Mike and Jodi explore the existential theme of death, discussing its implications on life, the human psyche, and societal perceptions. They delve into concepts like memento mori, temporal scarcity, and terror management theory, emphasizing the importance of accepting mortality to live more intentionally. The dialogue highlights the cultural influences on our understanding of death and the coping mechanisms we employ, ultimately encouraging listeners to embrace life with awareness and purpose. Be not afraid.

Key Topics

• It's not weird to be excited about discussing death.
• Memento mori serves as a reminder to live fully.
• Temporal scarcity increases the value we place on life.
• Death denial is a common human response.
• The quest for immortality often stems from fear of death.
• Coping with mortality can lead to a more intentional life.
• Aging brings its own set of challenges and reflections on life.
• Cultural perceptions of death shape our understanding and responses.
• Finding meaning in life can mitigate death anxiety.
• Living with awareness of death can enhance our appreciation for life.

Sound Bites

• "Remember we must die."
• "We need to live with intention."
• "The idea of death saves us."

Chapters
00:00
Introduction and Setting the Stage
02:00
Exploring the Existential Given of Death
03:58
Understanding Memento Mori and Its Relevance
05:58
The Value of Life and Temporal Scarcity
10:04
The Desire for Longevity and Its Implications
12:03
Death Denial and the Quest for Immortality
14:49
Existential Reflections on Life and Death
17:55
Acceptance of Death and Living Intentionally
23:21
Confronting Aging and Self-Perception
25:51
The Passage of Time and Its Implications
27:31
Loss and Acceptance in Aging
30:44
Grieving the Loss of Potential
32:01
The Unpredictability of Death
33:30
Anxiety and Fear Surrounding Death
35:02
Terror Management Theory Explained
38:04
Coping Mechanisms for Mortality Awareness
41:24
The Illusion of Specialness and Control
46:10
Workaholism as a Response to Mortality
50:09
Cultural Influences on Death Perception
51:56
The Evolution of Change and Mortality Awareness
54:09
Terror Management Theory in a Post-Pandemic World
59:58
Generational Perspectives on Death and Risk
01:05:02
Coping with Death: Cultural Reflections and Acceptance
01:09:01
Finding Meaning in Mortality: A Call to Live Fully

TRANSCRIPT
Mike Steger  00:03
You're listening to This Could Be It, the podcast which gives you conversation, research, and big ideas for living a life that truly matters, and for helping you start today. Because, well, you know, this could be it.

Jodi Wellman  00:16
So we're here today to talk about existential anxiety, a real attention grabber is that what I'm thinking?

Mike Steger  00:23
Yeah, people have this all the time now. Did you know that?

Jodi Wellman  00:26
What anxiety?

Mike Steger  00:27
Existential anxiety.

Jodi Wellman  00:28
Oh, existential anxiety. Okay, yeah. I mean, anxiety is popular. I noticed that there are more anxiety dogs out there and pets.

Mike Steger  00:35
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've only seen anxiety dogs, but I, I, I assume there's other kinds out there, but yeah, it's a it's a pet filled world right now,

Jodi Wellman  00:46
and they have roles to play in helping us mitigate. But before we go any further, because no one can stand to listen based on our last conversation, because everybody listened to that one, can we ask you another follow up question about your nether regions.

Mike Steger  01:02
You have to be more specific. I joke. Yeah. So, so there's a couple things that are I think quite interesting about my colon. Number one, it tells you a lot. Having a colon at all tells you a lot about the medical system in the U.S. Right. So, the first time I went in, and after talking with the colon specialist, the

Jodi Wellman  01:27
urologist,

Mike Steger  01:28
yeah, that person, I thought I had a great one, and wouldn't see that person for a decade. And then, in a random conversation, as we well know, I talked to my physician about something else, and he's like, "Well, we can discuss this further after you get your colonoscopy results in October, and that was only three years after the initial one. He's like, "Oh yeah, I was like, "Well, I thought I had a decade. I thought I was looking pretty good downtown. And he said, "No, no, we didn't say that, but it was implied because I was labeled high risk because of polyp and polyp-like activity. So I did. I went back, and the news was, I don't know, I don't know who to trust anymore. But they said there are some things there. They're not great. They're not terrible. So I was prepared for another three years. But then he said, "You're actually on the five-year plan. The last time I talked to them, so you don't find anything out unless you specifically ask, because no one updated me. So that's one thing you learn. The other thing you learn is, and I want to help people apply research, right? That's a big thing in my life, and I've been lecturing about the peak end effect. Do you know this peak end effect? Yeah, it's really good.

Jodi Wellman  02:37
Tell the world.

Mike Steger  02:38
Yeah, especially since there's a built-in pun, right? Because the peak end effect was based on colonoscopies,

Jodi Wellman  02:44
the

Mike Steger  02:45
end, and what your basically what your end feels like is a big deal in these

Jodi Wellman  02:53
procedure, not the end of the no, the end of your body,

Mike Steger  02:57
how the end of your body feels, the end of the digestive tract, as well as the end of the procedure, right? So I think I think most people know this, but this was a really interesting one. So in the olden times, aka the 1990s, they would just like drive the the colonoscopy apparatus as a giant hose with a camera, some grabby arms, sharp little grabby arms, and right. So one of the things that's exciting about having a colonoscopy that people do not like very much is it inflates your entire intestines, right? They pump in air because that smooths out all the wrinkles, right? Otherwise, you'd be like you'd never see anything. So they have to like they blow you up just like you you hit the night market too many times while traveling, right? So it feels apparently like that. People don't love it, and then they're driving the tube around, and your your your gut, your intestines kind of have like corners, and people don't like the feeling of like it's like you have to push the hose, camera, light, grab a thing around the corners, and people don't like that sensation either. So it's not a it's not a gruel horrible experience I suppose because these are people doing it without anesthesia after all, but it's not pleasant either because people don't rush to get to their doctors and request one. So so the study was it takes about 15 minutes to do a colonoscopy. You drive your little hose around you take pictures of the nice smooth inflated bowel, and then normally they just like just pull this thing out as soon as possible because people like it, do it. The gastroenterologist makes that sound. The apparatus does not itself. You have to you have to click that on a menu beforehand. I'd like them to make the sound, and I would recommend it. So, but it does come out apparently. That's how they do that. But then, in one condition, they got almost out, and they just left the camera in the end. If this, if you know, this isn't visual enough for people.

Jodi Wellman  04:53
We get

Mike Steger  04:55
you just go online for one minute. So. Have 15 minutes of driving around, and then slurp it out in the regular condition, and then the end extra condition you just leave it stationary for one minute before pulling it out. So it's either 15 minute long colonoscopy or 60 minute long colonoscopy, and what they found that it suggested the end effect, so how events end shapes how we remember them, is that the people who are actually in the longer colonoscopy version were more likely to recommend a colonoscopy and follow doctors' orders and prescriptions for getting another one, even though it was it's not fun still to have a motionless camera in your butt, but it is less painful than driving it around, right? So they remembered the procedure is less painful at the end than on average it had been. So that demonstrated the end effect. Well, I was thinking this when I was sent back to get my second colonoscopy, and I was like, "Well, hang on. They didn't even ask me if I wanted anesthesia last time, and I don't. I'm not a big fan of anesthesia. Like, I don't like my mind disappearing and then waking up crying or biting my own mouth or whatever I do when I wake up from. I don't wake up well. You're getting a picture, so I was like, "Is anesthesia required for this? And it was a older nurse, and she said, "It seems to be now, but I remember no one used to get anesthesia. Like you just couldn't, you couldn't even get it for a colonoscopy back in the day. I was like, "I told, I went through the whole story of how I'd lecture about this in my classes. I'm like, "I think since everyone used to be fine with it, I'm doing the whole going in with eyes wide open, and so I did, and I got to see my own innards. And there's some awkward moments. It's not. It's not without social awkwardness, but as a pain procedure, it's not bad. Like the fear of the fear and the reputation of these things is so much worse than the actual experience. So I apply. That's the applied research for the day. Just get your colonoscopy without anesthesia. You can drive yourself home. Did you know that?

Jodi Wellman  07:08
If you haven't been like bonus,

Mike Steger  07:10
yeah. If you haven't had your brain scrambled by anesthesia, you can drive yourself home. So yeah, yeah. For productivity experts out there, that is that's the way you got to do it, you're in faster, you're out faster.

Jodi Wellman  07:23
Love this. Okay, and so what we're getting at in terms of your results is that you are going to live to see another day and another colonoscopy.

Mike Steger  07:31
I'm going to live to see another colonoscopy. I can't be too confident because I got the five-year plan, not the 10-year plan. But I can feel a little smug because I got the five-year plan, not the three-year plan. That's all I want. That's

Jodi Wellman  07:42
fine. I love this, and I also love it because applying your psychology, we now know that we need to make the end of our podcast good, and the whole entire beginning and middle can be pure. We have to have a

Mike Steger  07:53
really, we have to have a highlight, and probably soon before the people who thought they're coming for a psychology podcast have have gotten nonstop colon,

Jodi Wellman  08:03
yeah, nonstop colon. Hey, all right. Well, maybe that is going to be on the list of things we're here to talk about today, which is a list of the four existential givens. Yeah, which to what now everyone's like, what are you talking? Yeah, because if you hear existential given, you're knowledgeable, so you know these things. I think, but what would you think unprompted, or an average man on the street, what would they think of major concern of life would be

Mike Steger  08:34
paying for stuff? Paying for stuff is a concern. This is all we hear about in politics since I can remember, right? We got to get money in people's pockets so they can buy things they think they're supposed to buy. So that's got to be one, right? Like the ability to buy stuff-that's got to be an existential given. Am I am I on the right track so far?

Jodi Wellman  08:53
I mean, I don't. This is all hypothetical. You can't go wrong.

Mike Steger  08:56
Oh, nice. Okay, then heated seats in cold climates, that's an existential given.

Jodi Wellman  09:02
This is going really well. This is yes, exactly what I want to think. Yeah,

Mike Steger  09:07
I think people don't like the fact. I'm just guessing that that. Now it's hard to really truly guess, but I would guess they're thinking about the stuff that you can't avoid, the inevitable things, right?

Jodi Wellman  09:24
Inevitable. Yep.

Mike Steger  09:25
Yeah, and they think about death and taxes. At least that's what we've been told. So taxes would be one.

Jodi Wellman  09:31
Yeah.

Mike Steger  09:32
Do you think, and maybe death? Is are any of those four on the right track? He says ingenuously.

Jodi Wellman  09:37
Yeah, exactly. I wonder if you don't know about this already. Yes, death is going to be there. That one's a winner, and taxes aren't. But yeah, in this conversation of how at least one esteemed existential psychologist, Irv Yalom, I like to say Yalom, but he's never corrected me. Do you say Yalom?

Mike Steger  09:59
I've actually never. Met him, so I I say Yalom because that's much more Tolkienish. He's it sounds like Gollum then, and that's pretty beyond.

Jodi Wellman  10:07
Yeah, okay, I'll say it too. You know how I don't like to pronounce things right.

Mike Steger  10:11
He's never corrected you because you said it to his face, and he's been yes. Well, I'd say that facetiously.

Jodi Wellman  10:17
We did have an email exchange once, and he failed to correct my pronunciation by email. That happened. Okay. Well,

Mike Steger  10:24
if I ever need a favor from Irv, I'll. I know who to go through. You

Jodi Wellman  10:29
come through me. Yeah. Well, he has identified these four ultimate concerns, the inevitabilities, as you say, the things in life that many believe are at the root of all anxiety, and so as much as this sounds super unfun, isn't it true that if we can unpack some of the anxieties, then we are able to better attack them? Would you say?

Mike Steger  10:54
Yeah, like this is this is actually going to be like a random colonoscopy story, something that's usable, right? This is this is gonna get us to something that's useful because Yalem was a psychotherapist. Yalem wasn't some ne'er do well researcher like me

Jodi Wellman  11:09
who

Mike Steger  11:10
just babble about ideas all the time. For a long time, Yalem worked with people in clinical distress, and these givens and managing those givens, coming to terms with them, understanding them better made a difference in people's lives. So that's that's the box we're unopening right now, right? Like we're gonna the point of talking about all this kooky existential stuff is because coming to terms with that can make your life better.

Jodi Wellman  11:37
Amen. And it's funny to think too that there may be 123, or four out of the four that particularly twingle. You know that feeling of oh, this sounds like this is something that's always on my mind, or maybe you don't know it's on your mind, but it's in the recesses, and you realize, wait, I want to learn more. That's the cool thing too is that when it's like this dawning awakening, then you can identify the ways in which it causes you to feel anxiety, or the way it motivates you to do things, or to not do things. Like to do nothing is that's a choice. So it's I mean basically what we're saying is this is going to be the best conversation that's going to help everybody.

Mike Steger  12:18
That's all. That's all we're promising. But yeah, it is interesting, right? Because, well, how how would you characterize just the overall concept of existential givens?

Jodi Wellman  12:31
The things that we may or may not know that keep us up at night, that root us in that sense of unmooredness, that are this epicenter of why am I so full of angst or dread? But we can't always name it. I think that's the thing. Is most of these things we can't name. That's why I love having a conversation with you like this. Is because we're able to go, ha ha, pin the tail on that donkey. Like we're able to maybe label a little bit of it because these are-I don't think that they're intuitive. We're building suspense as to what they are. But so before we tell them, what is your take on these existential givens?

Mike Steger  13:11
Well, I like how I like how you put it a lot, you know. And I got I got the sense of suspense, like it's stuck in the shadows. That is, yeah, a little makes you a little uneasy at times, and sometimes is maybe a little bit too scary, right? So that's that's one way to think about it, right? They are things that are in shadows are still things, you know, and sometimes them being in the shadows makes them scary, and sometimes bringing them out of the shadows makes them even scarier, right? So that's one of the that's one of the fun things about this this area. So for me, these would be truths about the human condition, right? So stuff that is it's not up to you to decide if this is going to be part of your playthrough of life. This is just going to happen, or it is the way it is, right? So it's the stuff that is the way it is that tends to put us in a state of tension, a desire to not have to play the game with those rules, whatever those rules are. And so we mentioned one death, right? Death happens. We don't want that to be so, and that puts us in a tough spot. And we we tend to do a lot of weird things about that. And sometimes it just gets us to spiral. Sometimes it gets us to distract ourselves. Sometimes it gets us to do. I just feel shitty about things. But but that's that's because these are things that are true about existing that we would that on the face of it, we prefer are not true.

Jodi Wellman  14:45
Yeah, well said. I love that. So I like how you've already dangled in the death thing that we referred to. Yeah, I think we should name the other three, and then was

Mike Steger  14:55
it taxes and whatever else I said that I already can't remember? Making money and buying stuff,

Jodi Wellman  15:01
money and something about hair. I recall, and maybe if our conversation goes well as this little like mile wide inch deep, we'll come back and go deep on the four of them because there is so much that we can extract, and again, in a very productive way, cause the right amount of existential crisis in order to elicit change in our lives.

Mike Steger  15:24
You know, the more I think about, the more it is basically like a colonoscopy, right? You want just the right amount of tension. You got to do it. You got to do it. You got to know what's in there, and we have to. We have to know what's in these existential givens, and so we're going to inflate them and drive a camera around them in some later episodes, but let's yeah, let's give the tour. So death, we've agreed is one. We've agreed. All the other gibberish I've said is not one of them. Okay. So what's after death? Like, death's a big deal. Are the other ones kind of big deals too?

Jodi Wellman  15:55
Yes. So high level freedom, counterintuitive as that one might sound, do you not agree that freedom sounds good?

Mike Steger  16:04
We are currently residing in the land of freedom.

Jodi Wellman  16:08
That's what they say.

Mike Steger  16:09
That's what they say.

Jodi Wellman  16:10
Yeah, we love

Mike Steger  16:11
it. Yeah, above everything,

Jodi Wellman  16:13
all but more. It's

Mike Steger  16:14
a problem somehow. It's as bad as death. Okay, that's going to be that's going to be intriguing to try to figure out why freedom is as bad as death.

Jodi Wellman  16:22
Yes. So death is a given. Sucks to be us. It's going to happen. Freedom somehow, strangely, we don't sit well with. Yeah. Third one. It's

Mike Steger  16:30
also inevitable. I like that. Like we're. It's inevitable that we're free.

Speaker 1  16:35
Yeah.

Jodi Wellman  16:36
Okay. Well, it even when you think you're not like oh, you know Viktor Frankl in the Holocaust camps, but there's still a certain degree of freedom that is unsettling. Ah,

Mike Steger  16:46
yeah. Okay, okay, that's gonna be a scary one.

Jodi Wellman  16:48
Okay, third one. I'm gonna take this one because I want you to take the fourth one. I feel like you own the fourth

Mike Steger  16:52
one. Okay, I I think I'm being set up here. Yeah.

Jodi Wellman  16:55
Well, yeah, it sort of has your name written all over it. So the third one is isolation. We

Mike Steger  16:59
don't like that. We

Jodi Wellman  17:01
tend not to. I know it's sort of head scratching right now because some people would say, "Yeah, but I have so many friends. I'm alone. But aren't you okay? All right.

Mike Steger  17:13
I've got my anxiety dog, so now I'm never alone.

Jodi Wellman  17:16
Yeah, that'll. Okay, grab it. And then number four, last but not least, take it home, Mister Meaning,

Mike Steger  17:25
meaninglessness. Yeah, and unpacking that one will be interesting too. But

Jodi Wellman  17:31
I know, yeah, and I like how that one is sort of like you'd think death is the end of it all, right? Like that's the curtains drawn. That's it, the end of the show, guys. No, I like how meaninglessness is the culmination of it all. I'm not going to take words out of your mouth because it's no. But this

Mike Steger  17:47
is why we listen to existential therapists. They really like meaning, you know. So this is very exciting. Now, meaninglessness feels like it's going to be Deeply personal, but what if it's not? What if that is the crux of things? Okay, so is that suspenseful enough? Like, have we created like a lot of tension here? I think

Jodi Wellman  18:11
we have, and also because I don't even understand what you just said about meaning. So I want to know what's going to that deeply. What this is what they recommend.

Mike Steger  18:18
Yeah, this is what they recommend. Say things no one can understand. Yeah. Okay, but I think. Do you think that they're ranked in order from least scary to most scary, or easiest to solve versus?

Jodi Wellman  18:30
No, I think most people would put death as the worst. I've seen in a lot of lists, freedom has started as the kickoff because that's this notion that the very tectonic plate shifting awareness that oh my god my life is actually up to me that that sort of sets off this cascading well I guess to go back to tectonic plates I guess it starts an earthquake so that one tends to be one I think that logically starts, and I think most people they don't even know that they're afraid, or that there's angst coming from isolation and freedom. Would you not agree that they're confusing initially?

Mike Steger  19:11
I think that all of them have their little unique traps for everybody, including you and me. I'm guessing. So

Jodi Wellman  19:20
we're impervious to all this. I got to

Mike Steger  19:22
learn that trick. I got to learn that trick. Yeah. Well, let's let's start with an easy one.

Jodi Wellman  19:29
Let's do it.

Mike Steger  19:30
I think death is easy. He's my favorite.

Mike Steger  19:33
And I think we. I think it makes sense to talk briefly about meaningfulness before we talk about freedom.

Jodi Wellman  19:38
Okay. So you want to go death, meaningfulness, freedom,

Mike Steger  19:42
and then isolation. No

Jodi Wellman  19:43
isolation, and then we'll do deep dives. And then we'll

Mike Steger  19:46
add things like hair, okay, and buying stuff. No, we'll see what if there's other things to add. So you are you are like a spokesperson for the for death. Hey, you're laughing as though I was. To

Jodi Wellman  20:00
that, while I am deeply, I'm a spokesperson

Mike Steger  20:02
for isolation, so it's much cooler to be.

Jodi Wellman  20:05
No, you're a spokesperson for something cool. Everybody likes meaning. Not everybody likes the Grim Reaper, but I'm fine with that because gifts are bestowed. Well, I love this notion that we are as humans wired somehow. Soldering happened while we were being created. Little things happened in our brain. We were somehow created with this desire to be alive, a continued existence. In addition to you know maybe doing some cool things while we're here. But regardless, just this idea of existence and a will to live, and just can I please just continue to be here? And yet, then the juxtaposition between that and oh no, sorry, honey bunny, your time is limited. And even though we logically know it, that pending doom, as much as we stuff it down, because Cheetos do a good job, Rosé does a good job. We found our coping mechanisms to kick your poison.

Mike Steger  21:02
Yeah,

Jodi Wellman  21:03
we just try not to think about it because denial is part of our experience. Then we don't do ourselves the favor of benefiting from the awareness that we have the limited time only situation. But yeah, that the root is deep, and that desire to live and the awareness that we can't-it's just this combustion chamber, right? Of well, therefore, like light the match because I now know there's trouble if I can't continue to be here, and I don't know when, and my existence may or may not be obliterated. So, can I ask you? Because you said something in our last conversation, that episode one, that was about discomfort with just not being here. Does that resonate with you?

Mike Steger  21:44
Yeah. So I think it's interesting. We we can we will. I already know we will come back to death quite a lot, right? Because there's a huge literature. Ernest Becker's denial of death. There's research, experimental existential psychology rooted in terror management theory, which is concerned with mortality salience and all these very very cool sounding terms that we'll get into later on, and I think that thing about that makes to just for people to know now about the death as a given is that we resist it? We really don't like that, and it can be separated out. The sense that I don't want to physically die-that process sounds no fun, right? Like whatever leads up to me dying is probably not going to be a peak moment of my life. Not anything I'm going to look back on, or I can't even look back on very fondly, right? Like it could be mangling by rabid raccoons. That doesn't sound fun. Could be getting sick for a long time and slowly losing my capacity to do things that I love to do before I finally disappear, and that doesn't sound fun either. But there is a general sense that part of what we don't like about death is that we aren't anymore, right? Like everything feels so big to

Jodi Wellman  23:08
us. Us,

Mike Steger  23:08
our a little, however many pounds we weigh, worth of body is fragile. Doesn't always know what it's doing. Maybe never truly knows what it's doing. Maybe that's part of the freedom conversation, but it is everything we experience, and it's it's it just feels so big sometimes. It feels so pointless other times, but sometimes it feels so big, like you can't imagine. Like how do things go on after this is gone? And I I think that that's part of it, we don't like that idea. That even even if things are pretty much a bummer, at least we're in the play. At least we're experiencing something. Our little gears are still whirring around.

Jodi Wellman  23:55
Oh gosh, your words make me see the starkness of it, which I find helpful.

Mike Steger  24:04
Oh, okay,

Jodi Wellman  24:04
yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Steger  24:06
Okay, tell us. How do you find that helpful? The starkness. Well,

Jodi Wellman  24:09
maybe I've learned to reframe the distressing nature of it as productive. That maybe I'm so used to the stuff coming out of my mouth, and and I like hearing it as there's a gravity to it, and I think that that's kind of crucial to learn to take it, take our time serious and just not for granted, and also to notice the inklings to want to deny. And Yoland also has this idea about personal specialness, this tendency we have to somehow think we're above it all, like not because we're so superior and I'm better than you, but deep down we have these little fantasies that aging happens to other people. I'm somehow going to be impervious to it, or I won't get, you know, I won't shuffle in a in a walker. I'm going to be agile till I'm old, and then therefore I'm also somehow not going to be like one of you and die. It's very deep subconscious. So anyway, hearing hearing the gravity of it is crucial to know when we start to try and dance around it, and I think I do that too. So I'd like to think. Oh, oh no! Let's put a bookmark so that when we talk more about death, maybe next time.

Mike Steger  25:19
Yeah, you already showed us something that's important about all of these givens.

Jodi Wellman  25:24
Yeah, that

Mike Steger  25:25
we try to do something with them. Once we think about them, we try to do something with that knowledge.

Jodi Wellman  25:30
Yeah, not

Mike Steger  25:31
just get even more motivated to never think about it again and hope it never happens.

Jodi Wellman  25:36
Exactly right. I'm going to double down on denial. Thanks, guys. No, yeah, like let's crack this open and have that conversation, and let's talk more when we dive into this one about that symbolic immortality, like the ways in which we don't even know we're doing it. We're so crafty, you know. Every time we write a book or we do a thing or we we create a kid, we procreate you, procreators you, or we do something that maybe helps us feel like we're going to endure beyond the boundaries of this festering, rotting corpse to be. Yeah, we're we're up to we're up to something there, denying death. So I'd like to talk more about that one soon.

Mike Steger  26:13
I think that's a great one. That one that one has long historical roots too. Maybe all the way back to sublimation and some of the Freudian stuff. Freud stuff is always wacky when it seems even remotely plausible, so that's always fun too. But yeah, okay. So death is going to be like we know.

Jodi Wellman  26:32
Yeah.

Mike Steger  26:33
Well, and we'll share all of our ways, but about death for later episodes. So just know that it's going to happen. If no one told you, we're sorry you heard it from us. That's the worst kind of spoiler alert.

Jodi Wellman  26:44
Dying.

Mike Steger  26:44
Yeah,

Jodi Wellman  26:45
it's for you.

Mike Steger  26:46
I think it's for you. We all go to that seminar on being more.

Jodi Wellman  26:51
And I think it's appropriate just to do a quick, just for all we know, this could be it. All right. So death killed that one.

Mike Steger  26:58
We're off. We killed it. Yep. Nice.

Jodi Wellman  27:01
And up next.

Mike Steger  27:02
Yeah. So here's the thing: we can't really count on very much. This is one of the tautological elements, self-recursive elements of this list. In that, these is a list of things that you don't like, but you can count on. And here is one an element that says there's actually nothing really to count on. Kind of curious, supremely

Jodi Wellman  27:22
uplifting.

Mike Steger  27:23
Yeah, yeah. So okay. So I like to I like to talk about a little bit like this on the positive side, which I more often study. We can try to think about the meaning of life, right? Life, the universe, and everything-the brilliant Douglas Adams novel title. Where, where did, where did I come from? Why, what was I before I was born? What will I be after I die? Who started all this? Where did we? That you know, like, where do we end up? Why do good things happen to bad people? Why the bad things accept the good people? All the big questions: Is there God? Are there many gods? Are there the same gods? Is God watching me? Is God wanting me to move on because I'm giving too many examples? Right? Like we have all these, we have big questions. That's the meaning of life, and that is the meaning, the objective meaning that philosophers like to have us try to figure out, or theologians try to argue that must exist, or else no personal meaning can exist. But from a psychological standpoint, when we talk about meaning being too much to handle, we're talking about the big stuff about the life, the universe, and everything. So if we change it from the meaning of life to my meaning in my life, then it gets smaller. But what Yalm is saying is that we have to figure out some solution to the small picture stuff, the meaning in our lives, because there isn't anything that we can point to with 100% certainty that gives meaning to life as a whole-it's a leap of faith,

Jodi Wellman  29:04
right? Is that

Mike Steger  29:05
how you read? Is that how you read the the Yalam meaninglessness sort of vibe?

Jodi Wellman  29:11
Yeah, and as it can culminate the other three, if ultimately we're destined to poof be gone. There is really no structure in life, which we'll get to in a second, around freedom, and we're destined to, we're born alone, and we're going to die alone. It doesn't it then rankle this idea of if we have to construct our own meanings, and yet there is no meaning, then how can I make something, and is that even worthy of this life I'm living? And then we're off to the races, right? With this existential panic attack, which again we want in the right dose because it can be really eye opening. Keep trying to sell us on crises and panic.

Mike Steger  29:53
Yeah, let's go into existential crisis. It's good for you. Well, the alternative, you know, there's antidotes to all these sorts of things, like. Being aware of them is useful, but figuring out a path through them and to live with them is even more useful, right? So with death, it's something that looks something like acceptance. Accept that we die, and if you can go even beyond that, like in your work, to use the fact that there is a finish line to this as motivation to make the race count, right? Like that's really cool. So for meaninglessness, I think the the tricky part of it is that we can't count on something necessarily that exists as a truth in a giant book somewhere that we can go fly spaceship to and read and know for sure. That's the bad part. The upside is that almost everyone on the planet thinks their life is a little meaningful. So obviously, we don't need the truth written in giant capital letters in granite on an asteroid somewhere. I don't know if they have granite on asteroids these days, but you know, like we don't, we can figure out ways to make to sort of in in a weird way create an entire world around nothing, right? Like we don't know what's at the core of existence, but we can create incredibly meaningful, powerful, thrilling, precious lives regardless. So that's pretty cool. We don't know exactly. I'm supposed to know how we do that because that's what I've been studying for 20 years. But we don't know exactly how we do it. But we do know that even, like, it does help to have faith in big things, right? But even if you don't, somehow we create this magical trick of creating personal meaning, which is amazing, but it does mean that it's easy to doubt sometimes because we can't point to the big book of granite and see I'm right. I think the dark side of the existential given of meaninglessness is that we can't know for sure we're right.

Jodi Wellman  32:04
We like to know that usually, right? I'm so comforted by what you're saying because what I am hearing, and I like how so far you've summarized the cool thing about the first existential given, death, which is the ultimate bummer. We actually have ways to make this, you know, interesting and useful. Okay, we'll get to that. You're talking about how there are ways to make meaning in this mysterious world and in a magical way, and then we will doubt it, which to me is part of the interesting part of the ride that we're all on. Which is that, yeah, like we can make it, and that's great. And also, we will have the lows where we doubt and we're unsure, or we're on a wrong path, or we're like, whoa, that didn't doesn't bring me meaning anymore the way it used to. What does that mean? Ah, meaning circular reference, etc. And then we can do it again. You know that there's always a way. So I like how you're going to help teach us more about how to make that happen.

Mike Steger  32:54
That's right. I think it's like it's like any other thing that we learn. It's better to know how to get the right answer than to know that you have the right answer. Meaning's the same way.

Jodi Wellman  33:05
Well said.

Mike Steger  33:06
Thank you. All right. Very very nice to me. I think when when you get reminded of debt, you get extremely nice to me. So I'm going to keep doing that, and then you get to talk

Jodi Wellman  33:17
freedom. We need to cue George Michael now. Freedom. I used to hear this one, and I would think of it literally, which is still also problematic. That freedom can be, while seemingly great and good and all the things, you know, constitutionally absolutor. I used to think of it basically like you know the old jam study in psychology, where when purchasers are offered the choice of you know 16 different kinds of jam. Nobody can make a decision because ah, what if I make the wrong decision and then no one buys jam? Whereas if you just have less choice, people buy more jam. And I want a jam-filled life, don't you? You know,

Mike Steger  33:53
yes, that is

Jodi Wellman  33:54
a basic, simplistic, yet also remotely interesting and tasty example. I like how Yalum takes this and goes, oh, but there's there's there's a deeper issue here, and in the notion that we're free, that we can make choices in our lives, and then when we start to chip away at that, and we realize, wait a minute, this world that I'm making choices in isn't actually based on something that's really solid. It goes back to what you said a second ago that there is no chiseled in the granite or like a book about how to. The realization that everything's kind of fabricated, and that there is no formal structure of even the world, and even if there is law that we might abide by, it's still your choice to break it. And then everything though seems precarious, and then all of a sudden, the cool thing about this is it's linked inextricably to responsibility. So we could say I have freedom to do whatever I want, whether it's right or wrong, or moral or immoral, or whatever it is. But then I have to be responsible for its outcomes in a. World where all of this is sort of like a scaffolding of what, anyways, and it's all rooted in something that is there is no formality. So I know a lot of psychologists use the example of how kids actually they want to run free, but really what they really do need is structure and boundaries, you know, and limits. As adults, we actually need and want that too often, even though we don't think we do, so I'm just fascinated by the topic, and I'm also frustrated by it. And I would like to know what you think about

Mike Steger  35:30
it. Yeah, well, there's so many, so many cool directions to take this. I'm gonna, of course, go back to the land of scholars disguising themselves as drummers, and cite the Canadian Prague rock band Rush, who has a has a song called "Free Will, right? And it highlights something that people really don't like. There's a lyric in there: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice, right? And what calls this to mind for me is the famous trolley thought experiment. This is this is bad of me, but I think all cool thought experiments somehow came from Robert Nozick, right? Like the which makes me sure that it's wrong, but I don't know what to do about that. So Robert Nozick's famous trolley experiment was the one where, like, you know you've got you're the switch conductor trolley is out of out of control on a trolley track and there's a there's a fork in the track right now it's going towards I don't know pick your favorite thing a baby in a carriage stranded on the track it's just there and if you do nothing it's gonna wipe out the baby this trolley this crazy blazing away trolley on the other track. Then is is a is like for adults. I don't know what they're doing there, but they're they're there. So if you throw the switch, you steer the trolley into the adults. If you don't do anything, you could imagine that fate takes its its own course. The fate of trolleys is to run over babies and buggies, so that's what's going to do. And what we find is people typically do not like being in the circumstance of deciding whether to let a baby get run over or four random adults, but they seem seem to feel better about not doing anything at all. That is, but but as the late Neil Peart from Rush points out in his lyrics, if you choose not to decide, you still made a choice. In this case, to run over a baby in a in a pram. So that's another thing about life. Like, yeah, you can you can go with the flow, you can buck the trend. You've chosen that too, right? Like it's all these choices. There's, I mean, there's so many fun pop culture ideas in this, right? There's also the book *Gambero: Lightness of Being* by Milan Kundera, right? Where we don't always know or sliding doors, right? The the movie we don't know how our choices would have turned out. We never get that chance. So each choice seems light and unimportant, but it creates the life we live, and we can't go back and do a new one. So there's an incredible heaviness about our life, but also the fact that we only do everything one time means that everything is also simultaneously very vaporism and light. So, and somehow we have to decide. We have to make these choices, and we don't exactly always know how it'll turn out. We don't exactly know if we want to make the choice between the baby and the four adults, and we don't know. We don't know who we can trust, so that does pile up, right? Like it really does pile up. I think the good flip side of this is that, to some degree, when you manage to make a good choice in your life, I think you can. I think you can feel good about it, right? Because otherwise, potential choices were overwhelmed with potential consequences. And if we can point to something we made a tough decision about, we sorted through all the crazy noise and did something. That's actually pretty cool.

Jodi Wellman  39:00
Yeah, I love it, and then you build a muscle of confidence of knowing you can do it again. Yeah, I like the branch of this too, where there's the choices we make or don't make to become our potential, and like on the whole humanistic side of psychology, that well, I believe I could be this version of myself. Obviously, it's always a better version. You know, it's always new and improved, not like yeah, the downgrade. I'm going to be amazing at this, and I'm going to apply myself, and I'm going to launch this thing, and it's going to. And then the existential guilt that comes from the I have not done that, and I think that really is a huge part of our experience of being alive, right? And that like Coda's kind of deadness. Yeah.

Mike Steger  39:49
Wow. So I'm hearing from you. You think your your buddy the Grim Reaper has a symbolic role in this as well, in freedom?

Jodi Wellman  39:59
Dangling his. Into this one, yeah, because that version of you is dead. Yeah, you

Mike Steger  40:07
sacrifice that. That's the baby in the carriage. Okay, this getting too dark. This getting too dark. Freedom. Okay, does that make people feel better?

Jodi Wellman  40:16
You, George Michael, and yeah. All right, so there's freedom.

Mike Steger  40:19
Like just like freedom had the small version, the jam version, and the big version. Some some version of you is now dead. You murdered it by negligence, which is your word. Your words, direct quote. I'm sure. Yeah. Now we have isolation, and this is really interesting. I think this is an interesting one. It's a very bleak take on some things, but ultimately, it's kind of this. I have a hard time making liberating, but I'm going to say it is because then you'll save me later, right? So, what do we know about other people? On the small level, we know that they're bad at driving, right? And they don't always vote the way we want them to in elections. Everyone agrees with both those statements. I think pretty much isolation as the loneliness epidemic. And have you heard that we're in the middle of a loneliness epidemic?

Jodi Wellman  41:13
Rumor has it.

Mike Steger  41:14
Yeah. Well, I like to do. I like to be annoying. So I looked up when those headlines started appearing, and it was pretty much right at the year 2000. Right, like the first loneliness epidemic we ran was in 2000, and it hasn't let up. So this long epidemic, but yeah. So that tells you that people have struggled with the concept of loneliness and isolation for a long time, like feeling apart from other people, cut from the tribe, inadequate, voted off the island, whatever it might be, mistrusted people will cross the street when they see you coming, right? Like those feelings of being out of are painful for humans. So that's a little like there's you know Baumeister and Leary have this famous paper in 1995, the need to belong, and like it organizes everything. Baumeister then and Leary, I think both then turn around and even define self-esteem as a sociometer, right? The way that we, the way that we feel about ourselves is actually not tracking how cool we are; it's tracking how cool other people think we are and whether they want us in their gang anymore, right? So we're meant to be a social creature, and isolation obviously is the opposite of that, right? So you might imagine just as you started off with Jodi saying that inside of us is something that strives to stay alive and be alive. Something in us strives to be a part and stay a part of something. So that's but that that's the small, easy isolation.

Jodi Wellman  42:35
That's just light and fluffy. That's

Mike Steger  42:37
the light and fluffy one. If you're stuck there, all you need to do is go to a meetup, you know, and pretend you represent what they're talking about. Yeah, easy, so easy. I just saw right there with Meetup the app all social isolation and loneliness epidemic. The bigger one is is kind of sad. I don't know that one seems sad too, but the bigger one is, no one can ever really know us, right? We have these extremely diffuse, complex, overlapping, inconsistent, idiosyncratic experiences that we can't actually ever explain well enough to another person that they know exactly what we experienced or exactly who we are.

Jodi Wellman  43:30
Yeah,

Mike Steger  43:30
other psychologists might say we don't even know who we are, right? Like we're making it up as we go along, and then we're trying to teach the tune to someone else, and there's always going to be some problems. There's always going to be some misalignments, and if no one can ever know who we are, we can't really have true intimacy. We can't have that true connection. There's always going to be error and misalignment. The gears don't fully match, right? And we can't know another person believe that. So the scary version of this is we're always strangers to each other, and I turn it over to you for the the fun version. Oh, I'm just going to pile onto the depression for a

Jodi Wellman  44:13
second. Perfect. Yeah, just like let's just take this home. You made me think about that, like the unbridgeable gap, right? I think that we can't really fully be as connected as we deep down yearn to be, and then that hilarity of the cosmic indifference of the universe-that it's not for us to help us collude, to help us find our whether it's true connection, soulmate, friendships that are this, it's that you're right. We we are born alone, die alone. The fundamental concern of isolation. I want to talk more with you when its day comes for the episode about does it matter more to some people than others? You know, introverts. Versus extroverts, or is it fundamental to just our human condition whether we yearn for social needs or not? But this one does seem super sad, and I also have to say that the the grim reaper has his little bony hands around the neck of this one too, right? Because it is the idea about yeah, you know when I take you, there will be no matter how loved you feel or how much love you give, you're still alone on this pathway I'm going to take you down, and that is existentially riveting, right? Yeah,

Mike Steger  45:40
I think we're we're kind of familiar with the idea that everyone faces death alone. We don't necessarily think about the idea that everyone faces life alone.

Jodi Wellman  45:51
Life, yeah, yeah.

Mike Steger  45:53
But only here's my happy reframe. Okay, so I don't know why, but the scene from Rocky Horror Picture Show popped into my mind. Do you know this one?

Jodi Wellman  46:03
Well, tell me what the scene is.

Mike Steger  46:05
The scene. Well, for for people who don't know, this is one of the most successful musicals about transsexual Frankenstein's creator, their own human being, and one of the most it's it's made the most money of all that whole musical genre. It's a musical also, right? Okay, but it's it's it's actually I think it's quite great from 1970s when all sorts of strange things were happening with regularity, and the the closing scene kind of out of no way it ends in a sour note for the Doctor Frankenfurter, the sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania. Actually, a pretty sad note. He he does not make it to a sequel. Let's just put it that way. But then there's some humans involved in all this, and the narrator comes on at the end, to basically make fun of them, like all these humans living their ridiculous lives like insects. That's not a dread quote, but it's something like that, right? Like we're just scrabbling around like busy little ants. No one bothers to decide whether that ant is like a really cool ant or this ant is like needs to open up more so people can get to know it better. Like this idea that as we zoom out and we look down on the planet, the indifferent existence of all indifferent perspective of existence doesn't care about any of us, right? We're not doing anything at all. And certainly, if you look down at a street, like all those famous scenes of people like crossing the streets in near in Manhattan or in Tokyo, it's like it all looks the same. Like we all look like we're just hustling people who are vaguely annoyed that there's other people in our way. That goes back to that everyone in the world is is a bad driver. That's an existential given. So that is a weird counterpart, right? That on the one hand we're so unique, we're like an infinite fractal labyrinth of mystery that no one can ever know us. At the same time, we're like kind of interchangeable in a lot of ways. In a lot of ways, so that's actually, I mean, this is almost the fact that we maybe aren't quite so special.

Jodi Wellman  48:24
Yeah, is

Mike Steger  48:24
a gift, you know, in a weird way. Maybe that's the light, the light thing, right? My grandfather gave me two bits of advice. He said, one was if I find out you do are doing drugs, I'll wring your neck, or I'll break your neck. Yeah, he usually gave much nicer advice than that. His other piece of advice was don't take yourself so seriously. And I think this isolation thing is is a invitation to not to not take on impossible absolutist goals, right? To not have standards for what is closeness or intimacy that are ridiculous. That someone has to know everything about you, and it has to be like souls like blended together into an aioli. I don't know if that's what you thought was coming there, right? But like, yeah, we can have we can have inexact experiences that are still incredibly profound. Good.

Jodi Wellman  49:23
What

Mike Steger  49:24
do you think? Is that a beat? Maybe that's a beat. I don't know.

Jodi Wellman  49:27
I think that's very upbeat. And there's something that's really consoling about the fact we're all in this together. That no one escapes any of these givens, and that even when we are feeling that sense of the aloneness, in kind of a sense of irony, we're we're all if we're all alone in the aloneness, this isolation, then we all kind of get it, and it won't solve it completely, but it does have a misery loves company sort of feel to it in a in a comforting way, just as with all of these givens, actually as. Just some people will articulate it. Some people are conscious to it. Some people will still deny it. Not everybody is super aware of it, but this is our this is our lot in life, and we go, man, you know, we're going to make the most of it. And there's something that is, you know, as long as we have the will to want to explore and maybe alleviate a little anxiety in service of having a little bit more aliveness in a different area. Oh, that's a win! And at least you know that you're not alone in that magnificent way when you're looking at the constellations or the specks of sand and the Sahara, wherever you're like, I, I, I am just minute. And you're right. If if another species is looking down on me or in the Rocky Horror picture, so I'm just a tiny little nut, and like that's comforting, right? Maybe my problems don't really matter. You know what? They don't.

Mike Steger  50:53
They don't really matter. But we we are still able to to feel like they do, and I think that's kind of cool. Like, despite everything, all these givens, we still want to be here for the show, right? You and I, and hopefully everyone who's listening, may think about these sorts of things, and it might initially feel overwhelming. Like, oh, I can't contemplate. I hate the idea of people I love dying, or I can't contemplate the idea of isolation. Like, no, I'll never really know anybody. Is that what you are saying? But

Speaker 2  51:27
then,

Mike Steger  51:28
we're still here. We're still pretty excited about life and understanding the frailty and the and the sort of bonkersness of of this thing we didn't even sign up for, but like don't want to leave. I think that that's that's actually really cool. I think that people who tend to, yeah, make a comfortable place to set these ideas in their life, not hide them or lock them away in some vault somewhere. I think frees up a lot of space just to just to try to be excited about being a living creature, even under these somewhat existentially annoying givens. People, we had people think about a lot of stuff, but you know, one of the cool things about universal stuff that people generally don't like to talk about is that now you've got something to make new friends talking about? Everyone, everyone has these concerns. So if you've if you can think of a way of not sounding too creepy to say like, "Ooh, you're gonna die, you know, isn't that crazy? Like, you know, you don't want to do that. But like, these are topics that people will relate because they're givens of the human existence. So great for party jets is what I'm saying.

Jodi Wellman  52:50
Exactly. Let's talk about the universe's cosmic indifference. Yeah, I think we're onto something.

Mike Steger  52:56
I think we are. We are.

Jodi Wellman  52:58
Do you think? Yeah, we can. Do you think that this could be it? Damn right. What's up next? Death. Death. Excited.

Mike Steger  53:08
Yeah.