Why You’re Not as Hard to Manipulate as You Think | Rebecca Lemov

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0:33Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

1:24hey it's ryan welcome to another episode of the daily stoic podcast maybe it's a little crazy maybe it's an addiction i don't know maybe i should do it differently but but my sort of system is like i finish a book and then i start the next one finish a book i start the next one there's actually advice that that steven pressfield gave me he's like you just start the next one start the next one because you never know how one's going to do and and by the way it's not about the outcomes It's about the process. It's about doing the thing. So the Stoic Virtue series, which I've been working on since 2019, that finished back in October.

1:59But actually it didn't, right? Like I turned in the manuscript for what became Wisdom Takes Work. Like this time in 2024, like in December 2024, I turned it in for like the last time. It went into its final stages of editing and then production then. So I was still working on it, but basically like the creative thinking part of that book ended around this time last year. So the idea that I would wait for another 12 months or 10 months or whatever it is exactly to start the next one, that's always struck me as crazy and kind of inefficient. So I always think about like my next project. So I'm working now.

2:36I mentioned it here or there. I don't usually talk about projects when I'm working on them, but this pertains to today's guest. I've been working on a biography. I'm writing about Admiral James Stockdale, one of the few modern practitioners of Stoke philosophy, who's a hero of mine, a fascinating character. Maybe you know about him as a failed vice presidential candidate. Maybe you know about his time in the Hanoi Hilton where he was imprisoned and tortured and subjected to solitary confinement for years on end. It's an incredible ordeal. But he said famously that it was an experience, he said, that allowed him to test Epictetus' ideas in the laboratory of human experience.

3:14So that's what I'm writing about. And I ended up interviewing today's guest because I thought she might have something to teach me about this. Rebecca Leymov is a historian of science at Harvard. and I wanted to know if she knew anything about the sort of prisoner of war experience, particularly as it pertains to Stockdale, because he wasn't just in camp or a prison cell. He was subjected to the sort of Marxist brainwashing. It was essentially a communist re-education camp. So I asked her, you know, if she might have anything to say about that. And she says, as it happens, I used to teach a whole unit of my class on the Vietnam experiences of imprisonment that POWs went through.

3:55And she said there's a natural link to the Korean War POW experiences at the root of brainwashing's history, but it's not always brainwashing per se. She says it's really asking the question of what a human being can endure and how they survive. I used to show a film not about Stockdale, but about John McCain and generally the Hanoi Hilton conditions. That's what they called the prison that those pilots were in. She said, I'd be happy to make this a focus in a hinge of the interview and bring topics of the SERE training. That's what they train pilots in about evading capture and withstanding torture, interrogation, resistance, and similar questions.

4:31She says, I'm not an expert on Stockdale, but I can review what's available on him and talk about this in a larger context. She says the Stoic perspective would be fascinating to weave in and discuss. So I said, you got to come out, which she did. We had a lovely conversation. She came out to Bastrop And we talked about POWs and brainwashing, operating in what you would call the veil of ignorance. And we talked about the differences between heroes and cowards and much more. I love this conversation. I think you're really going to like listening to it. Rebecca is a historian of science at Harvard.

5:04As I said, she's been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute. And her research explores data technology and the history of human and behavioral sciences. And she has a new book out called The Instability of Truth. and you can see more of her work at rebeccalemov.com. And by the way, the subtitle of that book, I think, is interesting. It's The Instability of Truth, Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion. So a lot to teach us about this moment in time. Thank you to the professor for coming out. I think you'll really like this episode. Let's get into it. I'm going to get back to work.

5:41I'm working on the book right now. And so that's what I'm going to do. Talk soon.

5:49I'm excited to talk. I didn't know you taught a class about Stockdale. I mean, not about him, but I taught a class on brainwashing and I used to show a film of McCain in, you know, his resistance. Well, Stockdale referred to that as the laboratory of human behavior, that experience that they all went through. And I find that fascinating that you had these people exposed for years and years and years, isolated from the world. There's kind of a Rip Van Winkle-ness to his story, too, where he misses, like, the moon landing. He misses all, like, the 60s and 70s. Like, America remakes itself, and they're all in solitary confinement.

6:31And he talked about how they basically had to reinvent society in this prison. And yeah, it's fascinating. That is fascinating. I think there is two CIA operatives who are held even longer. Yes. Like 20 years. And when they came out, yeah, it was really that time capsule. I mean, it also happens with cults when people emerge. They just don't know how to use a bank machine or the latest technology if it was a low tech environment. And it's just a shock to the system. But with CIA men, there was a film about this, too. But, yeah, they had to get their back pay. Well, there's a big movement for them to get.

7:07Sure. Yeah. Well, yeah. Like, are you on active duty? Of course you are. Yeah, exactly. They'd written them off as dead so they weren't paying them. Right. Yeah. That's a really profound point about it is a sort of active duty. Of course. I mean, you're exposed every single minute of every single day, which is probably what makes, which is obviously the point. But like the amount of sort of resilience and fortitude you would have to have to not break under that or to break only in certain ways and not in other ways is that I think that's what he meant when he was calling it a laboratory of human behavior.

7:44Just like what can a human being take that that's sort of what I think Stockdale and McCain and a bunch of these other prisoners experience is really sort of testing. An unasked for lesson, but like a deep one. Yes. That's really profound. I mean, in a way, what all my work, what the theme that brings it together is this idea of a laboratory of human behavior and the way scientists have often sought to build them. And they sometimes took deeply coercive or abusive forms, whether it's testing animals in certain ways or human beings against their will or things like that. That's the dark side. But also there is this deep question at the heart of it, which is, I guess, what makes you human?

8:26Yes. Well, Stockdale, because he went to Stanford and then taught at Stanford after he said people would ask him about the Stanford prison experiment. And he just had no he had no patience for what he was like. He was like, you can't even begin to know what a person is capable of or what they will do until they've been in there for months, at least. Oh, interesting. You know, I mean, obviously, it's revealing that some people would do things like in the course of a few hours in this university experiment. But I think his his point, and this is what I think is fascinating, is like you really can't replicate this stuff in a laboratory because it's so profoundly unethical and, you know, unreplicable.

9:07replicable. But you get from certain stories, like whether it's the prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton or the prisoners in Korea or the CIA officers or just other sort of freak instances, you get a glimpse into what humans are capable of doing to each other and then also what humans are capable of potentially withstanding. Yeah, I think that's profound because in the social sciences, there's this fantasy. Like, could we create ethically, if like ethics were removed, could we create this perfect laboratory? But really, as Hannah Arendt apparently said about the Milgram experiments, she said, you didn't have to run those experiments.

9:44We have history. We can see what people did. Yes. And in a way, there's a kind of ambiguity about the word laboratory. Is it actually real? Right. You know, if you're artificially constructing it. Well, what struck you about McCain's experience? Like, why would you show that to your students? I mean, the film is, I think it's called Return with Honor, something like that. And I just thought it was profound what he went through and it raised, I thought they would benefit from seeing it. And it's not typically taught as a form of brainwashing. Right. Because brainwashing has to do with, I mean, the way we think about it is the attempt to instill a whole new ideological system where that wasn't happening in Vietnam.

10:26They didn't really care if they ended up converting them in some way. No, they were just trying to break them and get information out of them. Yeah. Right. And as you talk about in the book, in Korea, it was this sort of communist program to try to either turn them into communists or then the paranoia is like, were they trying to secretly turn them into communists and then return them as these sleeper agents? That's what the Manchurian candidate's about. Exactly. But breaking is always, it's actually a key component and it's the one that often is most successful. But McCain was just, I think it just struck me that students might not be exposed to what he had gone through and how much, you know, you could learn from it.

11:07What's fascinating about McCain is like his father is the theater commander. And so like, again, you like you could never have created this in a laboratory. So in McCain and Stockdale, so the two Navy pilots shot down over Vietnam, Stockdale is in the Gulf of Tonkin the night of the incident and watches like he's there. He's the wing commander. And he says nothing happens. So he is there as he watches the country deliberately or unintentionally fabricate its reasons for going to war. And then he ends up in a communist prison camp with the country that would be desperate to find out this information.

11:44And then in McCain, you have the son of the theater commander. Like you can't even you couldn't if that was in a movie, you'd be like, you can't have both of them. You could have one person with a terrible secret or a conflicted, you know, like a tie to the, you know, the upper echelons of command. But you can't have both. Yeah, they're both very high level. Yeah. It's also interesting because one thing that happened with reeducation in the Korean War is that they would divide the I mean, the officers were treated very differently from the the GIs who were seen. And so they translated into class terms in Chinese society.

12:20So the GIs were seen as peasants and therefore they should be treated more gently because they sort of their class consciousness had to grow organically. Whereas the officers were seen as inherently needing to be taken down or sort of. Right. I mean, they were kind of brutal to both, but in different ways. Yeah. And some of the officers. Yeah. So they had more out and out torture and the kinds of things you would see in Vietnam. Yeah. And like the Hanoi Hilton, Stockdale points out that like almost all of them have advanced degrees. Right. So like to be I mean, to become a fighter pilot, you're not just like fresh out of basic training.

12:57There's a whole thing. But most what he thought was so remarkable about it and why he thought there wasn't some of the brainwashing and there wasn't the sort of betrayals that happened in Korea is that these were highly educated, highly specialized professionals who had a sense of self and also a kind of training that that, yeah, I'm sure a random, you know, Marine pulled out of a, you know, captured in a, you know, in a seek and destroy mission somewhere else in Vietnam is probably not going to have. Well, actually, it was also the first people to break in Korea, at least publicly, were the Air Force pilots who were actually quite high level, but they were under extreme duress.

13:38But I mean, one thing later, they hadn't yet instituted the code of conduct. So there was some murkiness about what you were supposed to allow to say or not. But actually, many of them were educated and it was pretty tragic. You know, Frank Schwab is maybe the most famous of them where he just said, I became, you know, someone I didn't know. You just watch this happen, but he didn't know. I mean, resistance eluded him. When he returned, he had been extremely high level and well respected in the lifelong military. And then he just was, he kind of left in dishonor, even though, you know, I don't know.

14:17It was, there's more to that story. I mean, each story is interesting, but it's hard to explain exactly why what happened in Korea and why it was different in Vietnam. Yeah. Do you think it was a matter of leadership? Right. Like Stockdale and Denton and McCain, I think part of them, I think their answer would be, yeah, there was a little bit of the instructions coming out of Korea. But they said that they tossed that out the window pretty early because it was so woefully insufficient. Like the idea that you're going to have your arms bound behind you and hung from the ceiling, that you're only going to give name, rank and, you know, serial number is insane.

14:53So they felt like they tossed that. But what the prisoners said they did, and actually Dave Carey, who was one of them, sat in that chair, that they kind of created a system. And they said, like, look, you're obviously going to break, but you can't. You have to make them pay for it. That reminds me. Yeah, you said earlier they break in certain ways. Yes. In order to, it's almost like a pressure valve release. And I saw that in the accounts of even people who went through SEER who, because that's a program that actually sort of practically breaks soldiers sometimes. But yeah, a difference in Korea was that many of them had been prisoners for several years before they got there.

15:30And they had been gone through, I mean, suffering. It's hard to even put into words. I mean, three examples would be, you know, they'd gone through the Tiger Death March where if you even, men would just stop and then die because they couldn't put another foot in front of, or if they tried to help a companion who was slumped beside the road, they would also collapse and both would either be shot if they couldn't keep walking. But also things like once they got to the camps, they would lose half their body weight and just be so diminished. And one of the GIs I wrote about, and he was only 17 when he signed up, he said he watched the social fabric disintegrate very quickly.

16:12And one of the places it did was even before he was captured when his own officer told him to go shoot some Korean prisoners they had just captured. And he said it was so against the so dishonorable, this idea that they were breaking their own code. Yes. That he saw this. And then later he saw the social fabric fray further, like people were taking more than their share of the little food there was. Or, you know, not not everyone was. There was also racial conflict or tension or lack of solidarity, although there was the other thing as well. There were incredible stories of solidarity or helping each other.

16:50So but by the time the Chinese arrived and the conditions at the camps got better and they actually enacted their own sort of experiment in the camps, many of them, the occupants had been there for two and a half years and they just lost hope and they'd lost faith in their own government and they didn't necessarily have a faith to replace it with. Well, I wonder then if it does sort of come down to leadership, the social fabric, the culture being so important, like being able to look to someone for orders or like, hey, what am I supposed to do? That strikes me as a part of the Vietnam experience.

17:24And then also Stockdale talks a remarkable amount about like how you deal with shame and guilt. and they sort of set out this process by which, you know, no one, like basically the idea that once you accept, hey, everyone's going to break, including yourself, then it became imperative in this sort of culture that they built. How do you reintegrate someone who is feeling terrible about what they just spilled, especially because they're trying to get information about the fellow prisoners, which have consequences for each other. So this thing of like, oh, okay, I did, I told them who was the leader or I told them how this code works.

18:03So making it communicate, the communication system of their own was really important because it broke the totalizing. Yes. And how do you forgive and reintegrate someone who, if the whole point is, how do we divide and conquer? Yeah. Than when you exile or excommunicate someone or allow them to sort of downwardly spiral. What you're creating is precisely the kind of vulnerable people that are going to get picked off. Yeah, because in Korea they did separate out the officers. They weren't even there. They were being held in confinement of different types. So they were leaderless, which is one thing.

18:41And sometimes they would nominate someone to be, say, the spoon man who was supposed to be the most trusted person. who would be given the responsibility of allocating food. But this was not sufficient to kind of develop that sort of code. And there were also being, other things were being immersed in this whole system. So the classic to come out of the Korean War was called Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Robert J. Lifton. And in it, he does have a section on resistance, which I was reviewing. And he found several people who did resist. They were who resisted Maoist reeducation.

19:17And a couple of them were priests. And one of them was somebody called Bishop Bastorp. I don't know his background exactly. But what Lifton described was he said he did initially break. Because you would, when even the religious and civilians and missionaries and things, when they were arrested and put in the re-education camps, they would be chained and, you know, often their wrists would be bleeding. They'd have to hold standing positions for 36 hours, even priests and things like that, and humiliated in different ways. And in that situation, initially it wasn't clear to him what resources he would be able to summon for himself.

19:58And so he gave away certain things and he started to move towards a confession. But then at a certain point, I guess Lifton says there are four qualities that allowed resistance to flourish in him. One was having his own faith in the end. Sure. He's like he had a system. A countervailing belief system. Exactly. Countervailing. Exactly. That he was able to kind of institute for himself and that gave meaning to his own actions and a kind of code of his own that broke the code that was being imposed on him. Right. A second, I mean, one of them was having a sense of humor in the face of someone who's relentlessly forced, like occasionally having a smile on your face or telling, you know, So this is a heroic, even an image we have sometimes from World War II films is, you know, the hero making a joke in the face of...

20:46Sure, gallows humor. Yeah, or someone who's trying to break them, just showing like, not only are you not breaking me, but you're not breaking my spirit or that this tragedy you're attempting to relentlessly impose on me isn't able to completely capture me. Like, I'm in a different narrative. and also ways that they didn't succumb to the same communication system. So sometimes just refusing to learn Chinese or pretending to be unable to see. So they couldn't learn the language that their captors were using to exert thought control. Well, yeah, we tend to think of resistance as being like an armed insurrection or an escape attempt.

21:26But often, and in retrospect, it actually is very inspiring. Like there's the famous Jeremiah Denton one from the Hano Hilton where he goes on to become a senator, but he's being forced to give this television broadcast and he can't not opt out of the thing. So he blinks Morris Code, blinks torture in the midst of his thing. Or like they would talk about how they'd be like, give us the name of all the generals or all the. And then they'd like name all the characters from a TV show. So it was like a code that would communicate outside of. I think it was more like your point about humor, which is like they're finding these subtle fuck yous to the captors because they had no it wasn't like the Internet now where you just typed in the names and seen what we're like.

22:11They would be bragging in propaganda that they identified X, Y or Z. And then it would become immediately clear or the Vietnamese would take this to, you know, like sort of sympathetic figures from elsewhere in the world who would be coming and they'd be like, look what we got. And they'd be like, I'm sorry, but these are all baseball players. Or something like Captain Crunch isn't a real superior officer. This sort of humor as a form of defiance is probably underrated, whether we're talking about imprisonment or even under like an autocratic regime, like satire becomes a weapon. Or even in an abusive relationship.

22:47Yeah. Because another point which is kind of related was that Lifton said, he called it, and this seemed apropos for our conversation, he said a humane stoicism is maybe the most powerful. It's very, very difficult to, he said, very few people can actually do this and act it. But it's a kind of being passive in the face of whatever aggression is being imposed on you. That's how he defined it. That's his definition of humane stoicism? That's part of what he was talking about. Yeah, yeah. No, that's a fascinating sort of... Like exhibiting a kind of passivity that would often be taken as a challenge.

23:24In other words, I'm going to accept these conditions on some level, submit to the conditions you're imposing, but it's not going to take my humanity or something. In some way that he said when that happens in front of other people, say, if you're in a cell where the cellmates are supposed to actually be the social force that's pushing you more towards confession through struggle. He said in some cases when this would be displayed, humane stoicism, it would actually have this profound and lasting effect where it would demonstrate the inhumanity or the brutality that was otherwise sort of invisible for that moment.

24:01Well, isn't that the logic of passive nonviolence or, you know, Gandhi and Martin Luther King? It's putting a spotlight on the moral hypocrisy and the, in being degraded, the person is degrading themselves. The aggressor is degrading themselves. Yeah, it reminds me, then it loops back in my mind towards this, the various Buddhist monks who have been tortured by oppressive governments. He said that if they ever lost sight of the humanity of their torturers, that was when they were lost. In a sense that seeing their brutality is also seeing their humanity. Yeah. When there's something also very demoralizing for the aggressor to not get the reaction that they are trying to get.

24:49Like the defiance is almost an accelerant to the violence, but the passivity in the face of it, it's sort of not having the intended effect and it sort of exaggerates your position. You know what I mean? Yeah, the non-reactivity, it highlights the situation itself. Yeah. In a way that bravado wouldn't really do because that would allow. I'm going to break your bravado. Whereas if there's no bravado, it's a harder and more enigmatic target, perhaps. And then maybe the humor in the other forms is kind of more subtle, you know, evasive resistance also is exasperating in its own way. You can't break someone of their humor the same way you can break them of their defiance.

25:39Yeah. Now that you mention it, it reminds me of some examples from the oral histories of the Korean War where they would make these, they were forced to sing songs that were patriotic or things for Chinese communism, but they would change the words and, you know, and make them a sort of homage to, you know, American life or cars and things that they missed. And that is just sort of a fuck you, really, to that, which wouldn't necessarily come across to that. Right. But it's empowering to the person doing it. Yeah. And see others witnessing that, it could be empowering, too. It starts to recreate a social fabric.

26:19Yeah. But also, yeah, they sort of get divided into who's considered, well, resistors and non-resistors.

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29:56I was curious, too, because one of the things I was struck by when I was reading about Stockdale's experience is like he was like brainwashing doesn't exist. He was like, it's a cop out. It's for weak people. And it struck me as I was reading about your history with addiction, too. You know, some people are like addiction is it's just weak. Right. You know, like it's this kind of debate that we have. And sometimes the people who are really strong, who get through things, have a sort of lack of empathy or understanding that anyone else might be wired differently or have a different experience. And I wonder if if when you look at like it strikes me as unfair to look at these prisoners and go like the mentally tough ones made it out.

30:36And it was the weak and the, you know, immoral that that broke. It's obviously more complicated than that. Yeah, I think there was a temptation or tendency initially to break them into these two groups. Yeah. Whereas it turned out to be so much more and to test them each separately to say, well, what was the secret sauce in the what was the personality components we could identify, isolate and perhaps, you know, replicate in those who resisted and what were the flaws in the others. But they actually found when they did extensive testing on the returned POWs that they all evidenced to some degree collaboration or capitulation.

31:13And they were all mentally, I mean, there wasn't so easy to separate the groups. There wasn't a convenient lesson to be drawn along those lines. And one of the maybe ironic outcomes of it is just that there is a this kind of concerted effort to just build a program that would somehow insulate people from it in the future or operationalize it or something. Well, it's like with addiction, it's like some people believe it's a personal choice and other people believe it's a disease you have absolutely no power over. Obviously, it's some spectrum, right? It's some not just different individuals exist in different places on the spectrum, but there's some parts of it that we have control over and then some parts of it that make us like you could imagine the same person to go back to the prisoners a different time in their life might have had a different outcome like maybe you're 20 or you're 40 you're subjected to the same conditions who you are and what you bring to it could bring something out very different or or just a singular event one thing happens to you on one day and it changes the direction or the trajectory of you in that experience.

32:20That's a very humbling fact of the matter is that, I mean, if you look at the stories of people who get inducted into cults, it's often that they took a left instead of a right and ended up encountering someone. And they were vulnerable because maybe they had broken up with their boyfriend or girlfriend that day. And in my own case, I mean, it's interesting that you say Stockdale, that he had that reaction, which I wasn't, I mean, I believe that. And I think maybe you would feel committed to that position. And in my own case with addiction, it didn't make me think that it's all just, I don't know, it just made me feel that we're all, that no one's not susceptible.

32:56It just depends on the moments of your existence. And some of it's just accidental or you could say fate. You know, why did these convergent circumstances arise in my life? For some reason, I do feel that they arise ultimately for our benefit. Yes. Even if it seems like sheer suffering. Well, I heard someone say once that like the difference between a hero and a coward could be like a good night's sleep in a sandwich or, you know, like who you are in that moment, not just morally and your training, but also just like physiologically in that moment. Like you're coming down with a cold and you react differently to a set of stimuli or circumstances than you might 48 hours later.

33:37And so to me, there's something very humbling and it's kind of a there, but for the grace of God, go I situations like you don't know what they were going through, what led up to that. And if you think that, you know, for certain how you would react in that situation because of what you've been through. To me, that's a sign. Actually, I wouldn't bet on you like that because to me, that's that's ego and hubris that it's probably makes you actually quite susceptible. to all these things that you think you could resist. I mean, that's one of the conclusions I draw or one of the things I noticed in doing this research for many years is that there's a tendency in it.

34:17And I think that's why cult documentaries are so popular and narratives about scams because there's actually a part of us that loves to differentiate ourselves and say, I would be safe. At this point, I never would have believed that Keith Raniere was handsome or that the rain fell only. There was a point at which I wouldn't have fallen for this Or that poor person, but I'm safe because I'm not susceptible or I'm not vulnerable to that. But it's actually what you see is that we all can be and that, you know, that they present themselves and it's an unfolding. I was thinking about that, too. Like, it's interesting how we have different moral judgments about sort of different ones or we hold different types of people account.

35:00Like, I'm not angry at the people who fell for Bernie Madoff's scam. Right. I see them as victims. And then if someone has political beliefs that I believe they've been sort of suckered or manipulated into, I somehow hold them more morally accountable, even though it's it's arguably the same thing. You know, like someone has sold them a bill of goods. They made promises or representations that are not true. And they slowly, steadily convince them of a version of reality that when it all gets ripped away, it turns out to be embarrassing or wrong or damaging. And so it is interesting how we have strong moral judgments about different ones.

35:44And really, probably the proper response is a kind of empathy. And again, an understanding that it could happen to anyone and happens to all different types of people in different walks of life. I mean, I don't have the answer to that, but I share your tendency to find one culpable and the other not. I mean, maybe the more profound point is to see that we're all operating in veils of ignorance. Yes. But it doesn't mean that you can't take a political stance. It means look to yourself. Yes. And it's hard to know what goes on in someone else's heart or why they came to believe one thing or another.

36:21And I do think it has more to do with emotions and perhaps the manipulation of feelings than it is the embrace of an idea. Well, Lincoln, one of the remarkable things about Lincoln was his ability to understand. Like, I think if I was teaching and I talked to my kids about this, when I explain what the South was, I explain it as a sort of cultural military cult that was built around a bunch of flawed, ridiculous premises. And Lincoln talks about how he was like, if you were raised in the South, you would be exactly as they are. And this is what happens when you first you foist an economic system on someone and foist maybe seems like they were passive in it.

37:04But if you put a predominant economic system on a part of the country where it's now very expensive to consider anything other than this, you raise generations of people not just with the idea that this is OK, but that it's a positive good. Like slavery goes through this transition from the early republic to the Civil War being the height of this, where slavery isn't this thing that's hidden away and rationalized, but turned into a positive good. Like it's actually good for them. It's good for us. And anyone that's trying to take it away is, you know, a usurper. They're trying to kill you. They're anti-American.

37:42And so Lincoln had this unique ability to understand, to go like, what they're doing is morally abhorrent and has to be ended and I'll fight any battle and however long the war takes to win this. And at the same time, sort of suspend some of the moral judgment against the individuals caught up in said cult. That's a perfect way of describing it. It reminds me a little bit of this book that I got very deeply into when I was writing my dissertation, which was by John Dollard. It's a classic ethnography of the 1930s where he went to, he wanted to understand racism in the South, Jim Crow South. And he, so he's a Northern sociologist with psychological training and he heads to the Mississippi Delta and he's living in this town.

38:27And he said, and this is actually what I think W.E.B. Du Bois ended up reviewing his book. And he said, Dollar doesn't completely. So what he saw was a society where everyone was being constantly policed, not simply the black inhabitants of the town whose behavior was highly scripted. Like you had to say, sir, and you had to be constantly really show signs of submission all the time. But also the white population was constant. If you didn't demand it, you would be persecuted for not playing your part. You had to play your role, too. And in a way, it was even more highly policed because there were outlets by which you could escape, you know, to some degree as an African-American.

39:08And he himself is a northern liberal. Like, he found himself on the edge of being ostracized. And then when he wrote the book, Du Bois said, Dollard understands the white Southern mentality better than anyone I've ever read. Because it's not, you know, he went out to understand something else, but he kind of absorbed it. Yeah. And it does take an immense amount of fortitude to exist in a world where there is a predominant system and then to be outside that system. Like we are not meant to stand alone and be apart. That's just not what we're it's easier to leave. part of it. Like I was thinking about, I think it would be a fascinating piece.

39:44I think some of the, like I saw this with people I know who have been, become sort of politically radicalized, or I think like you look at a Clarence Thomas as a good example of this. Like what happens when your spouse becomes radicalized or develops extreme political beliefs, right? You are faced with this vexing choice, which is you either have to radicalize your own beliefs to normalize theirs, or you have to break apart your marriage, right? And like, very few of us are gonna be like, I've been married to this person for 20 years, we have kids together, we love each other, but they now believe things that I think are stupid or abhorrent.

40:22There's no like inciting incident, right? Like if there's an affair or an addiction or you drift apart, that's different than like, what do you do when someone you thought you were on the same page with is not on the same page with you anymore? I think if you don't if you're not a self-aware person and you don't and you don't have a good sense of your bearings, the natural human thing is to just slowly turn up the temperature of your own beliefs so theirs don't feel crazy to you anymore. So you would sort of align yourself. I guess Patty Hearst, I love the sentence she had, which she said when she was talking about her own brainwashing, she said, which she didn't necessarily refer to as brainwashing, but she said, I accommodated my thoughts to coincide with theirs in order to survive.

41:13And in a sense, if you do want your marriage to survive, that was probably happening. But there are you hear about and I know of cases where people's marriages do split up or they're on the very edge of it because that alignment can't or doesn't happen for one. I mean, it's really if I were a sociologist or that would be interesting to study. It's totally fascinating. I mean, it's classic cognitive dissonance. Right. Like how do you resolve it? Or do you end up seeking your natural tribe as you think? But then where would you be? Right. You'd lose this relationship. But yeah, I think a lot of the, like, what we think of as radicalization is not a solitary thing.

41:52It's part of a group or a scene. And it's like, I can either continue to be part of this or I can lose my friends. And this is what goes on with cults. This is what goes on with marriage. Whatever is you have to go like, OK, I'm 20 percent disagreeing with what they're talking about, but we largely agree. You know, they're just getting more extreme. Or I could 100 percent be on the outside. It's just an easier calculation to be like, I'll just turn up the volume of what I believe or I'll turn down my disagreement. And I think human beings as these kind of tribal species are just always kind of intuitively trying to figure out like where we exist.

42:34And that's what gets exploited. The irony is, yeah, we have these sort of nightmares about Manchurian candidates or brainwashing or whatever. But the reality is that the more day-to-day brainwashing of just society and peer dynamics and social groups, that's acting on all of us all the time. That's what the book is stealthily about, is that we use this extreme and seemingly absurd or just seemingly caricatured idea of brainwashing. But actually, we see that it's just this. It's the water we swim in. You're worried about the thing that will never happen to you. You will never be shot down over communist North Korea and brainwashed.

43:10But you are currently being molded and manipulated by your social group algorithms. In countless ways. Yes. That we're all in and that the tendency to find it only happening over there to that set of people or to these fools or dupes or, you know, evil folks or, you know, that that is in itself part of the process. Like I just thought it was so funny during the pandemic. Like, I don't know if you know any like sort of prepper people, like people that were always worried about the world falling apart. You know, they're training for the breakdown of society, etc. And like they've been training for a moment like the pandemic for so long.

43:49Right. This is like. Yeah. But then because their group was like, actually, no, taking COVID seriously is like politically problematic for us. They had to go like, OK, actually, no, it's not real. Like the cognitive dissonance of being a person who was looking for exactly something like this to happen and preparing for it. And then because like the influencers in the media you get is like, actually, no, it's not a big deal. That sort of you have a choice now. This is not what I'm prepping for. Or it's not that kind of a big deal. This is a, you know, the way it's defined, you have to accept that definition to keep your place in the group.

44:28I mean, I saw that profoundly happening, but not that exact version, but a version of it where I live. And yeah, it's amazing. And so it can be so destructive. But it's this line from Czeslav Milos, who kind of inspired the book because I found his book on the sidewalk one day many years ago, The Captive Mind. And he said, a self-respecting human being, humans are such, we're so malleable that a self-respecting human being might, if he hears that it's the fashion or it's necessary to crawl about on all fours with a tail of feathers sticking out of your behind, they will do it in all due regard.

45:06And it's just that this incredible malleability we constantly underestimate. And maybe it's also a saving factor.

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48:13The other thing I thought was fascinating in this book is you talk about Neuralink, which a lot of people are sort of paranoid about and worried about like what they're going to be putting computer chips in our brain and then manipulating us. What I find so fascinating about that is it reminds me of, yeah, people are worried about being brainwashed in some prison camp. And it's like the person who's doing that is himself an example of being brainwashed. Like he brain fucked himself without any computer chips in there using a social network that most people who are concerned about something like that happening are using multiple times a day, right?

48:48Like we're worried about these like extreme sort of totalitarian forms of mind control and brainwashing. And then you're just watching one of the smartest people alive destroy his brain by spending too much time on Twitter. I mean, I think that's partly a society wide blindness to just the reality of the fact that we're social beings in some sort of matrix with each other already, because it's easier to focus on the cartoonish, you know, the technology you've been fearing and the thing that looks like technology, you know, from circa 1960, like a crude thing that's going to be invasively, which could happen.

49:27And that's also happening. So that's concerning. But the fact that the manipulation is ongoing and that we're all subject to it is, you know, is the thing that tends to disappear. Maybe it's similar to like where people are scared about disinformation or government propaganda. I think it might have been Kasparov. Someone, some Russian expert was pointing out that like most of it is stuff that people want to be true. Like it's not it's not the government inventing something from whole cloth and then ramming it down your throats like the sky is not blue. It's more like you're already suspicious of this immigrant group because they look different than you.

50:09And let me tell you why they're responsible for the increased price of housing. Just like in cons, I think people are worried about some grifter coming up to them on the street and tricking them into giving them their life savings. No, like con men and grifters, they play off your greed. They play off, yeah, something, there has to be a fertile soil of some kind. And that's usually, I think, the unacknowledged emotions or feelings that are unresolved in each of us that everyone has. Unless you've really done an incredible amount of personal development, I guess. There's going to be a resonance that has to exist.

50:47It's not just simply the implanting. I mean, that's the cartoonish version of brainwashing is that these ideas are so irresistible or they're chemically implanted or there's like a formula or some new science that nobody ever knew about before. But actually, it's I mean, if you even just look at the history of how table manners, we share collectively. A delusion. We collectively decided that we wouldn't. It's no longer polite to blow your nose into the tablecloth. Other people are there. And that's a rule that's actually written out in the 16th century or something. But, you know, 100 years later, you didn't have to write the rule down.

51:23You did have to teach children that. But these things get inculcated and they're almost, now it just seems unnatural. Of course I know that. Well, it's like a form of technology, right? It's like maybe they understood there was something unsanitary or dangerous about that. Not just disgusting, but that it was bad. Yeah. And so you stop doing it and it becomes it's this sort of virtuous cycle. Yeah, I think about that now, too, like with some of the pushback against like PC stuff, like people are using the word retarded again or, you know, there's just this sort of crassness that's being re-injected.

52:00And like what alarms me about that is like we didn't just arbitrarily decide some words were not OK. Like, this is part of a process by which we are slowly, steadily tamping down the kind of baser, more violent and brutal parts of our human nature, which is always there because societies that let those run wild tend to do horrible things. Right. Like there's that quote about how like a society that burns books eventually will burn people. It's not that like books are like because you become ignorant, you then think it's OK to burn people. It's that when you unleash when it becomes culturally acceptable to just get rid of stuff you don't like, then it just becomes this sliding scale as what counts as stuff.

52:49Right. Books are stuff. And then undesirable people are stuff at different ends of the spectrum. And and so the reason we we don't do things is that it's been this technology, this process of like keeping those desires in check. And then what happens is a demagogue or a political movement puts those things back into play. And it's hard to tamp down on them again. Yeah, I think that's actually a brilliant point. So it seems like what we're saying is that manners are not inconsequential. Totally. And there's a sort of arc to, I mean, we don't urinate in the corner. That used to be what people did.

53:28And then it started to be certain classes don't do that. And then it was like, and you don't blow your nose into the hand we were about to shake hands with or things. Sure. Then it becomes widespread and then you don't really even have to teach it anymore. But there is a kind of social evolution. I don't think it's... Openly using racial slurs. And then all of a sudden we're all equal. And like politeness is a profound force, you know, that we learned that maybe you don't ask a person the first thing when you meet them and they look a certain way. Like, where are you from? It's another. But the the eagerness to reassert certain, you know, because it feels free to use some vocabulary that became.

54:07I mean, I could see why people feel that way, but it underestimates, yeah, the kind of what we're seeing, which is that the backlash actually feeds kind of license, like a new license. Well, isn't that kind of a component of cults, right? Like it's if they break down a lot of the norms that society has built. So it's like, hey, we're all going to share our boyfriends and girlfriends or, hey, all the kids are going to be raised over here. Actually, we don't talk to our parents anymore because parents are oppressed. They break these different bonds. They find things that are sort of just bedrock principles of civil society.

54:49They knock out the legs of that stool. And then it becomes, not only does that become destabilizing, but then because you're being looked at askance by people outside the cult, it creates this insular dynamic where it's like they're persecuting us. They don't understand us. They're weird. We're not the weird ones. And then you're off to the races. You create a miniature. Yeah. And there's an energy that comes from that breakdown of the prohibitions and bonds in this, in the normal or the way things are done. I mean, I think what caused Milos to write his book is that he said just living in Warsaw during World War Two.

55:24But he has this description of watching human society fall apart. Yeah. Where he said, you know, the first people are just trying to live their lives and everyone's trying to go to their jobs and keep their retirement savings going and just keep the family together. And then, you know, the men in jackboots arrive. People are divided up by races into different quarters of the city. And you're, you know, maybe you're saved at that point. You think you're safe. But at a certain point, he said when people know the day that they're going to be shipped off or shot, they copulate in the street next to the barbed wire.

56:00He said there was like no more human. Yes. The rest of the technology collapses, too. Everything collapses. And what he said after seeing that, you know, I didn't want that knowledge. Sure. Yeah, but he was never the same after. Yeah, I think you talk a little bit about the sort of right wing sort of online media system in the book, too. People are probably going to be watching this on YouTube. And I think what I think is interesting is the way that people whose work was kind of initially interesting, whether we're talking like a Jordan Peterson or something, how they have kind of themselves been a microcosm of this process.

56:34Right. They started like, let me tell you how to make your bed. And let me tell you this. And let me tell you this kind of transgressive idea. I'm going to push back on this, you know, political correctness thing. But then it kind of descends into this like madness or craziness. Like when I watch videos of him, I'm like, this is not a person who is doing well. Like there's something off. Right. all of a sudden, as it becomes more strident and more extreme, the people who came in because they liked it and it seemed normal then, now you're just kind of in, you're in that sphere, right? Because people trust him, I think.

57:11And also he, I do think he was placed in a position that I can only imagine being pushed. I've just so much pressure put on him and so much antagonism that I almost feel like it's a rare person who wouldn't be changed by that. It's not good to be that famous as an intellectual. It's hard for anyone to survive those pressures. And of course, you're going to want friends. When maybe your natural allies no longer will speak to you, you're going to seek associates. And yeah, I don't really know. I tried not to talk about it too much just because I want it to be something everyone can use to reflect on themselves.

57:48It's like the intellectual dark web became very dark very quickly. Right. Right. And I still follow some of the people are super interesting, too. They still do interesting work and you can find nuggets in it. That's one practice I have is like listen to all kinds of people and just find what you've be able to not have to take everything, but take some parts of it and keep what seems sane, but keep your sanometer functioning if possible. I think people are bad at spotting what is like maybe maybe it's how their parents were. I mean, look, if mental illness is very prevalent, then that means a good chunk of people have parents who are mentally ill or spent time.

58:29And so there can be maybe it feels normal or even safe in some ways. But like sometimes I'll watch clips of these people and go, this is a this person is nuts. And I think that's what's interesting when you when you watch like the cult documentaries you're talking about. You're like, they thought that this was like an elite, well-adjusted, successful person. It's unrecognizable to anyone else. Right. And I do think people have bad radar generally as to like like a good example. This, I think, is very clear in the financial space where it's like the people who are actually good with money, actually good at investing.

59:04You know, they're not like showing off their Ferrari and telling you how with this simple investment, you can triple your money or whatever. But if you aren't financially literate, it's hard for you to recognize the distinction between a savvy investor and a scam artist. You just don't have the experience that all looks the same to you. And being able to see those gradients is a skill. And I think that's definitely true. When I watch certain people, I'm like, that person is nuts. But if you don't have a good grasp on these things yourself, you're like, oh, they seem really smart. That's true. And it also, it's not transferable, like financial intuitive, savvy and acumen doesn't necessarily, it's not, doesn't translate to, you could even, you could be blind to a different type of dimension or invitation.

59:57Like maybe you develop that part of yourself, but not others. You see this in academics all the time, just like highly, you know, just brilliant capacity to even on that level of emotion and intuition, just being well attuned to their field. But it doesn't necessarily apply. And so it's difficult because there is there's often going to be an arena where you are vulnerable, you know, and then and then others who who aren't may think that you're just a fool. I had this funny memory yesterday talking to someone where I was remembering that my father was, my parents were invited to go to this cult meeting.

1:00:37I mean, they didn't think it was a cult. It was a large group awareness training where they put you and they kind of lock you in a room. And their friends had been through it and had changed their lives. So you're in this room and you can't leave and you can't go to the bathroom and kind of people start to break down. But they also, you know, have transformative experiences. And when my dad had to go to the bathroom, he's just like, I'm leaving. I'm going. Nothing is just too grouchy to be brainwashed. I thought that was very... No. That's a sort of... The funny thing is sometimes you realize like Cassandras or people who are really right about something, it is one of those things where like the majority was wrong and this small minority about it was right.

1:01:15A lot of times what they all have in common is just a kind of disagreeableness. They're actually wrong about a lot of things, but it was like a broken clock was right here because they just your dad's like also reject. Not that I don't know. But I'm sure there were lots of other things that he was invited to that he just left because he was too grouchy. You know what I mean? Grouchiness could occur in various circumstances and not always not always productively. But, you know, I mean, maybe Stockdale was like that, too. Yeah. It was like a profound superpower. Yeah, you don't tell me what to do.

1:01:48That's a personality trait that's also kind of a uniquely necessary skill in that thing. Yeah, definitely. It's hard to really make sense of, but it does seem like it's part of inquiry that everyone, I guess, has to. I mean, mostly a lens you can turn on yourself. Like, what are the parts that I can strengthen me? Because I know these are areas where I can be, where my issues arise, where my. I remember once I was at a meeting of this company I worked for and we were all talking about some idea and everyone was sort of in agreement except for this one guy who was sort of an older consultant, which there weren't a lot of at this company.

1:02:26And he pointed out what he thought was the problem with it. And, you know, I was arguing against it and the other people are vehemently. And he just went, all right. He's like, I'm OK standing alone on this one. He was like, I think I'm right. I don't need you to think I'm right. And I don't need to convince you that I'm right. And I just remember, I think about it all the time because people don't do that. That's a unique thing. That is unique. Just to be like, hey, I'm okay not being part of the crowd on this one. Yeah, he gave you that example. Yeah. That's really, that does seem stoic too.

1:02:59Totally. So how old were you when you saw that? 23, 24. Yeah, and also you didn't know that was part of human vocabulary. Yes, yeah. And I think that's one of the amazing things about being young too, Or just also just some of us in our backgrounds, we don't get that. We don't get like a shining example of X. Well, there's this stoic named Agrippinus who lived in the time of Nero. And so you can imagine you're in Nero's Rome. Like you don't want to stand out. That's a good way to get executed or, you know, exiled. And someone was sort of asking him, you know, like why, you know, he was he wouldn't attend Nero's dinner parties.

1:03:35He was always, you know, taking the contrary stance. And the person's like, what are you doing? And he said, life is a tapestry. He says, it's like a garment. And he's like, most people are the white threads. And I am the red thread that makes the garment beautiful by contrast. And I was like, I heard that probably in my 20s also. And you go, oh, yeah, like, you actually need those people. Those people provide an important role. And also, there's something kind of heroic and beautiful about being that. And at some other level, we all are unique. So why are we trying to match with everyone else?

1:04:13Very true. But I was thinking about recognizing crazy people. I don't know if you did you have you seen the clips of the actor Terrence Howard talking about his mathematical theories? No. So he thinks he's like a mathematical genius and that he like actually one plus one does not equal two. Like he has these like theories. And it's actually an interesting message. you to check it out because he was on rogan and like rogan's kind of like pretty credulous about it but you look at the you walk some through the steps of why one plus one isn't two yeah yeah and i don't think that's actually something but it's something like that like what one divided by one does not equal one something like that and he claims to have like invented all these technologies you're watching it and it's an interesting litmus test because when i see it i'm like this dude is screw loose or it's very manic.

1:05:03Like if you've ever been around sort of manic people or read much about manic people, you're like, oh, okay, this is all the signs of that. Right. And oftentimes manic people are very brilliant at some things. The problem is they can't turn it off and they have this sort of grandiosity that propels them. And then you look at the comments and people like, I don't know, it makes a lot of sense. And you go, oh, okay. Like we're coming at this with different frames of reference. And to me, what is throwing up every red flag that I know how to recognize, you're just like along for the ride. Right. And I think a lot that that is kind of one of the problems of our time, which is as information technology makes it easy to get a platform or get information out in the world in the way that you used to have to bump into the cult leader, like right in your small town.

1:05:49And they used to think that it would be impossible, that it would be impossible to recruit people online or that it would decontextualize. And They used to carry around the power of, I write a little bit about deprogrammers because it was an occupation, but they would carry around a briefcase of precious information that would show the, hopefully show the cult member that this was wrong and the information that had been shielded from them because they're under milieu control. And that could be powerful, but often just, you know, maybe the deprogramming looked like you were just brainwashing them back and then maybe tying them to a chair.

1:06:22Sometimes it would involve kidnapping and they'd just snap back when they were re-exposed to those stimuli, which is just this kind of, I mean, sometimes it was successful if the family reasserted itself and the deprogramming would take. But we are so susceptible to these things that we don't realize are a pre-existing level. For whatever reason, you have an incredible, you've honed a sensitivity to it. And so you see that first. Yes. Like you see the affect and the destabilized person first before you see this kind of elaborate theory. But many people are just drawn to the elaborate theory. Yeah.

1:07:01And we're getting so used to being decontextualized in other ways that we don't even have the cues we used to have. Right. When also like if an idea is on its face absurd to 99 out of 100 people looking at it and we go, okay, everyone sees it as dumb because most people see that it's dumb. What we're missing is what information technology allows to happen is for that idea. And sometimes we're showing it because we're laughing at it or we're saying it's abhorrent or stupid. But we don't realize that for every hundred people we're showing it to, it's resonating with one person. And so over enough exposure, you've now accumulated a group of people who don't think that it's crazy or abhorrent or, you know, dangerous.

1:07:48Oh, because they can find each other. They found each other. And just like typically if the crazy street preacher's message is on its face absurd to 99 out of 100 people, they're not going to be able to reach that many people over the course of their life. It's not a viral message. But if a message is made viral because of how controversial it is, Alex Jones, we think we're laughing at him. You're actually just telling more people about Alex Jones. I totally agree that in most cases that is true. But there is this possibility, just thinking about the classics in history of science, which is Thomas Kuhn wrote the book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

1:08:29Like there are occasional periods when we genuinely are in a revolutionary period of ideas. And so most science, this is what was radical about what he said and shocking to people. He said most scientists are just those white threads where, you know, they're just like reinforcing the existing paradigm. Their work is just putting another little tiny brick. in the wall and they're very conventional. And they're honing these tiny differences. And you see that around you. But there's just, at a certain point, the incommensurables start to add up and the structure, maybe the one plus one or whatever it is, falls apart in certain ways in certain respects and they start to add up and the existing structure begins to crumble.

1:09:15You need those disagreeable people because sometimes they're the first one that kind of starts to, oh, maybe actually this doesn't add up and maybe they're right for the wrong reasons or. Yeah. And then it's a revolutionary period. And so say it's tragedy if someone had the capacity to contribute in that period, but they just weren't born in that time. They were just a crank. But, you know, so there is always the possibility that this crank theory is something that could and should flourish. Well, have you heard this, that one of the arguments for what's happening now politically is called the crank realignment?

1:09:55Have you heard this theory? No. So basically, like the left used to have cranks and the right used to have cranks, right, for different reasons. And now it's sort of like and a lot of the cranks have come. Like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a Democrat until really recently. But now all those sort of people that used to be in the sort of left, the extreme or the we don't talk about them or we're happy to have their votes, but we don't actually let them to in. We don't give them the levers of power inside the left. A lot of those people have moved to the right. And this actually damages both parties in an extreme way because you don't have dissenting voices or counterbalancing voices inside your own party.

1:10:32I see. And so I agree. You need to have people who say crazy things, who are very different, who march to the beat of their own drummer. Obviously, it's a broad spectrum between sort of the malicious ones and the harmless ones. Right. But you need that. You need those people. You need room for a paradigm to shift. because that's what ultimately you do want, I think, for collectively for us to get wiser and get better science, but, you know, a more capacious science that understands. Yeah, if everyone's thinking the same thing, nobody's thinking. Exactly. So, yeah, otherwise it contributes to what you're describing, that realignment contributes to this paralyzing situation of polarization.

1:11:12Totally. You want to go check out some books? Yes. Let's do it.

1:11:20Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.