Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 14: Reality-based Thinking with Mardoche Sidor image

Episode 14: Reality-based Thinking with Mardoche Sidor

S1 E14 ยท Doorknob Comments
Avatar
84 Plays4 years ago

Dr. Sidor is an esteemed colleague, psychiatrist, and educator who joins Grant and Fara to discuss the science of suffering and the importance of a good team.

Find more about his work here: https://www.sweetinstitute.com/

Recommended
Transcript

Introduction to Neutral Reality and Podcast Themes

00:00:05
Speaker
In reality, everything is neutral until I think it as bad or good. Thank you for joining us on Doorknob Comments, a podcast that we created to discuss all things involving mental health. We take the view that psychiatry is not just about the absence of illness, but rather the positive qualities, presence of health, and strong relationships, and all the wonderful things that make life worth living.

Meet the Hosts and Guest Experts

00:00:30
Speaker
I'm Dr. Farah White. And I'm Dr. Grant Brenner.
00:00:33
Speaker
We are very honored to have a dear friend, Mardeshay Sidor. He is the founder and CEO of the Sweet Institute, which provides continuing education for clinicians and is a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. Welcome. Thank you, Farah. Thank you for having me. Hi, Gwen. Good to be here.
00:00:51
Speaker
Hey Martis Shay, good to see you. It's been a long time. Dr. Sidor has completed many fellowships and has many specializations and so is very well qualified to head up the Sweet Institute and has a lot to offer by way of continuing education. And today we feel very fortunate to have an opportunity to speak with you about what you're working on currently.
00:01:12
Speaker
I have an immediate question. I don't know if you want to answer this, but we're recording on Zoom, so we have a visual that listeners won't get to see. But might you tell us who is behind you on your bookshelf? Great, great, great. Obviously, never stop using his surgical skills.
00:01:35
Speaker
but i i computing so i've been having some fun during the pandemic and social distancing i'm just like um both of you guys and everybody listening to us we've been busy but trying to make the most out of it and um as a result i have been looking for ways to support

Supporting Mental Health During the Pandemic

00:01:56
Speaker
A number of individuals who've been calling me, consulting with me, how to best go through this crisis. So in the beginning, if you guys remember, right away, hey, social distancing, everybody was like, what's going on? So at the Student Institute, not only we held a number of webinars on anxiety, on even depression and how to support individuals with pain and loss, because as you know, many individuals happen to lose their job and all that.
00:02:25
Speaker
But and I got a lot of great questions, a lot of great inquiries, many colleagues of ours really reached out to us. And as I continue to do that, I realized I too needed to take care of myself. And part of taking care of myself is to form a team.
00:02:46
Speaker
I'll use a team. I didn't realize you were answering my question. I thought it was a polite blow off. But please go ahead. I remember as a professor we were very circumstantial.
00:03:01
Speaker
But we get to the point eventually.

Social Challenges and Historical Inspirations

00:03:04
Speaker
If you guys also remember, during all that pandemic, George Floyd took place in Minnesota. And again, a number of individuals reached out to me. And I also then that increased the need for me to say, wait a minute, let's actually take a look how to be the most helpful and to as many of our colleagues and our population as possible.
00:03:30
Speaker
And so part of the theme is I have here Mahatma Gandhi, who really, really in fact taught the person to men who happened to mentor Martin Luther King, who was the next person in my team. And that actually tried to look for another way. So I don't know if you guys remember many people after having been socially distanced.
00:03:55
Speaker
And then Joshua took this. So it makes you wonder how much is what? What exactly is going on? There was a lot going on. There was a lot of ways of responding. And we needed to find a middle way. And then the question is, what would Martin Luther King
00:04:11
Speaker
do? What would Mahamad Gandhi do? And so those are the two people in my team. But then the third person in my team was also as relevant is Abraham Lincoln, 1864, exactly more or less 100 years before Martin Luther King, who actually happened to play a role in all that was going on.
00:04:32
Speaker
and that the third person, but then, you know, I'm a professor, I'm writing, I'm a physician, I need to find a way, what about science? How can science inform us to really help others? And then who's the better person?
00:04:48
Speaker
than the genius Einstein, who actually not only really helped us debug 200 years of mechanical physics, but also talked about a lot of, had a lot to say in civil rights, actually, and all of those things. And so the cosmic man is part of my team also. And it actually really
00:05:09
Speaker
I've always been in love with Einstein. I go up really really now with Einstein. And I remember one of the best quotes of his that helped me shed light is you cannot solve, we cannot solve our problems with the same type of thinking that created it, right?
00:05:29
Speaker
really really helped me help many of our colleagues who actually have a scientific mind understand where we were coming from because there was there was so much emotion involved and it's hard to use the frontal cortex whatever in this case you wanted to say something
00:05:46
Speaker
Well, I was going to ask you, you're saying that that's an idea that Einstein had is that you can't solve a problem with the tools. So people often quote Einstein as saying the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. Do you know if Einstein really said that? He did not say that. So because as I said, I grew up reading Einstein and actually grew up reading Mahatma Gandhi.
00:06:11
Speaker
for a variety of reasons, and Nick, my dad, and then also my own curiosity. And so I also realized that they attributed a lot of course to Einstein, that he did not say. And we understand why, because unfortunately in that world of illusion, it's not what he said, it's who said it. And if you really want to sound good, you say he said that, even when actually he did not say it.
00:06:42
Speaker
And of course, of course, education, that's what we do at Sweet. And that's what I do every day. Even when meeting with patients, we educate. And this man once said, to change the world, change education. That's Nelson Mandela. So what's a better person to have in your team will not only have to have him spend
00:07:05
Speaker
27 years in prison. I am honored to say that I've actually been, I've been to his jail. I'm actually in, in, in, in Wabena Island and visited Hawaii, spent those years. He still managed to keep a smile, right? And he practiced forgiveness, which is really honorable. And so that's my number five man in, in, in, in, in, in the team.
00:07:31
Speaker
very inspiring and talking about inspiration. I believe that one of the best inspiring presidents we had was Jeff Kennedy. He did allow us to really, to really get the inspiration to do things that really nobody could have ever, ever dreamed of. And he's part of my team. I see him. Of course, talking about inspiration.
00:07:59
Speaker
to inspire is what a leader can do most or best, or who's the better epitome than Steve Jobs. You like him or not? Yes, he did not. He was not good at controlling his emotions, but I had a vision. And so he's part of the team. I realized that everybody I just said, they were all dead.
00:08:22
Speaker
I needed someone who actually was alive. I think one of the missing piece was confidence. So next was Steve Jobs. I actually have Barack Obama. I like he's gonna ask. Yeah, I like his willy-loo of confidence. He's not arrogant, but willy.
00:08:39
Speaker
Don't worry, you say anything, it just use humor to really disarm you and it doesn't go about, it doesn't really hold it against you. That's really worth emulating. Every day I sit here and I look at each one of those guys and say, okay, what are we doing today? Who are we being today?
00:08:58
Speaker
That's a good introduction for people to get a sense of how diverse and inclusive and focused on alleviating human suffering you are as a person and in your personal life and in your in your professional life as well. Yeah. And I think we would love to hear a little bit about what you're working on now. Yeah. Thank you.

The Nature of Suffering and Systematic Thinking

00:09:19
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for.
00:09:22
Speaker
Indeed, just like it's been said, I don't know who said that, but life gives you a lemon and you make lemonade out of it. It's my dad. I think it was Einstein. Just kidding. I have two variations on that just to digress. The first one is, when life gives you lemons, grow lemon trees.
00:09:46
Speaker
And then the second one, which makes even less sense, is when life gives you lemonade, make lemons. Interesting. Though you might say when life gives you lemonade, enjoy it. Yes, and people do that. I like you said that. And unfortunately, we do see people in our practice who happen to
00:10:03
Speaker
make lemons out of their lemons. And that's what we commonly call the self-sabotaging behavior and all that. The death drive that Sigmund Foote talked about. I never even thought of it as reverse psychology, but that makes sense. Yeah, I like it. I do believe that with the pandemic, many of us may have
00:10:25
Speaker
not only lived, but also illustrated, but also put to work this statement, this wisdom, so to speak. I'm trying to make lemon, lemonade out of lemon. But to me, it was more by necessity because I had so many people reaching out to me. So I could not but see how much suffering there was.
00:10:47
Speaker
In addition to that, all of us are seeing what's going on on social media, what people are saying. I mean, it's palpable. And the question to me was, how can I serve? How can we do something? Again, looking at what questions would those guys in my team be asking? That really took me to a quest to help end suffering.
00:11:10
Speaker
Suffering has been around since the dawn of time. It must be preposterous to believe that we can end suffering. However, just like we quoted Einstein, yes, this would be a logical thinking except that this is a symptom of thinking that we that started suffering, right, that we cannot use it to actually stop suffering.
00:11:35
Speaker
Therefore, to solve suffering, what we're developing right now at the Institute is looking at, is there formula to problem solving? Stanford, MIT, and Harvard are using the same formula. There are steps to problem solving, and those steps get applied to any type of problem. So then we're really looking at suffering in that way. So what is suffering? Let's define suffering. But more importantly, what causes suffering?
00:12:04
Speaker
And one other quote of Einstein, yes, he said that, if I'm given one hour to solve a problem, I will spend 55 minutes to understand the problem and five minutes to solve it. Which means for us, as part of ending suffering, we need to understand what's going on here, what's that suffering about,
00:12:27
Speaker
what's causing it and then how to go around it. And that's exactly what we're currently working on. This is so what we're doing is for each step we are gathering as much as many studies what different systems of thoughts are saying. So for example, as you know, there are five major thoughts systems that explain everything about life, about us, about who we are and all that.
00:12:57
Speaker
Now, those five major systems of thoughts, none of them necessarily have a solution, but then there is an intersection among all five where the solution, the truth lies, which takes us to Mahatma Gandhi. I remember I was a leader when I read him because I had a lot of religious questions, really, because I was told that I was safe. But then I said, wait a minute, if I'm safe because I belong to that religion, what about if I were born in Asia?
00:13:26
Speaker
where there are billions of people. None of them belong to the same religion there. That means I would not be going to heaven. I was very little, like 12, 13 years old. And I remember having read Autobiography of India out of Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi said, and I called
00:13:43
Speaker
All religions are different roads to God. And that just shaped things for me. Yeah, from Hindu philosophy, right? Yes. In Hindu philosophy, they talk about darshanas, which are different paths to enlightenment.
00:13:59
Speaker
There's a few of them. One of them is through logical discourse. One of them is yoga is actually supposed to be through the body to enlightenment. But his autobiography is amazing just for listeners. It's also subtitled My Experiments with the Truth. Today, I see myself applying that same thinking to those five major systems of thoughts that we have that really permeate every single aspect of our life, at least the vast majority of our
00:14:28
Speaker
of us. So we have science, right? Science really is there trying to do any stuff. But at the same time, we have religion trying to really answer many of those same questions. Then we have spirituality over there. And then we have philosophy and science of physics. So we have metaphysics.
00:14:47
Speaker
Those are the five systems of thoughts. But then you say, well, when you look, remember, like in medical school, one of the biggest pitman pieces of wisdom I think I've ever had was one day when we were told, remember this, the best truth of today are the best lies of tomorrow. And that's fine. Isn't that what we have from Newton and then to Einstein and from Einstein to Einstein?
00:15:12
Speaker
Eisenberg and David Bohr. It's there. It's prank. So even in physics, going, okay, wall string theory, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. Right. Well, I remember in medical school, probably in like 1993 or 94 in our neuroscience class, we were told in no uncertain terms that there are no stem cells
00:15:36
Speaker
no regenerative cells in the human brain. And that didn't seem true to me. Why would there be stem cells in every tissue in the body but the brain? And then I think in 97 maybe, like the year I graduated med school, they published a large study of cadavers
00:15:55
Speaker
where people took some radioactive tracer that would get integrated into their new DNA. Then they looked at their brains of those people who volunteered for that very important work on autopsy. Indeed, they found that there were stem cells in the brain, which really was a total change in the narrative. Absolutely. That indeed has changed the narrative since then.
00:16:21
Speaker
And now we're talking about neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, right? Now we're talking about epigenetics, about a totally different ballgame. So for some people, depending on how you're looking at things, how full is the glass, then you say, oh, this is so discouraging. Well, who can you believe? As opposed to some of us who are looking at this half full, say, wow,
00:16:45
Speaker
I mean, this is very promising. But you seem to be choosing very actively to see things a certain way. It's probably what you grew up with and also just the way that your brain works. You have a positive attitude. So the way that you view the world, I don't think would be really surprising to anyone who gets to know you.
00:17:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Farah. And so I like your answer because this is part of what we're looking at suffering. The way we've been looking at suffering has been looking at the psychology, right? So what we call the normal blueprint. We're all familiar with our normal blueprint made of our genetics and then our environment and our experiences and then mediated through the process of epigenetics.
00:17:30
Speaker
And so from CBT to DBT to even logotherapy and then everything in between has been trying to really, really stop suffering looking at the psychology, which is brilliant, right? But then that's one more reason why we know that at the same time, it's 100% of people who come to us for CBT who happen to live, hey, thank you, doc. I am good now, right?
00:17:58
Speaker
Does it work that way? Does it mean CBC is not effective? Oh, CBC is damn effective. We know that, but unfortunately, it's really, there must be some, there must be a reason why it's actually two thirds and not even 80%, right? It doesn't even go to the period of rule of 80-20.
00:18:19
Speaker
Right. The most effective therapies are like the effect size is still limited and nothing works for everybody. Exactly. Then it tells them what is the answer. But thankfully, we're not just our psychology. That's the reason why we ought to look at those five systems of thoughts.
00:18:36
Speaker
So is there something behind our psychology? So the same thing we used to believe that no stem cells in the brain. We also used to believe that the brain was the ultimate station. But now we know that's not true. So we know that there is behind our normal blueprint, there is a natural blueprint.
00:18:58
Speaker
And that natural blueprint that we have, for example, really fundamental, just that we have the fundamentals of the laws of physics, of electromagnetism, of gravity, that does not change, right? I was going to say, I think that suffering is one of them. I mean, in every language, it's called like la condision, men. And then we say to suffer is to be human.
00:19:21
Speaker
So I do think that that is something that's in some ways built in. Yes, and I thought about from a psychological standpoint, yes. Suffering is really part of our normal blueprint. So we're the psychology, the brain, the genetics. That's why, for example, we talk about transgenerational trauma, right? We talk about all this.
00:19:43
Speaker
However, we're not just our psychology. We are not just our, there's what's behind the psychology, what's behind, that's where, that's where we need to look to end suffering. You know, because suffering indeed, you're right. It's human to suffer, right? Because that's inside our psychology. And unfortunately then it requires something else. That word that
00:20:08
Speaker
We talk about that outlook. Outlook means where you're looking from, right? So where we're looking from makes a big difference. And then if you're looking from our psychology, then suffering is there. If you're looking from behind our psychology, then this is really what part of what we are working on.

Perception, Illusion, and Reality-Based Thinking

00:20:28
Speaker
Are you suggesting that suffering may not be a universal truth? Because many philosophical systems, they take that as an axiom, as a given. Life involves suffering. Are we creating the problem by taking it as a given? Or does it exist within our social systems and our psychology? And there's no way to completely deny the reality of suffering. It's a great question.
00:20:57
Speaker
And then the answer lies in depending on which system of thinking we're looking at, right? Depends how you look at it. Exactly. So for example, in now in terms of truth, is that which has no exception, right? Truth is that which is absolute. I may be looking at the same thing.
00:21:17
Speaker
And then I suffer from it, and Farah does not. So that tells you something. So that's correct. In this case... Anything come to mind? Let's just say, we're following the election right now, right? I know it's just a matter of illusion going on here, right? It's just history really... Unbearable. ...being of itself, right? At several levels. And so what happened is that
00:21:46
Speaker
Again, what the suffering means, etymologically, suffering is to bear from below. It's where you are looking from. The moment you really just change your position, suffering dissipates. Can I ask you something about where we started? Many of the people you described as your heroes, who are also heroes to me in many ways, the majority of them were killed by other human beings.
00:22:13
Speaker
Lincoln, Kennedy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Christ. Steve Jobs sort of neglected his own health. Some people feel in his grandiosity, perhaps. And Steve Jobs, by the way, had an interesting tie-in with Indian culture, with South Asian culture.
00:22:30
Speaker
culture, because I think he studied with the same guru that the Beatles did. And I remember from his biography, he read a book called Autobiography of a Yogi Every Year, which really talked about how to harness the power of the mind. I'm sure you're familiar with Paramhamsa Yogananda's work. But I'm wondering how you think about suffering when it comes to these sorts of things, when the best of us seem to be, you know, ended by the worst that humans have to offer.
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question. So let's just take one step back. So there is a very nice, nice study that shows that the MIT grad, physics grads of MIT, did fully compare to children in many physics questions. I mean, that's really out there. That's number one. Number two, that shows that children
00:23:23
Speaker
do better in questions related to electromagnetism before they went to school than after. We were born with an actual blueprint and then we got socialized. So something like beginner's mind. Exactly, indoctrinated.
00:23:40
Speaker
And then that's what leads to the normal blueprint. The normal blueprint is our genetics, yes. But remember, because of epigenetics, those genes are not necessarily expressed until they are in the environment where they need to be expressed for the process of epigenetics.
00:23:58
Speaker
In other words, now because of how we were raised, so for example, we know that children, all of you guys know, babo, babo, baba, baba, baba, baba, they actually really have every single sound in every language at that stage. And here we start speaking English to them. Yeah. And interestingly, they can distinguish between sounds that we can't once we're in adulthood. Yes.
00:24:26
Speaker
It's also why it's so hard to understand babies, because they're speaking every language at the same time. Exactly. Now, the question is, what's that about? Did we lose that? Where is that? Well, here's what happens. As we continue in the process of socialization and programming, then that's what takes over. But that which we were born with, which is our natural blueprint, is there. And both Sigmund Freud and his teacher, Joseph Brewer, had
00:24:54
Speaker
I talked about that. That's our free conscious mind. That's where reality testing is. We're not using it. We are using our unconscious mind, which has been made by looking at consciously what I'm hearing from my dad. Obviously, as you know, then I put it there, I put it there. Then my unconscious mind makes it automatic for me. Then I have a way of seeing the world of my belief system based on this environment.
00:25:22
Speaker
That's creating problems. That's creating problems. That's creating problems. And then we see the whole world, everyone and ourselves through this lens. Reality, therefore, is not being used as the basis for our thinking. But reality is there in our conscious mind.
00:25:40
Speaker
And then it's just a matter of shift. So everything you just said, which is a great question, is explained by this type of thinking. You call it illusion-based thinking, by the way, for obvious reason, because it's based on our past. And brain holds on to it, and then that's where, whatever we're thinking, we're thinking about our past.
00:25:59
Speaker
Right. This sort of reminds me of enlightenment and the story of the Buddha of being assaulted by illusion, by Maya, you know, and finding the truth and getting back to this sort of base state free from all of the conditioning. Now, when you talked about the babies, but I thought of the story of the Tower of Babel.
00:26:23
Speaker
I wonder if the word baby comes from the word babble now. But the idea, if I understand the story, was that people were trying to reach heaven and that that was considered to be narcissistic or too prideful. And so God caused everyone to speak different tongues. They couldn't collaborate anymore to keep building this tower.
00:26:47
Speaker
And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about that. I'm curious. You know, it's safer if people keep to themselves stay in the same caves. And I think that's at the root of a lot of the problems that we see today. There's so much anxiety about the other starting in these biblical stories. I didn't conquer.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there's a question maybe in there about hubris and suffering and how do we strive and sort of tolerate success and failure. But sometimes success can be harder for people than failure, strangely. And I wonder if you have any thoughts about that.
00:27:25
Speaker
So here is the thing here. The first thing is there is one way to end suffering, only one way. It's to shift from an illusion-based thinking to a reality-based thinking. So that's number one. That's the only way. There's no other way. Why? Because then
00:27:42
Speaker
When I wake up, it doesn't matter what I have, the moment I wake up and then my water is not hot, then I have a different relationship with my water. I forget that I was that whoever, then I feel it, right? But if I'm based in my life on a reality based thinking, it's different. We all are familiar with this famous book, Main Search for Meaning.
00:28:09
Speaker
written by a Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist whose name is Victor Franco. Victor Franco was actually in the Nazis' concentration camps, literally, along with his family members and colleagues. He saw them being really tortured and suffering
00:28:29
Speaker
Yet, he describes in his book all the different strategies he used, which actually are part of his logotherapy, the third beat has been his way of psychotherapy, in order to actually not allow himself to suffer.
00:28:46
Speaker
That was an example of a reality-based thinking. What does that mean? Reality-based thinking allows you to see illusion for what it is and regardless of what's going on. But that's the only way. You're talking about something like radical acceptance.
00:29:03
Speaker
It's more than radical acceptance, right? Because we do use radical acceptance in DBT, which is great. DBT borrows that from Buddhism, right? And alongside longevity, which is good, but it's beyond that. You are going to say something Farah.
00:29:18
Speaker
Oh, I was just going to say that I think the, you know, logo therapy is based on the fact that our main goal is to find a purpose in life. Right. And you correct. And now a lot of people go about doing this differently. This again, we can be doing it based on an illusion based thinking.
00:29:38
Speaker
or we can do it through a reality-based thinking. The latter was used by Victor Franco. Reality-based thinking. So what does reality-based thinking mean? Again, pre-conscious mind. Go back to pre-conscious mind. As a child, I am seeing this
00:29:55
Speaker
electric circuits, I just put my hand. That's sad. So going back to the Bible, I was on the great side of the Bible, in the garden, that tree of good or evil. That's sad. People read it so literally.
00:30:13
Speaker
that's the electrical socket that's forbidden fruit which means i don't really know what i i don't know just like shakespeare said nothing is good or bad but thank you makes it so so as a in reality everything is neutral until i
00:30:29
Speaker
think it as bad or good. That's reality-based thinking. But in illusion-based thinking, the way we've been programmed, we have a preconceived notion of what's good, what's bad. Sure. Well, how do you think about ethics and morality? When we get to reality-based thinking, we will not need ethics or morality.
00:30:49
Speaker
because reality is thinking is harmony. Why does that mean harmony? Because reality is thinking you know who you are. So knowing who you are means you actually are just like let's go back to Einstein. Here's what Einstein actually quoted was in his letter to a rabbi who actually went to the war and helped
00:31:12
Speaker
came back with a number of children. Actually, he lived here in New York, the rabbi. He went to the war, came back with a number of children who were orphaned and helped them. However, the rabbi's own child died young and
00:31:27
Speaker
It could not get over it. Something that many people may not know about Einstein unless they actually study him is that, again, he wasn't just a scientist. He actually really received a number of letters from all kinds of people asking him for advice.
00:31:43
Speaker
And he advised the rabbi. Advice was always short and to the point. If you miss the point, then you have to write again, right? He was a true scientist. So he said, and I quote, a human being is a part of the whole, but he experiences himself, he thinks
00:32:03
Speaker
He feels as if he was different. He was separate from the rest of the whole. And he added a kind of an optical delusion. That's that. That's not reality-based thinking. That's why he said that's not a delusion.
00:32:21
Speaker
Right. So, so in reality is thinking you see yourself, I am, and you see yourself as far and great, not different from me, which means I, the idea of projection as well. When I think Farah is mad at me, maybe then I'm actually just projecting.
00:32:38
Speaker
And that idea of projection is not as superficial as many people understand. It's deeper than that. And that's where that comes from, is because we actually won, but the optical delusion that Einstein mentioned makes us see that totally different. Sort of clarity.

Unity, Empathy, and Ethical Beliefs

00:32:57
Speaker
And how does that make it not necessary to have ethics or morality? Well, if I'm one, if I'm you, Greg, I hope I'm not. So, for example, I have my body here, I have my liver here, my pancreas. I hope I'm not going to say, hey, Hen, you are here. I'm going to start hitting you here and I'm not going to hurt. People will naturally treat each other well if we see one another as the parts of ourselves. And are you familiar with Petros Levinas, the philosopher Levinas?
00:33:26
Speaker
I am familiar with him. He has a sort of a philosophy like this is that your first ethic is to the other. It doesn't make a lot of sense, because again, again. Well, but I would actually I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think it works if everyone pretty much does that. It's like a cooperation model, you know, like the prisoner's dilemma.
00:33:49
Speaker
You know, if everyone cooperates, then everyone does the best that they can. But people sometimes will quote unquote defect and betray each other. So here's our problem here. Our problem here, we've been overall in the world. We've been trying to solve a problem.
00:34:07
Speaker
by patching things up without the foundation. You cannot have this as long as we continue to operate the word from an illusion-based thinking. But the moment we have that shift, a reality-based thinking
00:34:22
Speaker
then that said there is no there's not even not even any fear of somebody defecting right because that's reality-based thinking so that's that's the thing that's the foundation that's why this is the only way out of suffering with it and we can do it. Did you ever read Einstein's letters with Freud about whether humanity will ever cure war?
00:34:45
Speaker
I haven't read that one. I think you would dig it. But I think Einstein wrote to Freud and asked about it. And then they had a number of famous letters back and forth. Thank you so much. I mean, this was really, really enlightening. And I'm so excited for, you know, your work to come out on

Future Work and Sweet Institute Resources

00:35:03
Speaker
this. Where can people find you? Where can they find themselves by finding you? There, they can. The best place is really to find themselves. So go inside.
00:35:14
Speaker
www.me.me. No, no, where can we find you? Well, in the meantime, in the meantime, while looking for them, while looking for themselves, they can look for me. Sweet Institute, that, that, that sweet like candy, S-W-E-E-T, institute.com.
00:35:37
Speaker
And really looking forward, we're working very hard. We're making sure that this has come as complete as possible. So it's going to take some time. But this is a project we are really very, very enthusiastic about because what's a better cause than MLK says. Martin Luther King says, you know, a man is not worth living until you have something to die for. And I think that's worth cause dying for because it will help humanity.
00:36:05
Speaker
You know, all of us. If it's worth dying for, it is surely worth living for as well. It did. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. Thank you. Thank you, Farah, and be well. Thank you, guys. Yeah, good to see you, too. I hope it won't be as long next time. I look forward to the next time. Thanks. Thanks for listening, everyone. Take good care.
00:36:34
Speaker
One disclaimer, this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of psychiatry or any type of medicine. It's not a substitute for professional and individual treatment services and no doctor patient relationship is formed. If you feel that you may be in crisis, please don't delay in securing mental health treatment.