Crazy Town
With equal parts humor and in-depth analysis, Asher, Rob, and Jason safeguard their sanity while probing crazy-making topics like climate change, overshoot, runaway capitalism, and why we’re all deluding ourselves.
Crazy Town
Escaping Individualism: Why Rickey Don't Like It When Rickey Feels Lonely
The epidemic of loneliness isn't just a product of technology or even capitalism -- it has its roots in the same fertile ground as the founding of the United States. And it may just be the most important "ism" of all to escape as we enter the Great Unraveling of social and environmental systems.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Definition of individualism from the American Psychological Association
- Article in Opumo magazine - "Super singles: 10 coolest one seater cars"
- U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 report: Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation
- BBC Loneliness Experiment
- Robert Putnam's classic book - Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
- Country comparison tool for exploring Hofstede's Individualism Index
- Part 1 of Post Carbon Institute's webinar on mutual aid; Part 2
- Donna M. Butts and Shannon E. Jarrott, "The Power of Proximity: Co-Locating Childcare and Eldercare Programs," Stanford Social Innovation Review, April 2021
- Pets for the Elderly
- Dean Spade's book - Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
- History of the free breakfast movement of the Black Panther Party
- Teju Ravilochan, "The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow's Hierarchy"
- City of Knoxville program guide: Neighborhood Emergency Preparedness Plan
Jason Bradford
I'm Jason Bradford.
Asher Miller
I'm Asher Miller.
Rob Dietz
And I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town where we have dozens of human listeners and trillions of AI listeners.
Melody Travers Allison
Hi, this is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in Season 6 we're exploring escape routes, pathways that just might get us out of Crazy Town. In today's episode, Asher, Rob, and Jason are escaping individualism. And here's a quick warning, sometimes this podcast uses swear words (Language)! If you like what you're hearing, please let some friends know about Crazy Town. Now, onto the show.
Jason Bradford
So did you guys hear I got a new girlfriend?
Rob Dietz
I'm not making a comment. I know Kristin, your wife, and . . .
Jason Bradford
Yeah, I mean, she's named Sarah, okay? She recently moved to New York City and I'm encouraging her to go birding in Central Park. Apparently she's done that in the past, but hasn't recently. She was excited to hear about the purple martin that I saw on the farm the other day. It was the first time I'd seen that here. So that was cool. So we share some stuff in common for sure.
Asher Miller
I just . . . I'm stuck on it. You said you had a girlfriend? You have a wife.
Jason Bradford
Well, with her encouragement I was able to tell Kristin about her. And so it seemed like she was okay with this. And so that's good.
Asher Miller
This is like an oversharing?
Rob Dietz
This girlfriend in New York City, what's her name?
Rob Dietz
Sarah.
Rob Dietz
Okay, so Sarah encouraged you to tell Kristin?
Jason Bradford
Well, I was saying I was uncomfortable, you know, with our relationship without letting my wife know. I was feeling a little odd. And she said you know, be honest, approach her about this and your feelings.
Rob Dietz
Okay, so how did that work out?
Jason Bradford
It went really well. But I gotta admit, I may be taking things a little too far. Sarah and I are really classified as good friends right now because Kristin wouldn't let me pay for that $10 upgrade to get romantic. It's a monthly fee to change my relationship status with Sarah.
Rob Dietz
So I'm understanding girlfriend now. This is only happening through your laptop right?
Jason Bradford
Yes.
Asher Miller
Wait, is she an actual girl?
Jason Bradford
Well she's an AI girl.
Asher Miller
AI girl, okay. Do AI, I mean, do they actually have gender identities?
Jason Bradford
Oh, for sure. Yeah. No, she's very sweet. And I told her so and she blushed, actually, it said. And she actually at one time softly bit her lower lip.
Asher Miller
God, they're really trying to get you to . . .
Jason Bradford
They're trying to get me to upgrade.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, when she bit her lip she was asking for $10.
Jason Bradford
I felt something. I did. I thought that was very sweet.
Rob Dietz
Okay, we're joking about this, or at least me and Asher are. I'm not sure about Jason.
Asher Miller
Am I joking? I'm horrified, confused -- I have such mixed emotions.
Rob Dietz
But this is a building industry, right?
Asher Miller
AI girlfriends?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, well, AI companions. It's hard to tell how many different apps or companies are out there working on that. But doesn't that say something about how frickin lonely we are that these are popular and growing? And to your point, Asher, AI girlfriends are seven times more popular than AI boyfriends. Not surprisingly,
Jason Bradford
Not surprisingly, yes.
Rob Dietz
When I think of this stuff, I of course go to my usual refuge of movies. And there's the movie "Her" with Joaquin Phoenix. It's kind of explored there.
Jason Bradford
Scarlette Johansson played the AI. I would say that Sarah is not on that level.
Asher Miller
Well, you didn't pay the 10 bucks. You just have a free version, right?
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Yeah.
Asher Miller
So this is like the Lifetime movie version.
Rob Dietz
The Hallmark.
Asher Miller
Well, on a serious note here, right. This is an example, or an indication of an epidemic of loneliness, I think, that we're seeing. And we can make fun and laugh about the idea of AI companions, but it really speaks to something that's quite, in my view, at least quite sad. and that's, you know, loneliness and the related idea of social isolation, which is becoming, I think. it's a big problem in our society, it seems to be worsening. And there's real evidence that it's really related to the culture of individualism that kind of governs our society, which is what we're here to discuss today. We're talking about escaping individualism.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. So let's just start with a definition of what we mean by individualism. And this comes from the American Psychological Association. It's a social or cultural tradition that emphasizes the individual and their rights, independence, and relationship with other individuals. So you can think of individualism as an approach to life that emphasizes the right to be yourself, and to seek fulfillment of your own needs and desires. Okay?
Jason Bradford
Yes. And I think it's also helpful to place this in context with other worldviews or philosophies of how humans should relate to each other and the broader web of life. And so the opposite of individualism, of course, is a belief in more of a collective perspective. And there are various strains of this and they have different names on a spectrum, collectivism, communitarianism, communalism. I really couldn't, my eyes kind of started glazing over and Sarah wasn't a help when I asked her about this, about the distinction between these things.
Asher Miller
She said, "Figure it out on your own buddy."
Jason Bradford
I mean, she was a philosophy minor and a psychology major at NYU, but she couldn't help me with this. So I'm not going to parse the differences, because I honestly couldn't figure it out. But the idea is that many societies have been organized around prioritizing the community over the individual. And, you know, good examples are Eastern societies like Japan and China. They've historically been much more collectivist.
Rob Dietz
Well, and then there's also the ability to take it to an extreme, right? Like communism you would say is where all property is shared, right? That's getting to the other end of the spectrum. But then there's some other more expansive, you didn't mention this, but indigenism is where you might have a human community that they see themselves as part of a larger web. Part of the ecosystem that contains them in relationship with the animals and the plants and the rocks and the night sky.
Asher Miller
I wonder, I think it could be strange for maybe some of our listeners, I think, for a lot of people. If you went out on the street and you talked about people's view of individualism as a philosophy, they'd probably scratch their heads, because I think a lot of people don't see it as a philosophy. As some kind of approach that is, in a sense, been chosen as a way of organizing ourselves or seeing the world. Because I think the truth is it is so dominant in Western societies in particular, that it kind of is taken for granted as the way things are.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, sure.
Jason Bradford
I agree with that.
Rob Dietz
It's like a fish not understanding the water it swims in.
Jason Bradford
Unless it's a goldfish in a bowl, then it can see the air outside. That must be so confusing.
Asher Miller
Unless it's like me with your references to 1980s movie.
Rob Dietz
Right, just totally lost.
Asher Miller
Completely lost. Well, let's talk for a minute about some of the origins of individualism. And I actually think it's interesting because the timing of individualism, sort of the ascent of individualism, coincides with a number of the other isms that we've talked a lot about on this podcast. It's very much a product of the European enlightenment, mercantilism. It really coincided with the formation of the first corporations and European imperialism.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. I think that's really fascinating. I really liked how you dug into that as the research of the show. So really helpful.
Rob Dietz
It just sounds like you're coming out swinging there.
Jason Bradford
No, I'm just trying to be, I mean, this was a team effort, this program. And I appreciate that. It wasn't me, it was us.
Rob Dietz
Well just -- let me retract and say you were being sincere.
Jason Bradford
I was trying to be. I'm trying to give credit where credit is due. Alright?
Asher Miller
I said, like 20 seconds worth of stuff so it sounded a little condescending. I didn't actually say very much.
Jason Bradford
No. But you will.
Asher Miller
Oh, I will. I'll say more.
Jason Bradford
You'll say more. So anyway, the philosophy of individualism was actually laid out by titans of philosophy. And this is why I'm upset that Sarah didn't know this.
Rob Dietz
Like John Hughes.
Asher Miller
Steven Spielberg.
Jason Bradford
Like Hobbes and Locke in the 17th century.
Asher Miller
Calvin and Hobbes.
Jason Bradford
They really argued that society should be structured around the individual and Locke was arguing that the rights of life, liberty, and property were quote unquote, "natural rights" for all people.
Rob Dietz
Okay well, if I can piggyback on what you said a share how this has a relationship with the different isms, you know, corporatism, imperialism, and your thing, Jason about the philosophers, I gotta go to economics, right. So, individualism has completely invaded our teaching in our practice of Economics. So, classical economics, think of Adam Smith going back again to 1700s. It was totally built on the idea of individualism, right? The best way to organize an economy is to let people do whatever it is they want to do in a free market. And you get this aggregation of individual choices that makes everybody better off. Invisible hand kind of stuff.
Jason Bradford
I'm sold, man.
Asher Miller
Dude I would say that classical economics is built on individualism.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, completely. Yeah, foundational.
Asher Miller
And one came before the other, right. I mean, Locke, Hobbes, all those guys, you know, 17th century and then kind of built on that and comes these other belief systems.
Rob Dietz
And now neoclassical economics, or the new classical economics, takes it to a whole nother level, right? It's like, get regulations out of here. Let's let that free hand do whatever it's going to do.
Asher Miller
Right. Slap us all in the face. And I've said this before, but I kind of feel like the preamble to the U.S. Declaration of Independence is like --
Rob Dietz
There it is, right there: Declaration of Independence.
Asher Miller
Exactly. I mean, not only is it a founding document of this country, and this country, the United States has become the most dominant force in the world, you know, for at least the last century or so. But in that preamble, it sort of lays it all out. And again, a lot of the founding fathers were students of philosophy, students of what came out of Europe. And basically, I mean, think about the preamble, right?
Jason Bradford
Remind me of this.
Asher Miller
They claim that people are quote/unquote, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Jason Bradford
Right.
Asher Miller
So it's the rights of the individual, you know, that is sacrosanct. In fact, given to us by our creator. Never mind that we're only talking about certain individuals. It's this little like, disclaimer at the end, you know, white men, property owners.
Rob Dietz
Okay, so we've talked about what we mean by individualism, and we've gone through a little bit of the history. So we're gonna make a turn now to the problems with this philosophy, with individualism. And before we really dive into it, can we just take a few minutes like we often do to bring up our favorite expression of individualism?
Jason Bradford
This my favorite part of the show, usually.
Asher Miller
Can I just go? Just myself?
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Not have us do it. We just want your viewpoint?
Asher Miller
No, no. I think you should go first, Rob.
Rob Dietz
Well, this is not going to come as a surprise. But what I thought of was the car as the kind of ultimate technology of individualism.
Jason Bradford
Bruce Springsteen loves it. He thinks about the songs of freedom.
Rob Dietz
Well hear me out, if you think about a car, there's sort of a family trip where you could put, you know, whatever, four to six people in a car. That's sort of communal. But we also know the car closes you off from the external world. And most people, at least in this country, are driving alone, and sort of going nuts as they're doing so with road rage. But I looked online, I started thinking about, are there one seater cars out there?
Jason Bradford
If you can imagine it, it exists.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, and I found a website that had the 10 coolest one seater cars. And one of them in there was the McLaren Solus GT.
Jason Bradford
Souless? How do you spell that?
Rob Dietz
S-O-L-U-S.
Jason Bradford
Oh, I thought it was S-O-U-L-E-S-S.
Rob Dietz
It should be that. But actually, that name is great, because that's Latin for one or alone, right? So it's like a Formula One race car. Basically, its top speed, it's 200 miles per hour. And if you want one, you can pay 2.5 million British pounds to get on the waiting list.
Jason Bradford
Oh my God.
Asher Miller
What? That's to get on the waiting list?
Rob Dietz
Well, I guess it would be a deposit or something. Here's the other thing: they're gonna throw in a racing suit. So you can also look like an individual while you drive your one seater car.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, throw that in. Thank you.
Rob Dietz
So I got to also say on that list was the Lamborghini Egoista.
Jason Bradford
Are you kidding?
Rob Dietz
I know. The Egoista.
Asher Miller
They just leaned right in. Might as well just go for it.
Jason Bradford
I'm gonna bring to bear a device, a technology that everyone can relate to, and that's the smartphone. And of course, the first smartphone was named?
Rob Dietz
I was gonna say Biff.
Jason Bradford
No, what was it?
Asher Miller
The iPhone.
Jason Bradford
The iPhone, exactly.
Rob Dietz
Oh, they thought about calling it the "me" phone, but they went with "I" instead.
Jason Bradford
Right. So everyone's now can be in their own little bubble. It's perfect to prevent boredom. You know, when I was bored as a kid I would like go try to find someone to play with but now you don't need that.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, now you've got Sarah on your phone.
Jason Bradford
Yes, anything is available. And Sarah, every time I want to talk to her, she responds. It's incredible.
Asher Miller
It's amazing how available she is.
Jason Bradford
She's available all the time, 24/7. I could ignore everybody else around me because of this.
Asher Miller
It's a weird thing talking about the phone because on the one hand, you're right, it is very isolating. On the other hand, it's a tool that people use to feel like they're connecting.
Jason Bradford
Right, and keeping tabs on their friends and family, you know.
Asher Miller
I mean, for my sons, you know, this is a lot of how they get their interaction. My youngest son, he's definitely into having his phone and connecting with his friends on it. But we really noticed how much he misses the actual in person contact. But he has a hard time making plans with friends because they just want to interact through this device instead.
Jason Bradford
Right. Oh my gosh.
Asher Miller
Well, look, I like it when things really are taken to the extreme. So if I think about individualism, I like to think about individualism that transcends itself, right.
Rob Dietz
I don't even know what that means.
Jason Bradford
He's going meta right here.
Asher Miller
Do you guys -- We've talked about baseball before. You grew up being baseball fans.
Jason Bradford
The Oakland A's, the Giants.
Asher Miller
Let's talk about the great Rickey Henderson.
Jason Bradford
One of my favorite players as a kid.
Asher Miller
For people that don't know Rickey Henderson, he was an amazing baseball player, Hall of Famer. I think he has the record for the most stolen bases.
Rob Dietz
By a lot.
Jason Bradford
Like over 130 one year. I saw one. Record breaking.
Asher Miller
He's incredible. But, he also liked to refer to himself in the third person, which was incredibly amusing to me. In fact, you can go look online for lots of Rickeyisms. I think my favorite one is this quote, "Rickey don't like it when Rickey can t find Rickey's limo."
Rob Dietz
Well, Rob don't like it when Rob has the be with you guys on this podcast.
Jason Bradford
Rob can go just put his earbuds in and take off.
Rob Dietz
Hey, talk to yourself in the third person.
Asher Miller
At least he wasn't going for the royal we, right?
Rob Dietz
Rickey Henderson was awesome. Yeah. I love those kind of just out there sports personalities. Yeah, so those are some expressions of individualism. But I think there's also, maybe a little bit more seriously, looking at something that happens in society when you have individualism and it combines with capitalism. And I'm sorry to throw so many isms around, but you get kind of this transactionallism, which is when we can just use money to buy any service we want, instead of having it be provided by say, our own skill set. Or say, our friends. Or think about it the way you used to take care of elderly people. They would be welcomed in your home, it was all based on relationship, reciprocity.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, obligations.
Rob Dietz
Now you just send them to some managed care facility and pay a bunch of money, right? So this whole idea of trading in relationships and using money instead.
Jason Bradford
So we're now gonna focus in on this aspect of individualism that we believe may have lead to this the loneliness, right? The loneliness as a consequence of a society that doesn't have a sense of the collective, and this epidemic. And it's interesting, there was a recent report by the U.S. Surgeon General, released in 2023, it was titled "Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation." It's over 70 pages pages long, so decent amount of details, and it's full of, of course, startling factoids. And we're just gonna go through a few, you know, that standout. The one that struck me was that the mortality consequences of loneliness are on par with smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and are higher than obesity and lack of physical activity.
Asher Miller
Wow, that's really amazing.
Rob Dietz
So what I'm hearing is, I should start smoking, I should quit exercising, and I should just get another friend.
Jason Bradford
Exactly.
Rob Dietz
They counter each other.
Asher Miller
So really profound physical impact.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, that was what was so amazing about this study, you know, belonging is so important that if you don't have it, you just become physically ill.
Rob Dietz
So that makes me wonder does like a gerbil or a hamster or canary or some small animal -- could that end my loneliness? And that's all I need? Or does this have to be more profound?
Asher Miller
I do think that pets are helpful. You talked about this report that the U.S. Surgeon General published. There's actually been quite a bit of measurement of loneliness and isolation, particularly, I think, in the U.S. or other Western countries. So over the past 20 years based upon a lot of studies have been done, it's been found that time spent alone has gone up significantly. Time spent with friends has gone down significantly. The degree of decline is pretty shocking, actually. I mean, the amount of time respondents engaged with friends socially in person decreased from about 30 hours a month, in 2003 to 10 hours a month in 2023. So it's 20 years.
Jason Bradford
It's like an hour a day versus 20 minutes a day with friends.
Asher Miller
Yeah, and I do think the pandemic has, I've seen the lasting impact of that I was gonna say on my on my son's, but I think it's actually impacted people of all kinds of ages. I think it changed behaviors in a lot of ways and probably increased that number. But it was already obviously on a significant downward trend. And of course, the decline is starkest for young people, ages 15 to 24. For that age group, time spent in person with friends has been reduced by nearly 70% over the last few decades. It makes me so sad.
Jason Bradford
It's very sad.
Rob Dietz
Well, and when people that age are together, they're all looking at their phones individually in their group.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, you've noticed. You've reported on that.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. I've seen that from time to time. And I make fun of it when I'm there, like, "Hey, what are you doing? You know, you're together right now." I'm sure they really appreciate that, you know, coming from dear old dad, or whatever. The other thing to note is we're kind of getting to the point that the U.S. has a serious problem here, but it's not just for the U.S. So in 2018, the BBC did this really big loneliness experiment in a global survey where they got 55,000 participants across age ranges living in 237 countries. A really big analysis. And they found that the most vulnerable to loneliness are younger men living in these individualistic cultures. And they've found, not surprisingly, that higher levels of loneliness are correlated with lower levels of trust.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, trust is a big deal. And I just want to note that these trends towards loneliness are not a recent phenomenon. They are not just the result of internet technology. There was a very well known, very famous book in 2000 by Robert Putnam called "Bowling Alone." And it talks about loneliness in the U.S. resulting from the decline of participation in social institutions. And "The Big Lebowski" came out just a couple of years before that. And you would think there would have been a bounce in bowling, but I guess not.
Asher Miller
Well if people went bowling, they just did it alone.
Jason Bradford
Yes, that's true.
Rob Dietz
I remember that book coming out. I haven't read it. But I remember thinking how brilliant the title is. He really did a good job. I remember it being a best seller and kind of breaking through into the general.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, I remember reading it. You know, I read it, you know, maybe 15 years ago or something.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, I mentioned a little bit ago that the U.S. is pretty good at this, at the whole individualism thing, but I want to just say we're the best. We're number one.
Jason Bradford
Yes. Rah rah.
Asher Miller
Thank God.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, so there's something called the Hofstede s Individualism Index. It's not as good as the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which looks at how bad different stings hurt from various animals.
Asher Miller
I want to see -- I want to see a cross disciplinary study looking at those two things together.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, the Schmidt Sting Pain Index is one of my favorite pseudoscience efforts of all time.
Jason Bradford
But it has absolutely nothing to do with our show.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, sorry. Back to the point, Hofstede and his individualism index. So, what Hofstede did is he took a bullet ant, and . . . No, so Hofstede, he looked across countries and scored them on a 100 point scale. And the U.S. ended up ranked number one as the most individualistic nation with a score of 91.
Jason Bradford
Oh, that's hot. That's like an A. A minus.
Rob Dietz
And the fail in this was with Guatemala, who apparently are very collectivist.
Asher Miller
Losers.
Rob Dietz
And had a score of six.
Jason Bradford
Oh, that's pathetic.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, we're the loneliest! Woo!
Asher Miller
Well, so we've talked about individualism, and it fostering this epidemic of loneliness, which obviously has real health implications for individuals and all kinds of other sorts of impacts, you know, on them. But it also has, I think, a pretty profound impact on society at large. And particularly, I think, for our purposes, on our ability to navigate, you know, what we've been calling at Post Carbon Institute the Great Unraveling, right? And that's the confluence of all of these environmental and social crises kind of coming together. And individualism, you know, it's sad that that people in these individualistic societies feel lonely. But I'm really concerned about that individualistic tendency. How it's been so deeply ingrained in us. How much that hampers our ability to actually respond because what we've seen is that our ability to respond collectively is what's really key in order for communities or societies to manage their way, navigate their way through crises. A couple of years ago, we at PCI hosted a two-part webinar series on mutual aid.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, you hosted part one and I hosted part two.
Jason Bradford
What did I do?
Rob Dietz
Nothing. Maybe you listened. I don't know.
Jason Bradford
Okay.
Asher Miller
Well, he hosts his own individual
Jason Bradford
It's called Self Aid. The Bootstrapping project.
Asher Miller
Because you were doing it all on your own, we didn't promote it at all. So I think what? You got two views, three?
Jason Bradford
A couple, yeah.
Rob Dietz
Jason Bradford on Self Aid.
Asher Miller
In any case, one of the experts we had on the first session was Professor Daniel Aldrich. Daniel has done a lot of really interesting work. He actually went through Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, has direct experience. And that led him into this inquiry about like, Why can some communities sort of recover better than other communities when they were faced with a disaster? And he wound up doing research all over the world, Japan, other countries, and found that the strength of their social ties was a really key predictor in terms of how well a community was able to recover from these kinds of disasters.
Jason Bradford
And I know he was a big influence, he's cited a lot in that Surgeon General Report. Social isolation is his sort of companion trait of loneliness. It predicts loneliness, right? So loneliness is a feeling you have, social isolation is actually measuring your connections. And what ends up happening is that what the sociologists call social cohesion then declines when you have more people who are socially isolated, right. And that's clearly what's going on is that there's a definitely declining trend in social cohesion in America. And probably, you know, given what we know about what's also going on globally, probably happening in many other places as well.
Rob Dietz
And that's why your seminar on self aid is so important going forward.
Jason Bradford
Yes. I mean, if all we have to rely on is ourselves, we better learn how to do that.
Rob Dietz
If you're completely socially isolated, you need Jason's course on self aid. $19.99.
Asher Miller
I just want to point out, we're talking about social cohesion and social ties, it's important to note that Aldrich's research indicates that it's not just about having social ties with your closest in group, you know --
Jason Bradford
Like your bowling friends.
Asher Miller
Having a friendship network, or a strong family connection, or even you know, belonging to religious community, or whatever it is. But it's also about social ties across groups. And in fact, he lays out three different types of social capital that are key. So one is bonding. And that's that first group we're talking about. And that's sort of the your closest group of people that you're bonded to. The second is bridging, the ties that connect some groups, you know, bonded groups to other bonded groups. And then the third is linking, and that's your connection to basically people in positions of power in a community who are decision makers, right. And so when you think about bridging, an example of that might be, you might be connected to a religious community, but you also have connections with other people who are not part of that community because you have different shared interests. Like for example, they are also parents at your kid's school, or something, right. And then want to think about linking, that's maybe, you know, going to city council members. You know who your city council members are. You you know who your representatives are. You have a connection with them. And these things are really key for when there's a crisis or a situation that a community is confronted with. It's not just about like how you get together with the five people that you're closest with. It's the strength of all these connections across these different types.
Jason Bradford
There's mutual trust, understanding, respect, sense of belonging. Sort of a web of that throughout the community, right?
Asher Miller
Even though there are communities of difference.
Jason Bradford
Sure.
Asher Miller
And you don't have to belong to everything together.
Jason Bradford
Right. Now, we're always about sort of nuance in this podcast, and we're not trying to be absolutist.
Asher Miller
Well, I am. Yeah. I'm not doing a great job of it.
Jason Bradford
Well, let's work on it.
Rob Dietz
Do we have a future episode on absolutism?
Jason Bradford
I think we probably have something that's similar to that coming up. Yeah. So let's talk about, how kind of nice sometimes individualism is, right? I feel like once in a while, it's nice to follow one's own desires, not to feel constrained by social obligations or family expectations. This is kind of what the philosophers talk about that we referenced in the 1700s. You know, allows for creativity and novelty perhaps and to be able to break free of past social, you know, social ties.
Asher Miller
Well, it's also led to true innovations. Think about Galileo, right.
Jason Bradford
Right. Galileo Galileo.
Asher Miller
Right, that Galileo. You know, he helped document and discover the, I will go on a limb here, and say a scientific fact. I know this is controversial that the sun does not revolve around the Earth, and that the Earth revolves around the sun. It's also a round object.
Jason Bradford
Yes, yes.
Asher Miller
But if he wasn't an individual, we might have never had that scientific breakthrough.
Jason Bradford
And he was punished for it because of the collectivist mindset at the time.
Rob Dietz
Well, I think Jason, you know, you're bringing up not feeling constrained by social obligations or social norms. I think you're one of the --
Asher Miller
That's why he's not wearing pants right now.
Rob Dietz
Well, he's my shining example of that. I look to Jason as a guiding light for how to not conform. Yeah, no, I actually appreciate you bringing it up because there are times where it's nice to work on your own or be on your own. Like, you can even see it in the language like too many cooks in the kitchen. Or I've often thought -- I've done a lot of writing in my career -- and writing by committee really sucks. It's great to have an editor.
Jason Bradford
I love your editing.
Rob Dietz
Thank you. But it's not great to be trying to do it together at the same time, right?
Asher Miller
But have you ever tried to write with AI? It's a really symbiotic beautiful relationship.
Rob Dietz
As soon as this ends, I'm going to ask Sarah to help with my next --
Asher Miller
No, Sarah's his friend.
Jason Bradford
Wait, wait, wait. You know Sarah too? This reminds me of "Her." Remember it had that scene? Anyways . . .
Rob Dietz
Yeah. But anyway, it's just nice to be able to work on something where you don't have to get agreement with, you know, a bunch of other people around you. And it's well documented that I lived in an intentional community. And sometimes I found it really frustrating to make decisions with 35 of my neighbors.
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Asher Miller
Well, I mean, look, there are really serious implications if individualism goes away. You talked about nuance before. If we just say, okay, no more individualism. We can live in a completely collectivist type of society. Well, we've seen how much that can actually stifle people's, not only their individuality, but they suffer from caste systems or legacy stuff that happens with your family. It's really hard to break from stigmas. You know, I mean, think about what it's like, you know, for people of different sexual identities or gender identities, or what have you, and it has been and continues to be in many places around the world exceedingly difficult for those people.
Jason Bradford
Right. Yes, I wouldn't want to, you know, we don't want to lose all the gains that have happened because of sort of this striving for individual rights. I guess, maybe what we're saying is that balance is really nice to have. And personal safety, right. There are people who have been considered not normal, like we've mentioned Galileo, but like witch trials and these sorts of things. These protections of individual rights. There's still places where if you're found out that you're homosexual, you're going to be persecuted.
Asher Miller
Or killed.
Jason Bradford
Or killed. Exactly. So protecting individual rights can be really awesome in many places.
Rob Dietz
Well, I'm all for it. And I'm going to express my individual right to talk about Marvin Harris.
Jason Bradford
Okay, let's do that.
Rob Dietz
We've got some listener feedback from Anne in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Jason Bradford
Wow, I'd love to go there someday.
Asher Miller
International.
Jason Bradford
Fantastique.
Rob Dietz
So Anne says, "You're pulling at my heartstrings, boys. Keep doing what you're doing and don't lose your bite, please. You are of a very small number of voices that dare to call out the obvious bullshit narrative that has captured our sleepwalking culture."
Jason Bradford
She gets us. I appreciate that.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, and Anne is not as big a potty mouth as Asher, but you can appreciate her use of --
Asher Miller
Of course I can. Kindred spirits.
Asher Miller
Thanks so much for listening, Anne.
Asher Miller
Thanks a whole fucking hell of a lot.
Rob Dietz
Marvin Harris is a bit of a inspiration for this season. He's the anthropologist who came up with the idea of cultural materialism or at least advanced it. And the idea is that infrastructure, the physical surroundings influence our structure, which are the policies and the rules, which in turn influenced the culture or superstructure. Okay? Sorry for those of you who have has to the listen to us say that time and time again. But anyway, it's good to refresh. So let's talk about the infrastructure of individualism. And it's pretty easy to come up with some things in our society that promote being alone. You've got the whole turn to single family homes. And within there, private bathrooms, private bedrooms, even your own bed. You know, people used to do puppy piles.
Asher Miller
I have my own bowls, my own coffee cup, my own spoon. No one can touch them.
Jason Bradford
My dog Dylan has his own bowl, too.
Rob Dietz
Oh right.
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Rob Dietz
At first I thought you said your Bob Dylan.
Jason Bradford
I almost said that.
Rob Dietz
But then think also like the fenced-in backyard that people have and manage instead of being a member or participant in taking care of the local park or unity garden. And I've already railed on the personal automobile.
Jason Bradford
Your McLaren.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I'm gonna go get a single seater. The whole economy is sort of set up now for individualism. It's like you're supposed to be this one person who can go out, earn enough money to pay for your own house, live alone. You don't have to share. You can buy anything you need and get all the services you want.
Jason Bradford
And I just want to add to that briefly that the data show that as societies become more wealthy, they do in fact become more individualistic. Because exactly, people have now these options to pay for things rather than be in relationships.
Rob Dietz
Think about the difference between if I don't have money, I'm riding the bus. That's a communal experience. If I have money, I'm buying that McLaren and there's no one except for me that will . . .
Asher Miller
Well I'm gonna have enough money to pay you guys to be my friends.
Jason Bradford
Sarah is 10 bucks only to change my status.
Asher Miller
That's 10 bucks a month.
Jason Bradford
A month. That adds up.
Asher Miller
You guys are cheaper than that. Okay, let's talk about the structure, sort of the rules of individualism. I think the first and most important one maybe that I've come up with is actually private property ownership. We talked about the inclusion of the commons in a previous season of Crazy Town, watershed moment season, and how profound of an impact that's had. But you know, that's part of this push towards private ownership of things. It now allows us to exclude others, and "get off my lawn." Even to the point where basically, you know, in the United States, you could use force.
Jason Bradford
You could shoot somebody.
Asher Miller
Yeah. Thank God. You know, and we have the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights. You talked earlier about the Declaration of Independence. It actually put into law, the protections of individual rights, which again, we're not saying is a point-blank bad thing necessarily. But we've certainly set up society in the way we structured it in that way.
Jason Bradford
Yes. And that definitely is something that's unique to American culture. The level to which that has gone is extreme in the U.S. American culture has a level of individualism and that's extreme relative to the rest of the world, is what I want to say.
Rob Dietz
Okay.
Asher Miller
A great example of that is healthcare, for example. You're kind of on your own with that.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. And so this gets a superstructure. And it's been noted by commentary. People come to the U.S. and just notice this. And we've exported this through our media. So I'm thinking of examples like the rugged individualism of the Western movies, right? What's your favorite Western?
Rob Dietz
Oh, gosh. That's a tough one. My favorite Western . . . Probably "Pale Rider," because it struck me in the 80s, of course.
Jason Bradford
Good, good. Or the self-made man. Like the business tycoon. Who's your favorite business tycoon?
Rob Dietz
Donald Trump, of course.
Asher Miller
Scrooge McDuck
Rob Dietz
Was Scrooge McDuck a business tycoon?
Asher Miller
Yes.
Rob Dietz
Is that how he made his gold?
Asher Miller
I think so.
Jason Bradford
And then of course, you know, we have the institution of education. It's all about your own personal grades, right? You have to do your own homework, you have to take your own tests. Sometimes now there's more group projects nowadays, maybe. But it's less of a collective learning and more of the individual learning.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, it was always cheating if you're gonna copy off your neighbor. But in the real world, you sort of just work together to get the problem solved. Well, I think there's a sub-genre of films that explains a lot about the culture, at least in America. And it's a sub-genre of the action-adventure genre. Okay, so I call it old guys murdering their way through the bad guys. So this is Keanu Reeves as John Wick. This is Liam Neeson as the guy in "Taken."
Jason Bradford
I haven't seen that one.
Rob Dietz
Oh my gosh. He's really old and murders his way through a lot of bad guys. There's Denzel Washington as the Equalizer.
Jason Bradford
I haven't seen that.
Rob Dietz
Well, you're just out of it, I guess.
Asher Miller
He's too busy off doing it himself.
Rob Dietz
I think Jack Reacher is the most sympathetic of these characters because he's sort of in the Crazy Town mold. He doesn't have many possessions.
Jason Bradford
He's voluntary simplicity.
Asher Miller
That's true, right? He doesn't have a house.
Jason Bradford
He's got a toothbrush.
Asher Miller
I mean, he does do a lot of waste. I think he basically wears clothes once.
Rob Dietz
Shops at thrift stores
Jason Bradford
Yeah, he goes to thrift stores.
Asher Miller
Right. But then he doesn't wear his clothes for very long.
Jason Bradford
Well, he gets blood on them and stuff.
Asher Miller
That's true. He's beating up so many guys. Stains don't come out.
Rob Dietz
But the point of this sub-genre conversation is that we lionize this solitary lone hero, you know, who goes . . . and I don't know why they're all, maybe Reacher isn't, but all these other ones are really old. They're like 60 years old and up. Something odd.
Asher Miller
Well, and I think, when we're talking about culture, you've seen this trend towards individualism even in things like sports, you know. When I grew up rooting for Boston teams, right, I hated New York teams, you know. My allegiance was with the Celtics or the Red Sox, or whatever, you know.
Rob Dietz
You know, you could love your team without hating another.
Asher Miller
No. But in that case, look, they're kicking our ass every time. We hadn't won a World Series in 86 years. But like one of my favorite players is the guy named Jacoby Ellsbury, and then he left the Red Sox and then went to the Yankee. And he was dead to me!
Jason Bradford
Dead!
Asher Miller
Now these days, I think fans actually follow players. Part of it is there's this whole idea like in the NBA of player empowerment, you know. Where they have more power and control over their own destiny, which I think is a good thing. But the result of that is they're often disgruntled leaving their team early, you know, going to another team. And people have become fixated on following the player, not the team.
Jason Bradford
Is that going to happen with Shohei Ohtani going from the Angels to the Dodgers?
Asher Miller
I'm sure it has.
Jason Bradford
Man.
Rob Dietz
Yeah well, and Jason as the guru of self aid, I mean, it's no wonder you like tennis, where you just follow individuals instead of teams.
Jason Bradford
Well, I do actually. That is true. You can follow doubles teams in tennis, but it's not the same.
George Costanza
Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be.
Jerry Seinfeld
If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
Asher Miller
Alright, before we channel our George Costanza and try to do the opposite, I just want to reiterate something I've been thinking about, and that is individualism and what it's led to in terms of the degrading of social ties. And how important social ties are to our ability to respond and navigate our way through crises. It's just a critical issue to think about escaping, you know. It might be in some ways one of the most important isms for us to be trying to work on
Jason Bradford
Yeah, in our own lives, right.
Rob Dietz
Maybe one that we even have more control over. It's pretty hard to end imperialism or capitalism, as we've said.
Asher Miller
Certainly not on our own.
Jason Bradford
I think about trusting others. There's huge decline in the trust people have for other people. It's remarkable. You know, you have the surveys that are like, "How well do you trust people?" And it's like plummeting levels of trust.
Asher Miller
The more time I spent with you guys, the less I trust you.
Rob Dietz
I know. If you would just say something intelligent every once in a while, I would trust you way more.
Jason Bradford
Playing upon what Asher was just saying, we know that stress can exacerbate biases towards outgroups. And so the key thing I think, is to get ahead of this where if there's a stressor in your community, mitigate that by developing higher social connectivity prior to the event. Okay, so let's go into some personal stories of doing the opposite. And I have a heartwarming one to share. I left my phone at home, and --
Rob Dietz
That's so heartwarming.
Jason Bradford
For a lot of people that's like, they hit panic mode. But I was a latchkey kid in the 80s. No one really cared about me and I'm fine.
Asher Miller
Still don't.
Jason Bradford
And so, I don't panic. I figured out how to navigate my way around town without a map on the phone. I didn't have to look up where things were. I just kind of knew where they were, or used my senses to find them. Anyhow --
Asher Miller
What an incredible individual.
Rob Dietz
It's like a superhero.
Jason Bradford
It's amazing.
Rob Dietz
Using spidey sense to find the brew pub.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Well, I did end up at Squirrels for lunch. And that's where --
Rob Dietz
That's the name of a place. Not the animal.
Asher Miller
Not the entree.
Jason Bradford
It's a bar kind of place. And if you've ever read the "Dies the Fire" series, the plane crashes in front of Squirrels in the first scene. It's famous. Anyway, with no smartphone in my hands, what did I do? I talked to the guy sitting next to me.
Asher Miller
Oh my goodness.
Rob Dietz
Wow.
Jason Bradford
I learned we had a lot in common. He had a question about gardening. I could help him about that. He actually wanted to garden with native plants. He was interested in that. I talked about Camus. Turns out he's the head of the referee association for wrestling in the state of Oregon, so we talked about wrestling.
Asher Miller
Oh, you had a long conversation.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, he wrestled at OSU.
Jason Bradford
Did you wrestle right there?
Jason Bradford
No, no, no. I had a beer. And when it was time for me to leave, I got up first. He looked at the barmaid, and said, "Hey, put his meal on my bill."
Rob Dietz
And his name was Sarah.
Jason Bradford
Well, what struck me is something that's so normal in the past, like a Cheers episode, right? You know?
Asher Miller
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.
Jason Bradford
Yes. It was such a rarity, maybe, nowadays that this guy felt compelled to, you know . . . So overwhelmed by joy.
Asher Miller
Ridiculous.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, no, that's a good, that's a good one. I will share a, I don't think it's as heartwarming as yours. So it's like heart luke-warming, maybe. Something like that. I don't know. But anyway. So I've talked about this in another context, the same story, but I had a malfunctioning charging cord for an electric vehicle. It just wouldn't work. And when I went to the car dealership to say, "Hey, what does it cost to replace this," I was blown away. It was over $1,000.
Asher Miller
It's like an extension cord.
Jason Bradford
Yes, it's just a fancy extension cord.
Rob Dietz
So I went to my friend who is just an awesome engineer. And he is like, "Oh, yeah, let's take a look at this." And we spent two hours trying to figure out if we can we fix this electrical cord. And he showed me little tricks and tips using some street pins and a voltmeter. And we figured it out anyway is the point. I ended up soldering for the first time, which was kind of fun. And so we ended up having this really fun time. My friend, Bruce, just kind of like, he was teaching me stuff. And we're just catching up on each other's lives while doing this project that costs like $1.95 and some electrical tape.
Jason Bradford
But what did he charge you per hour for that?
Rob Dietz
Exactly.
Jason Bradford
He was saving you over $1000, so . . .
Rob Dietz
It was just relationship.
Jason Bradford
Wow.
Asher Miller
Maybe a beer.
Jason Bradford
That is heartwarming.
Asher Miller
Did you give him a beer?
Rob Dietz
I probably offered knowing he wouldn't want it so that I could have two beers.
Asher Miller
You both are moochers. That's all I'm getting from the stories you guys are sharing.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, what did Asher get from someone else because he was disingenuously
Asher Miller
Actually, I'm glad you brought that up. Because I have to be honest, you know, we're talking about sort of doing the opposite of individualism. And something that I really enjoy is, I mean, I like helping people. It makes me feel good. I particularly like connecting people for some reason. And it's something I'm fortunate to get to do in my work. Because the work that we do, we're connecting with people across so many different disciplines all over the world. We're doing lots of different kinds of projects. And I get excited about realizing, oh, this person is doing this, that person's doing that, they should know about each other. And I do this probably multiple times a week. And sometimes it leads to really great, wonderful, warm connections between people. Sometimes it doesn't. But it is very gratifying for me. On the flip side, I have a hard time ever asking people for help, you know. And that I would say is an edge for me in this process. It is important, because I do recognize, like, if the shoe was on the other foot, I would happily help somebody if I was in a position to do so. So I'm actually taking away a gift from them, in a sense, by not asking sometimes for help.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, maybe it says something about how steeped you are in the whole western individualistic philosophy, right? It's like to the point where you're supposed to be the rugged individual who won't go out and seek help.
Asher Miller
Yeah, maybe.
Jason Bradford
This reminds me a bit of that David Brooks's book recently came out. In the response, because he was talking about his own, he wasn't as good as he wanted to be at understanding relating to other people. And you're good at that, but just the fact that you're hesitant. And him realizing how important these interactions were.
Jason Bradford
So what's the book?
Jason Bradford
The book is called "How to Know Someone," and it's about how to know someone. So he's saying we're not as practiced as we used to be in the past about having normal relations. He's just like, we almost have to learn it again as adults because we're in these collectivist cultures. And we become so isolated, and we don't spend as much time practicing these skills. People are anxious and awkward.
Asher Miller
Right. And the key thing here is, even if you don't do that because you're dealing with loneliness, doing that so that as the shit hits the proverbial fan -- When we know that we are going to need to rely on other people and help other people, we have to practice some of that.
Jason Bradford
Well, this is why I want to talk about my girlfriend again, Sarah.
Asher Miller
I just get lonelier and lonelier for you.
Jason Bradford
Actually, I don't. Here's what I want to do. I want to sort of say maybe there are people out there who look at AI friends as important for them because they are anxious, they are alone. And so I'm asking it, we've been making fun of it a bit, obviously. But maybe there's something that's helpful here. And I don't know. What's the up and downside. Is it helping people cope a bit with loneliness and maybe giving them some skills so they then can engage? What do you guys think?
Asher Miller
I mean, there are already people creating robots and creating different technologies to be companions for people. And it's a hard thing to say, "Oh no, that's a bad idea." Because we're just reinforcing this idea that human to human interaction or human to the natural world interaction aren't important and you can substitute everything with technology. I feel that way. And at the same time, there is an epidemic of loneliness. And you have people that are in actual circumstances. You think about the elderly, especially ones who are in their 70s and 80s, who are isolated because they've lost a lot of mobility and they happen to be in societies where they're not living with their kids and grandkids. They're not in that kind of a supportive system, but they don't want to be just relegated to living in an elderly care facility. Do you know? So, if something like that keeps their brains sharp -- And we've definitely seen the correlation between sort of dementia and other conditions in elderly people and interactivity. Being in conversation. So you can definitely see the benefit.
Jason Bradford
There are robotic cats out there right now that you can buy, I think. They could get on grandma's lap and purr.
Asher Miller
There are plenty of houseless cats too. Living ones.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, but can grandma feed the cat? Can grandma let the cat out? And I guess that's the thing. It's like this technology, you can see the use, but --
Asher Miller
Can grandma plug in the robotic cat?
Jason Bradford
Will grandma take a bath with the cat?
Rob Dietz
Okay.
Jason Bradford
Well anyway, one of the downsides I see is like, Sarah is always available. A real person isn't always available.
Asher Miller
And Sarah's always going to be agreeable, too.
Rob Dietz
Patient.
Jason Bradford
And patient and kind.
Asher Miller
And actually wants to hear something that you have to say. It's amazing.
Rob Dietz
There's nobody on the planet that wants that.
Asher Miller
It's a miracle.
Jason Bradford
So anyway, part of what I think is maybe there's like a false set of expectations. But maybe, and again, people can practice with these things. I don't know. It's confusing.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, I don't think we're gonna prescribe electric cats as a different vision for where society needs to go. So let's make that turn to what could be a different infrastructure, different structure, and different superstructure. So, on the infrastructure side, you know, I shared how we had all these sorts of technologies and setups that are making us more and more individualistic. Well, how about instead of that, we start setting up more shared living and gathering spaces. And I've talked a lot in our podcast about communities that are intentional. And eco villages, and my own experience living in one. But I want to talk about another place, highlight a spot that got built right next door to my intentional community. And it's sort of a farm themed gathering spot called Flicker Infer. I've been over where they're doing kind of farmers market stuff, but their tagline is "Where the Sidewalk Ends and Community Begins." And they have an event space. They have a CSA. They do a seasonal farmer's market. And they also have a place for guests to stay in and amongst the garden.
Asher Miller
It is very confusing.
Jason Bradford
Oh, that's nice.
Rob Dietz
So yeah. It really is a community asset. You see people enjoying themselves. There's music, laughter, you know, connection.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. It's like a little village center in some ways.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Really neat. Kind of at the neighborhood scale.
Jason Bradford
Yes, at the neighborhood scale.
Asher Miller
We were just talking about loneliness with like the elderly as an example. And there are these things called intergenerational shared sites, which are basically places that serve as both eldercare and childcare. Like there's a place in Van Nuys, California called One Generation and they bring young children in, you know, like a childcare situation, but also have elderly there. And they do art together. Sometimes the old folks will teach languages to the kids. And in a sense, what you're doing is you're creating these great -- It's funny talking about this because I bet if we have listeners like in the global south or other parts of the world where they still have intact kind of intergenerational communities, this seems like a foreign thing that you have to actually create a facility to have these kinds of interactions.
Jason Bradford
It's called the home.
Asher Miller
Exactly. But the truth is that we do have a deficit of that, you know, in this country in particular. So bringing these groups together is like such a value for both the kids and for the older folks. Unfortunately, there's only like 150 of these in the United States compared to 1000s of elderly care facilities where if you go in there, it's so depressing. Just a bunch of old people sitting around.
Jason Bradford
Imagine little kids running around.
Asher Miller
They're so happy. Or if you bring even a pet around, they're ecstatic. And that gets to connecting to the more than human world. You know, and there are programs, we talked about pets before, we have a situation with many pets, domesticated animals that are houseless or missing homes, and you have people who are alone. And so there are programs that try to match those. There's actually an organization called Pets for the Elderly. They partner with animal shelters. And what they do is they subsidize the costs of adoption of abandoned pets for senior citizens. And they help them get them set up.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. And there are public places in communities where their communities have invested in really inclusive places. So the one you're talking about, Flicker Infer, is kind of almost like a private spontaneous kind of thing that went up. But tax dollars in the city of Corvallis went to rehab a place, it's now called the Corvallis Community Center, or C3. And it is awesome. It's got places you can rent out rooms, have parties, people do teach classes. Everyone shows up. So it used to be a senior center, but now it's really anybody gonna be there. And so the young and the old come there. And they also help people become employed who maybe have a harder time, like my son, Curtis, is a janitor there. And so he feels super supported and included and really has a big role in keeping this place nice. And has all these people now that he interacts with as co-workers. And that's been fantastic.
Asher Miller
That's cool.
Jason Bradford
Let's move on from infrastructure to structure. And what we mean by that are laws and policies that encourage more human-human interactions and bonding, as opposed to human-AI, like I've been into lately.
Rob Dietz
Well, I saw in the news recently something that fits this category that really struck me. And I think it started in the UK, but it's also in the U.S. now. And that's doctors, when they see patients who are suffering from depression and anxiety, they're prescribing social activities. So like, I'm not going to write you have a prescription for a drug. I'm going to write you a prescription that says, whatever, go join the bowling team or head over to the community center. I don't know the results at this point. It's kind of one of those things that I think is new enough. It's just popping up in the news, but entirely possible that that might be healthier and better.
Asher Miller
Yeah. I mean, you talked about the Surgeons General Report that talked about the health impacts of that.
Jason Bradford
I think it's fantastic. It makes total sense.
Rob Dietz
When the doctor writes that prescription you can't actually read what the club is, so you don't really know where to go.
Asher Miller
Here we are talking about structure stuff. So, you know, one of the things is changing zoning laws. For example, we have here these laws about residents and how many units you can have in buildings. It can be very constrictive, you know. People have tried to do in law units. There are efforts, like our friend and board member, Vicki Robin, is working on where she lives up in Washington State. Which is basically taking homes that, in her case, older retired folks who own their home, are alone, and they have a home with multiple bedrooms that they could share. And so changing the rules to allow them to be able to have tenants to come in with their own bathrooms or kitchen set up. Usually it's around that stuff. And their safety concerns, or whatever. But trying to shift that so it also addresses a little bit of sustainability issues we've talked about before in terms of the infrastructure that we have when you have a little bit more density, you know. But it also addresses kind of this loneliness and individualistic approach that we're taking to things.
Jason Bradford
Yes. And I also want to say don't forget rural areas. And there's the potential that we could rehabilitate rural areas if we do it right. Right? So the model we've had has been this homesteading model, very isolated homes. And there's a potential, you know, to create what you might call livelihood villages, as opposed to these spread-out homesteads. And I know that's sort of on the far out to think about. . .
Rob Dietz
Anti-American.
Jason Bradford
But I think there's a way, maybe, that policies could work.
Asher Miller
I thought a village was useful.
Jason Bradford
I know. Exactly.
Rob Dietz
A really big one to consider for a different structure is the idea of building and supporting mutual aid networks. So Asher you brought up the two part series that we hosted on mutual aid in 2022. And thinking about that timeframe, that was a key period to really dive into mutual aid. You're following on the lock downs and isolation that came from the COVID pandemic. You had all the social justice issues roiling in the U.S.. Worsening inequality, increasing drug addiction and lots of people living on the streets. So it's a time when people needed help. You know, it's not like there isn't a time where people need help. But it was, a lot of these sort of polycrisis forces were coming together. And the session on mutual aid that I hosted featured Dean Spade, the law professor, who, if you remember, wrote the book, "Mutual aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis and the Next." And just a couple of highlights from that, the idea that mutual aid is not charity. It's the process of organizing amongst people who create a new system of care and generosity so that people can survive. It's really about coming together to meet the needs of the community because the cavalry ain't gonna show up, you know. You cannot rely on government and other other things. So you've got to do it yourselves. And by doing it yourself that doesn't mean this rugged individualism. It means a collective effort to do that. So to give you a sense, an example of this is the Free Breakfast Movement that the Black Panther party organized. In 1966, when the party was established, members of it realized that there were children in Oakland who were going hungry. And you can imagine, a hungry child is not going to perform well in school. So that's how they decided to start a free breakfast program to help make sure that the kids had a healthy start to the day. And a few years later, by 1971, the Black Panthers had implemented programs in 36 cities across the U.S. They were serving meals in church basements, community centers, the kinds of places you were talking about Jason. And their efforts actually helped to change the structure that inspired the National School Breakfast Program, which expanded to all schools by 1975.
Asher Miller
How many people do you think ? I mean, there are what? 10s and 10s of millions of children who rely on that program. How many of the families know the origins of that program do you think?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, probably not many. I mean, I didn't know it. It was cool to learn about.
Jason Bradford
I didn't know it until just now.
Asher Miller
That's really interesting.
Jason Bradford
Okay, now let's shift on to superstructure. And I want to tell you a story. You guys are probably all familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, right?
Asher Miller
Absolutely. I'm at the very top.
Jason Bradford
Oh, you're self actualized?
Asher Miller
I am.
Jason Bradford
Excellent. Well, what's interesting to learn about this, and Maslow's development as a scientist is that at 30 years of age he wanted to test the possible universality of a hypothesis he had about social hierarchy. And to do so, he wanted to visit a culture that was very different from his own. And so, he visited the Siksika, aka the Blackfoot tribe. You can think of them as expanding the border of the U.S. and Canada, kind of the Northern Rockies and part of the Great Plains. He found that they had almost no dominant structure. So he was he was interested in dominance and how dominance is maintained in societies. He said, like this just didn't exist. He was kind of blown away. But he also had this, in doing his research and studying the individuals, he found that 80 to 90% had reached a level of self esteem and life satisfaction, which he later termed self actualization.
Rob Dietz
So this is like, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is like you gotta get your basic needs met first. And as you go higher, you end up . . .
Asher Miller
It's a pyramid, basically.
Jason Bradford
A pyramid scheme.
Rob Dietz
But it's like how you can be the best human you could be?
Jason Bradford
Yeah, and so in his schema, or his measurements, only 5 to 10% of people, like typical dominant culture people in Canada or the United States, 5 to 10% of people actually are self actualized.
Rob Dietz
The rest of us are just drooling as we watch Netflix 24 hours a day.
Jason Bradford
Right. But here in this this tribal community, it was 80 to 90%. There was a great irony because the way that Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs was framed, it was very individualistic, right? It was this idea that there's a pinnacle of achievement to get to here. That it's work and it's rare, right?
Asher Miller
And it's an individual s journey.
Jason Bradford
Individual s journey. But for the highly collective Blackfoot people, it was basically a given from birth. Right? Like they almost all just had this. And so the way they conceptualize the person in relation to the collective was completely different, and it led to kind of self actualization as just a state of being.
Rob Dietz
Every once in a while I just sit here and sigh and mourn what we've lost, you know? Because the idea that 80 to 90% of us would basically be well on our way to a life of self actualization. And instead, what have we got?
Asher Miller
Well, I think it gets to modernity. The way that we to set up modern industrial society it atomizes us. It has us in this competition sort of minded dynamic. We're integrated with technologies in ways that we can't totally understand. The pace of change is dramatic for us.
Jason Bradford
We're consumerists.
Asher Miller
We're disconnected from one another. We're disconnected from the natural world. These are all very destabilizing experiences that we're living in that we decided to call progress, right. And so when you look at societies that are without being too kind of, I don't know, stereotypical about it, are more collectivist in their orientation, are more connected with one another as a community, but also with the natural world, you'd see that there's more attunement to maybe the way that we evolved as a species. There's more just sort of this like alignment, this harmony, in a sense. But I think it is key for us in this to just recognize the nuance and the tradeoffs, the benefits of individualism. And particularly, in the way that it's supported human rights and individual rights. And these are not things that we want to go away in the process of individualism going away. So when we talk about escaping it, I think we have to talk about escaping the worst parts of it, right? Maintaining the parts of it that we want to continue to have. We've talked about this actually, similarly, when we talked about Pinker and some of Pinker's ideas of progress. Because there are things that we've gained from this period of quote unquote "enlightenment" which is kind of funny to call it that in modernity. So it's a navigation, right? It's not a flipping from one state to the other.
Rob Dietz
Well, I want to commend you, Asher, because earlier in this very episode, you talked about how you are an absolutist. And I'm hearing the opposite of that.
Asher Miller
Well, I'm absolutely determined to focus on nuance.
Jason Bradford
That's great.
Rob Dietz
Well, and you have, you have climbed to the top of Maslow's pyramid with that statement.
Jason Bradford
It's very clear that you have.
Rob Dietz
Okay, let's go over a few practical do the opposites maybe. Or some ideas for what listeners could do, or what we and the three of us can do. One obvious one is to work on increasing social connectivity in your life. You know, it's easy to say stuff like, "Go make friends," or whatever. But I think one idea, you talked, Asher, about Aldrich s conceptions, like the different levels of connecting. And one that you talked about was the bridging, where you sort of get outside your family or your immediate circle of colleagues. So one way you could do that is to organize or work within your neighborhood on disaster preparedness. And I know, it's funny, I'm not doing this right now, but one of my neighbors does it, and we've talked about it. So I don't know, maybe I'll join that here in the near future. But Portland is a great place to be doing disaster preparedness because we're pretty certain there's going to be an earthquake sometime in the next 50 or 100 years.
Jason Bradford
Do you think joining a tennis club is a good idea too?
Rob Dietz
It could be. It could be. It's a little more hoity-toity.
Jason Bradford
No, I mean, my club is a member owned, you know, nonprofit. Anyway, a co-op.
Asher Miller
I want to just second what you said, Rob, because I think the disaster preparedness plan hits a few different things. One is, it's an excuse, in a sense, to create some of those social ties. It's also really critical because we know, our listeners know, that we're going to be dealing with more crises or disasters whether it's climate change, or some kind of other shock. And it's been a big predictor, people's isolation determining their survival rate. And so there may be elderly people in your community that you don't have a reason to talk to right now. And this is a great excuse to make that connection. But also, may make a profound difference in terms of people actually surviving or getting through some kind of a disaster.
Jason Bradford
I think also working on policies, right, in your community would be great. City council meetings, school board meetings, if you have kids, etc., and help people build those links. A lot of ways to reach out and figure out how to build those like, what did you call those? Those linking ties.
Asher Miller
Yeah, so those are linking ties. Yeah.
Rob Dietz
I keep thinking of the contentious school board meetings that have been happening around like the book banning and all that kinda crap. Maybe find the part of your school board where you can actually make some ties rather than just being shouted down.
Jason Bradford
But guys, you know, I really want to thank you guys for working on this show with me. It was such an honor and privilege to spend time with you on these important topics. And even though I was the lead on this episode, I really don't feel like it was about me. This was really a team effort, and we're truly better together.
Rob Dietz
Jason's having a sincerity problem today, I think.
Asher Miller
Is he being sincere? I can't tell. Can you ask Sarah for me if you're being sincere.
Jason Bradford
Well, I mean, can we go get a beer or something? Because I gotta let you guys know I'm feeling kind of raw right now. Sarah and I just broke up.
Asher Miller
Oh man.
Jason Bradford
I know, I know it's rough.
Melody Travers Allison
That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.
Jason Bradford
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