incredibly important decision. We seem to be stuffing it up more and more as a society. Why is that the case? Well, I mean, there certainly are social norms that have changed the taboo nature of getting divorced, right? So if you came from a religious background whereby, you know, you're not
00:35:12
Speaker
supposed to ever get divorced, it's for better or worse than already that removes that option, or it makes it a lot less likely for you to instantiate our breaking apart and divorcing. So there's a bit of that element. That said, I think that I can't, I mean, this is speculative, but I suspect that, for example, if you take arranged marriages,
00:35:33
Speaker
I don't know if, on average, they have a lower divorce rate, but there what you're doing is you're subcontracting the choice of your mate to third parties. In those cases, it's your parents. And your parents, given their wisdom and greater life experience, are able to focus on the attributes that, on average, are more likely to be the important ones in choosing an ideal mate. And this is why, for example, I warn against
00:36:01
Speaker
You know, oftentimes we make a decision that this is my life partner based on the first stage of love, where we get the butterfly in our, in our stomach and our fingers tingle because we're neuro anatomically, we're at that stage of love lust.
00:36:18
Speaker
but that is not, cannot be something that you can expect 20, 30 years to imagine. That doesn't mean that you're not going to find your partner sexually attractive and so on. Hopefully you will. But those, you know, you go through different stages in your relationship. Later it becomes contentment. I just love to be around this person. They make me feel comfortable and safe. I know I can trust them and so on. So I wonder speculatively whether in today's fast space world,
00:36:47
Speaker
in line with your previous question about flipping through the apps, whether we've lost our ability to focus on the most fundamentally important attributes when choosing proper mate. And if that's true, then obviously that's going to result in a greater divorce rate because I'm not focusing on the best predictors of what constitutes
00:37:07
Speaker
the likelihood of a long-term marriage so one of the things i talk about in the book. That is probably the biggest predictor of the likelihood of us staying together or not and here there are two evolutionary maxims that are pitted against each other there is the opposites attract maximum and then there is the birds of a feather flock together maximum turns out that overwhelmingly if what you're trying to maximum maximizes the long-term. Success of your relationship
00:37:33
Speaker
In other words, not getting divorced and so on and being happy in the union, then it's overwhelmingly the birds of a feather flock together, Maxim, that is operative. And so the question becomes, but flocking on which feathers? And here we're not talking about we have to have the same eye color or the same hair color, but we have to have the fundamentally same values, life mindsets,
00:37:56
Speaker
belief systems if we don't have those. That doesn't guarantee that we'll be divorced but boy is it statistically increasing the likelihood of us failing. So example, I may be a very very religious person whereby every single element of my life is centered around my faith. You may be someone who's a caustic atheist. Well it's not going to take a fancy evolutionary psychologist to tell you you're probably starting on the wrong foot. Now
00:38:24
Speaker
You might overcome it, it's possible, but statistically speaking, that's not a good start. And so I think that while none of the prescriptions that I offer in the book are guarantees, they're statistical arguments. If you implement this, you're statistically more likely to achieve goal A, B, or C, right? If you don't smoke,
00:38:44
Speaker
you statistically reduce your chance of lung cancer, even though many non-smokers contract lung cancer, right? And so birds of a feather flock together is something that every listener who's looking for a mate should keep in mind. There's a separate but related consideration that I've heard you mentioned before. I think it was on that anonymous Joe Rogan podcast. So you might need to, you might need to say a few more people can actually hear it. And that is the longitudinal mating value of a prospective mate.
00:39:13
Speaker
Explain that to me. Yes. And you know, when I first espoused or proposed that theory on Joe Rogan's show, which I also covered in the current happiness book, you can't imagine how many people wrote to me saying that they wanted to collaborate on a research project to actually test those ideas. And I'll explain in a second. And I'm quite regretful that I haven't done it yet. So thank you for triggering my regret. So the theory that I proposed works as follows.
00:39:42
Speaker
And actually, you're exactly right that it's a perfect segue from birds of a feather flock together. In this case, the feathers that we're trying to assort is our overall mate value. So let's imagine that each of us walks around with a number that's floating around us on a scale of 0 to 100, 0 on the least attractive mating prospect possible, 100 on the most attractive.
00:40:06
Speaker
attractive, I don't mean just in a physical sense. I mean, in the amalgamation of all the attributes that define my mate value, that's what I mean. So if I am a 90, it really makes sense that I assort with a partner that also has
00:40:23
Speaker
roughly that same meeting value and and and that makes sense so we're sorting on meeting about yes we all wanna meet with the one hundred the problem is that if i'm scoring at forty i could never hope to get the one hundred there find out the sorting with someone who's roughly of the same meeting value so now take a young couple, who gets married,
00:40:43
Speaker
out of high school. They both have a very high, within that ecosystem, within that life stage, they're both off the charts high. He's the star quarterback. She is the homecoming queen. She's the gorgeous cheerleader. I'm taking the stereotypical kind of tropes. And of course it makes sense that Johnny and Linda would be the homecoming king and queen because they're the hottest couple in high school and they get married. Fast forward 12 years later,
00:41:11
Speaker
johnny's gotten fat johnny's lost his hair johnny is an unemployed mechanic who plays video games all day linda on the other hand is now doing her neurosurgery surgery residency or there's a lot of really attractive
00:41:28
Speaker
well-spoken worldly physicians around, some of whom are physically attractive and have a wonderful vocabulary and are really ambitious. Now Linda's mating value from wherever it was has gone on an ascendancy, whereas Johnny's is gone on a precipitous downfall so that when they first started, they both had assortative mating values. Now they're 50 points apart.
00:41:58
Speaker
Well, there is no greater threat to the union, in my view, than that inequity. So I argue when I propose that theory that the stability of a marriage is going to largely depend on us pursuing that assortative mating value throughout all of our life. If we don't, it's going to be problems.
00:42:21
Speaker
Yeah, I thought it was fascinating because I think most people instinctively look at the here and the now as opposed to thinking, well, which is not easy, thinking about that, that future lens. The second big life decision, which is the choice of career. And I want to return to that theme of really seismic historical changes in a short period of time. The big one around work is obviously the changes that have happened as a result of COVID and particularly hybrid working. How do you think that plays into this story, some of those changes that we've seen in the corporate world in the last three
Work Environment Changes Post-COVID
00:42:50
Speaker
or four years?
00:42:50
Speaker
Right. Look, there is an element. We are a social species. We have a desperate need to connect.
00:42:59
Speaker
Yes, you and I right now are able to look at each other's eyes to get a sense of the nonverbal cues. If I say something that is interesting or idiotic, I can read it in your face. But nothing could replace it happening face to face. We need that. So even during the draconian measures during COVID,
00:43:20
Speaker
If i was able to meet up with a close friend and we go on these walking talks i actually mentioned that briefly in the book how invigorating those are not only the invigorating because we're walking there for exercising but we're doing it face to face it wasn't through zoom talk i get to.
00:43:37
Speaker
Metaphorically smell you I you're there it's tactile you I see you I feel you maybe we even touch each other we know that oxytocin is released through warm embraces and hugging and so on and so I think there is that element that is lost when we go into remote world.
00:43:55
Speaker
Look, it's very easy and convenient for me when I am teaching a class. 10 minutes before the class starts, I turn on my Zoom. I don't have to face traffic. I don't have to face parking. I don't have to go downtown where the campus is, where it's all chaotic. I'm still delivering the same message, but there's something unique about you seeing me delivering it in person. And I've actually asked that of students because there is a convenience factor of just doing it online.
00:44:24
Speaker
But many of them would say, yeah, but it's different when we hear you delivering it in person, where we can exchange ideas and discuss things in person. So we have lost a bit of that. Like most things, there are pros and cons. But I think the more general question, irrespective of the COVID realities that were imposed on us and so on, what are, if I can answer, what are some fundamental markers that could increase the likelihood of my occupational happiness? Can I share these with you? Please, yeah.
00:44:53
Speaker
So I argue basically that there are two key ones. Number one, anything that allows me to instantiate my creative impulse by definition is going to increase purpose and meaning of my job because just immersing myself in the creative process by definition does that, right? It's very hard to get into a flow state if you're not creating something. So yes, we need insurance adjusters and any honest job
00:45:22
Speaker
has dignity so i'm not denigrating anybody and we need janitors and we need bus drivers and we need corrections officers but. That's probably not something that the insurance adjuster does wakes up in the morning rubs their hand and goes thank god.
00:45:39
Speaker
I found my passion in life and insurance adjusting is where it's at. They do their job. They do it honestly. They do it with dignity. That's great. They put food on the table. That's great. But they're not creating the chef, the architect, the standup comic, the podcaster, the professor and author while they're working in completely different mediums and domains. What they share in common is that they're
00:46:03
Speaker
each creating something that heretofore had not existed until they came along and created it. And that just provides you with purpose and meaning. Now I understand the reality that
00:46:15
Speaker
Not everybody can do that. There's just pragmatic realities. I need to put food on the table. Well, then in that case, I would say if you can't instantiate your creative impulse on your job, in your job, which would be you won the lottery, then you could do it in your personal choices. Well, you are a bus driver, but you've always been interested in the medium of ceramics.
00:46:36
Speaker
Well, why don't you, instead of watching television for the four hours after you come home from your long shift as a bus driver, sign up for that adult lifelong learning ceramics class at your local visual arts center. And it's only going to be an hour and a half, but boy, are you going to be invigorated and your life is going to be more enriched and meaningful if you instantiate your creative impulse. So that would be the first metric. The second metric is any.
00:47:04
Speaker
profession in my view that allows you to have maximal temporal freedom is one that's going to, all other things equal, make you happy. So I work very, very hard. I can pull 16 hour days, but I never feel stressed as much as if my entire day is already booked, my fate is sealed.
00:47:27
Speaker
eight to nine departmental meeting nine to eleven i'm teaching a course eleven to twelve i'm meeting with the dean that gives me what i call scheduling asphyxia right because what makes me happy is to be able to be in french you say i just about around.
00:47:45
Speaker
Now I'm talking to Will on the show. Next, I'll go sit at a cafe for two hours and I'll think about some stuff and I'll write some notes. Then I'll come home and exercise for an hour. Then I'll go off and do something else that's meaningful and very stressful. But I am the master of my time. And that gives me a great sense of personal freedom. Now contrast that to the factory worker.
00:48:09
Speaker
Who doesn't even have the dignity of deciding when they can use the restroom because it is mandated at ten fifteen you could take a break till ten thirty well. All other things equal i think the former is going to lead more to more happiness so and by the way there's great research.
00:48:25
Speaker
by a gentleman, by many people, but the most famous example of which is a social epidemiologist from England called, I think, I mean, in French you would pronounce marmot, but I think the English would be marmot. He looked at the cortisol levels of people in a hierarchy as a function of where they are on the hierarchy, and the lower you are,
00:48:51
Speaker
the higher your cortisol level now that that at first seems surprising because you would think that the person who the ceo faces the most amount of stress so they should have the highest cortisol levels but it is found that it's the exact opposite by the way it's been also demonstrated
00:49:07
Speaker
with baboons. So Robert Sapolsky has done great studies looking at the hierarchy within baboon society and the lower you are on the rung, the higher cortisol levels. And cortisol levels is a hormonal marker of stress, right? And so the lowest rung on the organizational hierarchy to the extent that your boss tells you what to do, what time to do it at, there is absolutely no room for creativity or temporal freedom while that manifests itself in my higher cortisol levels. So
00:49:37
Speaker
create and vagabond around and you'll be occupationally happy. Yeah, I love it. I have managed to think of one final question for you, for you Gout, after my previous one was stolen. It requires you to
Future Happiness and Societal Trends
00:49:49
Speaker
actually look forward. So let's ponder the world in 2050. Given everything you can see happening in the world today, do you think we will be a more or a less happy world or society in 2050?
00:50:01
Speaker
Okay, I have to be speculative here because I don't, unlike some other public intellectuals who are futurists who can tell us things really profound like, I'm not going to do the accent, but I'll leave it for your listeners to decide who it is. In the future, people will really care about food.
00:50:23
Speaker
Holy shit, who could have thought of such an insight? I mean, how do you tap into such futuristic wisdom, O God of Davos? But in any case, so I'm too epistemologically humble to pretend that I could accurately answer your question.
00:50:41
Speaker
I'll answer it using the backdrop of the Middle East where I come from. Imagine if there was a magic pill that we can take to eradicate some of the regrettably innate tribalism that shapes human nature. Imagine if now we can unlock the Middle East
00:51:00
Speaker
which we're starting to see some hints of so that there is no longer all of these deep-seated hatreds between groups. So think about what the Middle East can become, given its richness of its hospitality culture, its just rich culture in general, and you open that up to the world so that there are no longer places that are difficult to visit because of all of these religious hatreds and so on.
00:51:26
Speaker
If we're able, I think, and I'm not optimistic that we can, because as I said, tribalism is an inherent part of human nature. If we can unlock the secrets to how to get rid of some of these blue team, red team, coalitional thinking that we have, then I think in 2050 or in 2100, we'd be in a much better place because we would not be spending our time hating one another rather than using the richness of our diversity to make the world a better place. How is that for an answer?
00:51:55
Speaker
I think that's a teaser, potentially, for about 10 more podcasts in that
Conclusion: 'The Sad Truth About Happiness'
00:52:00
Speaker
answer. But we don't have the time. Gad, this has been an absolute pleasure. The sad truth about happiness is out coincidentally in Australia today, for everyone listening in Australia. Took this book and I read it in the lobby bar of the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Sat down, I read it cover to cover. It was as close as probably I could get to a spiritual experience that we talked about. You gave me goosebumps. What an award.
00:52:24
Speaker
Thank you so much. I really appreciate your kind words. It's a wonderful book, and it's one of many wonderful books you've written now. Thank you very much for everything that you are doing in the culture wars, in the additions that you make to intellectual debate. You are much loved around the world and for very good reason. Thank you very much for coming on, Australiano. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Cheers.
00:52:44
Speaker
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Australiana. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review. And if you really enjoyed the show, head to spectator.com.au forward slash join. Sign up for a digital subscription today and you'll get your first month absolutely free.