If AI Takes All the Jobs, What Happens to Our Purpose? (Existential Psychologist Weighs In)

25:38It's the ones who feel like this is all I did. This was my job. This was my life. And now I have nothing. And they, you know, going back to a previous point, they turn inward and they're just at home and they're not using their skills in any way. They're the ones who feel like, well, I don't matter anymore. I don't have a use anymore. And that's not good. I mean, it's a predictor of not living very, very long. It's a predictor of bad health habits. It's better if you can make that transition at the individual level into retirement. So like, well, what's the next stage of my life look like? And what can I do to be a meaningful contributor to my community?

26:10I feel like you can use that logic to think about, well, what happens if it's not an individual who's retiring, but it's a society? He's going through some type of economic or societal transition in which we have to rethink the way work works. And I think you've offered great advice on this in some of your previous podcasts. Because even for me, and I know I talk about this, and I'm very close to the data on this, is the reality is going to be some decoupling of job title to identity. But even for me, I think the idea that I don't have something to strive for professionally doesn't sit very well.

26:47And I'm also very aware of what's going to unfold. Being a part of your community is incredible. but if I'm just kind of floating around and I don't have this anchor of striving and maybe that's something that I have to go internal about but it doesn't feel great thinking about that is that because we have built this society around work being so central to who you are I mean when kids are three years old we ask them what they want to be when they grow up we bring the idea of your identity is a job like the kids don't think in terms of work but we introduce that to them at such a young age and then we basically say you go to school for 17 years to prepare for this thing not just for life or not just to become you know yourself or become someone but to do something with a title and so is that because we've made this world around this construct of jobs and work that it feels much more existential than maybe it really is like we've done that to ourselves i was smiling a little bit because you know it's funny we do ask these kids these questions and they say all sorts of things, you know, from superhero to, you know, more like normal or predictable job aspirations.

27:59But what's funny is like, I used to be a college professor. I was a college professor for a long time. And most university students change their majors. And a lot of, you'll see this reported in media outlets where, look, students aren't even using their college degrees. And that's a bit of a misrepresentation And what it is, is they're doing something that's not in the specific major that they did. Right. So they might have done a major in psychology, but now they're in banking. But that doesn't mean they're not using their college education or the experience. And so I think the question of work or purpose in the world is tied.

28:39You're right. In the modern economy, it seems more like explicitly tied to professional life or work life. But really underneath that is it's like, what am I doing to help build and sustain society? And I'm with you. I don't think this is an immediate issue. I don't think robots are going to replace workers tomorrow. And I think you've had some good commentary on this of how AI can't actually do people's jobs. But down the road, yeah, maybe we have all these advances. And I think humans will find new ways of doing work where they feel like they're still creating something in a marketplace, whether it's an economic marketplace or a marketplace of ideas in which they are able to feel like they're building, that they're entrepreneurial, that they're contributing to something.

29:29And so I understand what you're saying, but I see work in a more, I guess I see it more abstractly. that, yeah, in our current framework, we very much tie it to jobs. But really, it's that action. It's that feeling like we're contributing in some way. And there's lots of ways to do that, I think. And that's, yeah, I see work as separate from jobs. Jobs is a relatively recent invention, but work isn't. And maybe if we were to zoom out on the macro scale of history, even in the last 500 years, there's a couple hundred years or maybe a thousand years where we identify based on a religion or community or social belonging.

30:06And then there was the chapter where we identified based on jobs. And we're headed into a new chapter and it's undefined. But on the macro scale, it will make sense when we get there. But until then, it feels quite disruptive. But when you hear AI leaders casually say, we're going to have to prepare for societal disruption. And people will just casually do other things and the economy will take care of itself. We'll introduce universal basic income all of the economic needs and labor will be done by ai and robots and then people will be freed just to do whatever they want and the idea of you know just getting some form of a check to sustain seems like it's just this simple future that we step into how do you see that idea as an existential psychologist yeah well two things one i'll believe it when I see it.

30:55You know, because there's long been science fiction type utopian visions, I think, and things rarely pan out as predicted or imagined. And wouldn't that be a dystopian vision in a way? That's a good point. So I think it would be a dystopian vision if it looked something along the lines of WALL-E, right? Which actually has a very positive ending, right? Where humans reclaim their agency after, you know, just kind of being lazy and taken care of by robots, figuring out, oh, there's something more here. Where I'm bullish on humans is even when we go, even if this happens, I think there might be a period of existential decline where people feel like, well, you know, what are we supposed to do?

31:49But we're clever. Like we're creative. We're adaptive. I think people will figure out new ways to build frameworks for meaning while they'll still say, well, you know what? We still matter. Like there's still things that we can do that robots can't. You know, I provided a few examples earlier, you know, maybe a robot can hold your hand. And maybe we'll have human-like robots, but will it be the same as knowing another person as they're sharing that emotional experience with you, sharing that tragedy or that triumph with you? I think there's something deep about our emotional lives that, you know, whether you're a religious person or not, at some level is deeply spiritual because it's about what it means to be a human being and to feel something.

32:34And so I think we will privilege that more. And you're already seeing this a little bit with the way you're seeing an increase in people privileging real life experiences over digital experiences. And again, people aren't rejecting digital technology. We all love digital technology. It's improved our lives in many ways. But you're seeing people say, OK, well, that's good. But there's something missing. There's something about the in-person experience. The COVID-19 pandemic really brought this home when people were not able to spend a lot of time with others in person. And it reminded them, oh, yeah, that's a big part of what being a human is about is being in a room with other people, sharing experiences.

33:13And so I think that will continue. And I don't know. Well, you know, it'll be interesting to see what happens, for instance, when we have AI actors in movies. I'm really curious about that. Will people like those movies? Maybe they'll think they're interesting. But a lot of the people's interest in Hollywood culture is the actors in their lives and the gossip about it, right? And understanding what they're doing. We like watching interviews with actors because we like to hear their story, what got them into this, what motivates them, how they performed that character, how they prepared for it.

33:47So even in something where we've never met a person and we're just watching them on a screen and it's all very technological, we still like that human backstory. And I think, so I'm interested about that too, like how, when these transitions happen, will humans respond? And will that change the development of these systems as well? Will we carve out a space for ourselves where we say, well, you know, really, yeah, maybe a machine could do this, but we think of this more as a human activity. And maybe the arts will be more like, maybe that's a domain where that will exist. I don't know. But it's an interesting time for sure, an exciting time.

34:25And I guess it's so interesting to think, do we over-index on technology and then realize we went too far? For instance, with dating apps and social media, we did all of this, we kind of realigned our lives to this digital world. That felt really insufficient. and now we're gearing away from that. But do we go through a period where we actually do think robots and AI can fill some voids and then we have to over-index away from that? Yeah, I think so. And that seems to be the story of progress. We just go for it, right? We just kind of go wild. We go all the way. And then sometimes we recalibrate and we say, okay, that was an interesting experiment, but we need to dial that back a little bit.

35:12And I think to your point about social media, you're right. That's what's happening. It's not that people are getting rid of it entirely because they like many of the features that social media offers, but they're saying, okay, maybe it was a bit much and maybe I need to carve out some space. And there's lots of surveys showing this. The vast majority of Americans are at least reporting that they're dialing back or they're setting time aside without their phones present so they can live in the moment more. And so, yeah, I think you're right. I think that's a possibility that things will get really wild and we'll be excited about all the shiny new robotic toys and opportunities.

35:50But then maybe we'll be like, okay, now let's figure out, let's dial it back. And again, that's part of the human condition. And you do a lot of research on the idea of nostalgia. And I think a lot of us can relate to having those moments where you kind of feel happy or joyful thinking about something. But then it's also this longing for the past. and what we're describing we're seeing the rise of this counterculture right so people are unsubscribing from dating apps and joining things in person to meet people the rise of the flip phone more articles about offline as this luxury people feeling like oh i just want to get into nature and be unreachable by a billion people which i don't think was ever natural in the first place you could describe that as people longing for life that looked like it did in the 90s but maybe through the lens of your work and nostalgia, is this actually our desire for a better future?

36:43Like we're actually pointing much more towards the future than we are to the past. Absolutely. So I very much believe that nostalgia is a future-oriented experience. We think of it as past-oriented because of course it involves reflecting sentimentally on the past, but no one has a time machine that I know of, right? No one can go backwards. And so we're inherently a forward looking species. Like we're trying to figure out tomorrow and the day after that and these long-term ambitions that we have. And part of the way we do that is we pull from the past. So we don't, we're not trying to go back to the past.

37:17We're trying to use the past in ways to build a better future. So all the things we're talking about, you know, are exciting and scary because the future is unknown. We don't know what direction these technologies are going to take. That's the nature of the future. It hasn't happened yet. What we do know is we can look back and say, these are the memories and experiences that I've had that are meaningful. This is what's fulfilled me the most. How can I factor that into the decisions I make, the priorities that I have for different paths that I could choose? And we've also started to find that people don't just do this with their own life.

37:50They don't just use their own personal or autobiographical nostalgia. They also use what we refer to as historical nostalgia, which I think is really cool. We only really started studying this in the last few years, which is you have a lot of people saying, I'm nostalgic for a time before I was alive. They don't have any memories from that time, but they are consuming artifacts from that time. They're watching media from that time. They're hearing stories from older generations about that time. They're reading historical documents. And what they're discovering is most people, if you ask them, don't want to go live 50 years ago.

38:23They don't want to give up the modern advances in medicine and technology and civil rights and things like that. You know, they're not saying I want to go back to that. But they're saying there's something from the past that maybe we've let go of or that we've lost or that we've just neglected. Nature is a good example, to your point, of like people don't want to go live like people did in the frontier, but they would like to spend more time in green spaces. And in fact, when they're thinking about planning future cities, they think, well, maybe we should have more green spaces in them because it turns out there's something really nice about that and something like the humans really enjoy the experiences of awe and connectedness to nature.

39:00And so, yeah, I think of nostalgia as very much this way as we approach the future to be guided by what's given us meaning in the past and to use that in a way that gives us more confidence too in our decision making because it's very difficult to know what to do. And this is why it's difficult to be young when we're talking about young generations and challenges with meaning. I mean, that's just inherent to being young. It's like you've got your life ahead of you and you're trying to figure out which path to take and it seems overwhelming. Well, nostalgia can help, I think, in this way. It can help us pull inspiration from the past as long as we do it in a constructive and productive way and to figure out what path is the best path forward for us.

39:42And I was on social media, ironically, and I came across this young girl talking. She was maybe, I'm just going to guess between 19 and 22. And she was saying, you know, we might be the first generation that dies with more memories of other people's lives than our own. And that comment really struck me. Because when you think about nostalgia and how you describe it, as nostalgia is actually really important psychologically, it helps remind you of who you are. And it can be good to go into those moments of nostalgia. But what if there is, you know, a generation of people that don't actually have those memories because we've spent more time looking at other people's lives, but you're seeing nostalgia doesn't even have to be a part of our own life.

40:24We can be nostalgic for time periods and events that we didn't even actually experience. And that can be a guiding light. Or do you think I'm looking at it wrong by over-indexing on how much time we've given to this algorithmic Truman show? Yeah, yeah. So it's hard to know, you know, Because people will say, oh, young people aren't having the same opportunity to build nostalgia experience that previous generations have. I'm always personally a little bit skeptical of the kids these days kinds of arguments because I remember talking to my grandmother, who, by the way, rode a horse to school, which is pretty incredible, right?

41:04I remember her saying, oh, I feel sorry for you kids because when I was young, we grew up on the farm and we had freedom and we were just outside doing things. And there are aspects of that that sound very appealing, but I look back at my childhood in the 80s and the 90s, I'm like, I think it was pretty cool. And so I do think that it's hard to know in the moment what any particular generation is going to feel nostalgic about in the future. But to your point, there is research, for instance, on the concept of savoring. And you're more likely to build nostalgic memories if you savor experiences.

41:39And so this is where I think our digital distractions can be a barrier to nostalgia. I go to concerts, and this is going to make me sound old, but I'm just always shocked at the number of people who are more focused on recording the concert on their phone than enjoying the concert. And I'm just, you know, and again, maybe that just makes me old, but I'm like, well, you came here to see live music, like enjoy it while it's live. You don't have to capture it on your phone. And maybe that's a minority position. But I think the research shows that when you savor something, when you really take it in, you're more likely to feel nostalgic about it in the future.

42:21So I do think that's something. And it's not just young people. We're all getting more addicted to our phones and more distracted. It's good to take a step back and look around and appreciate the world and what's going on in your life. and I don't know if that's a generation specific thing but I do think it's more challenging now with all the digital distractions we have but to your point about historical nostalgia one thing that we've found that I think is really fascinating is how young people are their technology's introducing them to a life before this technology, right? They're learning about this by watching TikTok videos and by watching YouTube and they're saying, this was what high school was like in the 1990s.

43:05And they're getting really into that. So it's just kind of funny that the learning about it by the technology. But then what's kind of cool is that they're often going and using that to talk to people. So that's maybe a conversation starter for a person in an older generation to have this intergenerational contact is to go talk to their mom and dad or aunt and uncle or older co-worker and say, was it really like that? Tell me more. And then that kind of creates a dialogue for inspiration, which again, I had when I was young, you know, talking to the older generation about what life was like. And I feel like I picked up some things that, you know, were useful.

43:40And so I think where historical nostalgia is even though it seems to be starting for many young people with their phones by watching videos and learning about the past, it often ends with them getting off their phones and going out in the world and talking to people. And so this is why you see a number of interesting consumer trends like increases in vinyl record sales. It's not just people my age. It's young generations. And they're saying, you know what? It's kind of cool to have the physical media. One, you own it. And so if your streaming platform takes it down, you have it. So there's a practical motivation.

44:12But then there's just something about curating a physical collection that you can handle, the tactile experience. and then that sense of like this kind of helped you know this is part of my my story of like what makes me me and what i'm into and so i think you're seeing a lot of those historical patterns re-emerge because young people are discovering that there's something as much as we like these digital devices and streaming content there's something neat about like having that physical shopping experience and then being able to curate something that feels tangible to you. And if I was to plot the trend line over the next five years, of course, the world's going to look really unrecognizable.

44:56But I think one of the trend lines that's not as easy to spot is how much we are going to veer away from this idea of being constantly connected, scrolling, available, our lives becoming this performance that others can quantify and rate. I mean, talk about living in an unnatural coliseum. And I think we're actually, and we are already intuitively moving away from that. And I think that those numbers are just going to grow. And even your point about to create nostalgic experiences, we have to just savor the moment that we're in and just be more present. There's this pressure for life to look like this performance that you post and share and can get quantified.

45:34But to just be in that moment can actually make your life start to feel more nostalgic and in some ways more meaningful or are those two not necessarily that correlated? Yeah, yeah. No, so nostalgia is a big driver of meaning. So when people engage in nostalgic reflection, it tends to increase their sense of meaning in life. And it does so because nostalgia, you can be nostalgic for lots of things, but one common characteristic of nostalgic experiences is they tend to be highly social. Most, not all, but most nostalgic memories are memories shared with other people. And a lot of those memories are memories in which you have done something that like it doesn't.

46:11This is what makes life worth it and what makes life fulfilling. So you've done something with people. And they're not necessarily entirely happy memories either. When we were first doing this research, you know, almost 25 years ago now, we were interviewing people south of London. And I worked at the University of Southampton, in Southampton, England. And we were interviewing older adults and they were sharing these nostalgic memories from times when they were children in World War II and that southern part of England was heavily bombed by German bombers. And so this is not a good time in life.

46:43It's like now you're hearing some people talk about nostalgia during COVID. Like this isn't a good time. It isn't a time that any of them wanted to go back to. But they have these memories from that time that reminded them of what's important in life. And to your point, it wasn't like what looks cool on Instagram, right? It was what it was to be with people that really matter in my life. And what am I doing for those people? Nostalgia can help you like really focus on that. There's lots of things that are fun or interesting or distracting or just stimulating in many ways, but nostalgia really helps you focus, well, what are the things that I really value though?

47:19What makes my life meaningful? And so So many, not all, but many nostalgic memories center on meaningful memories. And so, yeah, I do think that can be useful going forward because it serves as sort of as a guide for people. And do you think social media has really gotten in the way of our ability to just feel like our lives are meaningful because we can continuously compare it to somebody else that's doing something different, something better, something bigger? or that's actually just this feeling of never feeling satisfied. And I think about it even in my own life or life of friends where they'll achieve some sort of a goal that was on the vision board and then you achieve that goal and suddenly no one says anything about it and it's on to the next thing.

48:09Or you get that relationship, but then suddenly, well, I feel still unsatisfied because there's this aspect of my career that isn't fulfilled. or you get the career and then it's like, but I'm still single. So I feel like something's still missing. Is that just amplified by social media or is that actually just part of the human condition to need to continue to move forward? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's both. And so I do think social media can, these social comparison processes can be bad. So we did this research on what we call digital flourishing and we asked American adults about different dimensions of their digital lives and whether they felt good about them.

48:46And on many things, it was a positive story. Like most Americans said they feel like they can control, like, you know, whether or not they're on, you know, they can get offline if they want to. They're in control of the time they spend online. The area in which they had the lowest level of flourishing was what we call positive social comparison, which is when I compare, I'm comparing myself to others in a way that inspires me. So social media could do that, right? You could look to people that energize you. You see them as role models and inspire you. But a lot of people don't feel that way. They feel like they look to others and they're engaging in a social comparison that makes them feel worse about themselves and demotivated.

49:23So I do think that can be a challenge. But at the same time, I think you're also correct to point out that this is the story of the human condition is meaning is always in motion. There's a momentum to meaning. and we actually did this is many years ago we we did a study where we looked at goal completion and there was this ironic effect that happened that you would think your intuition might be when people complete a goal they feel more meaningful and what we found is as people were working on a goal they felt more meaningful as they were approaching that goal they felt more meaningful if they got close to completing it or completed it their meaning actually went down because like you said, it's a little bit like, well, what's next?

50:04So that's not just a phenomenon of like modern life or social media. There is a sense that meaning has to be sustained. That's an ongoing project. It's not something that you can just pull from. And, you know, this is, you know, like the point I made earlier about retirement. People can't just retire and feel like, well, I built up, you know, I built up this bank account of 40 years of meaningful work. And so I'm good. No, they need to feel like they're still in the game. and so I do think that it's important to have these, you know, to have one different types of goals. So if you think about it like an investment portfolio where all your meaning isn't in one particular investment, right?

50:41You have a diverse portfolio, existential portfolio. I think that's important because anything could happen to any one of those areas and so it's good to be like, I have a holistic approach to meaning. It's not just my job. It's not just my family. There's lots of interest. In addition to that, you got to stay active. I think you've got to feel like you're constantly doing something. And it's good for our brains, too. It's good for our mental health. It's good for our existential health. It's good for our social health to stay engaged and active. And so, yeah, meaning is very much an ongoing project that has its ups and downs.

51:17And if you look at meaning and studies that kind of measure it day to day, you know people you know it goes up and down like some days you feel like oh what am i doing like is it really and other days you feel like oh yeah i'm i'm i'm really making a difference here and so i i do think that is just part of the human condition but yeah social media i mean it can be it can be tough and one of the things that we're we're doing um where i work at the human flourishing lab at archbridge institute is we're trying to help people develop those the skills to use social media or just digital technology in a more healthy and productive ways?

51:51Because the technology has lots of great things about it, right? That could really help improve our lives. It can help improve our social, you know, people say, oh, social media is anti-social. It's like, well, it's how you find out where things are, where you can, you know, it's how you find people with shared interests. It's how, if you live in a small town, you can find that there's other people that have, are interested in the things you are far away, even if you feel alone there. So there's lots of positive social benefits from this technology. The key is to use it in a constructive and productive way, I think.

52:22And if you were to sit in a room with policymakers, knowing that AI is going to create this somewhat sense of disruption as we start to decouple job titles from identity and we can see that that's coming, what would you tell them that they could start to do to prepare society? Like what actions could they be taking or could we all be taking to prepare for this shift that we're stepping into? Or what should they at least be expecting? Because I feel like we don't hear anything from policymakers about the impact of AI on the individual person. Right, right. Yeah, I think a lot. Yeah, that's, you know, that's a good question.

53:02I don't know. I think part of the challenge is a lot of policy is needs to be or should be fairly surgical, right? It needs to be like, this is a specific, you know, this is a specific challenge. And we've thought about these different policy mechanisms for responding to them. I think a lot of policymakers are honestly behind on, you know, an understanding technology. They don't have a lot of understanding of how these AI systems are going to affect society. And so it's not at the top of the priority list. But really, I think, and this isn't a dodge, But really, I think a lot of the work is more cultural than it is policy, because a lot of what's going to have to happen is going to be bottom up, not top down.

53:46It's going to have to be individuals, communities, organizations, institutions figuring out a path forward. And this is why I think it's important to maintain, you know, it's not like a naive optimism, but I think it's important to maintain a hopeful spirit. because that affects our cultural attitude matters. If people become extremely pessimistic and disillusioned and depressed, then that's when we start to turn inward and we retreat from the world and we retreat from our communities and we're just more skeptical and negative. And that's not how you embrace or respond to change. It becomes nihilistic in a way.

54:33And so I think we need a culture that, you know, I'm not saying that we should ignore risks or concerns or that we don't have real challenges. I mean, our policymakers, you know, they should be perhaps focusing on, you know, things like our adversaries, like in the challenges that pose to because there's a lot of potential weaponization. of what we're already seeing this with social media, right? Where there's deep fakes and other, and there's actors from other countries using our social media to demoralize, particularly younger generations of people. And so I think there, obviously there's places like that where policy could be very, very targeted.

55:15And how do, I don't have the answer to that. It's not my area of expertise, but I do think those are concerns. But I think a lot of the societal, at all how the society response to this is going to happen really more at the cultural level and how are we going to approach this and i think that the best way is really with you know to go back to the nostalgia the nostalgia point is like we can look back through history and we can see examples of where the world felt like it was not going in a good direction right when i was a child it was a Cold War, right, with the Soviet Union and the constant fear that, you know, this could all end at any point because of a nuclear war that could break out between the United States and Soviet Union.

55:58So that was a big existential threat. I think I'm the first generation my age that, you know, most of our fathers didn't. You know, we weren't drafted to go into, you know, my father's generation was the Vietnam before that. It was World War II. So that was obviously a big existential threat that we had these major wars. that people fought in. We've had the COVID-19. We had a good example of we remembered previous and even worse pandemics, right? And so we've gone through these challenges before, not the AI thing, obviously, but we've gone through big world-disrupting challenges before and humans have come out the other side.

56:39And so I think for our culture, we need to maintain that spirit of agency and resilience and optimism. and policymakers can't, you know, no matter how much they try, they can't make that happen. I think that that's not their role. That comes from us as individuals bottom up in the cultures we create. And it's funny, I was talking to a friend the other day and I was telling her that kids under the age of five are likely the first generation where it will be a foreign memory or seem radical that people used to identify with what it is that they do in terms of a job. And so they are probably going to grow up and think, wow, remember when people used to think that they are what they do between the hours of nine to five, and that's how they viewed the entirety of their life.

57:31And that will seem radical. The same way if you go into a dinner party, it's a radical act to say, okay, nobody can talk about what they do. Soon it will seem radical that that was such a big part of who we thought we are and who we thought we were. Yeah, it's so interesting. This is why I think intergenerational dialogue is so important, because it's funny to think about the things that we just take for granted or we just assume are default. And then you talk to people of different age groups and they'll be like, oh, no, that's, you know. I remember as a college professor where students laughing, you know, they would laugh at me when I would talk about that.

58:07I used to, you know, just get in a car and you'd have to ask somebody where something was or look at a map, you actually would talk to people and say, like, how do you get to so-and-so's house? And that, you know, but all they knew was the GPS, right? That was, you know, they grew up in that era. So, yeah, I do think it's interesting. And I actually find that somewhat exciting. I know it can be scary, but I think that's exciting to think about, well, how is the world, how much is it going to change in my lifetime and beyond? And I think it's just healthier and more productive to approach that with a level of curiosity and excitement than to fear it because it's happening.

58:50And so it's better to approach it with a bullish attitude, I think. And what advice would you have for somebody who feels like they're struggling to find meaning? They don't, what should be the next step that they do if they're feeling like, I don't feel like my life is very meaningful. I don't feel like I'm contributing to something. What should they do next? So if you don't exercise very much, but you know it's good to exercise, right? Fitness trainers will tell you the most difficult thing is getting started. You have to go into the gym. And the reason is because exercise is self-reinforcing.

59:23It has momentum. You start exercising every day. You start feeling good about it. And then you want to exercise. The exercise itself makes you want to do it more. So there's that challenge of starting, right? And I feel like meaning is similar in a lot of ways. When people feel meaningless, it's the same thing with loneliness. One of the problems, one of the challenges of loneliness is it's self-reinforcing. That's why it's so difficult. It's because if you feel lonely, you actually start to avoid people because you're worried about social rejection. You're like, it'll make me even feel worse if I go out and try to meet people and then they reject me.

59:56And so loneliness tends to encourage more loneliness, right? Meaning is similar. Like at some point, you just have to put yourself out there and you got to go for it. You have to look. This ties back to the idea that meaning is about action. You have to look around you and say, what can I do that's going to make a difference? It doesn't have to be something grand. It could be something small. You can go help your neighbors. You could. This is the story of a lot of entrepreneurs, actually, right? It's just like, where can I identify a need in the market where I can make a difference? and you can start a little entrepreneurial operation in my home, right?

1:00:28And I can do something and I can feel like, oh, like people like my products, people like my services and I'm making a difference. I can go out in the community and I can volunteer. I can do something creative that inspires others. I can offer some kind of mentorship. I have maybe skills that I bring to the table. So that's where, you know, before I said meaning isn't found within you. It's found by action, going out and doing things. That's true, but it has to start with you saying, okay, what can I do? And then you have to just go for it and you have to take risks and you have to be prepared for setbacks.

1:01:01But just like exercise takes going to the gym and it's no fun at first, right? It's difficult. It's often physically uncomfortable. You're sore. You're miserable. Sometimes you're embarrassed because you're like, I'm out of shape here. But eventually everyone who does it, who keeps going, feels better about themselves. and then they take pride in it and then they want to keep going. And I think that's the same thing with meaning is you just have to get out there and throw yourself in the game and you'll land on something eventually. And then that becomes like exercise, it becomes reinforcing. Here's the interesting about meaning.

1:01:38It's a very motivational force. So if you look at research on meaning and health, people who have a strong sense of meaning in life tend to live longer and healthier lives. And the reason, there's nothing like magic about meaning biologically, right? The reason is meaning motivates you to take care of yourself. Because if you feel meaningful, you're like, I have a reason to be here. I have a reason to make good decisions because I play an important role in the lives of other people. And so meaning promotes healthy decision-making. So like exercise, I think once you get going, that sense of meaning further energizes you to do even better.

1:02:13But you got to start somewhere. And is there anything we didn't cover on meaning that you think people should know or nostalgia or feeling like you have or understanding that you have a lot more agency than you may think you do? I think we did a good job covering meaning, especially the point about, I think it's important that people recognize that meaning is about outward action more than is about inward reflection. And again, that inward reflection is how we come to ask questions about meaning, but it's the outward action that's how we find meaning. And something I would say about nostalgia, because I get this question a lot, because I'm in this space of what's sometimes referred to as progress studies a lot, where people are interested in the technological, economic, scientific, political advances that make the world a better place.

1:03:10So, you know, the history of human progress. And most of the people that I encounter in that space are very anti-nostalgia or they think they're anti-nostalgia. And their point of view goes something like, well, the future is about looking forward. So if you're allocating any cognitive bandwidth to looking backwards, you're wasting time that could be spent on looking forward, right? Or worse, looking backwards is actually distorting your, you know, it's a barrier to thinking like rationally or thoughtfully about the future. My response to that is, first of all, that's not at all what the evidence shows.

1:03:51We're supposed to believe in science and evidence, right? But nostalgia actually makes people more open-minded. It makes them more creative. It makes them more motivated. It makes them feel more agentic. It makes them more resilient. If you talk to, and when I was working on my book, I was talking to artists. I was talking to filmmakers. I was talking to technologists. I was talking to business entrepreneurs. And all of them had nostalgic memories. And they were trying to do something innovative and something fresh or something new. And they were talking about what got them into filmmaking. The first time they went to that movie and they made, this is what I want to do.

1:04:26Musicians often bring, even if they're doing like trying to do cutting edge music, they bring in the music that inspired them, right? And they show some nod to that. They just try to put a twist on it. And so I think that's the story of progress. We never just start from scratch, right? We're always building on history and nostalgia helps us access that in an inspiring way. It's the affective component. It's not just like the pure rational history. It's what makes that history interesting? What makes it inspiring? What makes it meaningful? And so my response to people whose intuition understandably is to see nostalgia as a barrier to progress is often the fuel for progress.

1:05:09It's the passion for progress. It's the inspiration for progress. And it also can help us make the types of decisions that make change better. Because change in itself isn't good or bad. right we can make decisions that are that make the world worse we can make decisions that make the world better sometimes we're just going to find out by trial and error that we made the bad decision that's fine right we make mistakes but nostalgia can help us it can help us move move forward with decisions in a very intentional way and so that's why i call myself a nostalgia futurist is i think it can be a very useful way for building a better future and even for the individual, if you're feeling a bit lost, don't be afraid to sit and reflect on some nostalgic memories because that could actually be some sort of catalyst to moving forward.

1:05:55Absolutely. And one thing that's kind of cool about that too is what you'll often find is even though nostalgia starts out as this very personal reflective experience of like, oh, me sentimentally longing for the past, what we find is kind of like meaning, and this is a big part of why nostalgia is so connected to meaning, it's most of the time that nostalgia quickly turns outward. What do fans do when they get nostalgic about what they're into, whether it's Star Wars or Harry Potter or something like that? They build communities of like-minded people and they share those memories with others.

1:06:32And so nostalgia, even though it starts with a reflection, often ends in people building communities, talking to others and sharing their memories because that's one of the best ways to experience nostalgia is to pass it along to others and to share it with others. And so nostalgia in itself, even though often thought of as this sort of withdrawn, like passive activity, ends up turning into a very engaged and active and outward oriented activity in which people find ways to share their memories and connect their memories with other people. Because we all have our own individual memories that are situated and broader and larger cultural memories.

1:07:10and that's part of what makes society function is where we can connect in that way. Clay, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. It's been great talking to you, Sinead. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of I've Got Questions. If you've got questions, we would love to hear them. You can submit them on our website via email or you can comment below. Send this episode to anyone else who you think may find it interesting and we look forward to seeing you at the next one.