The Art of Manliness - #148： Trying Not to Try With Edward Slingerland

00:00:00.000 right okay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so have you ever

00:00:18.780 noticed whenever you try really hard at something you end up not being able to achieve the thing

00:00:24.280 you're trying to do so for example you can't sleep at night you try really hard to fall asleep and

00:00:29.260 it just makes falling asleep harder to do or you're going to a party you want to make small talk feel

00:00:34.980 comfortable relaxed doing it so you try really hard and it just makes you uptight and nervous and

00:00:40.960 it makes you feel uh the conversation doesn't flow the way you want it well what's interesting is

00:00:45.920 chinese philosophers thousands of years ago understood this paradox whenever you try to do

00:00:52.100 something it makes the thing you're trying to do harder to achieve so confucianism daoism they all

00:00:57.060 understood this well my guest today has written a book exploring these different chinese philosophies

00:01:02.420 the insights they have about trying not to try combining it with insights we've gotten from

00:01:08.000 neuroscience and cognitive psychology on how we can have a more spontaneous life and how we can

00:01:13.140 actually achieve this trying not to try so we have a more spontaneous relaxed life and things

00:01:19.700 go the way we want his name is edward slingerland he's the author of the book trying not to try the

00:01:25.320 art and science of spontaneity today on the podcast we're going to discuss some chinese philosophy and

00:01:30.020 this is great because i've i've never really been a student of chinese philosophy this book does a

00:01:34.640 great summary of the early chinese philosophers so we're going to discuss that their insights on how

00:01:39.980 to live a more spontaneous life and what neuroscience and cognitive science can teach us about trying not

00:01:46.720 to try really great podcast to get a lot out of this without further ado edward slingerland

00:01:51.420 edward slingerland welcome to the show thanks for having me so your book is trying not to try

00:02:04.960 and it's about the art and science of spontaneity and you approach this by looking at what ancient

00:02:11.360 chinese philosophers how they approach spontaneity so there's two big concepts that you talk about in this

00:02:16.640 book that is going to connect our conversation so the first is ue and i guess this was the word

00:02:22.900 that chinese philosophers uh use to describe the spontaneity you're talking about can you talk a

00:02:27.480 little bit more about what exactly you mean by spontaneous and what the these philosophers meant

00:02:32.340 by ue and spontaneity yeah so the ue literally means no doing or non-doing it's sometimes translated

00:02:39.860 as inaction but i think really the best translation for it is something like effortless action

00:02:44.400 so it's a state where you lose a sense of yourself as an agent you have a feeling that you're not

00:02:51.660 exerting effort or even really doing anything and yet everything works out perfectly so it's a bit like

00:02:56.520 being in the zone as an athlete so you have these stories in the early chinese texts of a skillful

00:03:03.120 butcher who cuts up this enormous ox and he just kind of moves his knife through it and it falls apart

00:03:10.400 and the lord who's watching him and is amazed because it seems like magic that he could do this

00:03:15.260 so skillfully or you have these people who are in social situations so you have the confucius moving

00:03:21.820 through social situations or political diplomatic situations with this effortless ease and he doesn't

00:03:28.580 seem to be trying he doesn't seem to be really working at it and yet everything works out

00:03:32.400 and so why why were they you know well here's another first question like how does it connect

00:03:38.020 to this other concept of is it doe d-e yeah duh it's actually not duh like no duh yeah unfortunately

00:03:45.560 modern mandarin yeah so the if you're in a state of ue you get this power called uh which maybe you

00:03:53.400 translate as charisma charismatic power so it is something that if you're a confucian attracts people

00:04:01.460 to you and makes them want to follow you so the ideal confucian ruler is in a state of way and

00:04:07.160 then everything just falls into order around him he doesn't have to command people to follow him

00:04:11.360 everyone just wants to follow him if you're a daoist it's what if you're a laozian daoist it does the

00:04:17.280 same thing it kind of brings the world into order but no one knows that you're doing it you're kind

00:04:21.280 of this dark figure that no one knows about it yet suddenly everyone feels natural and starts acting

00:04:26.000 naturally and if you're a duang zian this other daoist thinker it seems to be a kind of power that

00:04:32.500 relaxes people around you so they feel comfortable around you it helps it's almost like a kind of

00:04:37.960 spiritual therapy you have in other people when you can emanate this power of duh so it's a power that

00:04:43.260 you get when you're in a state of way interesting what i found was curious is that all these different

00:04:48.740 philosophers who were talking about how to achieve ue they all sort of came up came to rise during the

00:04:54.920 same time period which is i guess the the warring states period is do historians have any idea why

00:05:01.840 that is well the warring a lot of things happened in the warring states period so this was really when

00:05:07.520 chinese philosophy starts so it's the beginning of explicit philosophizing in china and it's probably

00:05:14.680 because it was a period of first of all expanding population and expanding literacy so you have a lot

00:05:20.120 more people who are actually able to write thoughts down but i think primarily it was a period of chaos

00:05:25.820 so it was a period where china was divided into these various states who were all fighting viciously

00:05:32.440 with one another to try to obtain supremacy so eventually you know one of them succeeded in

00:05:37.100 swallowing up all the others that that became the chin dynasty the first unifier of china but i think what

00:05:43.860 was interesting is you have all these different states they all have courts so the rulers of these

00:05:48.400 various states have essentially think tanks so they have these academies where they invite thinkers to

00:05:53.360 come and give them advice about how to be successful and it's it's not an academic issue because they're

00:05:59.040 in danger of being wiped out so it was really a time of creativity you get a lot of schools where all

00:06:06.520 the major indigenous schools of thought in china arise and they're not just focused on a way there are

00:06:11.720 actually a lot of thinkers who are opposed to a way and think you need to use rationality or cognitive

00:06:17.020 control to properly order a state but it's it's i think all of this is happening in this time

00:06:22.640 period because it's it really is when uh the the intellectual foundations of chinese thought get

00:06:28.740 laid interesting and i what i thought was interesting about the some of the differences between say

00:06:32.560 western thought so in west western philosophy the whole uh top-down rational approach won out

00:06:37.500 um but and in ue it seemed it was relying more on what you call hot cognition right that's just like

00:06:45.740 not i don't even have to think of thinking about what you're doing and things will just work out

00:06:49.400 but also the emphasis on community so i think in western philosophy uh it's very individualistic

00:06:55.960 yeah um and but in chinese or the ue concept community seem to play a big role in it can you describe

00:07:03.040 the role community play in ue yeah so first of all you know ue does involve some cold cognition so

00:07:09.860 there's uh cognitive scientists talk about two systems sometimes so we've got the hot system which

00:07:14.700 is tacit it's mostly unconscious it's very fast it's frugal it does most of what we we do during the

00:07:21.600 day uh we also have this ability to switch into cold cognition so this is relatively slow conscious

00:07:28.660 rational calculating there are two different modes in which we can engage in cognition and what you

00:07:35.640 see is a tendency in and western you know you can make these generalizations about the west and the

00:07:40.100 east that are almost always inaccurate but um you know plausibly you could say the dominant models

00:07:45.980 of ethics in the west in the past few hundred years have focused on cold what i'd call cold

00:07:52.280 models so ethics is about either following rules so following maxims or calculating utility so if

00:08:00.480 you're utilitarian calculating what the best payoff is and then making yourself do it and they're both

00:08:05.620 cognitive control models so you you what you want to do not what your hot system wants to do is not

00:08:10.640 what you should do and so what you have to do as an ethicist or as an ethical person is engaged in

00:08:17.080 cold cognition figure out what the right thing to do is and then force yourself to do it force your

00:08:22.180 hot cognition to do it in the the this chinese idea of wui they also are most of them not necessarily

00:08:29.420 the taoists but certainly the confucians are suspicious of the kind of hot cognition we're

00:08:33.680 born with they do think you have to cultivate yourself and use cold cognition but the difference

00:08:38.920 is they think you're going to reshape your hot cognition into the right form and so you're basically

00:08:44.080 one way to look at it is you're downloading insights you get through cold cognition onto your hot

00:08:49.660 systems and that makes them much more reliable and faster and able to respond to the world in an

00:08:55.480 effective way and it also allows you to integrate yourself in your community so the the confucian

00:09:00.700 models are certainly are very communal what's involved in cultivating the right dispositions

00:09:06.600 is learning how to fulfill your social roles properly learning how to be a obedient child learning how to be a

00:09:14.900 caring parent learning how to be a loyal minister and a large part of the training that's happening

00:09:21.320 is training you to fulfill these social roles properly but you do see analogs of this in the west so in

00:09:28.220 aristotle's vision of how to train people is very much um training you to be a good athenian citizen

00:09:34.120 take your place in athenian society so there are there are analogs in the west interesting so i mean

00:09:40.320 here's something is the uh this concept of ue is it similar to what uh let me get this name right

00:09:45.640 mihi chikszentmihalyi chikszentmihalyi chikszentmihalyi yeah uh is his concept of flow is it very similar to that

00:09:52.400 there are a lot of similarities so uh i read flow in grad school i actually went to grad school with

00:09:58.240 chikszentmihalyi's son mark who's who's a colleague of mine he teaches at berkeley now uh does the same kind of

00:10:03.360 stuff i do so it's there are a lot of parallels so phenomenologically so in terms of the way it

00:10:10.040 feels on the inside it's very similar so you have a you lose a sense of time you lose a sense of

00:10:15.320 yourself as an agent uh the the difference is really how chikszentmihalyi characterizes what

00:10:22.060 distinguishes flow from other types of states so he's very eager and he's right about this to distinguish

00:10:28.560 flow from states where you lose a sense of time and you lose a sense of yourself as an agent but

00:10:34.840 you emerge feeling uh weakened and dirty and kind of mad at yourself so like sitting in front of a 0.95

00:10:42.000 stupid tv show or playing a dumb video game it has some of the features of flow but you don't feel good 0.93

00:10:48.080 you don't feel energized when you come out of it so he says well what's different about flow states then 0.99

00:10:52.240 and what he decides is different is that they involve complexity and challenge so you get into

00:10:58.740 flow when your abilities are perfectly calibrated to the situation so if it's too easy you get bored

00:11:05.900 if it's too hard you get frustrated he thinks in flow you're he sometimes talks about a flow channel

00:11:10.700 where you're kind of your the challenges are perfectly calibrated to your skill and what that

00:11:16.640 also means is as your your skill is going to get better so you have to keep ramping up the challenges

00:11:20.760 so if you're you know a rock climber you've got to always be trying a harder face to climb where

00:11:26.820 you're going to get bored so and and i think this is an accurate description of certain aspects of

00:11:32.800 what would certain instances of what we want to call flow or way so certainly high performance sports

00:11:39.560 rock climbing probably also a lot of things maybe some things in the social world so business challenges

00:11:46.360 kind of you know striking a good deal or winning a court case but the interesting thing is that

00:11:52.300 Csikszentmihalyi when i originally read that book there are a couple examples he gave that just didn't

00:11:57.400 seem to fit so particularly the one that stood out was this woman who lives in the italian alps and

00:12:02.180 she describes getting into flow every day when she gets up and goes to milk the cows and then she

00:12:08.740 gathers wool and then she weeds her garden and this is the same stuff she's been doing her whole life

00:12:13.840 it's what her ancestors have done there's nothing particularly complex or challenging about it she

00:12:18.680 knows how to do all this stuff and even Csikszentmihalyi's own survey data so he and his colleagues

00:12:23.520 have have since gone on to collect data from people about when they get into flow states and it seems to

00:12:28.420 be for most people in in actually situations of low complexity and low challenge so walking down a path

00:12:34.860 favorite path that you've walked down a hundred times or hanging out with family and having a nice meal or

00:12:41.260 playing with kids so it doesn't it the complexity challenge thing doesn't really seem to capture

00:12:47.360 those experiences and so this is where i think is more helpful because for the early chinese the

00:12:53.140 distinguishing feature of way is that you're embedded you're involved in something bigger than yourself

00:12:59.380 so you're absorbed in something that's both bigger than you so it's outside of your narrow little ego

00:13:06.280 and it also is something that you value that you think is a good thing and so people get into ue when

00:13:12.000 they're walking in a beautiful landscape because they they are absorbed by nature this woman 1.00

00:13:17.620 Csikszentmihalyi interviewed in the italian alps the way she described it is you know i feel at one with

00:13:21.820 nature i feel connected to my ancestral traditions and that's what gets me into this state so i think

00:13:28.500 actually the way in which the early chinese characterized ue is a broader and more accurate

00:13:34.900 description of how people get into these states yeah and i love it like i think everyone has been

00:13:39.860 in those those states before and i think we all want to try to force us into that state right because

00:13:46.280 we enjoy it and that's what you talk about the different different chinese philosophers there's four

00:13:51.100 of them you highlighted and they had different approaches on how you can achieve ue yeah and you

00:13:56.860 mentioned uh confucius uh for example and uh so the name of the book's trying not to try i guess

00:14:03.560 you the best way to describe confucius's approach is you try really hard in the beginning

00:14:07.920 so you don't have to try later on is that right yeah you basically you he thinks you need to try

00:14:14.260 very hard to obtain ue so we're nowhere near the state of ue in our natural state but he thinks that

00:14:20.260 if you train intensively over a lifetime and it takes a long time it's going to take your whole life

00:14:25.520 but if you train and rituals if you study the classics and memorize the classics so that one of

00:14:32.600 the contributions i think i've made to the study of ue is it's it always used to be associated with

00:14:38.040 taoism because the taoists talk about ue all the time people don't think of typically the confucians

00:14:43.700 as having ue as a as a goal but they do so it's just it's at the end of a long process of self

00:14:49.760 cultivation so uh confucius himself describes he's got this one passage i call a spiritual

00:14:56.500 autobiography he says at age 15 i set my heart on learning at 30 i took my place with ritual and he

00:15:03.780 describes going through these different stages until finally at age 70 he says i could follow my

00:15:09.860 heart's desires and never transgress the bounds so he's gotten to a point where he can do whatever

00:15:15.500 he wants whatever spontaneous thought comes into his head and yet he's ritually perfect so he is

00:15:22.420 complete he's trained himself so he can finally be in a state of ue and that's what his goal is is to

00:15:28.200 get other people to undertake this training you talked about ritual and the importance of ritual and

00:15:33.300 confucianism and and how uh what is what is the what does cognitive scientists have discovered about

00:15:40.060 ritual and how it can actually help us put in put us into a state of ue or flow whatever you want to

00:15:46.000 want to call it yeah so one of the things we were starting to realize so the early chinese had these

00:15:51.120 insights what's happening cognitive science is in the last few decades there's been uh you can think of

00:15:57.800 it as a kind of rediscovery or a re-uncovering of the power of spontaneity so that our hot systems are

00:16:04.380 actually very powerful most of what we're being we do involves hot systems and scientists and

00:16:11.120 psychologists have therefore kind of stumbled on the importance of ritual they said well if that's

00:16:15.940 the case how do you get people to change their behavior oh it'd be good if he gave them scripts to

00:16:20.980 practice or things to do and oh okay i guess that's called ritual so the psychologists have kind of been

00:16:27.160 getting back to this point just through trial and error and realizing the way human beings work in

00:16:33.220 terms of our cognition so i think this is a good example of how early philosophical traditions can

00:16:41.020 be a great resource for us in the contemporary world because actually the chinese have been thinking

00:16:46.480 about how you would use rituals and training and these sorts of things to change people and get them

00:16:51.540 to act in a better way you know for 2500 years so they and a lot of clever people have thought about

00:16:57.320 this very long and hard so there's probably a lot to learn from the sorts of actual concrete techniques

00:17:02.100 they came up with interesting and one of the critiques that uh even confucianism had 2500 years

00:17:08.360 ago or 22 000 years ago was that you know your the goal is spontaneity but you're putting you're

00:17:15.060 basically you're you're faking it right like you don't you're not actually you don't actually have

00:17:19.100 it you're playing a role and there's this uh risk of being what i guess what confucius called

00:17:24.900 being the village poser yeah that's right that's my translation of this term xiang yuan uh which

00:17:31.260 sometimes is done villa is village honest person or village worthy so confucius was very worried

00:17:37.000 about this problem so you were you know you're faking it until you make it you're you're going through

00:17:43.620 the motions of let's say being a filial child with the idea that that's going to help you really 1.00

00:17:49.460 experience this feeling the spontaneous feeling eventually of filiality the danger is that you

00:17:54.800 just learn the outside behavior and you don't actually make it way you don't actually reach a

00:18:01.060 state where you've really internalized it and made it spontaneous and he was worried about that and he

00:18:05.700 was very worried about people pretending to be true confucian gentlemen who actually hadn't

00:18:10.980 mastered it in this way and this then leads to the first real philosophical critique of confucianism

00:18:17.580 which is that of laozi and the dao de jing where laozi says uh you should be worried about this and

00:18:23.200 in fact your techniques are inevitably going to produce nothing but a bunch of village posers

00:18:28.060 yeah and another we'll get to laozi in just a second but the other other problem with confucianism is uh

00:18:33.320 there's sort of a bootstrap problem um in that you have to like want to get into that that confucius

00:18:40.100 approach to uh you have to you have to desire the confucius approach to get going on it but if you

00:18:46.160 don't desire it it's like what do you do yeah how do you teach so he's he's very frustrated because

00:18:51.520 he thinks if you really love the way then you won't have you don't have to worry about the village

00:18:56.460 poser problem you'll love the way you'll learn to embody it in a new way fashion but he's also

00:19:01.780 frustrated because nobody loves the way so you know everyone loves at one point he uh great line

00:19:08.060 he says you know i don't have to teach you to love food and sex how can i have to teach you to love

00:19:12.980 the way now where can i find someone who who really is passionate about it and this is the

00:19:18.220 tension that he has so how do you how do you cause someone to genuinely sincerely love something

00:19:24.620 they don't already love and that's the basic tension at the heart of the basic confucian

00:19:30.660 approach to way yeah and i think you see that tension play out even today in people's lives like

00:19:35.180 people want to be fit yeah but they don't love the the way that you have to get fit well they

00:19:42.720 you know they've got to learn to actually treasure it for the internal goods you know you have to

00:19:48.860 find something like if you want to get fit the best way to do it is to find something you actually

00:19:52.300 like to do that as a side product would get you fit right yeah play tennis play tennis or do something

00:19:58.300 fun um it's also a problem within learning so you know you have kids you know my daughter's in

00:20:05.700 elementary school and fortunately she is one of these people were born loving to read so she just loves to

00:20:11.960 read we actually have to yell at her to stop reading sometimes when we wanted to do something

00:20:15.480 what a problem yeah it's a problem but you know schools are really interested in getting kids to love

00:20:20.440 learning you know and love reading but if you don't how do you get them to do it if they don't

00:20:24.820 really want to do it and you know their solution is well force them to read make them read for two

00:20:29.400 hours you know a day um and it's not clear that that's actually productive that could in fact be

00:20:34.760 counterproductive so yeah well that brings us to our next guy lausa um yeah because his he

00:20:40.180 disagreed with confucius and um you bring in this concept of ironic effects it's a modern cognitive

00:20:46.620 science or behavioral concept uh and lausa seemed to have uh insight into that two thousand years ago

00:20:53.000 yeah so there's a movement the late dan wegner did a lot of work on that this ironic effect so you

00:21:00.180 uh ask people not to think of a white bear and they think of a white bear if you this one great

00:21:06.700 experiment he did you uh have people putting doing a golf putt and if you tell them you know try to

00:21:14.240 get it in the hole but whatever you do don't overshoot the hole they overshoot the hole a lot

00:21:18.500 more than if you don't tell them that um so there's you're basically priming people with the behavior

00:21:23.080 you want them to not do and that causes them to do it so he called this the ironic ironic effects

00:21:28.340 and lausa seemed to be aware of this so he he was worried that in the same way contemporary you say

00:21:35.460 uh situation you force a kid to read for two hours a day and you think you're gonna you're doing it to

00:21:42.320 get them to love reading but in fact it makes them hate reading because it's a chore lausa thought if

00:21:47.780 you force people to act out virtue by doing these filial piety rituals and doing these rituals to show 0.80

00:21:56.420 that you respected your colleagues it would actually make you a hypocrite and in fact make

00:22:01.180 you at some level hate virtue and that's the the only real way so he really thought inevitably because

00:22:07.200 of something like this ironic effect he actually had a term for it this term fawn which uh it means

00:22:13.160 return or kind of turning back but he thinks anything that's pursued consciously turns into its

00:22:20.360 opposite so if you try to be witty you're not going to be witty if you try to be virtuous

00:22:26.320 you're not going to be virtuous and so therefore the only way to actually really be witty or virtuous

00:22:31.000 is to not try to stop trying so his basic approach was let's stop doing everything stop doing all the

00:22:38.100 stuff the confucians tell you to do go back to being natural again and that's how you're going to get

00:22:44.300 these things that you want so he was really advocating trying not to try yeah so and he but of course

00:22:51.440 this is a tension right yeah um so nobody escaped there's a genuine part of the point of the book is

00:22:56.800 that this tension of trying not to try is a real paradox and i actually explore from a cognitive

00:23:03.100 scientific perspective why why it is a paradox essentially you're using your conscious part of

00:23:08.860 the brain to shut down your conscious part of the brain it's a direct psychological paradox and so

00:23:14.420 you see all these thinkers struggling with the problem loudspeak thinks the solution

00:23:17.800 is to just stop trying and embrace weak if you can really embrace weakness and not try to be strong

00:23:26.100 then in the end you'll somehow be strong but the problem he has is this what i call the instrumental

00:23:32.280 problem if you know that then aren't you really at some level valuing strength yeah so you're like

00:23:37.920 okay i'm going to be i'm going to uh pretend to i mean i think a modern equivalent would be people

00:23:43.420 who you know in a dating situation they're like okay well the way to get a date is to not try to

00:23:48.900 get a date and so i'm going to go out and be at a bar but i'm not gonna i'm gonna act like i'm not

00:23:53.800 interested in meeting anyone um and the problem is people like that really look like they're acting

00:23:59.420 like they're not trying to meet anyone they don't actually seem sincerely uh uninterested and so

00:24:06.100 that's the tension how do you genuinely not want something yeah it's what i thought was funny

00:24:12.100 you know i kind of chuckled as i was reading it was how much parallel there is to what happened

00:24:16.420 2 000 years ago in china what to what we see today um you know i think lausa and his followers they

00:24:21.300 sort of uh romanticized um naturalness right they they rejected technology they'd go and farm with

00:24:28.840 you know rudimentary tools and like they're very like hippie like yep and very they're the first hippies

00:24:34.620 yeah and and it's the same sort of like uh tensions that you see in those different approaches

00:24:40.420 uh then you still see them now yeah well the you know these 1960s hippies back to the land they're

00:24:47.200 like let's go you know we're going to be natural we're going to live in harmony with nature and yet uh

00:24:52.700 it it seems to be somehow in conflict with basic human desire so all of those most of the communes

00:25:00.860 that got founded in the 60s very quickly broke down and most of those people who were following

00:25:05.940 the grateful debt around um now drive beamers and are investment bankers right um so lausa the the

00:25:13.260 tension he has is from my perspective seems to be if he's telling people they have to be natural

00:25:19.320 and yet he if he has to work so hard to tell us to be natural maybe what he's telling us to do isn't

00:25:25.600 natural yeah why do we have to work so hard to be in harmony with nature yeah that whole

00:25:30.700 thing about you know technology isn't natural but like we love to be love to use technology

00:25:35.060 we love technology yeah there must be something natural about it yeah yeah um okay so there's

00:25:40.440 lausa the other one uh he seemed to take more of a i guess a middle approach uh it's mincius is that

00:25:46.920 how you pronounce it mincius yeah mincius munza in chinese munza okay so he had this idea of we have

00:25:54.180 these these sprouts within us uh and there's four of them can you describe these sprouts and what

00:26:00.400 we're supposed to do with these to cultivate ue yeah so in some ways you can see him responding to

00:26:06.460 the daoist critique of confucianism being unnatural so you know the daoists are saying we read we need

00:26:11.780 to be natural we can't do these confucian virtues what mencius says is actually doing the confucian

00:26:17.540 virtues is what's natural for us because we have those virtues inside of us they're in our nature

00:26:23.940 in this incipient form or kind of weak form and we need to develop them and so he his metaphor that

00:26:30.780 he uses is a sprout so we have these four sprouts we've got a sprout of benevolence or compassion

00:26:35.880 we've got a sprout of righteousness we've got a sprout of ritual propriety doing the ritually proper

00:26:43.200 thing and we have this sprout of wisdom and he thinks these are these tendencies if we if we

00:26:48.680 introspect if we look inside we can see that we have these in some kind of basic form already

00:26:55.640 and they want to grow into the full virtues they want to this beginning feeling of compassion really

00:27:02.120 wants to turn into true benevolence and in order to do that we need confucianism we need the rituals

00:27:08.100 we need the classics we need these this type of training that we get from teachers but that

00:27:13.880 training shouldn't be seen as unnatural because it's actually helping this thing inside of us to

00:27:20.800 grow and so he's really trying to split the difference if you want to look at it that way

00:27:25.620 between the confucians and the daoists he still wants to be confucian he thinks he's a follower of

00:27:29.680 confucius he his picture of what society is going to look like looks a lot like what confucius wanted

00:27:34.900 but he thinks it's really tapping into these natural tendencies inside of us okay so yeah he solves the

00:27:41.180 bootstrap problem yeah yeah how do we you know get someone to love something they don't love

00:27:46.580 well we do love it at some level and i'm as a teacher going to help you see that yeah yeah you

00:27:53.020 talk about some of the stories where you'd help these like really terrible kings realize you do have

00:27:57.240 empathy look yeah yeah yeah um so yeah so there's a the famous story is this really evil king you know

00:28:04.620 men just says you can be a true benevolent king and the king says no i really just like to party and

00:28:10.660 hang out with my concubines and oppress people that's what i'm into um and then just tells him 0.53

00:28:17.040 the story about where he heard that he spared this ox that was being led to slaughter and what he does

00:28:21.980 is get him to introspect and realize that it's kind of like the puppy and the windows uh situation

00:28:27.640 the the king saw this animal that was in terror and about to be killed and he felt compassion for it

00:28:35.740 and he gets him to realize that he did feel compassion and that if he could just kind of

00:28:41.460 almost meditate on that feeling focus on it and learn to strengthen it that would allow him to turn

00:28:47.960 into a truly benevolent king the other thing too you mentioned so mince has this idea that you have

00:28:54.700 these sprouts you want to help them grow but you don't want to try too hard um yeah because you either

00:29:00.200 you mentioned the parable of this farmer who saw the sprouts in his his garden and he went and just

00:29:06.140 pulled them out yeah trying to get him to grow faster trying to get them grow faster so it is

00:29:11.240 confucianism but not really hardcore confucianism well it's not he doesn't want you to force it his

00:29:17.000 target there is really these uh these utilitarians so these people called the moas and the moas think

00:29:24.340 that they're they're not they're not into way at all they think what you can do is rationally figure

00:29:30.660 out that behavior x results in the best consequences for everyone and so force yourself to do behavior

00:29:38.660 x and and in this view it's impartial caring so they want you to act impartially toward all people

00:29:44.540 it looks their ideas in a lot of ways sound a lot like modern some modern utilitarians like peter singer

00:29:49.700 um and and they're similarly rationalistic in the sense that they think we just have to

00:29:55.180 rationally grasp this thing and then put it into practice and mentions his critique of that is that

00:30:00.680 it's actually you're forcing people to go so far against their nature that it's just going to result

00:30:08.140 in disaster so getting forcing people to act completely impartially and not favor their own kids

00:30:15.780 over other people's kids or favor their own parents over other parents is so unnatural that for it's

00:30:21.760 like pulling on sprouts to try to get them to grow in a direction you want them to grow you're actually

00:30:26.420 going to kill the plant and it's not going to work so go ahead yeah so you need guidance but it needs

00:30:33.160 to be gentle guidance just in the way you can't make a plant grow faster than it's going to grow and how

00:30:38.980 does his approach confirm what many cognitive scientists are discovering to be true about how

00:30:44.440 human motivation or human cognition works yeah so i i talk about mentions a lot when i'm talking to

00:30:52.640 philosophers because i think his model actually has a lot going for it from a contemporary empirical

00:30:59.340 standpoint so first of all it's it's becoming increasingly clear that moral cognition and especially

00:31:06.540 moral behavior is driven by emotions and so mencius was right about this that we have these four

00:31:12.840 feelings these sprouts that really are driving our behavior and he also seems to be right that they're

00:31:18.280 distinct so uh philosophers often talk about morality as if it's a unitary thing western philosophers

00:31:25.520 in mencius's model what we could call morality is just a blanket term for these distinct

00:31:31.500 moral emotions so empathy and uh justice you know feeling of anger when people are being unjust

00:31:39.820 and the important thing to see is that these are really different types of feelings they're inspired by

00:31:44.640 different situations they have different behavioral uh outcomes they have different phenomenological on

00:31:51.040 the inside feeling to them and so mencius seems to be right about that that the way to look at it is

00:31:56.720 morality is modular it's emotional it's based on our emotions and it's modular so it's we have these

00:32:03.080 distinct moral emotions that that uh are are very different from one another although they all we call

00:32:08.880 them all moral because they have to do with helping people get along with other people in society so he

00:32:14.500 seems to be have been very present in the sense that he was uh he thought that morality was about

00:32:20.300 cultivating embodied emotions and and that's a message that i think modern ethicists really need

00:32:26.700 to get okay so look we talked about three there's one last one you're gonna tell me with his name

00:32:30.820 because yeah yeah yeah i was pronouncing it different in my head yeah um so what was his approach

00:32:38.140 to ue was it seemed like it was very similar to laozi's approach to uh there are similarities and

00:32:43.840 that's why they so duangza is typically paired together with laozi and called the the they're

00:32:51.140 called the taoist school but that's a later that term's a later invention so the confucians actually saw

00:32:57.140 themselves as confucians as followers of confucius as members of a school they were um you know fighting

00:33:04.440 about who really got confucius right but they all thought they were they were following confucius

00:33:08.920 the the taoists weren't following each other so as you'd expect maybe of the taoists they were a

00:33:14.000 little bit less organized um so duangza he's classed with laozi because he's similarly worried about

00:33:20.780 trying too hard so he does think the solution as laozi does is to try less you know to to go toward

00:33:28.340 more than not trying part of the the strategy and but his his technique is a bit different he doesn't

00:33:34.960 have any kind of concrete so laozi has got a very concrete vision of what a natural life should look

00:33:41.400 like and he wants you to pursue that vision drop out of society go live in a small village

00:33:46.880 use primitive technology never leave your village that's going to make you natural duangza thinks 1.00

00:33:53.060 actually having a concrete vision about what's natural is part of the problem so i think he'd be

00:33:58.640 as critical of laozi as he and he is actually as critical of these primitivists who are very much

00:34:04.100 like laozi as he is of the confucians so he thinks that the similar problem they all have

00:34:08.100 is they're sure they know what the right way to live is and he thinks in fact we don't know what

00:34:13.720 the right way to live is that the only way we can live properly is to surrender to make our mind

00:34:20.760 empty to make it tenuous this is the shoe this term he uses and if we can do that we've got a kind of

00:34:28.340 onboard guidance system sent from heaven so he believes that the the kind of uh sacred force in

00:34:36.560 the world heaven has implanted this thing called the spirit inside of people and that normally we

00:34:43.660 don't listen to our spirit because we're using our mind too much we're full of thoughts about we know

00:34:50.160 what the right thing to do is or we have these maxims we're trying to follow or we're trying to

00:34:54.700 maximize utility he thinks if we could stop trying and and make our mind empty this spirit would be

00:35:02.000 able to take over and guide us in the proper direction interesting yeah um so what i thought

00:35:09.660 was really great at the end of the book you wrapped us up you made this connection to uh ue or flow

00:35:13.940 you know we'll call it ue um that i never really thought about before why we value it so much and it

00:35:20.520 comes down to human trust what is it about spontaneity that makes us more trustworthy yeah so

00:35:29.260 one of the things i'm trying to explain in that that last section is why ue and uh should fit together

00:35:37.860 so i said in the beginning if you're in a state of ue you get this power this charismatic virtue or

00:35:43.520 charismatic power the the chinese explanation is religious it's a theological explanation so they think 0.77

00:35:50.160 the reason you have da when you're in ue is heaven gives it to you as a reward when you're in ue you're

00:35:56.660 following heaven's heaven's dal heaven's way and so it gives you this power as a reward but what i'm

00:36:04.460 wondering in the book is from a modern perspective we don't share this metaphysics we don't believe

00:36:09.360 there's a heaven that's giving us this power necessarily so what's a naturalistic explanation of

00:36:14.460 why these two things should fit together and i think the answer has to do with problems of

00:36:18.980 cooperation we have in large-scale societies and civilization so when people are living

00:36:24.780 in civilization they're having to cooperate all the time with people who aren't related to them

00:36:31.420 and who they don't really know well personally necessarily and so there's there's some really

00:36:36.280 basic uh cooperation dilemmas that arise in situations like that and one of the things you need

00:36:42.540 to be sure of to get coordination off the ground is that people these people you're interacting with

00:36:49.500 are committed to the same values as you that you can trust them so uh if we're in a an army unit

00:36:56.840 together and we're going to be sent over this ridge to attack the enemy i've got to believe that

00:37:02.320 you're as gung-ho as i am and that when you know the sergeant says charge you're going to run just as

00:37:08.520 fast as me and you're not going to be like you know hanging a few paces back letting me take the

00:37:13.400 first bullet and so how can i be sure of that i've got to trust you and one of the things i do is

00:37:19.640 review a bunch of literature coming out of social psychology and cognitive science suggesting that

00:37:24.620 we we trust people who are spontaneous we trust people who are not kicking off signs of conscious effort

00:37:33.780 and that seems to be because actually in order to lie or cheat or deceive people you have to exercise

00:37:41.200 cognitive control and so there's something about somebody who is not trying who's in there's

00:37:47.680 something about someone who's in a way that inspires trust in us because people who are not trying are

00:37:53.720 usually honest they're whatever it is they're doing or saying is probably true because they're not

00:37:59.880 kicking off signs of lying or trying to fake it really interesting stuff um so this has all been

00:38:06.260 great we we've talked we've covered a lot of different approaches to away i'm curious before we we end the

00:38:11.120 conversation is there one thing that a person who's listening to this podcast can start doing today to

00:38:17.680 maybe cultivate a bit more way into their life or do you have a favorite approach yeah you know this is a

00:38:23.860 tricky thing and the book was marketed as a self-help book and a lot of people got pissed off because

00:38:28.980 there's not they thought there'd be like a little pull out section yeah where was the bullet points

00:38:33.200 at the end of the chapter bullet points no bullet points and so there's no one solution because it's

00:38:39.960 genuinely a paradox and if a if there were a solution it wouldn't be a paradox but what i think is helpful

00:38:46.480 the kind of takeaway from the book is first of all just having a word for way is helpful like i find that

00:38:53.300 people who know about the stuff who i've talked to about it they start using it in their daily lives because

00:38:58.120 we just don't have a good word for it and one of the reasons we don't have a good word for it is

00:39:02.320 because we don't tend to recognize the power of spontaneity in our everyday lives and so i think

00:39:08.620 we've really been trained that to reach our goals or to get what we want and we just have to try harder

00:39:14.700 so we're not where we want to be we'll try harder work harder uh you know put your put effort into it

00:39:19.560 and we what we don't see is that when it comes to a lot of goals so um happiness creativity

00:39:26.200 attractiveness that's completely counterproductive that consciously pursuing it means we're not going

00:39:33.820 to get it and so knowing about way kind of recovering a sense of the power of spontaneity i think

00:39:40.080 helps us to see to recognize in our lives situations where we're trying and we shouldn't be

00:39:46.920 and actually what we need to do is stop and how we're going to do that may vary it may be that

00:39:51.960 you know we need to do a kind of duang zian meditation where we just clear our mind before

00:39:56.460 an important meeting let's say we know that when we go into the meeting we have a tendency to talk

00:40:01.380 too much and try too hard to impress the boss and we got to stop doing that how do we actually do that

00:40:07.240 maybe you know it involves meditating you know doing a little mind mindfulness exercise before you go in

00:40:13.200 maybe it involves actually going for a intense run beforehand and just tying tiring your body out

00:40:20.780 so much that you're you're not able to be too pushy the thing is the the what what the barriers to

00:40:27.540 wui are for any given individual really depends on the individual and i think that's why there are these

00:40:33.400 these different strategies because which one is the right one is going to vary from individual to

00:40:39.580 individual and it's also going to vary from situation to situation but that's where i think

00:40:44.620 having this kind of grab bag of strategies the early chinese really i think explored all of the

00:40:49.920 logical possibilities you could have and so you've got them there you've got these different strategies

00:40:55.720 and which one's going to be the the best one is really something that's going to you're going to

00:41:00.840 have to evaluate in your own life and and and based on what the challenge is to spawn to the adr that

00:41:06.460 you're facing all right well edward slingerland this has been a fascinating conversation thank

00:41:10.700 you so much for your time it's been a pleasure yeah thanks a lot my guest today was edward

00:41:14.300 slingerland he's the author of the book trying not to try and you can find that on amazon.com and

00:41:19.440 bookstores everywhere well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more

00:41:26.980 manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com

00:41:31.060 and if you enjoy this podcast i'd really appreciate it if you would give us review on itunes or stitcher

00:41:35.560 whatever it is you use to listen to the podcast or just tell us tell your friends about us i'd really

00:41:40.300 appreciate if you get the word about the podcast really appreciate your support and until next time

00:41:43.940 this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

00:42:05.560 you

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The Art of Manliness - October 19, 2015

#148： Trying Not to Try With Edward Slingerland

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