The Psychology of The 10 Commandments| Jamie Metzl

23:35But I think that makes it very, very difficult because I think we have to, coming back to what we said in the beginning, to have respect for everybody, we have to have enough oxygen in the room to think that, well, maybe they're more right than me. If we start out with my thing is the absolute truth and the other thing is absolutely untrue, I think that's a very hard starting place.

23:56Dr. Michael Gervais:You go after some of the complexities of adhering to the original Ten Commandments, like not lying, however, or not killing, or not stealing. And I think you did the German code crackers. The Enigma machine, yeah. Right, the Enigma machine. And so what you're going after there is that, okay, well, there's these people that actually stole and they did it in a world-class way. and they ended up saving a lot of lives. So is this an absolute or can you bend and break it? Okay. Now, there's a lot of complexity in that philosophical positioning. You know, are they absolutes or are they relative? And one of yours is do no harm, okay?

24:36Dr. Michael Gervais:That's number two. Nice, beautiful, right? Now, when you are going to eat an animal, you have just harmed an animal. So how do you square? Yeah, it's - I wanna pick apart a few of them and just kind of - Yeah, it's great. And it's a great question. And I actually did an interview, a podcast interview with Peter Singer. And Peter Singer is this very famous philosopher and famously vegetarian and vegan for exactly this reason. And he said, this is a contradiction because if you're doing no harm, like life is doing harm. I mean, everything that we do is a choice. And so I didn't want to edit the Ten Commandments that came back.

25:16But if I was editing that, I would say try to do as little harm as possible. And one of the principles that came up in the analysis of where all of this is coming from is a principle that I really value that comes from Jainism. And so Jainism is an offshoot of Hinduism, and their thing is do no harm. And that's why the Jains, they wear these coverings on their mouths so they don't accidentally swallow bugs when they walk around. They keep an eye on the ground to make sure you're not stepping on an ant. And it's not possible to do no harm just by breathing. I mean, just by anything. You're doing harm to something and not harm to other things.

26:01But there's this principle in Jainism called ahimsa, which is that aspiration. So they would say, do no harm. but it means do as little harm as possible. It's funny, I'm pretty active on Twitter. And if I have some expression of outrage, then you get millions of views and likes and things like that. But a couple of weeks ago, part of it is a test. I said like, nobody has ever blown up a building in the name of Jainism. Maybe we can learn something from these people. I mean, of course I got eight likes and one of them was my mother. But so I just think that it's more aspirational. But that one of all of the commandments, that's the one that I've gotten the most pushback on.

26:49And they've said—

26:50Dr. Michael Gervais:It's the easy one to—I'm not pushing back on it. I just want to understand your position. And so your position is, yeah, I think aspirationally I'm behind it. I see it. There is a complexity—I'll use the word again—to live in modern life and think that you're not causing harm. but if you can have that in the center of your heart and the front of your mind, that you're going to do a little bit better in this world than if that is not on the list. Yeah, I agree. And I think that aspirationally, like even if there's a destiny, like I talked about navigating by the North Star, you're never going to get to the North Star.

27:22It's not like that's the goal is just like, oh, I made it. I'm at the North Star. It's like a navigational guide.

27:29Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah, of course. That's really funny. Because we use that. I've used that a lot. Like what's your North star. Well, you're never going to get there. Right. Okay, good. I'm clocking that one. Thank you for that. That's really good. Yeah. So just pull out of the AI 10 commandments for a minute. What is your North star? The thing that you're aspirationally pursuing, but not knowing that you'll never get there? It'll sound like pablum and probably more general. It's not like, you know, I'm going to do this one thing, but I just feel like, and I talked about my family history. So I'm very mindful of just the accident and the beneficence of just being here.

28:05But my North Star is to say, well, at the end of this life, have I used the time? Have I had the greatest possible impact that I could have had? Have I loved the people? Have I supported the people in my world? And it's kind of general. It's not specific. And I talked about this balance. I mean, And my, I said, my eighth book is coming out in February. Like, I don't know the answer of whether it will be more meaningful to write a ninth and 10th and 11th book or to do some other thing, like have a child or do some other thing. And so it comes back to what we were discussing about process. And so My North Star isn't necessarily exact destination as we discussed, but it's trying to be as thoughtful and honest about process and what am I trying to do and to align my actions as much as possible with that North Star.

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31:39Dr. Michael Gervais:by the way i loved your book i loved your latest i say this a lot and um it's almost in my head i had this thought that it might sound like a platitude because i say it so often to folks that are here but the reason you're here is because i like how you think i like how you've organized your life and when i say like it's not like an approval it's just i i'm really interested in it. And I'm attracted to people who can think clearly, who have a systems approach, and then also can slide right down into the intimacy of the human experience. And you have captured that. You even just did it in the way you described being a futurist.

32:15Dr. Michael Gervais:You talked about where it came from. You talked about the system of what you're trying to organize. And then you said, it's just like you, Mike. And then you made it personal. And then you came back up to a, like a mesolayer systems approach to explain it. Like, so as I was listening, the most immediate thought is, where did you prepare yourself? And what were the experiences that led to you to want to think about the future so richly? Yeah, well, I'll start super early and then I will jump ahead. I was, I imagine like you, one of those really annoying kids who kept asking why, why, why? Yeah.

32:51And from an early - I got made fun of. Well, it happens. Did you get made fun of? I didn't really get made fun of, but it was just a different way of being than most people, I think, are just kind of, they're thinking the why, but most people and even kids don't have the space to articulate it. And there's a lot of pressure to conform. And I come from my parents and my family were kind of rule breakers. And I remember growing up and kind of breaking every rule and driving to the Kansas City Chiefs game. And there was like a two-mile pileup on the highway for the exit and driving on the shoulder for two miles.

33:33So I come from rule breakers. But I was just always asking these questions of why, why, why. And particularly my mother always indulged it, which was, I think that was really a great way to do things. How did she do that? She just entertained the questions. She didn't say, oh, why are you asking? She said, oh, that's a great question. Let's explore it together. And I really benefited from that. And then, you know, when I was a kid, I went to a Hebrew day school, which I absolutely hated because it was very doctrinaire. Dr. Nair. And I remember in fourth grade, I was growing up in Kansas City, and I was at this school.

34:11And I raised my hand one day, and I said, you've been talking about all this stuff. I've considered what you've said. And I've decided I don't really believe it. And I don't believe in God. And it was like the fire alarm went off, and they came, and the principal pulled me out of class by my ear and I just rebelled. And I said, no, I just, I just don't believe this. And that's kind of my whole life. You know, that's the way I've been just thinking of like, I get information and sometimes you get information that comes from, from some other place and you think, wow, that really rings true to me.

34:47And when that happens, how wonderful you can incorporate that and then you grow. And sometimes you get information and you think, well, that doesn't make sense. And even if everybody is saying it makes sense, if it doesn't make sense to you, There's like a level of maybe confidence is the right word to say, well, if it doesn't make sense to me, then I need to either figure out why it does make sense and maybe I'm wrong or challenge this perception and maybe I'm right. And then jumping forward, 30 years ago, I was on the National Security Council working for President Clinton. And my boss at the time, and now still close friend, Richard Clark, who later became famous after 9-11 because he was the one who had—he was like the Cassandra of 9-11.

35:31He predicted it, but wasn't—as hard as he tried, wasn't able to prevent it. And he always, Dick always used to say that if everyone in Washington is trying to solve one problem, you should not solve that problem because the efficacy comes from thinking about and trying to solve problems that other people can't see. And I really took that to heart. And when I was looking around at that time, 30 years ago, I came to feel that this intersection of, it had different names then, but of AI, biotechnology and genetics was going to have massively profound implications for all of us, but nobody was really talking about it.

36:08And so that really pushed me to start learning, to start writing, and that led to decades of work and multiple books and all sorts of things working with the World Health Organization and others. And as I explored all of that, as I had written about genetically modified humans before the Chinese CRISPR babies were born, and I kept saying, these things are coming. What was that book? That book was Hacking Darwin. And we tell you, that was our first conversation was just after Hacking Darwin was released. As a matter of fact, when Hacking Darwin, when in November of 2018, it was announced that the first Chinese CRISPR babies had already been born, For folks that don't know what that is, just give them a brief tour.

36:50Okay, so genome editing is the capability that has, it's been around for a while, but our ability to do it has gotten much better over time. And it's the ability to go into the genome of a cell. And so lots of all living creatures have genetics, which is the recipe for life. And to go in and make small numbers of changes, which can have profound implications. And so we humans have been making genetic modifications in one way or another for 12 ,000 years because agriculture is an aggressive form of genetic modification, but we haven't been doing it with the tools of biotechnology. So that's more recent, our ability to do that.

37:36But at least since the 1940s and 1950s, we've been doing that. And if you go to Whole Foods and you go to the organic section of Whole Foods, you are eating genetically modified crops because almost all of those crops come from bombarding the seeds with radiation. And then you have different mutations. And then you say, well, these seedless grapes, that's the genetic modification that we prefer or not. But now we're getting so good at it that we're genetically modifying different animals. And when I wrote this book, Hacking Darwin, I said, genetic modification of humans is coming very, very quickly and very soon.

38:13And in the book, I said, it's coming, it's coming in China. And I had a list of five genes. And I said, the first genetic modifications will happen in China. And it will happen most likely with one of these five genes. And then it happened after the book was written. It did happen in China. It was one of these genes. So that's good fortune as a futurist. And then with my next book, Super Convergence, when I was going out and I'm always speaking and I never use notes and I never get behind a podium and I never give the same talk twice because I just feel like it's kind of a jazz performance. Yeah, that's my same approach.

38:51Yeah, and I just feel like, and there's energy coming from the people who are there and maybe you'll have a conversation with somebody before you go up on the stage and you think, oh, that's a really interesting perspective. Maybe I want to incorporate that into the talk. Yeah. But the talks got bigger and bigger. Like I would say, well, this book, Hacking Darwin, it's about human genetic modification, but that's just a little piece of this bigger story. And the big story of this moment of human habitation on earth and maybe life on earth is this is the moment when after nearly 4 billion years of evolution, our one species among the billions that have ever lived suddenly has the increasing ability to engineer novel intelligence and re-engineer life.

39:36And the big question that will determine whether this is a wonderful story or a terrible story is whether we can learn to wield these godlike powers wisely. And that was the foundation of my book, Super Convergence. And you and I also had a conversation after Super Convergence. Another hit. Well, thank you so much. But then the last part of what I just said of wisely. So what does wisely mean? And I kept saying, this isn't a story about technology. This is a story about ethics and values. And then the logical next question is, well, where do the ethics and values come from? And my answer, it was a glib answer at first, but I felt like, well, I needed to populate the answer with meaning was it's got to come from all of us.

40:28Like this is a societal, a species-wide transformation. This is a story about all of us, just like the story of domesticating fire a million years ago was a story about all of us controlling fire. The story about domesticating plants and animals 12 ,000 years ago, that was a story about all of us because it changed all of our lives. This is that kind of story. but if we say, oh, this is just up to experts and technologists and maybe a few government regulators, we're going to get it wrong. And a few billionaires. And a few billionaires who are kind of out of control. And so for us to feel like we're part of this story, well, how does that happen?

41:14And then if we need to have our values guiding this transformation, how do we decide what values they are. And so we all come from our different values, traditions. And then with the new book, what I was trying to ask, well, is there a way of seeing ourselves collectively? It's kind of like, like we can see an ant colony when looking down from above, we can see the collective of the ant colony in a way that the ants in the colony, they don't really aren't able to see themselves or the Artemis two astronauts looking back at earth. They had a perspective on us that we just can't have here. And so they all do.

41:54Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. All the astronauts do. Yeah. Yeah. Real quick before you take it one step further. Yeah. Do you feel like an outsider or do you feel like you're part of the pack? I definitely feel like I'm part of the pack because like, what is the pack different though? Well, everybody's different in their own special way, but I just feel like within the pack, that doesn't mean everybody has to be exactly the same. As a kid, did you feel like an outsider or were you part of the pack? Kind of both. I mean, I, I've always felt like I was looking at things a little bit, a little bit differently. And mom helps you build the confidence to keep asking.

42:31Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. Oh my God. Yes. Because you didn't understand something. Yeah. And you know, you would explore, explore, explore. So you're naturally an explorist. Yeah. A lot of people would prefer to fit in and look smart as opposed to raise their hand and ask the question. Yeah. I'm sorry, I don't understand. So at some level, you know you're smart. Well, you're sweet to say. I mean, yes. I would be lying. You know that. And so for you, how does your intelligence work? Is it speed and or horizontal ability to hold many frames together? Yeah. And or both? Yeah. So I do think it's both and other things.

43:12And but it's breadth. I think my thing is breadth. It's having - That's what I meant by the horizontal. But you can drill underneath. Yeah. Which is like a lot of, so I just feel like my brain, since I was a little kid, I feel like I'm pretty good at making connections between a lot of disparate things of like how do all these pieces fit together? And I talked about when I'm just about to go on stage for a talk and somebody will say one thing. And it's not just that I'll reference that. It's like you're at the airport and something happens with the weather and then all the flights change at once.

43:49So for me, I'll get one piece of information and then it's like that all of the flights are changing because it'll go through my brain. I'll think, well, if this is true, then how does it touch all of these other things? It's not just one piece of information shows up on itself. It shows up in context. And I think that is something that I feel like I can do pretty well.

44:11Dr. Michael Gervais:So that's actually not intelligence. that's a framework that you're, you are smart, of course. Right. But that's a framework underneath the surface that you apply to information. Yeah. So when a new piece of information comes in and you say, if that is the case, you don't accept it fully, but then you entertain if it was accurate or true or honest or whatever, then you run it through a filter, which is like, how would that impact A, B, C, D? And now we're in that horizontal experience. And then you, you drop down two, three, maybe six levels on some of them. Okay. If I can just add to that. And so that requires a level of openness, because if you're holding on so tight to something and you get some new piece of information that challenges that, if your energy goes to into holding onto that old thing, you're not going to be able to do that.

45:01So I really try to cultivate to the best of my ability, a fluidity and openness, even in the things that I feel like I believe the most. Like if I, something I really believe and then there's, I start to get data and I think, well, maybe this thing that I thought was a core belief isn't right. My aspiration for myself is that I will challenge that thing. It doesn't mean I'll change right away, but I think maybe I need to learn something more to test whether I still believe this thing

45:29Dr. Michael Gervais:that I thought I believed. How do you map that with a sense of anxiousness or a sense of groundedness? And I'll tell you that the Zen teacher shares with the student, good news, bad news. And the student says, up to you. And the Zen teacher says, all right, bad news. Life is like falling through the sky with nothing to grasp or hold on to. And good news, there's no bottom. Okay, so you apply both of those. You can free flow through life. Nothing to grasp onto, meaning there's no absolute truths that you're working from. It's an assumption I'm making right now. but a radical openness to explore, which can feel very almost amorphous on what you're resting on.

46:11Dr. Michael Gervais:So how do you manage that internally? Because the need to cling to something is the desire for certainty. And it feels like if I can hold wood, that's what sailors would say, stay true and hold fast and stay true. Hold fast is like, hold onto something that you can trust. And you've got this ability to just keep it fluid. How do you do that? Yeah. So my answer will be aspirational because everybody has to have some kind of anchors that we hold onto in life and whether it's relationships or aspects of identity. But I feel like for me, it's a sense of appreciation of the process of the journey. Like the thing is that exploration.

46:57I get a lot of joy and meaning from the process of exploration. I talked about getting—I was pulled out of class in fourth grade of Hebrew day school, and then eventually I was kicked out of that school, which was one of the better things that's ever happened to me in life. But one of the things, even though— Because you said, I don't believe in God? And I was a troublemaker, and I challenged everything every single day, and I got kicked out of class of all the religious classes every single day. And eventually, I don't know why I didn't leave that school earlier, but eventually they said, this is not a place for you.

47:29And they were 1 ,000 % right. But what I will say, one of the things that I valued from that part of my education, even though I was a feral child when I went to my next school, I didn't know anything about English grammar or anything. And I had to learn it all very quickly. But in the Jewish tradition, there's the sacred book, which is the Torah, the Old Testament. And then there's thousands of years of books about debates on what does it actually mean, the Talmud. And the books of debate are also sacred books. And so it's not that you can anchor yourself on the original text, because if you only do that, you're missing the sacredness of the exploration.

48:17And because in that exploration, there are no right or wrong answers because the debate itself is the sacred thing. And Buddhism has that. I've spent a lot of time in Dharamsala with a lot of the Tibetan Buddhist monks. And you see that they have this system of structured debate. And the idea is don't get stuck in one thing because the process of exploration is the sacred thing. And that's what I really try to aspire to. And that doesn't mean that I have no beliefs. I have actually very strong beliefs.

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50:08Dr. Michael Gervais:Again, that's davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. But for me, part of having a strong belief is allowing enough oxygen so that they can be challenged so we don't become doctrinaire holding on too tight. But also an answer to your question is there's a bit of life structuring that goes into that. But every time when I've had these very tempting offers in life, like I was given an offer to join a big law firm after I graduated from law school. And I was really tempted because I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. And here was this very lucrative, very secure thing. And I looked at it like, well, what am I going to do?

50:50You know, be a lawyer in a law firm my whole life. And then later, after I ran for Congress 23 years ago, I had an offer from McKinsey. and it was very tempting because it was all these really smart people and the kinds of people who I'd been in my various college and grad schools with and I was so tempted because it's like, well, I'm a smart guy, I think. Here's a place where you can get like a little badge of honor for being a smart guy and they send you to do little jobs and it's like smart guy jobs. And I really looked at it and it was so tempting. I thought, but at the same thing, I thought, well, what am I, I'm going to do their thing for my whole life.

51:28So I love your analogy because it requires, there's like a little bit of faith of not doing the thing, which is in a way, I mean, it's a hard path, but an easier path where you get that security. Like there's an insecurity that is necessary for a life of continuous growth.

51:50Dr. Michael Gervais:You have eloquently described in your own language the defining characteristic of mastery. which is a love affair with the process. And you used different words like allowing oxygen to be able to explore and the sacredness of debate and the sacredness of really discernment and getting in there to better understand. When people think about, I get this question all the time and they're like, what's the difference between mastery and high performance? And another maybe artsy way without pinning us down to an actual definition yet, which is not hard to do, but to use more of a symbol of it, high performance is a bit more metallic and it has right angles to it, right?

52:35Dr. Michael Gervais:There's a podium, there's a metal, there's associated with high performance. Mastery has different contouring and it is more about the commitment to the path than it is about the end state. And you are far more committed to the path of exploration, which is so unsettling for so many because the destination is not interesting. And it's a little bit of a distraction to the artistry of really trying to become artistic in said, you know, craft. Yeah. And, and, and the destination is, is unknown because it's like sailing in the direction of the North star. You can't go straight at the North Star, you have to attack.

53:20And just in this interaction that we've had, I mean, I said something, but you were very actively listening. And then you had your very wise philosophy about mastery, but you restated it to me, incorporating the things that I had said. And my feeling is in a conversation, if it's a meaningful, deep conversation, that's what's happening over and over. I mean, we're sitting here in the same room. We each have our microbiome that reflects our lives up to this point. But by being in the same room and we're sharing the same air, our microbiomes are jumping back and forth between us. So I'm going to leave this room on a biological level.

54:00I'm going to be Jamie plus a little bit of Mike. And Mike is going to be Mike plus a little bit of Jamie. And if we have a meaningful conversation, that's also going to be the case intellectually. And it's not like I'm going to, I mean, maybe I will, but it's not like I need to, at the end of this, think, all right, here's how I'm changing as a result of my conversation with Mike and vice versa. It's that we had this conversation and we came to it with open minds and open hearts, and then we heard each other, and then we kind of become each other. And that's something that's very wonderful and very beautiful.

54:37And that's why you talked about the question of being inside the pack or outside the pack. We are humans, and we're kind of like ants in the ant colony. We are a collective species. We're speaking the English language which neither you nor I invented. We have a set of cultural norms and expectations, which come from thousands, tens of thousands of years of history and cultural evolution. So we're part of the pack, and that pack is continually growing. And there are people, There are people who have just different kinds of lives. You and I both have the luxury, which comes from, I think, who we are and how we've lived our lives.

55:20But to live these lives of exploration, there are some people who are exploring in different ways or have minds who work differently. So I think we're all part of the pack, but we have different roles.

55:33Dr. Michael Gervais:You have an uncanny ability to, again, work from principles, clearly articulate them. and just about every filter does explore a future state. Yeah. Almost everything you've said is exploring that way. And I think your filter is fundamentally optimistic. No, it's since I was a little kid. I mean, people ask me this, Chris, like, why are you always smiling? It's like, well, I don't know. I've been doing it since a little kid, since I was a little kid. But before we went live, you and I were talking about my late father. And my late father, who passed away a year ago, if you had met him, he was a pediatrician in Kansas City.

56:14And if people who met him, they'd say, well, he's a great guy. But my big critique is, why is he so positive? What's he so happy about? And if you would tell people who didn't know him well, well, actually, he came to the United States as a refugee after the war. Most of the family was killed. They came on the bottom of a ship like you see in the movies where there was no air and everybody was vomiting. They came out in New York. Nobody spoke a word of English and everybody was completely bewildered and he was 13. So that's the starting point. Somebody from that starting point. Did his parents come?

56:52Him and his parents came and most of the rest of the family unfortunately didn't make it tragically. And, and, but he was so grateful to be here and, and he was so grateful for this life. And somebody who would have had that starting point at 13, you could say, why is this person so miserable? And you could say, well, look at what they, what they've been through. And, and I'm not saying that everybody can be, or should be an optimist, but it seems, it seems to me an easier way to go through life.

57:24Dr. Michael Gervais:Why would you pull that back? Like, why, what would the world be like if we all fundamentally had a filter that the future could work out as long as we make it so? Exactly as you said, as long as we make it so, how are we imagining making it so? If we have a positive image of what we can make, that's so inspiring. We talked about the work that you do with athletes of kind of imagining a future state. Like if the thing that you're imagining is a positive thing, that's really inspiring. I haven't worked with the world's best that is not fundamentally optimistic. And we know people hear this all the time, like, oh, athletes do mental imagery.

58:03Dr. Michael Gervais:Well, that is actually available to all of us. Mental imagery is about casting your imagination forward and seeing the most beautiful movie you can imagine and then seeing it and playing it and then being honest with yourself. like, whoa, when I put myself in that shape, I'm being an athlete in my mind right now. When I put myself in that shape, I actually don't know how to link it to the next shape with speed and accuracy in my own mind. So then that gives a really rich set of clues like where to go work. And it also plays a movie that lays neurological pathways. We know that from research, it's quite clear, so that you're more familiar with that expert grooved movement than unfamiliar with that expert grooved movement.

58:49Dr. Michael Gervais:So optimism is a learned behavior, as you know, and it sounds like your dad by default learned it. And then you learned it from mom and dad. Yeah, I learned it from them and it's innate. I mean, I have three brothers and so I'm one of four and we're not all exactly the same in our levels of optimism. So I think there's some of it that's innate and some of it is learned and some of it is self-cultivated. I mean, I think that that's exactly as you were saying, is everybody can say, well, I mean, there are people who are just born pessimistic. I don't think so. I mean, I'm always going to give room for the genetic coding.

59:24Dr. Michael Gervais:Like, you must give that room. Right. I just think it's so culturally and individually. And when I say culture, I mean writ large culture and also family culture and neighborhood culture influence that either way, whether it's genetic coding, culturally influenced or individually developed, you still have a choice on how you want to see the future. Even if you came from the most hardened, the most cynical, you know, family and some genetic predisposition for it. As an adult, I think we have to make a decision. How am I going to see the future? Now, if you've been through some traumas and you still don't quite feel safe in your ability to navigate future states, you probably ought to stay cynical because that will keep you safe.

1:00:07Dr. Michael Gervais:It will keep you away from the edge. my challenge though, because you're a living emblem of it, is that you can come from families that have faced the worst of the worst and then still develop this idea that if I develop a set of psychological, physical, technical skills to navigate the future artistically or in a high performance way, let alone masterfully, that I could go anywhere. I can go explore. That's the word. I mean, it's on the bottom of these microphones, the name of your podcast. That's the finding. The finding is the practice of becoming. And it's, yes, people may have a Satori experience where you get hit on the head with a stick and you have sudden enlightenment.

1:00:54But for most people, it's saying, well, I want to get to this place and I don't really know how I'm going to get there. But I know if I make little steps and look at my behavior and my options and start moving in that direction, I can find mastery. And finding is the active process of directionally living.

1:01:17Dr. Michael Gervais:What is the dark side of the counter rotation to what we've been talking about? Yes, optimism. Yes, think about abundance. Yes, think about what could be and work your way to it and have a love affair with the unknown and don't cling too much because you'll be stuck in some sort of old way of thinking when there's a whole new world to explore. Okay, great. What is the dark side? And can you make it about you? Like, where do you struggle in this approach to life? Yeah, and so I'll say general and then specific. I want to know your heart in this answer. Okay, good. No, you're so good. You're so good.

1:01:54But Buddhism, the reason why I love Buddhism, but I'm not a Buddhist, is this idea of non-attachment. Because I just think that's hard. I don't, for me, it doesn't fully ring true that we should be non-attached. Because I just feel like there are things in life and people in life, we don't want to cling to obsessively, but we want to have that level of attachment. And I think that it's healthy. Somebody has a child or a partner or whatever. I think that's, it's a healthy, a healthy thing to have. The downside for me is that in pursuit of everything that we've been discussing, you know, it's all great and it sounds great on a podcast, but there's a cost of every choice that we make.

1:02:41And so I have led this life of exploration since I was, I was 19 years old when I went and worked in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border. I've continuously pushed myself to say, well, I need to go to the hardest place, the most challenging place. I need to live a life of exploration. But I'm 58 years old. I've been with the same girlfriend for 13 years and we live together in New York. We don't have kids and I've kind of lived this life. And there's an element, this sounds negative, but I'll say it, self-indulgence. That is, it has some very, very nice upsides. And I love writing books.

1:03:27I love sharing ideas. I love having conversations with people like you. And because both you and I have dedicated our lives to this process of growth, but I'm going back to Kansas City in a couple of months for my 40th high school reunion. And some of my high school friends are grandparents. And I look at that. And even now just walking around, just when I see people, when I was younger and I would see people on planes with these little kids, I thought, oh my God, they're but the grace of whomever go I. I'm so fortunate I'm living this life. But now I look at it and think, God, that looks really meaningful.

1:04:03And I don't want to miss that. So it's not that everybody should become whatever the thing is of like living a life of constant exploration. Like if you have a kid, as you know, like you have to have a level of constancy. There has to be a level of stability. And while I certainly value what I do and how I live, I'm acutely aware of the costs of this life.

1:04:31Dr. Michael Gervais:I so appreciate that. I mean, I think it's one of my great fears is how am I doing for the people that have, and I have promised to be great for? Yeah. Because I love the pursuit of understanding deeply. And it requires me to explore and go and be on the frontier and understand and muse about it, think about it, wrestle it with it, get afraid of what I'm understanding and not understanding. And that is a full-time commitment. and it's the great fear I have is that how am I doing in the eyes and hearts of the ones that gave me the promise to be great partners to each other my wife my son my family members and I think it's the great dark side of the full commitment required to go to the edge to really understand how do you wrestle with that in your heart because I don't think you and I are alone in the in yeah in anything that we're wrestling with so obviously you're honest with it.

1:05:28Dr. Michael Gervais:When you feel the pit in your stomach, how do you manage that? Yeah. Again, there's the aspirational answer and there's the real answer. And I'll try to give both. The aspirational answer is I try to entertain both sides and I give, I have a lot of energy. I mean, I love having this conversations with you, conversations with you connected to books that I've written, bringing ideas into the world. And, you know, every day I get these wonderful messages from readers. And that's, that's really reassuring. But I'm also like, like we just said, just acutely aware that there are costs and, and I'm always asking myself, am I making the right decision?

1:06:11And like I said, I'm, I'm 58. If I'm ever going to do things like have a child, like it's, you know, I got to get rolling or I don't want to be a thousand years old. And so what I try to do is to translate these abstract ideas over time into actually real world choices. Because if it's just philosophical musings about trade-offs, that really doesn't do anything. So it's starting with those abstract ideas and then saying, well, what does it actually mean in life? And you said it exactly right, that we all have relationships and people who are relying on us. And there's a balance between having big ideas and writing books and having conversations like this.

1:06:59And exactly as you said, just showing up in really practical ways. Like if you have a little kid, your little kid wants you just to be there. And the kid doesn't know that you're living this life of philosophical exploration.

1:07:15Dr. Michael Gervais:Does not know what happens when you leave the family, but they do know what happens in your own mind when you're with them. Yeah. Yes. I think that's really, really important, which is a total other topic, which is why everybody with little kids should not have their phones with them. Because your kids know when you're focusing on them, when your energy is focused. So I don't have any easy answers to that question. It's a struggle and it's a process. I'm not at all convinced. I'm getting it right. And there's a tendency for me and maybe for other people just to go with the thing I'm good at. So I feel like I'm pretty good at exploring ideas.

1:07:56And then when I get to a certain point, being able to articulate those ideas, I'm pretty good at listening to other people and incorporating their things. And so there's a tendency to just go with that. So I'm getting a huge amount of positive reinforcement from the world. But our greatest capabilities can also be a trap. And I think that's the struggle. I don't have a good answer other than to try to honor the process and not get carried away and not become too enamored with the voice that I've so cultivated that it crowds out other voices that maybe are within me and trying to be heard. Well said.

1:08:36Dr. Michael Gervais:Obviously you have a, like, if there's a cartoon character, I would want to see for you like this big oversized brain, let's say, okay, cognitive abilities are in check. And then like, wouldn't it be rad to also, if somebody could pick up like this huge heart that both are connected, you know, and not just one overdeveloped and one, you know, underdeveloped, like that would be a great cartoon. So I tried it. So, but I think there's a third angle because there's the head and And then there's the heart. And then there's just like the living of life. And so I feel like my head and my heart are both aligned in this kind of what feels like an idealistic mission for the world.

1:09:19And then there's just the day-to-day things of life. And where I feel like I try and I think I'm pretty good at treating everybody around me with a great deal of love and respect. but there's just the day-to-day of our own life choices. And I think that's the thing. Everybody lives on this kind of matrix and you can kind of plot yourself maybe where you are on this matrix. But for me, I would have in this cartoon, which is a wonderful idea, like a third thing, which is like, am I making the right choices? While I follow my head and my heart, is there another thing? I mean, I use the idea of possibility of having a child as another narrative, but there are lots of different narratives.

1:10:01Italo Calvino has a great short story in his book, Invisible Cities, that a city is a bunch of possible, and you think of every person living their life, that's one realization of their opportunity set. But every person has many different possible lives that they could have led had they made different choices. And that if you think of each person as a thread of there's their actual life, and then there's the thread of the different lives they could have led had they made different choices. And then there's a whole city of people the same way. You see a community as a weaving of all of these real and possible lives.

1:10:44And so I have this blessing and curse of living my actual life and imagining all the different alternative lives. I think the year cartoon, it would get very busy with all of these different thought circles.

1:11:02Dr. Michael Gervais:I want to take a second here to tell you about a morning routine that I've been using for years. For me, it's a great way to switch on my mind, to ready myself, to take on the day. So before I check my phone, my emails, market updates, or text threads, I choose how to start my morning. That's always in my control. That's always in your control too. This is the same morning mindset routine that some of the world's top performers across sport, business, and the arts are using. The best part? It only takes about 90 seconds to do. So just head over to FindingMastery.com slash morning to download the audio guide for free.

1:11:37Dr. Michael Gervais:Again, head to FindingMastery.com slash morning to get your morning mindset routine. Let's just stay on purpose for a minute. Do you have clarity of your purpose? Like what you're doing here? I do, but it's not specific. It's not like, it's not, I want to do this one thing because I want to give space for growth and change. But it's definitely, as I said, it's connected to my impact in the world. I mean, different people see their lives at different scales and, you know, no, no judgment at all. I mean, like my youngest brother is a wonderful, wonderful man and he's a physician and he has two great kids and he really sees his life in the context of this circle of his wife and his children and the smaller community that he's in.

1:12:30My aspirations for myself are big and sometimes I feel like they're too big. I had a line in one of my novels, if you try to grab the entire universe, you may end up with nothing in your arms. And so I always have that fear. But the way I kind of see my world is actually in a really big way. And so my judge for myself is have I had a positive impact? But as we've been discussing, I'm not at all certain that that's the right goal. And I think that like it may be like I asked my late father before he passed away. I asked both of my parents, you know, in the pie chart of your life, of meaning in your life at this later stage, how big are the different slices for family and work and kids?

1:13:26And my dad looked at me and he said, you don't understand. Family is the pie. And that meant a lot to me. And again, And I'm not saying that I'm exactly that because I kind of feel like, well, the world is the pie, but that's a really big pie. Maybe that's a world that's too big for one person.

1:13:47Dr. Michael Gervais:I don't know. One of the most difficult questions that my mentor asked me, he said, okay, Mike, and it was a concrete kind of throwaway question. Are you committing your life to go deep with few or shallow with many? and I thought, oh, oh God, I never thought about that. Am I going to go deep with a few to make a real meaningful difference with a handful of people? Or am I going to kind of skim along the surface for a hundred, a hundred thousand, a million, whatever, you know? But you found, I mean, what a nice combination. Like we're having this meaningful dialogue here and you're doing it so much.

1:14:28And yet we're bringing, you are bringing other people into this conversation. So I, like, maybe there's a combination, the foundation of everything that you're doing is about going deep, at least as I see it, going deep with a few, starting with yourself. And then like, what are the ways of sharing that? And I imagine there are lots of people who are listening to this podcast. I mean, like me, and we talked again before going live, how I've listened to some of your conversations and I've gotten a lot out of it. And I've seen you in these different modes. Like sometimes it's more like helping somebody tell their story.

1:15:07And sometimes it's like a therapy session and just kind of listening in. It's like, wow, like there's a lot of unanswered questions here. Like, I don't know the answer to that, but I think that people leave you and me out of this. But there are people who've gone deep individually and have created these beautiful transcendent works of art that have allowed other people and even the Ten Commandments themselves. I mean, I'm a non-believer in that traditional way, but somebody created these things or some small group of people created these things and it's given guidance to a whole lot of people for thousands of years.

1:15:45So for me, at least, I don't see the choice as being as binary as your mentor suggested. And it just seems that your work is a representation of that.

1:15:57Dr. Michael Gervais:Beautifully said. Thank you. Let's take us home with, I think is a seemingly simple question, but a little bit more complex, certainly as it runs through your filter. Let's go 10 years out just because it's an easy number. Let's put on your optimistic filter and let's strip down to one or two things that humans need to do to be able to flex into co-creating a positive, better 10 years from now than we have currently. What do the humans need to do? Yeah. So as I said in the beginning of our conversation, people are acting like this is a conversation about technology. Technology is what gets us to the conversation, but the conversation is about values.

1:16:38And it's about values that need to be translated into systems. If people feel that there is these overwhelming technological revolutions, and they're bigger than we are, and we are just bystanders, it's going to be a terrible outcome. There's going to be a small number of corporations, but these technologies are just going to do a huge amount of harm. The reason why we have societies, why we've come together, why we have all of these faith traditions and spiritual traditions and ethical traditions and legal traditions is because as communities, we've come together and said, here's what we would like the future to look like, and here's how we're going to realize our principles in the real world.

1:17:26And so if that doesn't happen now, given the speed and the acceleration of these technologies, given the power, given the intimacy of these technologies, the world is going to feel very unfamiliar and very dangerous. So while I do think I'm not one for saying we should pull the plug on any of this, even if we could, humans and human values need to be the drivers of this. And if that happens, I think we can do all these wonderful, magical things. It won't be perfect. There'll be ups and downs. But if that doesn't happen and it doesn't happen relatively quickly, there are a whole lot of dystopian models that we can easily imagine.

1:18:13Dr. Michael Gervais:I'm going to put some wood behind that arrow. Is that values, yes, first principles and values. And you put them in your AI Ten Commandments or you and Chatty did it. Moses did it in his way. And okay, so I think the values are quite clear universally for most people. I think that that over the thousands of years that we've been thinking and writing things down and transforming from thoughts to words to actions, that I think we could collectively get pretty close. And you did a really nice job on it. Now, if you do not have, and I'll speak about you and me in this conversation, the requisite, the required psychological skills to manage yourself in a high stress, consequential environment, you will default to something other than those aspirational set of values, principles, and behaviors.

1:19:04Dr. Michael Gervais:We are required right now, in my mind, my best estimate is we are required to invest in our ability to be aware of our psychology, to be aware of our feelings and emotions and have the skills to navigate those so that we can be honest. This is AI commandment number three, tell the truth. So that we can be honest in those environments and line up against the values. Most people sign off on the values and they're like, those are great. and then you put them in a really dangerous, seemingly, or actually dangerous environment, and they will bend eight out of 10 of those commandments to survive. I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong, but that's not the design.

1:19:46Dr. Michael Gervais:The designer, here's the values. Now train yourself, whether I'm saying psychologically, train yourself to be about those. This is why I was so attracted to the Zen traditions and the samurai warriors is that was their, that was their fundamental approach to life. Yeah. And I, so I completely agree. Um, and that has to happen in a context that, that everybody couldn't do those things and should do those things. Uh, and I think it's essential, but I like to think of it as a, like an inverted pyramid and the individual is the bottom and making sure that we're doing it for ourselves and we're helping other people doing.

1:20:25I mean, just like you with this podcast. I mean, that's the mission of this is to share these skills and capabilities. But then those individual sensibilities need to filter upward into communities and whether it's businesses or faith communities, into governments, into international, global. And all of these pieces need to be connected. The individual is the base of the point, I guess, of the inverted pyramid. And the unsexy word for all of this is governance. And it starts with the individual. So it's governance of the self. But if we don't have this systemic framework, we'll have these increasingly enlightened individuals needing to operate in increasingly dangerous and hostile environments.

1:21:17And that's going to be really difficult. And so that's why in addition to translating these principles individually, we all need to think about, well, what are the systems that will make it easier for everybody to live these lives, for everybody to feel that we have an opportunity to, like we talked about before, to imagine a better future and to get from here to there individually, but with the societal and other supports that will make it easier and more possible.

1:21:44Dr. Michael Gervais:Jamie, I love this conversation. I love how you're showing up in the world. Keep leading from the front. And, you know, thank you for the discerning, the honest, the thoughtful conversation. evidenced by your body of work and the commitment you've made to be honest in your approach to life. So I love how you help me feel and think. And I think our community is going to eat up your book. Well, thank you so much. It's such a pleasure and honor to be with you again. It's our third time. But I'm an active listener to your podcast. And I always feel like I'm learning and I'm growing. And the reason why that is, is that you have this wonderful ability to, I mean, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has this conversation.

1:22:28It's like, God, Mike is my best friend. But I was just thinking, you're such a great listener. Oh, thank you. And you're adaptive. And I think that's, it's like, again, finding mastery.

1:22:41Dr. Michael Gervais:Yeah. It's not mastery. And it's not found mastery. It's the process of finding and every person is trying to find it. And just like you said, if you're the greatest athlete in the world, the second you break the world record in the hundred meters, you're thinking like, I wonder if I could go a little faster. And I think that's the great work that you're doing is that everybody doing everything, certainly ourselves included, has the ability to learn, to say, well, what can I do more? What can I do better? How can I think about what I'm trying to do and best align my life in pursuit of that? Well said.

1:23:24Dr. Michael Gervais:Thank you. Thank you again. Thank you. Next time on Finding Mastery, we examine what makes us motivated to act and why can that drive sometimes disappear? Dr. Mike sits down with Oxford neurologist and neuroscientist Dr. Masood Hussain, author of Our Brains, Ourselves, to explore the surprising signs of motivation, attention, and dopamine, and what changes in the brain as we age, experience memory loss, or develop dementia that can teach us about who we really are. So join us Wednesday, September 16th at 9 a.m. Pacific, only on Finding Mastery. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us.

1:24:05Dr. Michael Gervais:Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously.

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1:25:23Dr. Michael Gervais:If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your healthcare providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.