**Transcription of audio can be found at the end of this post**
Humans are social beings, and we are happier, and better, when connected to others.
- Paul Bloom
Paul Bloom is a professor, scholar, and writer who studies how humans make sense of the world. When he said yes to letting me interview him last year, I lost it. I have been in love with Paul’s writing for years. Ever since his book, “How Pleasure Works,” came out he has been a favorite of mine. In my opinion, he infuses just the right amount of human drama into research to keep it relatable and interesting.
We dig a little deeper into the connections of suffering and meaning, and talk about his book The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning. For me, Paul Bloom’s writing helps me wade through the pressure to be happy all the time, that emotions are complex and often hard to find to be either all good or all bad. There is comfort in this mess.
When we get to the topic of motivational pluralism, Paul Bloom explains the “Experience Machine,” the thought experiment by philosopher Robert Nozick. If given the chance to be hooked up to a machine and live the rest of your natural life in an imagined life full of accomplishment and joy and pleasure and success far beyond your wildest dreams, would you do it? Paul has posed this question to a lot of different people and the answers always vary. But he says that he wouldn’t do it. He doesn’t want to just get the feeling of doing things, he wants to do things. He has people in this world that he loves, and he does not want to abandon them. I think this helps to shift the mindset on what it means to make meaning out of life - where surviving for the people I love can be a sort of beautiful motivation to stick it out and keep on going.
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Wishing you a relaxing weekend with the people you love. XO, Carissa
Transcript:
00:00:02 Carissa
Yay, hey everybody, I'm super excited to introduce you to Paul Bloom today. He's a professor of Psychology. He's a researcher in the areas of morality, of identity, and of pleasure, and he's also an author, and he just finished the book, The Sweet Spot, which is out now, which is amazing.
00:00:24 Carissa
And yeah, Paul, will you give us a quick, what sort of, how did you get into the studies of identity and understanding pleasure?
00:00:33 Paul
Yeah, I'm, thanks, thanks for having me on.
00:00:35 Paul
I got into the book because I was interested [in] certain puzzles of everyday life. So it's not surprising people like food and like sex and like to be loved and good company. But why do we like hot foods and saunas, running marathons. Scary movies. BDSM, you know, and your mileage may vary. It's sort of a list painful things, but everybody likes some stuff that's painful and difficult and hard.
00:01:05 Paul
And so I was really interested in how this contributes to pleasure. I was going to call my book the “Pleasures of Suffering” but the more I looked at it, I, just it got a bit broader and I started to think about ways in which we choose difficulty and suffering in ways that don't bring us pleasure in any simple sense, but bring us higher goals like, you know, starting a business or a romantic relationship sometimes.
00:01:29 Paul
Or raising children. Nobody raises children and thinks this is going to be easy. They know it's going to be hard. And I don't even think it's going to be fun in a simple sense, but I think it's going to give their life value.
00:01:40 Paul
And I began to think about the role that chosen suffering plays in a life we're living.
00:01:47 Carissa
Well, can you really briefly talk about how, I think that this ties into the idea that one can be motivated by different things and different things in the same moment, but also different things over the course of a lifetime?
00:02:02 Paul
There's a lot of people, and maybe this was me before, before I started the book, who thinks a lot of psychologists say we're just after pleasure, we wanna have pleasure. We want to avoid pain.
00:02:11 Paul
And whenever somebody tells us different, I said no, no, I wanna do good I wanna make the world a better place. We say, uh, you just wanna, you just wanna get the kick, the feeling good you get from doing that and I've come to believe for a lot of reasons that's just wrong. That I'm come to believe something that people call motivational pluralism, which is idea we want many things, so we do want pleasure.
00:02:34 Paul
And you know it's a really hot day outside. You're all sweaty. Nothing like a cool drink, yeah we like that.
00:02:40 Paul
We also want to be happy we want to look back and says this is a good life. I'm happy with my life I'm positive about it, but we also want to be good.
00:02:48 Paul
You know, I think very few people would take a pill that would make them into a psychopath, even if they were happier, you know, because we want to, we want to make the world a better place we want meaning.
00:02:57 Paul
We want meaning and purpose in ways that are sort of above and beyond happiness and pleasure. We want to make a difference to people's lives. We want to engage in long and difficult projects. One reason why I call my book The Sweet Spot is that for each of us, given all these many motivations, we have to find a compromise, have to find a sort of a proper space between all of this.
00:03:20 Carissa
I think that sort of I was wondering if you could speak to, I didn't ask you on the Live this, about sort of the trend of toxic positivity and how your book kind of plays into that.
00:03:31 Paul
It pushes against, it plays against it actually.
00:03:33 Carissa
Plays against it, sorry.
00:03:38 Paul
You're right, there's some, there's a lot of talk. A lot of people pointed out that psychologists seem to focus almost exclusively on happiness, pleasure, positivity. And I think they're missing something, and in fact they’re missing some fairly ancient wisdom. That I think all of the world's religions capture, which is a good life, is not merely a matter of you know maximizing the number of orgasms or hot fudge sundaes you have.
00:04:04 Paul
It's a matter of often in addition to those other things, it's often a matter, a matter of living a life you could be proud of, living a life you could be satisfied by.
00:04:17 Paul
And when you ask people whose lives are full of meaning, they'll tell you, and there's these are sort of scientific studies. They'll say my life is also full of difficulty, anxiety, struggle. The most meaningful jobs, for instance, are not the ones that pay the most nor that are ones that are most high status.
00:04:34 Paul
They're jobs like being a member of the clergy, being a social worker, being an educator, and those are difficult jobs, but they're difficult jobs involving struggles, sometimes conflict that make a difference, and so meaning pushes you in a different way than happiness, and I think too many psychologists and too many people are ignoring that.
00:04:54 Carissa
Why do you think we as humans crave meaning?
00:04:57 Paul
That's a really good question.
00:05:00 Paul
I think some of it may be cultural. There's sort of a notion that of long term goals, one should aspire to, and different cultures have different ideas what these goals are.
00:05:12 Paul
Some of them really valorized child rearing as a meaningful goal, others much less so. But I also think some of it is built into us.
00:05:19 Paul
I think that the sting from other animals sort of for Darwinian reasons we want to do things that make a difference, that impress the group, that show off our value in a community of people. Because we're very status oriented.
00:05:37 Paul
So I think unlike pleasure which could be fairly hard-wired, fairly built-in, and largely shared with other creatures. The appetite for meaning is something that distinguishes humans and has a source both sort of evolutionary and also cultural.
00:05:51 Carissa
Oh no, that was a really good answer and also a way of saying.
00:05:56 Carissa
I don't know, you don't know.
00:05:58 Paul
The best answers also say, no, you have caught me, whenever somebody says it's a combination of evolution and culture, that's kind of like saying “I don't know.”
00:06:07 Carissa
I mean, I think it's crazy how much I really want certaintude and answers when I know that there's, it's just, I don't think it's going to be within my lifetime, if ever.
00:06:20 Paul
I think, I'm a fan of psychology and I think we have answers to certain questions we could talk about things which I think we know. When it comes to the question of what do people want and what satisfies them, what makes for a good life, if somebody tells you they know all the answers, run the other way. So I'm just trying to present some ideas.
00:06:40 Carissa
Oh no, I think we mentioned this earlier that I mentioned this earlier in when we spoke about how the, for all my life I really desire to be a good person and to have competing sort of motivations in what to do is really confusing.
00:06:57 Carissa
Or how to be a good person and I think the idea of motivational pluralism is actually really helpful in accepting that there might, that humans are complicated and that there could be different motivations.
00:07:09 Paul
It's a way of acknowledging the problem. You're really happy at home. You have a good book in front of you and a glass of wine. You're feeling really good, but there's a sick friend you should visit and you know it's going to be a long trip. You know it won't be much fun and now you have a sort of this with the, that's the right thing to do.
00:07:24 Paul
But now there’s a pleasurable thing to do and there's no simple answer, it's not like, oh, we always do the right thing. People are complicated, sometimes. Sometimes pleasure could override morality.
00:07:34 Paul
I think sometimes meaning could override morality, so that's what we wrestle with.
00:07:39 Carissa
I was wondering if you could talk about the one such or the idea or the simulation that you could choose to enter into a life that was just a simulation that was pure happiness and joy and what you would choose.
00:07:55 Paul
It's a wonderful example. Just to sketch it out just a bit it’s by the philosopher Robert Nozick.
00:07:59 Paul
And he says, yeah, imagine an experience machine so that you plug into the machine. It's like the matrix, only much better, you plug into the machine and for the rest of your natural life, you're just lying on a table until your body dies a natural death, but you will live a life, an imagined life of accomplishment and joy and pleasure and success far beyond your wildest dreams and you will never know for a second it wasn't real. Your memory of choosing the machine gets blotted out.
00:08:27 Paul
And so the question is, would you do it?
00:08:30 Paul
And I'll tell you, I've asked a lot of people this who teach these classes and answers vary, but I wouldn't do.
00:08:37 Paul
Because I am, I want to do things, I don't want to just get the feeling of doing things. I have people in this world I love. And I don't want to abandon them, even if I wouldn't know I abandoned them. I still don't want to abandon.
00:08:52 Paul
And to the extent you say wow, there's a bit of a problem plugging into the machine or to take a more realistic example, living the rest of your life on some incredibly high quality heroin that just gets you totally buzzed. You see, that's not a good life.
00:09:06 Paul
That means you're also a motivational pluralist. It means you also see other things that should be maximized.
00:09:12 Carissa
Is there sort of, I don't know if you, I can't remember, I'm a little bit foggy these days, is there a sort of a generational difference between people who would choose the simulation and people who would choose to stay in the present.
00:09:27 Paul
It's a good question. I don't know of any systematic data from it.
00:09:32 Paul
I know when I've asked the question to people recently, a lot of people say that they would go into the machine and maybe that's because young people today are more hedonistic. Maybe it's because of COVID, which makes us makes many of us want to escape our lives, but yeah, there are definitely individual differences, and I gotta say to the extent that you say oh don't plug me into the machine. I'll have a full life. If that's cause I'm living a pretty good life now.
00:09:58 Paul
If I was in a in a prison, or if I was suffering from terrible pain or whatever, I might say, hey, plug me in. So I'm not denying that pleasure has its lures.
00:10:09 Carissa
It's weird that when you, when you talked about that, it really sort of elicited a really emotional response. I think during the pandemic, especially when I've been really sad and hopeless and sort of felt like you know, the things are stacked against me, surviving for the people I've loved or the people I love, I think is a real sort of beautiful motivation or having that sort of desire to stick it out with them is like a very fundamental source of meaning for me that I would know that I was letting go of, which I think is kind of disappointing or pointless I guess.
00:10:46 Paul
It's a beautiful way to put it. One of my subtitles of the book is “the pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning,” “a search for meaning” is a shout out to Victor Frankel's book, Man’s Search for Meaning.
00:10:56 Paul
And he talks about his experience in the Holocaust and talks about what people will survive on the concentration camps and what people decide to kill themselves or just give up.
00:11:07 Paul
He says the solution is meaning. That the people who make it through don't give up often have some sort of broader purpose or broader connection. Often the family or the loved ones that keep them going.
00:11:19 Paul
And you know this isn't the Holocaust, but any difficult time I think, has a similar moral, which is the thing to hold on to often is what you're describing very well, which is things that matter. Not day-to-day pleasures, but things that matter, deeper things like the people you love.
00:11:36 Carissa
The, well Paul, thank you so much for talking about your book. We'll talk about it again just at the end, but I want to be respectful of your time and ask you what this so this is not really a podcast. This video cast is called Bad At Keeping Secrets and so I ask everybody if you would be willing to share a secret.
00:11:59 Paul
You know I had a secret I was going to tell you. It was very boring and I told it to you before. But then we had a conversation, so I'm going to tell you a different secret this and well you could edit it out if it's too, it's too terrible.
00:12:12 Carissa
I don't know how to do that, Paul, so you're just gonna have to take the risk.
00:12:16 Paul
OK, fair enough, thanks for thanks for that.
00:12:20 Paul
We talked and you argued that some of my claims are controversial and then you said my last book is called Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, where I really do say a lot of how we think about goodness, is mistaken, and you asked me, very nicely, asked me: Are you a contrarian?
00:12:38 Paul
And in some way in my work I am. I push back on things and so on. But the secret is that I'm almost embarrassed to say that, is that I'm actually very uncomfortable with conflict in everyday life.
00:12:52 Paul
I really like to, I like to talk about ideas, but I like, kind of people, I like in a friendly, open way. And acrimonious debates, people screaming at each other. People dunking on each other. I have no stomach for it and so.
00:13:09 Carissa
What do you think that says about your core identity, that these sort of disagreements can exist in this particular realm, but not in this sort of more serious sort of violent realm or not. Maybe violence is the wrong word, but anger or that they can exist in the theoretical realm, but not in the sort of actual realm.
00:13:31 Paul
So you know, my partner and I have, you know, amazing relationship we talk about things all the time we disagree about and I love it.
00:13:40 Paul
But when it turns personal with anybody, it's just unpleasant and I wanna pull away and I think for whatever reason I have a difficult time being hated and a difficult time hating people.
00:13:55 Paul
And you know, and I'm not, this is not. This isn't really a a humble brag, I think sometimes a willingness to jump into the fray and really mix it up with people who are the enemy. I think sometimes this is a good thing, and that's not my strength.
00:14:10 Paul
My strength is more, I don't know, what we're doing now talking. You may disagree with me. I could disagree with you, but we're, we don't hate each other and this is all and that's my strength but my, but my secret is that there's a lot of people I think who read my book say, “boy, that's a guy who really likes likes, you know, do big fights and everything” and not so much.
00:14:30 Carissa
So give me an example of what sort of. Was that highlighting a moral or is this, do you find this is a Canadian attribute? I'm sorry to stereotype. You probably get that all the time.
00:14:46 Carissa
As a non Canadian. Who yeah, do you find it? Is it because, I mean I do think that, that's, you're Canadian, correct?
00:14:55 Paul
I am definitely Canadian. I was born in Montreal.
00:14:58 Carissa
OK, I'm definitely not Canadian. To my knowledge. And I, I think for me I'm uncomfortable like to think about why I'm uncomfortable with conflict is I think I take it back to like culture and gender and expectations. But I'm also like, genuinely I, I'm just like not that interested in it?
00:15:20 Carissa
But I do like to argue. A lot, yeah.
00:15:25 Paul
Ah, I never thought of it... could be Canadians, of course, are notoriously polite.
00:15:30 Carissa
Sorry, I mean I mean sorry for making that stereotype, but sometimes there's a current I, find that there's a truth.
00:15:34 Paul
I thought when you said sorry, I thought when you said how you're making fun of the Canadians, you know they always go “sorry.” We're very apologetic, maybe. Maybe it. Maybe it is my Canadian blood coursing in me.
00:15:47 Paul
It's also I realized when I was a teenager when I was a graduate student, I would argue about everything. And I had a certain style. I went to grad school at MIT, which had a very belligerent style, and I and I had a style which people told me later was very belligerent and aggressive.
00:16:04 Paul
And I'd say, oh, thank you, good. That's what I want to be. I want to be, you know, and a lot of the people I admired, scholars were very, very argumentative and very, you know, take no prisoners you know, humiliate the other person, push your points, see how it, what happens.
00:16:18 Paul
And I've just grown tired of it. I've grown tired of it personally. I've grown a bit tired of it as a way of ascertaining the truth as good scientific practice. I like people who hold strong and interesting views. But the sort of treating, treating intellectual disagreement as if we're two armies meeting across the field and one must win and one must lose. I think just is not actually a good way of getting at the truth so maybe thinking about this the way I am now, my secret is, is a new secret. I hadn't always been this way.
00:16:52 Carissa
Oh, uh, people change.
00:16:55 Paul
Yeah, people change.
00:16:56 Carissa
I just wanted to add I don't think for me in my life it's been an effective strategy to actually win people over or to change their mind, not that or to have an effect. A thoughtful effect, a deep effect, an effect that is thoughtful and meaningful.
00:17:16 Paul
Yeah yeah, I agree, so we've come at it from different ways, but we're both in the same place I think.
00:17:21 Carissa
I'm really sorry about this beeping, my computer won't shut up, but anyway, I just want to talk one more time about this amazing book that doesn't give you any answers, but it's very thought provoking and explorative, on why we are the way we are. What at this point drives us to keep going and I think for me and I won't speak for other people, I think I need that. I need an argument to keep going and to understand why and the motivations behind that is really insightful.
00:17:57 Carissa
So thank you Paul so much. For your work. Thank you so much for your time today.
00:18:01 Paul
That means the world, this was terrific. Thanks for having me on. Let's do this again sometime. Talk about empathy.
00:18:05 Carissa
OK yeah anytime. Take care, bye.
00:18:09 Paul
OK, take care.
Can we live a "good" life without suffering?