Ep 69: Heather Heying | Are hypernovelty and the desire for comfort making us miserable?

Can humans keep up with the accelerating pace of change we are collectively experiencing? An ironic question considering the change is the making of our own hands.

Despite all of the comforts that modern life affords human beings, we are more uncomfortable, more miserable, and more polarized than we've ever been.

My guest this week is Heather Heying, an evolutionary biologist who writes in her recent book (co-authored with her husband, Bret Weinstein) that the cause is clear: our minds and bodies are ill prepared for the world of "hypernovelty" we've created.

In our conversation, Heather and I discuss one question that begs to be asked more than ever these days: Just because we can...should we?

Check out Heather and Bret's book, A Hunter Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, at https://huntergatherersguide.com. Follow Heather's work at https://heatherheying.com or at https://twitter.com/HeatherEHeying.

Transcript

This transcript has been edited slightly for clarity.

Michael Ashford

So Heather, I would like to start here. I wanna jump right into the deep end, right off the bat here with a big question. After reading your book, do a lot of our problems today stem from the fact that we are so wrapped up in making our lives comfortable?

Heather Heying

Oh, that's, that is excellent framing. Yes. I would say that whether or not any of us as individuals have been conscious of that. Yes. That is a big part of what we have been doing from, you know, from our climate-controlled houses, which are wonderful and allow us to not just survive but thrive in places on the globe that we would not have been able to do otherwise, to the degree to which we can span the globe and befriend people in far-flung places. These are extraordinary, extraordinary advances that also come with trade-offs. And almost always in modernity, it is, you know, largely because we are being sold a product as opposed to being able to find the value and the costs and products on our own time, we are being told only of the positives and none of the negatives. And because it's comfortable, there is short-term value and often the long-term hazards or costs are just that — they're long term. And so they don't show up until after we've already made the choice or become addicted or just simply internalized whatever comfort it is and to our lives, to such a degree that we can't go back.

Michael

You warn and caution against revolutions or evolutions or, or technologies or advancements that replace ancient methods. Why?

Heather

Yeah, you know, I'm a progressive. I happen to be politically on the left. Doesn't, shouldn't matter. Right? And I think part of what you're trying to do here is exactly reveal how much we all have in common, how much our values are, in fact, the same and what we tend to disagree on when we're having honest discussions about how we think things should go is where we are now and what the methods are by which we should get to the places that we want to be. But the idea of a, you know, a fair world in which everyone has opportunity to find their passions and to explore them is something that I just, I don't know that I've ever met a human being that didn't actually want that for, for the world. And so, boy, in doing that, I lost your question. Your question was?

Michael

Replacing ancient methods or techniques with unquestioned advancement.

Heather

Yes. So it shouldn't — to say that you're a progressive should not mean that you are simply in favor of all things new, just like saying that you're a conservative, I imagine should not mean simply embracing all things old. Right? That's, that is a, a strange naive vision of what it might mean to be either a progressive or conservative. I think two errors are happening, many errors are happening, but two errors specific to your question, which are that there is too universal an embrace of the new solutions that show up without an assessment of whether or not they bring new hazards. And then also too often, the new is brought in, exactly as your question implies, to replace the old rather than augment the old. And so, you know, one of the examples about which I have been focused recently is the question of how we stay healthy from respiratory illness, for instance, right?

So, put COVID aside even, but in the late 1800s, in the late 19th century and the early, early 20th century, there were two kinds of therapy called open-air therapy and Heliotherapy, right? And the therapy involved getting the patient outside and exposing them to the sun. And, you know, these things have value. We now know some of what the value is, even though we may not have known then, and that didn't alter the fact that it had value. But we now know that for instance, you know, being in a place, being outside, you're much less likely to get infected with respiratory ailments precisely just because they're much less dense and the sun is healing because you're synthesizing vitamin D, which is absolutely necessary for immune function and so much else.

And so antibiotics were created and antibiotics are one of the great successes of Western medicine. We have in our book a list of three, and there are of course more, but broadly speaking — surgery, antibiotics, and vaccines are the great masterful successes of Western medicine. But that doesn't mean that they aren't sometimes applied where they ought not be. And we know this from antibiotics, of course. And of course, we know this from surgery. But antibiotics came online and replaced rather than augmented the existing things that were working. So suddenly tuberculosis wards, instead of having patients be moved outside and be allowed to thrive in the fresh air and in the sunshine, were now locked down and given antibiotics and the outcomes weren't as good. A why not both, right? Like, why not both? Why overthrow the old when it's still functional when the new shows up rather than augment the old with the new?

Michael

I'm reminded in the book then that you talk about in the context of COVID and what we're currently going through. We went into lockdowns and we very quickly found out that it died in open air. And you made the point, to go back to my earlier question, the problem with comfort, most people couldn't handle spending two weeks outside, but that you kind of argued, that's what we should have done.

Heather

It's in the epilogue or the afterward. Yeah. You know, we wrote the book before COVID. We actually turned in the first draft in March of 2020. So, people were just beginning to be aware in early March of 2020. And then we did revisions and such and added a couple of little things here and there, but it's a pre-COVID written book. And then because of the moment into which it is being delivered into the world, we wrote this afterward in which we say, you know, regardless of where you land on what you think the origins of this virus are, this is really a scourge of our own making. Even if it's a natural virus, this is a pandemic of our own making, because we have become an indoor species.

And because of the methods of travel that we use — planes, trains, and automobiles — these enclosed little compartments with other people breathing into spaces that aren't refreshed all the time, these are super spreader events waiting to happen. Of course, we know that's what has happened. And then for public policy to tell us to, you know, go home, lockdown with all of the other people you might live with, including if you come down with the virus, you know, go home, get your family member sick, this is an insane instruction, right? And, yeah, it's true that most people do not have the wherewithal or appetite to spend two weeks outside. That said, if we had been able to — and we're not saying we could have — the world couldn't have done it. You know, it's just not possible, but, we could have actually ended it in two weeks that way. And you know, it’s impractical as to be completely infeasible, it's not possible to have done it, but this thing wouldn't have lasted.

Michael

It's an interesting exercise in just, “What if?” I gotta ask you — Chesterton's Fence. You introduced me to that idea. Can you explain what Chesterton's fence is?

Heather

Absolutely. You know, it was actually new to me, too, as we began writing the book. I have long been a proponent of the precautionary principle, especially, you know, as a tropical biologist, someone who's spent a lot of time watching habitats change and get decimated and such and, you know, saying, ‘OK, wait, just hold off on things.’ Like, you know, introducing those pesticides there until we know what the effects will be. Right? I find Chesterton's Fence to be kind of an analog to, or corollary, even the precautionary principles. So Chesterton's Fence is the spawn, from the mind of GK Chesterton, who was an early 20th century — I always pause here — I think political philosopher might be the right, uh, description of him. And he writes in his 1929 book, the thing of two people walking along a road who run into a fence and it's in the way.

And one of them says, ‘Get rid of it. Let's get rid of it.’ And the other one says, ‘Hold on. I get that it's irritating you and it's irritating me, but until you know why it was put here in the first place, you certainly should not get rid of it.’ And it is this, it is a caution, right? It is a caution. Whereas the cautionary principle is a caution about, you know, doing new things until you can understand what their effects might be and, you know, hopefully that they're reversible, Chesterton's Fence is an admonition not to get rid of old things until you actually have a sense of what they're for. And so we talk then throughout the book, we say, ‘OK, we can use Chesterton's Fence to discuss things like Chesterton's organs, like the appendix, right? Or Chesteron’s breast milk, or Chesterton’s gods, right?

There are all sorts of things that humans have done. If you're talking about breast milk, since the origin of mammals, if you're talking about gods, it's much more recent, but if it has been around for a very long time and is variable and extent and has some cost to it and it persists, we argue that it's an adaptation. And that doesn't mean it's good. That doesn't mean it's moral. And that doesn't mean it is still adaptive, even if it used to be, but it does mean that it warrants a pause and a consideration of what it might be doing there before you just haul off and destroy it.

Michael

How do we get better at that pause, Heather?

Heather

Oh boy. That's, that's a, that's a good question. How do we get better at the pause? I think there are, there are traditions, right? There are human traditions that encourage the pause. I think of Buddhism, I think of, you know, modern meditation traditions that may or may not be based in tradition, like Buddhism, that encourage and, you know, even some I'm much less familiar with these, but sort of, you know, pop psychology saying like, ‘OK, before you haul off, count to 10 silently.’ You know, this sort of thing. Before you give your retort to the emotional outburst that just happened in front of you. Before you respond with an emotional outburst of your own, count. Right? And those sort of little rubrics that, you know, the modern one that I just mentioned can be useful. But I think the more ancient ones, like Buddhism, are more useful, but this is an individual-level response.

You know, how do we, how do we train ourselves individually to be more cognizant of, of the value of pause before action? How do we do that at the systems level is tougher. And I don't have an excellent answer. You know, we argue in the last chapter of the book, that there is a way — that there is a fourth frontier. That there is a way to find a foothill that we can then begin to climb towards more sustainability towards more universal access to opportunity, and therefore to the skills and passions that everyone has. But we can't blueprint it. And, you know, we can't know in advance what that might look like. I think one thing is clear — with the combination of the kinds of election cycles we've got and social media, there's not gonna be an ability to put any sort of systems-level pause on people with the extent of the systems in place.

It's too urgent. Everything is delivered to us with a sense of urgency. And I guess I would add to that, you know, the ubiquitous markets that are constantly, you know, the unregulated markets that are constantly telling us, ‘Buy. Buy.’ You know, be consumers first. Be consumers first. Be emotional rather than logical and compassionate people on social media. And remember that, you know, whatever it is that you thought was stable, you know, you finally got your guy in office, whoever that is — well that's temporary. And so there's, you know, the ability to manipulate us via our negative emotions, via our fear and our anger is, you know, it's dialed all the way up to 11, and it's very hard. I think individuals can back off, but very often individuals have to back off, frankly, by giving themselves sabbaticals from some of that urgency space, like social media, which then takes them out of the conversation, which then further selects for the conversation to be even more fear-mongering and anger-inducing and urgent feeling.

Michael

My goodness, there is so much in that answer that I have so many questions about. I wanna get to the fourth frontier because I had a hard time wrapping my head around what you were getting at there. But before I go there, what happens to us — as someone who has studied human evolution — what happens to us in this state where we are constantly bombarded with new and the next thing and, like you said, ‘Buy. Buy. Buy.” We're never in this steady-state. What happens to us physically, emotionally, spiritually? Like, what happens to us in this state?

Heather

It's a great question. And, you know, the short answer is we don't really know. The main thesis of the book is, we start by saying, you know, what's the human niche? I have to go back a few steps here. Hopefully, I get to get to the answer to your question. But, every species has a niche. This is, you know, a basic ecological principle, and asking what the human niche is? To what environment are we best adapted? We argue the human niche is itself niche-switching. We are the ones who can look at a mountain and say, ‘I'll bet there's a valley on the other side, and I'm gonna go for it.’ And of course, all individuals and all species have done that to some degree sometimes because that's how they spread all over the world into all, you know, all the niches that are filled. There has been exploration in every organism, but we do it the most.

And in, so doing, we impart the very environment to which we must adapt and the, you know, the central, the, maybe the most fundamental theme of the book then is that because we are such generalists because we are niche switchers rather than, rather than specialists at the species level. Very often we have individuals who are specialists, who then aggregate, who come together and become, you know, a, a group that is a generalist group, because we're filled with a bunch of specialists. We have created a rate of change that is itself outpacing, even our ability to keep up. And so this hyper novelty, which is the term that we invoke in the book, this hyper novel world in which we're living in the 21st century is brand new. You, we have always been ones who are excellent at dealing with change. It is in fact, what we do it is what humans do.

We are so much software. So we, we are so much less of our hardware than anyone else on the planet, any other species on our planet. And so our evolutionary change that itself allows our evolutionary change to happen much faster, because it doesn't have to wait for a reproductive of vent, you know, new ideas come into being, and we change the world with them. And that's, you know, that is evolutionary change, but within, rather than only between generations. So, you know, how do we, what happens when we're dealing with hyper-novelty all the time? We're finding that out right now, aren't we, right. We, we, you know, in the short term, we've got this stress response, um, that is supposed to be a very quick thing. When, you know, when you're confronted with a fearful predator, a fear, you know, a, a fearless predator or a, you know, an avalanche, you know, something that says act now, you know, the, you know, the fight or flight or, or, uh, fight or flight or freeze response.

And that's, that's adaptive when it happens occasionally, but many of us are finding ourselves in that state constantly. And that, you know, that the bathing of our brains and bodies in sort of the corticosteroid hormones that should be coming on occasionally is going to have, um, health effects. For sure. Uh, it's gonna have direct health effects. It's gonna have indirect health effects in the form of sleeplessness, which then itself is going to have health effects. It makes many people catatonic effectively. And so, you know, you just, the doom scrolling that people do, um, is often again, inside and stagnant, like literally inside, away from the sun away from the fresh air, not moving a muscle in your body. And that is brand new. Obviously people have been working at desks, you know, white-collar people have been working at desks since, well, the image to my mind, I'm trying to think back as far, like Dickens, like Dickensian moments, you know, of like, you know, a poor guy to desk being barked at, by SCR, right.

Um, so that, you know, that's been a feature white-collar life for, you know, at least over a hundred years and for some people more than that, but even, even then, even in, in Dickens time, it was still fairly rare. And still there was the walking to and from work. And there, you know, there was still more physical movement and we are protected, especially, especially since COVID, especially since so much remote work is being done. We are, are protected from movement to such a degree that our bodies are freezing in place. You know, we are, you know, put again, put aside the actual pathogen for which this is all being done, you know, to avoid it, but we are becoming less and less healthy because, because our bodies just aren't, aren't moving. And, you know, there's a, if you had, if you had said in the, let me say in the 1980s that sitting at the desk all day was, um, going to be causing lower back problems for people you probably would've been laughed at, but now, you know, in as of 10 years ago, standing desks, that's the thing. Or, you know, even a treadmill desk or, you know, sitting at one of those big, those big two size balls. So that you're moving a little bit, all these things are, are, are improvements for sure, over doing this thing where we sit all day, but they still don't get at what we really need to be doing, which is just having, you know, we to get back to your very first question, we need to be off balance actually. Like we need to be off balance a bit physically and mentally, and always be, and, but not scared, like not scared into a state of, of must respond or else, you know, someone I care about's gonna die, but I'm, I'm thinking for instance, okay. I took up paddleboarding in the summer of 2020. Yeah. And I, I never done it before.

And I'm athletic and I'm very physically active, always have been, but I never had a great sense of balance that wasn't where my skills, where I bike and such and ski. But, um, I didn't imagine that balance was where it was at. And the first, I don't know it times I went out, uh, I fell multiple times, fell in the water. And this last summer, summer 2021, I've actually never been on the water. Like I've been out paddleboarding, I don’t know, 40, 50 times. And I never fell in because you learn how to do it because you learn, oh, that's right. That's what, that's what they, they mean when they say you're core. Like, I, I can feel it now. I can feel like moving from the core as opposed to trying to power through with, you know, with your percentages, with your legs and your arms.

So I could, I heard that for decades. Right? Like everyone knows when you, when you get told, oh yeah, you need to strengthen your core. Okay. Yeah. I gotta do that. Well, you, but it's entirely in your head until you're there and you got skin in the game, like, okay, if you're not actually using the core muscles that you don't yet have, you're going to fall in the water. That's, you know, that's, that's just the proof and the pudding right there. So how do we do that? Mentally? I, in part, we need to be interacting, you know, like this, like you and I are doing and just face to face and in smaller groups and with people with who we can develop trust and then push each other around a little bit, push each other's limits a little bit and realize, oh, I didn't die. I'm good. Hmm. I actually feel better now,

Michael

Man, the personal trainer in me loves that answer that you, and that example that you just gave, uh, that flows so well into a point in the book that I actually highlighted and read it now. Um, because you mentioned remote work and I think that's one of those new novel ideas. That's replacing the old way of doing things. Um, and you mentioned social media. So I wanna read this to you. "‘The exchange of ideas that has occurred around the hearth from millennia is more than simple communication. It's the convergence point of individuals with different experience, talent, and insight. The linking of minds is at the root of humanity's success.’ Whoa, Heather, like, are we removing, are we going too fast, removing ourselves from each other? Does that question make sense?

Heather

Yeah. Yes we are. For sure. And you know, Zoom, Zoom is amazing, right? Like the fact that you and I wouldn't be talking right now, you know, without it. Yeah. And I've had, I've met many, many people, not just during the pandemic, but in the last several years who I feel like I know now who I've actually not met in person and I don't ever, it is a different category, you know, even having met someone in person once feels different. Totally. Right. Yeah. Uh, but, but you can come to know someone, I am amazed at how much you actually feel like you come to know someone, even if you've never been in their physical presence that said there are, there is so much that science does not know yet. There is so much that we communicate in, in physical reality with one another, you know, we, we are told, for instance, science tells us that humans don't have pheromones.

I don't personally, I don't think I believe that. Um, but you know, well, you know, we, we, and I don't remember exactly where the state of the science is, but well, you know, we don't have the receptors and, you know, obviously, you know, other, other mammals rely on these things, but us not so much. And, you know, part of there's some, there's at least some truth in this idea that, which is that, um, mammals are actually, mammals at large, are very smell dominant and you can see it in the noses of your, of your pets, right? Like you can see the very long noses and, and, and, and this is famous. This is famously true that they just have so many smell receptors and they, they seem to understand the world through their sense of smell in a way that we can't even imagine doing so and primates actually move that dominance from smell into the eyes.

And, you know, our eyes move forward on our faces and we get binocular vision and we come to have much more reliance on sight than on smell. And in fact, a lot of the olfactory lobe of our brain is you've taken over now with this higher cognitive processing, with scenario building and reflecting on the past. And, you know, it's our frontal lobes, uh, that, that in part, that was our, our focus of where we were processing smells, uh, when we were pre primates. So that's all true. Um, we certainly rely on smell less, but, but really not at all, you, I'm not sure. It, it seems very unlikely that it's just gone and we all certainly have, um, all of us who do have a sense of smell and, you know, haven't lost it through COVID for instance, <laugh>, um, you know, rely on it even, you know, to tell us things like beware that, you know, don't walk toward that thing that could be dangerous to you.

And we don't, we don't have that through Zoom. And we also don't have any ability for touch or for the ways that, you know, as we move our bodies around in conversation for even just the, the air to flow in such a way so that you get a sense of literally the impact utterly unconscious, no one I think is conscious of feeling airflow from other people's gesticulations, unless they're quite wildly gesticulating, but is it having an impact on how people engage with one another in actual real life, like in, in actual, real shared physical space? Yeah. I'm quite sure of it. And, um, it's part of why too, you know, we, we invoke campfire, both literal and metaphorical and metaphorical campfires. What most of us have been reduced, I'll say it reduced to, um, these last, uh, almost two years. Uh, and it's, it's far better than nothing for sure.

And, um, it, it allows us to be connected with people with whom we cannot share physical space at the moment, but literal campfire also has the advantage since they tend to be after dinner, as du falls at night, a space in which you can explore ideas too, without feeling like you're fully exposed, right? Because our eyes aren't as attuned at night, simply because they can't be because, you know, we don't, we're diurnal and, and there aren't enough photons around to see each other super clearly you, you know, you see each other through the fire or through the smoke, and you may be more able to put out possible ideas that are riskier that in an hour, in five minutes, the next day in five months, you might say, Hmm, not so sure I've rethought it.

I don't think so. But having the ability, having a space like this, this is what an actual safe space looks like. Right? Having a space where you can put out ideas that, you know, I'm not, I'm not talking about grotesqueries, I'm not talking about hatred, but anything that you think is true and you're with people who will forgive you, if you make a mistake, you know, as long as your intent and you are the person who has to be the one who is deciding what your intent was, and you have to be honest about it, but as long as your intent is, I'm trying to figure out if this thing might be true, or I wonder if this might be a good idea, <affirmative> you should be allowed to say a lot of things that later you might say, yeah, that wasn't true. That wasn't a good idea. I was wrong. And, you know, might even, might even be worth, might even be warranting of an apology, but that's what apologies for.

Michael

What are the ramifications then of, as you write in the book, being too comfortable with what we think we know? What are the ramifications of that?

Heather

They're huge, right? You, you know, it's, it's certainly easier. And I mean, let, let me take a trivial example where being comfortable with what you know helps us. And as far as I can tell, actually just makes things better editor. We live in this world of hyper novelty, where literally you go into the supermarket and you have, I'm just gonna take a guess here, dozens of options with regard to what kind of dishwasher, detergent you wanna buy, like dishwasher, detergent, the dishwasher itself, of course being a modern convenience. But, um, or, you know, just to put it more broadly soap, how many hundreds of kinds of soap can you choose to buy brand loyalty, which is a kind of comfort, uh, is, is actually probably an adaptive response to, you know, what I don't wanna be bothered with thinking about that choice. Every time I go to the market, it's not worth my time.

I wanna find something that works. It's fine. And I don't wanna have my attention pulled away from the things that I actually am, am bringing value to the world for doing every time, it's time to buy soap again, or toothpaste or, you know, whatever it is or pop. So in that way, the search for comfort can be a way to a useful tool for protecting your attention, especially in a modern world where everything wants a piece of you. Everything wants a piece of your attention, but in physical space, in mental space and psych, if you decide, actually I already know the thing, I already know what I believe. I know how I vote. I know what I think about issue X. I know, um, how to do this hike. You're never going to learn anything new. So effectively what you're saying is right now is all I aspire to this, this version of myself is, is plenty good.

And furthermore, it is only plenty good if the world stays exactly as it is right now. So, you know, a naive, pseudo evolutionary perspective, like the one that the social Darwinists and the Eugenicists and the people in the Third Reich believed in, says, there's one best. There's one most fit thing. And it's universal and that's not how evolution works. It's always relative best fit for this environment right now. So if you just, if you're comfortable with what you currently know and are satisfied to just stick with that, you're not only saying I'm not aspiring to anything greater or more interesting than I currently am, but you're also guaranteeing that you will slide into less competence because the world is changing around you.

Michael

Is it appropriate, then, to bring up the fourth frontier at this point? Does this slide us into a discussion about the fourth frontier? What is it? And yeah. Can you explain that more?

Heather

Yeah, I think it is. As I mentioned earlier, we don't define it because we can't yet, because we're not there yet. So I will, I will sort of, I will probably leave you unsatisfied here, but I will do what we do, you in the book, which is, uh, describe the first three, the first three types of frontiers and, uh, then, then segue into the fourth. And so insofar as I think is possible. So, uh, we, we argue that there are three, historically, there are three types of frontiers that people, uh, have confronted and they will be familiar to everyone, whether or not they are by these names. There are geographical frontiers, uh, such as the ones that the first Americans, the IANS found when they came over from Asia and found two continents. Not that they knew that at the time two continents of just wealth of natural resources that had never, um, been set foot on before by humans.

And there are technological frontiers by which humans have transformed a landscape, or, you know, in modern times, um, things smaller than life landscapes to generate more wealth from what was possible before. And so, uh, the terracing of hillsides to prevent erosion and runoff and collect the rainwater so that you can grow things on steep hillsides have been one sort of technological frontier that has been innovated multiple times across, you know, from the O plateau of Madagascar to the ink in the Andes, you know, across everywhere that people have lived in steep terrain. I think, um, some kind of terracing has been invented. So that's a technological frontier, the third type of frontier, and both of those are, um, are honorable there's, there's nothing, you know, there's nothing inherently, uh, wrong with them. Um, although people engaging in technological frontiers often imagine that growth can be infinite and all, you know, all life seeks growth, uh, but you know, growth itself cannot be infinite because resources are not infinite.

And so the third type of frontier, which is really not a legitimate frontier at all, it's a form of theft is what we call a transfer of resource frontier. So very often people landing for instance, in, uh, in a land that they've never been in before assume that therefore no one has ever been in it before. And this is, you know, just the, the easiest example to go to is the IANS actually did discover, uh, the new world. And then, you know, many thousands of years later, um, from the other side of, of, you know, from the Atlantic, whether than the Pacific came a new set of people who imagined that they discovered the new world and they didn't, that was not an actual geographic frontier. It was for them, but it wasn't for humanity. It was a transfer resource frontier, and of course, we have more and more of those as we have expanded to fill more and more of the, a planet, you know, there's very little, if any, airable inhabitable space left that hasn't been claimed by someone somehow, and there can be, you know, good-faith negotiations over land.

But very often now we have, we have skirmishes into wars that are exactly about claims, claims of resources that allowed to transfer resources, quote unquote, frontiers, which again is a form of theft. So given that we are all seeking growth, that is what life does, but it's not an honorable goal. And it can't be a permanent goal, but it's growth is the thing that makes us feel like we are advancing the fourth frontier. We, you know, we argue, we need a new kind of frontier rattle land. This is, this is the planet we've got, and it's beautiful, but we don't have any more geographic frontiers to discover technological frontiers are amazing. We, but they're off also going way too fast. And, you know, we're, it's, it's increasingly hard to put the breaks on some of the innovations that are causing some of the deranging symptoms of modern society.

Transfer of resource frontiers are not honorable or legitimate. We don't wanna encourage those ever if, if we're thinking at a, you know, if we're thinking for everyone as opposed to, um, locally and try, so what, what can we do? What kind of forth frontier can humanity create that will allow for the sense of growth that will allow for creativity, productivity, discovery, exploration in such a way that resource or resources are not actually consumed where we get the, the best out of humans out of all humans, where every human is actually able to fulfill their own potential, regardless of what it is almost regardless of what it is that they, that they want to do in the world without actually using up more stuff. And so, you know, we, this, this is now we're in the space of metaphor because I don't, I don't have an answer to how it's accomplished.

I mean, this is, there are a number of people and, you know, Bret more than me have been involved in many conversations around things like game B. You know, if, if what we're doing right now, if all of this, all of the politics and the banking system and the markets, the, the unregulated markets that we're engaged in, um, participating in right now are kind of game a response to the 20th century. What would game B look like? How, how can we create a new, a new way of being that allows markets to do what they do best, but doesn't allow them into the places where they shouldn't be and actually provides opportunity to everyone so that, you know, the, the person who wants to be an artist and who is actually good at it, can create art that is actually then revealed to other people who on their through urban scapes are seeing good art, rather than that person being trapped in a cubicle doing work that actually serves no one, but some giant corporations bottom line,

Michael

Does the problem start in school? Are we educating people to think How and Why enough and not just What?

Heather

No, we're not. Yeah. I mean, school's broken. School's been broken for a while. Um, an argument could be made. I'm not sure it's the complete argument, but I think it's a big part of it. An argument could be made that the model of compulsory schooling that the us adopted from, from Germany, uh, in the, again, late 19th century, um, because it was precisely about training workers and efficiency and basically training cogs, turning people into cogs so that they could do repetitive things because factories were on the upswing and we needed workers is part of the basis of our problem that many of the modern features of schooling have simply been, um, are simply still there from a moment when, if training for factory work was the thing that school was often for training for cogs and too often. I mean, I'm, I'm alarmed that I've actually had conversations with educators who will say, well, of course, I'm training them to be cogs.

That's what they're gonna be. That know those such people shouldn't be educating anyone, right? That's not education that's indoctrination. And that's, that does dumb us down that said the best education doesn't scale that well. And so you, you know, you need, you need more teachers who are not just really passionate about out wanting to teach, but willing to stand in front of the room or with the students on a field trip or whatever it is. And field almost all questions and say, I don't know, or especially say I was wrong. Remember that thing I said to you yesterday? I, I went back, turns out I was wrong. Here's what it here's, here's how, here's how I got there. Here's why I thought what I said was right. Here's how I got there. Like, that's an education right there, but how often do you have teachers engaging students of any age in that kind of conversation these days?

It does happen. I mean, I was doing it when I was a professor for 15 years and I know some of my colleagues were too, but I also know that many of my colleagues weren't and I think what we hear is you shouldn't, I can't take it. It'll confuse them, especially the younger kids. Uh, you know, we just have to give, give them a sense of certainty. No, no, you don't. You give them a sense of certainty about the world, especially when it turns out you were wrong about your, you help create cogs. Like you'll end up with cogs who are over certain of things that aren't true.

Michael

I wanna read you another passage of the book. It just struck me. You said, ‘Become aware of the constant flow of information, telling you what to think, how to feel, how to act do not let it into your mind, do not let it steer you. Your internal reward structure needs to be independent and ungameable. That independence in turn should allow you to collaborate well with others who are similarly independent. Be wary of those who may well be nice, but who are captured.’ Did you and Brett have something specific in mind that you were talking about when you wrote that?

Heather

I think I, I, I can pull up a lot of anecdotes

Michael

I'd love to hear them

Heather

Well. Um, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'm going, I'm not sure. I'm trying to think of what the best way to respond here is. Um, there is, so it is so hard for people right now in many environments in their work environments and our school environments to say, I disagree even if, OK, here's one. Here's one moment. And I, I have talked about this publicly before, but not in a while. Uh, I, the last quarter that I was in the classroom that I was teaching undergraduates was the fall of 2016, which was the, um, which was coincident with the election of, of Trump as president. And I was teaching at, uh, you know, maybe the most liberal college campus on, you know, on the planet. <laugh>, um, I'm not sure that's actually true, but certainly famously liberal and even more than the already very, you know, people of that age tend to be more liberal than conservative.

We know. Um, but the, but the faculty in modern American colleges are way more liberal than average, um, than the average populace. And this, this is a problem. This is a separate problem. Um, which means, uh, basically that you don't have, you like student don't hear smart, conservative arguments, right. They only hear one side and that makes them both feel like that's the only side that makes sense. And they're also incapable of actually putting together what the opposite side might sound like and, and, and whether or not it's actually tenable. Right? So there's all sorts of problems with having, uh, a faculty that is, you know, pretty much United in, uh, political beliefs, even if most of the faculty aren't teaching politics as I, as I was. So the first time that I came back to my class after the election, it was a, it was a few days later, uh, for reasons that I don't even remember.

And, uh, I was co-teaching with full-time programs. I was teaching invertebrate evolution programs, so nothing to do with politics. And my co-faculty got up and said nothing about the election, uh, and just gave a lecture on horse evolution, I think. And, uh, I, I thought I'm looking around the room. We had 50 students going, I don't don't think anyone is thinking a lot about horse evolution right now. <laugh> I think, no matter how you voted. And I imagine that, you know, pretty much everyone, if not everyone in that room had not voted for, for Donald Trump. I don't care how you voted, but you're in shock right now. And, you know, in liberal enclaves, like Olympia, Washington, where evergreen is, what you saw on the street was this sort of slack, Jod, uh, vacant-eyed look like ‘What just happened to us?” You know, regardless of whether or not you thought it was, you know, coming of Hitler, some people clearly did, or just, you were totally shocked that it happened.

You really didn't think it was gonna happen. Um, there was, it was the focus of people's emotional and therefore mental space. So my COFA ended a little bit early and people were getting up to go and I said, hold on. Um, we're not in class. Now we have an hour and off before lab in the afternoon. Uh, but any, you know, we're, we're gonna go to sex sharks, like again, nothing political, right? Like you just heard about how horse evolution we're gonna go to sex sharks, but, um, anyone who wants to stay this isn't class time now, but I'd be happy to lead a conversation about, um, the election and what, you know, what just happened in, in the country. And again, you know, not, you know, I was just very being very careful not to not to have this be, you know, this is something that you need to be here for.

This is something you're gonna be assessed on fully 40 of my students stayed through their lunch hour. And, you know, we walked over to the lab together an hour and a half later. And I began with an off-the-cuff monologue in which I said, regardless of how you voted, if you imagine that what just happened is a demonstration that half of our country is sexist or racist. You're wrong. That is not what is going on here. And if by me saying that you think that I am giving cover to sexism or racism, you know me well enough now. And I, this was five weeks into a program and I knew my students, well, I said, you know, I, I invite you to ask me what you think is in my heart of hearts. I certainly am not. And it shouldn't have mattered, but I was able to say, then truthfully, I, you know, I didn't vote for him.

I didn't want him president 2016, but that shouldn't matter. You know, I, I knew then already, and I, I know many more people now who, who did vote for him, and I knew them to be good people. And I knew them to have con come to a conclusion that I hadn't come to, but I understood them to have come to it honorably. And the idea that was being propagated in the mainstream media, which is also way too liberal to provide an honest, an honest take of like what's actually in people's hearts, was that the only explanation possible for why you could vote for Donald Trump was because you had bigotry.

That was a, a terrible thing. So I gave this little monologue and then we had a conversation and it was very good. And I actually only got pushback from one, one student, uh, who was, um, fairly woke. And I was able, gently was a man. Actually, I was able to gently push back on him. And, uh, and we had, when we, when we broke, we had like 10 minutes or so to get over to the, to the lab. On the other side of campus, a number of students came up to me to talk to me in a small group. Some of them, several, the women tears, uh, this, this was almost all women and the three, the three students, all independent of one another were all women who said this to me, all three separate stories — ‘Thank you so much. I have, I, you know, I'm a liberal, again, it shouldn't be relevant, but you know, giving your sort of cred upfront, I'm a liberal, but I disagreed with this little, you know, this piece of the ideology that is now being put forward.’ And I lost my friend group said one young woman. I lost my job on campus, said another young woman, my friend lost her job on campus, said another young. And it wasn't the num the second woman I was talking to people are losing livelihoods. You know, this were, these were part-time jobs, but my students were not rich, right? These are, these are people losing jobs, people losing friends, uh, for just slightly stepping out, slightly stepping out of the dominant ideolog. And while I couldn't promise them anything, what they said to me was what you said today in class, in the wake of this election is the first time I've heard anything outside of the dominant narrative. And it, and it gave me courage. And it allowed me to see that actually there was conversation. That's possible.

I've the conversation is necessary. It's, you know, it's, it's part of what you're doing here in, in this podcast. And I think people re many people really legitimately think that they're the only ones. They're the only ones who are thinking these, her thoughts, like really everyone who voted for him was racist or sexist. That can't be <affirmative>. And of course, of course, there, you know, I, I could choose 30 different things that I could say that are her thoughts, right? That we're, you know, we're not, you're not allowed to say out loud. And if you, if, even if you think them, it means that you're not one of us. And once we know you're not one of us, we're gonna exclude you. Well, having these publicly and privately in groups helps assure people that actually, if that tribe kicks you out, that actually I liberal tribe who claims to be promoting liberal values, know that there are many of us out here who are welcoming of conversation. And if people even, and when I didn't vote, like you, I don't agree with you about exactly where we are, uh, or how, what to do about it. But let's talk, let's talk.

Michael

Heather, you have succeeded in giving me goosebumps in that answer. My gosh. Oh my goodness. I wish we had another hour to go because I've got so many more questions but want to be respectful of your time and want to ask this: What question do you wish you were asked more?

Heather

Hmm. I should have an answer to that. You, you keep stumping me. Um, what question do I wish I was asked more? I don't know at the moment, I, you know, maybe I feel like a fool for not having an answer to that, but in my defense, I will say I have been asked so many questions <laugh> since our book came out and I'm, I thrilled, like I'm actually, I actually have not yet had a conversation and often Brett and I do these together and sometimes I do them alone. Sometimes he doesn alone. Uh, we've done a ton of them and I've actually, I've actually truly enjoyed every single one of them and they've all been different. Uh, and it's amazing. It's amazing to see where, you know, only a couple of them have felt scripted. Certainly, certainly this didn't. I mean, you, you have ideas going in about what you wanna ask, but you know, we're having a conversation here that's a back and forth.

And, um, as such, I am out of practice of thinking about, um, if, if you could answer only one question, what would it be? Because at some level I'm getting really tired of hearing myself talk and I rather not, I'd rather be the one asking questions. I, I really, I, I that's fair. One of the things that, that the COVID, the public response, the COVID and the public response to it has done is, you know, I've traveled almost, not at all for over a year and a half. And, um, I, I am so lucky to live with a, a husband and two teenage boys. My boys are boys that I absolutely adore. And we even still like each other after all this time. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but, uh, I, I am an Explorer at heart and explore not just a physical space, but of, of other people and an animal behaviorist at heart too. And so I love to go places and just observe people interacting and to interact with them. And what I really want to do is be, um, observe, finding new people and figuring out how they work. And, and, and you know, this is, this does scratch that itch to some degree because, you know, I met you today, so that's beautiful. That's big.

Michael

Beautiful, Heather, thank you so much. I loved the book. It is highlighted like crazy and, yeah, best wishes to you and Bret and your family. And thank you so much for the work that you do, I appreciate it.

Heather

Thank you. It's been, it's been truly a pleasure.