How Modern Life Makes Us Unhappy | Bill von Hippel

23:05When you start out your job, you may have aspirations for how high you want to get in your field. But those aspirations change as you start to become a success. And so originally you set your sights on, I want to be a manager because then I'll be running my own show and I'll have enough money and I can afford a family. And now, well, I'm a manager, but boy, my boss's boss has really got a great life and flying all over the world. And that's what I want. And so we just keep resetting our sights and we keep doing it in the autonomy domain. And each time we do that, of course, we let our connections suffer.

23:31And so what turns people into these sad success stories is they do great on autonomy, but they never swing back and use that autonomy. They never leverage it to reconnect with friends or to connect with new people. Yeah. And I also think a lot of what happens in the pursuit of autonomy is that comparison amongst your autonomy also frays relationships and doesn't actually keep the connection as close as a share the meat policy. You know, we're really good about doing that within our families, but we don't do that across them at all anymore. And the problem is that we've disconnected in both ways.

24:08So if we look, if we go back to the 1970s and earlier, even back to the 50s, it'd be even better. residential communities tend to be pretty stable, whether they were in the country or in the city. And so people in city neighborhoods all knew each other. They'd all grown up in the same neighborhood. And we don't see that problem that we see today where you're surrounded by strangers because now we have such residential mobility inside cities that you don't even necessarily know the people in your building, much less on your block. The same thing happens with time spent with neighbors. And so if you look at all the sources of entertainment today and compare them to the source of entertainment when I was born in the 60s, it's dramatically different.

24:46We had three TV channels and they basically all sucked except for a couple of times during the day. We played board games where you roll a dice and you move a piece around and it's kind of boring and random. And now think about all the amazing ways that we can entertain ourselves. Ten zillion things. If all you do is watch TV all day, you could have great shows for the rest of your life. I mean, that's just one activity. And so with all these amazing things that you can do, it's no wonder that we start spending less time with others. But of course, we evolved to spend time with others and not just get entertainment out of doing amazing things.

25:18So the end result is we now spend way less time with our neighbors than we did in the 70s. We spend way less time even with our spouse than we did in the 70s. And the difference is we're spending time alone. Now, if you actually look at alone time, you're not truly necessarily alone. You're maybe on Instagram. You may be on YouTube. You may be doing things that involve other people, but they're not there. And we did not evolve for that. We have talked a little bit about the increase in time of leisure, but it seems like now that time is spent in isolation. We prefer to do our leisure activities alone, whereas in the past, leisure was always tied to group and club and social and involved other people.

25:59Absolutely. There was zero fun in being alone when I was a kid. You're literally just sitting there by yourself. And now you can sit by yourself and be very happy. And in fact, if we look at alone time, particularly among adults under the age of 30, we see that it's slowly accelerated up until you get to COVID. And then no surprise, it peaked. It dropped again after COVID, but it's now risen again past the COVID levels. And so people are just spending time, they're spending their leisure time alone, which is just not healthy. It isn't healthy. And it's something that we've been talking about on this show for quite some time.

26:29I mean, we have seen the loneliness epidemic and all the things that lead toward that. And of course, we like to say that a lot of times a correlation doesn't equal causation, but we all know that this technology had a major hand in the loneliness epidemic and chatting with people online is just not the same thing as going to the mall and hanging out with your friends. i'm gen x so that was my my high school uh time i mean everything was every every week they was planning on what we're going to be doing at the mall friday and saturday i mean that was the whole thing yeah and uh buying concert tickets lining up to get records going to see movies hanging out at the arcade um starting bands does go flyer the arcades and talk to cute girls all all of that stuff.

27:25But you've mentioned about watching television and counting that as an activity. Again, we have to start looking at now because of all the options we have, how are we spending our time? And what is the ROI that we're getting out of it? I'm sitting here watching great television programs. Am I learning anything? What am I getting from this time spent in front of this box?

27:59Or am I the product that the box is making? All of those things come into play now. And I remember for myself, and it was just before COVID, thinking to myself, what are the things that are most important to me that derive the most fulfillment and satisfaction in life every day. And then let me organize my day so I do more of those things and less of everything else. And of course, my life satisfaction shot through the roof at that very moment. Yeah. And that's a great strategy. In fact, I remember chatting with my nephew, who's a very keen computer science guy, and he bought one of these apps that allows you to say, what are you doing?

28:45It randomly bugs you and says, what are you doing and how much fun are you having? And he goes, when I got the data together, I realized I'm doing tons of crap I don't like and I'm not doing tons of crap I really do love. And he changed everything and he had the exact same consequence. So sometimes you can literally just introspect and answer the question for yourself. But sometimes you actually want an app to tell you, all right, let me track myself during the day. Let's see what I enjoy and let's cut off the crap that doesn't mean anything to me. But part of the problem, of course, also is that if you actually so danny kahneman did this very famously he he beat people during the day and he said what are you doing and how much fun are you having and watching tv actually is a lot of fun but the problem is that it's not the kind of fun that has any impact on your life satisfaction nobody ever says oh my god i've had a great life i've seen a shit ton of tv right you just that's that's not something you look back on and and mean something to you and so what what actually means something to you is is those memories you have of going to the mall with your friends and and trying to meet girls and trying to get a band started and doing all those fun things.

29:44It's just that every time in the moment, there's some hard yards in those other activities, those social ones, and those hard yards don't exist of just turning on the TV. And so the temptation is to go the easier route and just say, I'm going to do the e-communication. I'll scroll Instagram. I'll turn on TV rather than doing the things that actually are meaningful, that are going to give you really high yield, but have a little bit of risk associated. If I go out with my friends, maybe it won't be much fun. Maybe it'll be hard to get there. Maybe I'll say something stupid and they won't like me.

30:15The list is long about the risks of actual in-person socializing, but of course, the benefits are way, way higher. We are not a political show in any way, but the rise of tribalism and what's gone on with the fraying of society in a lot of ways that we're all feeling feels to me like the lack of community has led to the distrust. In isolation, we trust people less and less with the anonymization of our online interactions, our ability to flit about and be a different person and change our avatar and not have any real world consequences with those interactions. And it feels like the more time we spend in the community, the more we actually trust one another, the more it fosters our belief in finding solutions that we could all move forward around.

30:58No, you're absolutely right. And the problem is that we don't socialize across political lines anywhere near as much as we used to. And so, you know, I grew up in Alaska, and I'm a lefty, but it's a red state. And my next door neighbors are awesome people, and they're always voting for Republicans, and I'm always voting for Democrats. And it's super informative to realize, oh, I love my neighbors who happen to be politically different from me. And that doesn't become, well, I can't speak to them. They don't agree with me about politics, which is what our society has kind of become. And part of the reason for that, of course, is you can retreat into these online worlds where everybody agrees with you.

31:33You can choose your media where everybody agrees with you. And so we get, we're not nearly as good anymore at communicating across party lines, which means of course that they just march apart from each other and become more and more extreme. I'm not even communicating period. You know, I'm arguing that the more time we spend in isolation, lacking in any of the communication, the sharing that goes on in community, the less trusting we are of people in general. And we've seen this with what's happened with, you know, the incels and violence and what's going on where people in isolation choose to act out in ways that damage civilization as a whole.

32:09Because in that isolation, they've literally shifted their entire perspective around humans and what it means to be connected. It's the worst thing for us. We did not evolve to be isolated. It brings out the worst in us. It's bad for society to have lots of people who are isolated. And of course, there's a host of factors that have led to that. And some of them are the exact ones that we're talking about, whereby you just don't need to talk to people anymore. And once you don't need to talk to people anymore, well, then you just say, well, do I really want to bother? Maybe not. We don't share politics or whatever.

32:40I'm just going to cut you off and I'll do my own thing. And that's not healthy for humans or society. The worrying aspect of that is if you start looking at, let's take 10 years that we've already been through, and we go ahead and project that into another 10 years, and we see the trends, we see what's coming down the road, we see what everybody's talking about. They're all excited. And it's more isolation. i mean just as an example of this um i saw elon had his new tesla diner where you can go and charge your car not get out and watch a movie and people bring your food to you they're like so a glorified uh like isolation chamber so you like there's there's no there's there's no dealing with humans if you opt not to.

33:39I'm sure you can get out of your car and talk to people, but here's what happens. The more isolated we get, the more we're going to think it's weird to get out of our car and go talk to the guy next to us.

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36:22So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like tea time you. Mmm. Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you. So did you hear about Dave? Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you. Mmm. So update on Dave. It's up to you. We'll take the laundry. Rinse. It's time to be great. And taking that a step further, the more we're trusting AI and we're moving these conversations to just the avatars and the models and the algorithms that are being built. And there's been a lot of talk about these models gassing us up and what's happening now with psychosis around spending more of your time interacting with these AI models than actually interacting with humans.

37:11And Johnny and I are always in different echo chambers online, but we ground each other. Like that human interaction of like, well, where are you getting this information or what's going on with your algorithm? Like, let's check the facts on the ground by actually having the human connection and the interaction. You know, that's being frayed more and more. We're going to AI to diagnose what's going on with our bodies. We're going to AI to solve what we need to do with work. And now, you know, Elon's pushing AI girlfriends and AI boyfriends and get your romantic fix by talking to the models while you stay in isolation.

37:44And the thing is, this actually suits some people, of course. But 99 % of humanity didn't evolve to do this. And the problem is that if you don't socialize regularly, then when you do socialize, it starts to be a little bit intimidating. And so all humans have some low level of social anxiety. And the reason for that is that in our hunt-to-gather societies, if you started to do something wrong, if you started to throw your weight around or cause trouble for your group, the first thing that they would do is make fun of you. And if you don't respond to being made fun of, then they start ostracizing you.

38:14And if you don't respond to being ostracized, you'd wake up one morning and you're either dead or your entire group has left you and you're going to be dead very soon. And so we've evolved to be very socially careful, whereby if people start to make fun of us, we get really sensitive because that's a sign that we're going to wake up dead pretty soon. If people ostracize us and reject us, that's an even bigger sign that things are not going our way and we wake up dead. And so we're super sensitive to what other people think of us. And now we live in a world where we don't even necessarily know them.

38:45And so it doesn't matter a lot what my group thought of me. It doesn't matter what somebody across the world thinks of me. But now I put something up online and somebody makes fun of me from across the world and I feel terrible. And so we see a lot of social anxiety in the current generation that are coming of age with all this technology. And I suspect that part of that anxiety is they don't socialize as much. And because they don't socialize as much, it starts to become a little bit scarier. And so it creates its own unfortunate vicious cycle where it self-perpetuates. And lack of socializing leads to lack of socializing rather than the opposite.

39:17it. Now, it's my hope and belief that like all things, we're going to see this pendulum where all this technology we thought was going to make us happy makes us miserable. And so people start changing the way technology works and changing the way they use it so that they can come back together and socialize with each other again. But we're currently at a very bad spot with regard to that. Furthering that point, it's become easier to make fun of people online. So the more we live online, the more we're getting that signal, whether it's sarcasm, shit posting, all of that negative consequence that you're talking about that had a real impact on us in a hunter gatherer society.

39:56You see and feel online like you will get that feedback online from complete strangers across the world. And it's it's funny. Johnny and I were laughing about using some of these short form video platforms for our marketing purposes to get content out there. And we will find negative comments from people who haven't even watched the whole video. They'll watch three seconds and they'll make an assumption and they'll automatically start making fun of you. And there's this phenomenon of bean soup. I don't know if you both are familiar with it, but, you know, this ability for us online in a digital forum to jump to cutting down negativity, making fun, you know, that signal is amplified in technology and it has created more anxiety, right?

40:38If you are being made fun of, you are feeling that anxiety. And then that translates to, well, being on the bus and not wanting to talk to people, being at work and wanting to avoid socialization because that anxiety is heightened. The downside of being online is there's a social distance that gets created between people and social distance never brings out the best in us. And so the simplest example is if you go to the supermarket and there's a big line, you would never just take cuts in front of somebody three ahead of you. But if you're in a car and there's a brief moment where you could zing around and get back in, people do that all the time.

41:10And so cars create that social distance where people are already rooted to each other because there's just glass between them and some engine and some distance. Well, online, there's crazy distance. I can't see your face when I say, oh, you're the biggest jerk I ever met. I don't see you get really sad and upset and ask me why you think that. And so we're crazy rude online compared to the real world. And so, for example, when my first book came out, I was on Rogan's podcast. And of course, you get thousands of comments about how you did and whether you're a schmuck and all this. And lots of people laid into me for different things.

41:39And I, of course, can't read all of them. But every once in a while, I'd troll through it. And then I'd respond to somebody. And every single person but one responded when they were really rude to me. And I said, well, I understand why you feel that way. But here's what I was trying to say. They were way nicer in response immediately than they had been when they were just sort of trolling me on the thing. And so one person still was a jerk. But by and large, as soon as you establish a connection, people just aren't going to do that. and the downside of the internet is that connection's not there.

42:07We just feel this great social distance. And I'm seeing you and Johnny and everyone is wearing AirPods. And now we're even doing real world things like the grocery store, going to the gym, and we are isolated and we don't even realize it. We put in those little white pods and it basically tells people, don't bother me, don't interact with me. And because we've had those moments where we've interacted with someone who had them in, but we didn't see it and they didn't hear us and then that created anxiety. It has amplified anxiety even for the in-person interaction that we're all craving. Yeah. It creates more social distance.

42:40It's not a good thing. And the AirPods are getting smaller and now we're getting the glasses that are going to be filming every day. I mean, when you look at all of the different technology they have coming out down the line, it just shows that we are going to have to choose socialization just like we choose going to the gym every day for health. And we've been, I've been saying this for 10 years now. And, and it's, it's happening. I mean, that's, that's what it is. And, and what are you going to choose? Are you going to choose happiness and health over being isolated and depressed? I completely agree with you.

43:18And of course, part of the problem is that it starts in childhood. And in childhood, we now have these, you know, all these memes get started where we think, oh, somebody's on halloween we used to go around every house in the neighborhood and gather up all the candy and hoover it up that night oh yeah and then people started to say oh they're putting razor blades in apples and they're injecting drugs and none of that was actually ever happening but people get scared and so suddenly they stop doing those things um child abductions are crazy rare when it's by a stranger you know the somebody abducts your child it's almost always somebody they already know but because it happens by strangers really really rarely but because the world so big, we see that happening relatively often.

43:58And now we think, oh, my kids aren't safe to go in the street. And so there's all sorts of ways that we're changing the way we raise our kids to not allow them to socialize because it just feels safer to us. When first of all, it's not safer. The chance of your kid being abducted on the street are nearly zero. And second of all, it's terrible for their mental health. And so it's now, it's not just us as adults having, well, I got this cool phone and I got these cool things, but it's also kids in the way they're being raised. And mostly they don't like it. They want to go run around and play with their friends, but parents are stopping them out of fear for the safety.

44:28And it's a very misguided fear for their safety. Not only that, as a new parent, and I've seen this paradigm shift too, it is the pursuit of autonomy. So there's so many kids activities now. And as a parent, we talk about all the activities we're putting our kid in and shuffling them around. And that also frees any ability to socialize. If I have soccer practice, then I got to rush them off to music. And then I have to go, I have no time for the interaction with the parents, fostering their relationships, hanging out after practice, all those things that we did when I was growing up. And it was one activity that was basically for the full season.

45:02Now, because of the pursuit of autonomy, getting into a great college, getting that opportunity to get the job that leads to success, we are feeling more and more pressure to chase autonomy at younger and younger ages, forcing it on our children in the pursuit of their autonomy at the sacrifice of the relationships that we need. Of course, the downside is that once people move down that road, again, it creates this vicious cycle because if there are no kids outside playing, then it isn't that safe for my kid to be out there playing because they're the only kid out there. If something goes wrong, there's no one around to help them.

45:36And so I remember asking my mother, at what age did I start walking to school? And she said, kindergarten. And I said, well, all right, but kindergarten was a half a mile away from our house. I couldn't have walked there in the winter, could I? And she goes, no, no, you guys walked there when it was minus 20 degrees. And I was like, really? And she goes, yeah, but you got to remember the streets are covered with little kids. Like you're, even if you don't know the way, you just follow in this drove of kids who go to kindergarten together. If you set your kindergartner out the door to go to school, it would have no idea where to go unless it had, you know, let's follow this iPhone because kids don't go to school.

46:06And so once parents start making these decisions, they kind of force other parents' hands. Absolutely. And same thing with devices. You could want to be a device-free household and screens, but everyone else at school has them. And the age that kids are getting iPhones, you say kindergartners, there are literal kindergartners with iPhones. And it's the pursuit of safety. I want them to be able to talk to me. They need the Apple Watch so they can communicate with me in case someone's abducting them. And we're putting these screens on top of screens in front of kids when they should be learning the socialization and not the interaction with screens.

46:43You're absolutely right. You're forced to be on those various social media platforms. You're forced to have those devices if everyone else does. Now, the good news is there's enormous pushback that's starting to happen. So here in Australia, starting in December, you won't be allowed to go on social media if you're under the age of 16. In the United States, there's all sorts of parental consent laws that are coming into place. Connecticut, I think, was the first to go off, first cab off the rank, and a bunch of other states are now in line. We see this around Europe and other countries as well, where they're just realizing that, Yeah, phones might have advantages because you can track your kid at all times, but the enormous disadvantages that come with the social media and all the screen time need to be counteracted in some kind of way.

47:22Because once some parents start to get off, then it's much more likely that the rest of them do too. Are there any advantages to social media? Yes. So the big advantage to social media is to supplement rather than replace your face-to-face time. And so let me give myself as a for example, when COVID hit, and suddenly we're all kind of indoors a lot and not being able to socialize as much, I thought, all right, this is boring, I need to think about ways that I can connect more readily. And so the first thought that occurred to me is, all right, how can I use my phone to do that? Because of course, in a COVID world, that's an easier way to go.

47:54Now, my sister lives in London. I live in Australia. And we both really enjoy doing the New York Times crossword puzzles. And I'm not terribly good at them. She's a little bit better than I am. But by Thursday, I really struggle because they get harder as the week goes on. So we just came up with a plan. And every starting on Thursday, when she wakes up in the morning, is making her coffee. It's now late afternoon for me. And so my working day is mostly done. She gives me a call. And we do the crossword puzzle together. Now, I'm not replacing face-to-face time because I used to do the crossword alone.

48:21And now what I'm doing is I'm doing it with somebody who really matters to me. I love my sister dearly. And so we get a little bit of chit chat in and we kind of do the crossword. So we're literally doing what we wanted to do anyway, but we're adding an element of socializing to it. And I think social media is fantastic for that, where you can supplement your activities by not doing them alone anymore. The problem is much like the fat salt on the Savannah being scarce right now, social media, you know, it does lead to those empty calories where you overindulge and you lose track of time. The endless scroll, it can be hard to control.

48:56So what are the guidelines? How can we start to actually wrap our hands around it in a meaningful way? Yeah, that's crazy hard. And I see it in so many negative ways. And one of my favorite examples is when I used to walk by construction sites, they're buzzing with humor and activity when they're on their break. They're all sitting around by the side of the building, shooting the shit with each other, having a good time and laughing and clearly bonded with one another. When I walk by them now, they're all lined up, sitting side by side, but they're all looking at their phone. Nobody's talking anymore.

49:27And so it's fair enough that any one individual decision might be a good one because Joe here might be about to tell me the same story he's told me six times. And I really don't need to hear it. I'd rather watch my favorite cat video. But the long term consequence of keep watching my favorite videos is that I don't really know Joe anymore. And we're not really friends. And I don't really enjoy going to work with these people anymore. And so blue collar workers always had the big advantage that they had to work together in person. They never were doing these isolated jobs because it's usually teams of humans building sites or doing whatever.

49:57And that advantage has now been stripped away. And so from my perspective, you just like what I would do if I if I owned a construction company, I'd say, okay, your phones go in your locker when you arrive in the morning and you pick it up when you leave in the end of the day. Not because I'm trying to control my employees' lives, but because I want them to connect to one another. I want them not only for their own mental health to do that, but that's actually how job knowledge is shared as well. When I say, oh man, I'm really struggling with the roof. And the guy says, oh, I used to have that problem too.

50:24Here's what I've done about it. You know, that kind of stuff happens in casual conversation and it's just gone now. Good luck staying in business as a construction company with that rule. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at GoodToKnowFacts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit GoodToKnowFacts.org.

51:08When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. Well, there's another piece to that as well. I mean, I did construction when I first moved to North Carolina. I was 21 years old and there certainly wasn't any. The only cell phone there was the lead man and he he was the only guy that had one.

51:49They weren't readily available for everybody. And he had one just due to the role that he had leading us. but that a lot of time was spent bonding because you have to trust the other guys on that job site you're going on a 12 pitch roof that one false move and and you're sliding down the thing and you are counting on well yourself and your reflexes to get a foothold but as well as It's one of the other guys catching you. You always have somebody who's watching your back. And the amount of trust that you put in the other guys is huge. I mean, they're going to make sure that you get home for dinner and show up the next day.

52:37And besides, they need you there the next day because that job isn't going to get us done as fast if you're not there. So they're all watching out for each other. And that time spent joking around, that's male bonding. We're pushing each other around. We're calling each other names, hazing the whole crew. And I remember being the new guy and how hard I was hazed. But it was for those guys, their safety. And I was the northerner who was coming down the south to now work construction. and I've never done manual labor in my life. So they put me through the wringer. Now, I did that job for two years before transitioning into nightlife, but I remember it fondly.

53:27In fact, I loved it so much that when my parents came to visit me, I took them on a tour that showed them the houses that I helped build because I was so ecstatic and proud of it. On the positive side, we have far fewer workplace accidents because of all the OSHA rules that you've got to be tied off and do these various things that would prevent you from slipping off the roof. But on the negative side, well, you're not counting on each other anymore. And so you don't have that bonding with each other. And of course, now you're not even chit-chatting with each other anymore because you're just on your phone or whatever.

53:59And so phones and screens have decimated our relationships across a wide variety of domains. And I do think that we're going to wake up and realize that. Now, it's like everything else. We realize in some ways too late. Lots of people have gone down the wrong road and are very unhappy as a consequence. And once we realize and fix it, people are going to be much better about not having their phones out. So as a, for example, a Liz Dunn at UBC does these lovely studies where she has you go to dinner with your friends. And in one condition, she says, I may need to contact you during the dinner with some research questions.

54:34So be sure that your phone is out and that you can see the screen while you have dinner. In the other condition, she says, it's super important for the dinner that your phone be put away and you can't see it. And then later she just asked them how much fun the dinner was. Well, the dinner was way more fun. She of course never bugs them, but the dinner was way more fun when the phone was put away and you actually engaged with each other than when you kept picking up your phone and checking it. And so it's disruptive, even if you don't end up spending that much time on it, just because it's sort of interpersonally disruptive to constantly be pulling you away.

55:04and and and i just think we're going to get better about that right now we're we're terrible we're we're at the worst possible point but but people are going to realize that more and more it's going to become a sign of bad manners you know there's going to be ways that we start relegating our phones and putting them aside now i i could be too pollyannish here i appreciate your optimism yeah but but i do believe that that people are going to realize what the price that they're paying and they're going to want to go they're going to want institutionalized strategies to get rid of those problems.

55:32It feels very much like obesity. Exactly. You have to look at the gym to see how they work. And there's a, there is a subset of people who that is their life. Uh, and they couldn't imagine not belonging to a gym. I'm certainly one of those people, but there's a whole hell of a lot of people who look at me going to the gym every morning going, what the hell are you doing? Going to the gym at seven this morning.

56:01the self-discipline around, you know, physical health, some people, it comes more easily to and more naturally and others, it doesn't. It's just like the same thing with those empty calories and the junk food. But when it's in front of us, it's very hard to stop eating that salt and fat because it was so scarce. And when the screen is in front of us, it's very hard to stop consuming it and join a conversation about Bob's telling the story with him and his wife for the seventh time. You already know the punchline, but the new guy's on the crew. So he's got to tell it to the new guy. You know, we've all been there eye rolling.

56:36And, you know, speaking of social media, what I think is also really fascinating is I'm getting a lot of these clips now about these cultural differences around community like, oh, just move to Denmark. Everyone in Copenhagen has their kids playing and they're not on their phones. And look at how culturally connected they are. And I'm sitting in L.A. where everyone's in their car, everyone's cutting each other off and community is fraying and I'm daydreaming about what it would be like to move to Copenhagen to be part of that community. Are there cultural differences around this autonomy and connectedness and what can we make of it?

57:08We currently see huge cultural differences. And the problem is that the autonomy problem is at its worst if you live in a Western country, if you're highly educated, if you live in an urban area, and if you're wealthy. And so those things, every one of those things shifts you toward autonomy and toward doing things on your own and away from community. And so if you look at poor communities in the United States, or you look outside of the United States to rural communities, you sometimes don't see this problem at all. People do have phones, but they don't spend much time on them. They're too expensive.

57:38They are too interdependent with their community, et cetera. And so they don't cause nearly the problem that we're seeing in these Western industrialized, urban, wealthy, educated settings. And they're happier there. It's like a clear message that we're going in the wrong direction, right? Now, the question of what you can do about it is a tricky one. But if you look at the research literature on self-control, you realize that self-control is not about the capacity to resist temptation. It's about the capacity to avoid it. And so people with high self-control are no better at staring at a chocolate cake and not eating it than people with low self-control.

58:15They're way better about never buying it in the first place. And so it's not in their pantry. It's not in their fridge. And so phones are the same, of course. I'm terrible about it. If my phone is sitting there face up aimed at me and something pops on it, I cannot help but look at it, right? But if my phone isn't in front of my face, I forget it even exists. And then later when I check it, I get all these angry texts, where were you? I've been trying to reach you for the last X amount of time. And so it all comes down to designing your life to avoid the things that you know are making you unhappy.

58:47And if your phone's one of them, it's all about putting it away so you can't see it. It reminds me of those advertisements when cell phones first came out where every competitor was talking about their coverage and how their wireless coverage was better than the next. And I find myself now wanting more dead zones. Like I actually want a cell phone company that has more dead zones and less coverage. So it's like, oh, I'm out of coverage. You can't get ahold of me for that exact reason. Like I know that if my phone has coverage, it's way too easy for me to pull up that screen. but in those moments where I've gone completely off the grid, yeah, I forget about the screen because I know I can't access the TikTok of what's going on in Copenhagen with the kids and strollers.

59:26We didn't evolve to be constantly accessible to each other. We evolved that we check in at the end of the day. But the problem is that now that we are constantly accessible, well, that becomes the expectation. And so, for example, before there was email, once email got invented, I remember I was there. I watched it happen in real time. I was in grad school. I remember thinking, this is the greatest ever. This is going to save so much time. I used to write a letter, put it in the post box, weeks later, you know. But the problem is that if you're going to write a letter, you really want to know the answer.

59:54If you're going to go to that effort to bug somebody, it's important to you. But now every schmuck with every question that's ever occurred to them can email you and ask you for something, whether it's trivial or important, because it's so easy to do. And the same thing holds with texting and your phones and all that. We used to only bug each other when it's important because it's hard to find each other. Now we can bug each other with trivialities all the time. And so when you put your phone away, you can feel a little bit remiss. You can feel like all these people expect to be able to reach me and they can't.

1:00:23And that's tricky too. It's a little bit like this same problem that we see with none of the parents letting their kids go outside. We have to come to a society level agreement. No, I'm not reachable. No, I'm not going to be checking my phone every 20 minutes, et cetera. Well, the good news is the AI version of you. We'll be talking to the AI version of Johnny and talking to the AI version of me. That's true. We could go back to doing the things that we actually care about. Maybe AI is taking care of this podcast now. For those listening who feel that they've gone too far on the economy and independence and are missing connection in their life, what are some practical things that we can do to start to shift that more towards balance?

1:01:05So for me, it all comes down to not trying to recapture a world that doesn't exist anymore. Now, the world of the 70s, it was slow paced. There wasn't that much entertainment. So you naturally sought out socializing because socializing with your neighbors is going to be better than any other option you had. That world's gone. And so what we have to do instead is say, all right, well, if we've evolved to want autonomy, and that means we want to do the things we want to do, just don't do them alone. Choose the things that you want to do and then find somebody to do with you. And if they're not physically with you, then far better that they're on social media and you're chatting with them on your ear pod while you're on a run than not at all.

1:01:41But better yet, try to do these things in person with others. And so I simply looked at all my activities that I do alone because I really enjoy doing those things. I said, how can I integrate other people into those? Now, lots of people need alone time. I happen not to be one of those people. I could be surrounded all day, every day, and I'd be fine. If you need alone time, it doesn't apply to that. But everything else that you're doing, if you're just doing something because you enjoy it, try to find a way to do it with other people. And it's amazing how it's a little bit like what Johnny said earlier, that his life got so much better when he sat down and thought about his priorities and where he's spending his time.

1:02:14This is the same. You still get to do the things you really like to do, but now you're finding other people to do them with. So our audience is not as big as Joe Rogan's. Probably have a lot fewer trolls as well. Where can our audience find out more about you and reach you online? The best place to find me is my books are all available wherever you buy books, Audible, E, etc., are physical. But I've now got an Instagram account that my publisher said, look, you've got to get, I'm a boomer. So they're like, look, you've got to get with the times. And I enjoy doing it, actually. It's good fun. And so they can see a lot of the things that I'm up to on my Instagram account.

1:02:49And if you actually want to read any of the original articles that I write, which for most people are boring and full of stats and not of interest, there's Google Scholar and places like that. Now, I actually have a website. You can hit BillVonHippel.com or org or whatever, but there's currently a problem with it. I'm having the programmer fix where it does one of these, this is not a trusted site, like something's gone off with it. So you can't even get on that now. And maybe it's not trusted, like don't get on it. But any of these other places are a good place to find me. Well, thank you for joining us.

1:03:16This is a fun conversation. Yeah, my pleasure. Great to chat with you guys. Thank you.

1:03:29I hope you enjoyed that episode. And now comes the part of the show where we showcase one of our X Factor Accelerator members. Take it away. Hey, everyone. My name is Chris Raftery. I'm a financial advisor, and I joined X Factor to build better relationships with my friends, at work, and also with my family. X Factor really helped me not just with the course material and reading about all the ways I could improve, but also in helping me implement all of these different teachings, giving me an outlet and a network to practice these things, to troubleshoot in a way a lot of situations I was going through and really provide some real world applications and have fun along the way too.

1:04:19The thing I'm looking forward to the most is continuing to develop. They say iron sharpens iron and being able to work with the other guys in the group has really proved that. I'm looking forward to continuing to build better relationships with the existing folks that I hold near and dear to me, but also meeting new people out there. It was a pleasure working with you too and good luck to all your future endeavors. If you've gotten value out of this or any of our podcasts, head on over to your favorite podcast player and rate and review the show. It means the world to us and it helps others find the show.

1:04:55Until next week, go out and make this one an epic. Yeah, I remember you. You were the bad boy. You threw your love away. Like you were just a toy. And you sold the world, you sold the tragedy Cause you had your taste of black on the yesterday Yeah, but I remember you, oh yeah I remember you

1:05:37Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way You wanna sell those wheels You wanna get a CarMax instant offer So fast Wanna take a sec to think about it Or like a month Wanna keep tabs on that instant offer With OfferWatch Wanna have CarMax pick it up from your driveway You wanna get it done to it You wanna do it all So, wanna drive? CarMax. Pickup not available everywhere. Restrictions and fee may apply.