 There are no more heroes. You have killed them. You and I, that sounds a little bit like Nietzsche, when he said there's no more God, we've killed them. But seriously, we live in a world nobody's protected anymore. I wanna talk about the rise of tribalism and what it means for you. It's pretty important. Like, just think about this. Whoever you admire, 50% of the world hates. If you like Donald Trump, there's 50% of the world that really doesn't like him. I'm not talking about just slightly annoyed. I'm talking about despises. If you like Joe Biden, same thing. If you like Elon Musk, 50% of the world idolizes him. They're in his tribe and 50% of the world can't stand him. He's the exploitative, know-it-all billionaire. What does this mean and why is it important? Well, I was in the shower and I was thinking, you know, we used to live on time where you looked up to somebody and you had this source of continual inspiration. That's gone because if you're a human, which I'm assuming you are if you're listening to this, you get affected by negative criticism. In fact, the human brain actually elevates negativity. It's called negativity bias. So one of my mentors out of nation used to say, Ty, you know what it sucks about? Public speaking, you're giving great talk and the whole place gives you a standing ovation. But at the very end, when they sit down 1% or one person even stands up and says, boo, guess what everybody will remember? Guess what the media will write about? Guess what your family will hear about? They're only gonna hear about the boo. So we're wired to override all good with just one or two bad. I was trying to get an Airbnb the other day I'm traveling right now. And it was crazy because there was like 30 good reviews to this Airbnb and I sorted it by like, you know, most likely slight. There was one negative one. It's like, oh, the place was not dirty. And I just could catch my brain forgetting about the 30 amazingly positive reviews. So what happens in the world is you got two dynamics happen. One introverts rule the internet. Number one, there's really three, number one. So think about it. If you're an extrovert, you're not scrolling as much. I mean, don't get me wrong. There's extroverts and introverts and doom scrolling on Instagram and TikTok. But in general, you know, people who are more extroverted the definition of extroversion is you're a little more social. You're out, you're interacting with people. You're on some teams or team after work you go, hey, how are your friends at a bar, blah, blah, blah. So you have already this happened in the 1990s with the internet was the rise of introverts. Number two, the second trend is you have the rise of dark triad traits. The voice of dark triad traits. So those are narcissism, Machiavellian and psychopaths. So Machiavellian people are usually people who have been bullied, the underdogs, not the alphas, the betas. So who tears down? What is the hero? A hero is an alpha. So all of a sudden in the third trend, by the way, is the death of one or two media sources and the rise of millions of media sources, meaning now you get your news and information from hundreds of Twitter channels, YouTube channels, comments on Instagram, these are all sources feeding into your brain. So those three are the rye, lead to the deaths of heroes and the rise of tribalism in a way that I'm not even sure if it's healthy or not. I have it. I haven't got to my final conclusion as to whether it's healthy or not. So here's the deal. What it does do, it creates a more pessimistic, nihilistic world. And it's not even just humans. Now I see people, I don't know if Putin is doing the world's greatest job. I don't know what marketing agency he hired, but like if you go on TikTok, there's like Putin's the greatest leader of all time. And then of course, in America, there's hate. So 50% of the world, it seems to be really like Putin now. You see that in the Middle East, you see that. In Asia, more of us traveling in Thailand, Dubai, you'll see like you get geo-targeted comments. It's like, oh, Putin's a good guy there. If you're in Washington, DC, you know, talking to people, there's no rise of the Putin hero. There's the death of Putin. So what's happening with negativity bias, everybody having a social media news outlet, the rise, Machiavellian people and high psychopath, Machiavellian narcissists, they comment more. So you've got a slanting of social media comments towards people who are more mentally unstable. So you have the rise of millions of little tribes like, oh, I'm in, you know, this person, this kind of psychopathic introvert who has access to 10 channels, Instagram, YouTube, Snap, Threads, Facebook, blah, blah, blah, they're now posting, oh, I hate Ben Shapiro and I love this person or I love Ben Shapiro and I hate this bit. And it's creating basically chaos. So take a break from social media. There's no easy solution, except you have to meter yourself. Like don't be doom-scrolling, just endlessly, mindlessly scrolling and the algorithm's getting so good. Oh, it's tough not to anymore. It is really tough not to doom-scroll. So, because it's gonna scramble your brain, because humans need heroes. The rise of tribes is kind of okay, but the death of all heroes from the negativity buys any hero you look up to. I saw a guy interesting on Instagram and TikTok, his only account is roasting historical figures. So he was like roasting Mother Teresa. You know, she's considered a saint by some in the Catholic tribe. Now he's creating a tribe that despises Mother Teresa. Oh, he said only 3% of the money donated to Mother Teresa went to charity, which I have a hard time believing. She didn't pocket the money, we know that because she definitely, nobody's ever accused of an avenue materialistic life. So it's just you can whack and knock down everybody's mentors, everybody's hero and what you're left with is a race to the bottom where you become nihilistic, you go, nobody's worth listening to, everybody's bad. Nobody has any redeeming values. And that's super deadly to the human psyche. We were, remember, we're tribal by our DNA. So we evolved to live Dunbar's number in groups of 150 people, Robin Dunbar, the famous anthropologist said, you know, if you look, and if you look at this, there's a, Matt Lieberman, he wrote a book, Social, How the Wiring. He's done all these tests with fMRI machines as to how our brain, how many social connections we can have, but we can have about 150 close people which matches the size of a small village that existed in, you know, Viking Sweden or in Africa or in South America, the United States, the Native Americans were grouped into small groups and most of the last 10 to 15,000 years people have lived in these smaller tribes, villages we used to call them. And within there, you kind of had a hero, you had your local hero, you know. Now, if you put them on a global scale, that little tribe's hero, just like your mom and dad, they wouldn't stand up to scrutiny. I mean, my dad was a pro bodybuilder, I grew up thinking, oh, my dad's super strong. Now, if I compare him to this, forget his name, something cold, he's benching 1,100 pounds on Instagram. My dad could bench like 400. So it's always like, oh, my dad wasn't really that strong because now on a global basis, when you compare him outside of that tribe I grew up with. And so it's like the death of my dad as a hero. And that is not healthy for the world. So the solution is you have to go, you have to get off social media in terms of what you're watching, like train your Instagram algorithm to show you a lot of animal stuff. That's what I do. My dad shows me like so much elephants, dogs. Watch what, don't like too many things. Funny pranks I like, you know, because I rarely do Starbucks, but it's the only thing around here. Because it's just not good for the soul to have nobody to admire. And you know I'm big on mentors and how important they play in your life, but no mentor stands under global scrutiny of 10,000 dark triad cynics and critics. You're gonna, we're gonna end up in a world where it's so tribal, I don't even know what happens to democracy, eh, you know? What happens? What do you do? You already seen that in the United States. What do you do? I mean, people always Republicans and Democrats in America for the last 100 years didn't like each other. But at the level it's at now, it's just nuts because 100 years ago, not every crazy, cynical, high dark triad narcissist, psychopath, Machiavellian person had a way to communicate their hate. They just, you know, they could talk to their buddy, but now you give them a TikTok channel and a little knowledge on how to go viral and they're influencing 100 people or 100,000 people. So there's real tricky times. I, this is something I wanna keep thinking about. I just was like, I'm gonna record on this subject. I haven't even totally thought it through. I've talked to some top scientists on the general vibe. The general vibe is, you just gotta shut off most of the voices. You will need some heroes in life, even if they're flawed and all heroes have always been flawed. Humans are flawed from the standpoint. It's not flawed, it's just humans are naturally exploitative. And even the nicest person that you know, name the nicest person, your grandmother, your, I don't know, your priest, your emon, your pastor, whoever you consider, I live with the Amish for two and a half years, whoever you consider the most exploited person or the least exploited person you know, the nicest person, if you really put them under highly logical scrutiny, they're gonna fail too. I mean, they might pay taxes in a country where that country's military goes out and exploits other countries. And there you go. They've contributed to a system. They might have an iPhone and that iPhone, what does that iPhone do? How was it made? Oh, it was made by the largest corporation in history that probably has child laborers going blind, putting together little iPhones in Southeast Asia. Do your heroes care about that? Do they boycott Apple and say, I'm not gonna have an iPhone because an exploitative? No, so by nature, even the person you admire the most, that you think's the greenest person. Give me 15 minutes with them and if I wanna go into my dog triad place, I can rip them apart. And then all of a sudden you're left with nobody again. It's like, who do I look up to? And then if you look up to no other people, you're left with yourself. And then if you put yourself under scrutiny, then what? You put yourself under scrutiny and then you fail too. I fail, you fail. If everything you've ever thought or done was put on a movie screen for a billion people to watch, would they find anything that you've ever done sketchy? Like, be real. Everything you ever thought I'm doing, maybe you didn't have the courage to do what you thought about it. You know? Now, what's the problem with that? Well, you have to have some self-esteem. So if there's too much scrutiny on even yourself, you become self-loathing, you hate yourself. And so you see the rise of depression probably has to do with what this whole episode I'm talking about. This whole talk up to now has been why you probably have this super rise of depression, super rise of nihilism, of people who just go, like, I'm just gonna play video games. Of course you got the rise of video games. And then because it's the rise of, I saw this Bob Marley movie, which by the way is the best movie of the year. It's called One Love, made 100s. I knew it was a good movie. I always check box office mojo to see if the market agreed with my opinions. It's made 175 mil. That was good for a biopic, or biopic people call it. You know, it's just about his life. And I was thinking, Bob Marley, love this guy. Do I wanna really read everybody's opinion on him? Because somebody's gonna be like, well, you know, I think he, in the movie they talk about where he was with one woman that he cheated and she helped raise his kids, but they were friendly. So he's gonna be like, well, Bob Marley, like, oh, he's your hero. He's this, he won a world peace, but he, at home, he was this. Man, nobody stands under that scrutiny. Now, which means I know what some comments are gonna say. People are gonna say, that's why you need God. That's why you need religion. That's why you need spirituality. Because at the end of the day, humans are all flawed. And so if you're like religious, you'll be like God, traditional God, if you're more spiritual, you'll be like, you know, nature, the universe is bigger. But then if you put the universe and nature and physics under scrutiny, it's more worthless than humans. Exploitation. Remember I was talking about exploitation a minute ago? What I was saying is almost all forces are exploitative, meaning they care about themselves more than something else. Like bacteria in your stomach isn't thinking about your children. It's thinking about in its own primitive sense of thinking. It's acting in its own best interest. And so's your DNA, you know? And so is Donald Trump's DNA and Joe Biden's DNA and the people you idolize the most or the people you hate the most. And the crazy thing is from their perspective, they're doing a good thing. Like if you read the biographies or autobiographies of who are considered the most evil people in history, I wish I could interview, you know, Genghis Khan or something like that. You know, this huge conqueror. I mean, he didn't think he was doing, he's like, I'm doing this for my legacy. I'm doing this for my family. I'm, you know, I'm conquering. Look at all the good that happened. Look at all the children that were born. But then you put them under scrutiny and you're like, oh, can't admire Genghis Khan. So you got humans. People say, well, forget humans. You need to admire nature. But nature is ruthless. When a hurricane comes, it wipes out a village and children don't care. When a lion attacks a disabled or a handicapped antelope, we're supposed to feel like it did something wrong. No, it's exploitative. The lion's exploitative to the antelope, but to the antelopes DNA. Good book on this, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. But it's, he's acting altruistically for his own genetics, his own baby cubs. So it's altruistic and good for himself and his own family line for the lion. And Donald Trump, the way he acts. I met you, he's doing it. What benefits him and his tribe? His family at his extended tribe. Humans have non-DNA tribe too. You have your DNA related tribe and your non-DNA. Now, so there's some people go, okay, so you can't admire humans, but you can admire nature. And then that falls, that doesn't work out under scrutiny either because nature's pretty aggressive. So then you go God, but then you're like, which God? If you're a Christian or Muslim or Jewish, then the haters in the non-Jewish Christian Muslim tribe bring up all this stuff all about Christianity Muslim, well, they were stoning women to death who cheated on their husband. Do you agree with that? Is that the right response? They were killing man, women and children in the Old Testament story and God commanding them too. So if you're like, whoa, okay, we go over here like Christianity and there's other things. I mean, I'm not even gonna go into, think of all the things you can criticize on Christian Catholicism, you know, the inquisition. If the Pope and the church is infallible, can't make a mistake, you believe that. So you believe that the Pope was acting correctly to burn people at the stake, you know, I was like, so you have the death of the tribe, you have the attack on the tribes of religion. So then people say, no, those aren't the right religions. You need something that's more altruistic like Buddhism, something. But then, you know, you look, it's not hard to attack Buddhism or Hinduism. You say, well, look at the fruits of people who follow, you know, this caste system in India, if there's reincarnation, you don't care about helping the poor, because if you believe in reincarnation and karma, they're just getting, they're paying for their sins in the past life. I've been to India, I've been to Southeast Asia. They have good things, just like America, they have bad things. So if I wanna go into my hater mode, I can destroy that tribe too. So then people go, well, okay, I'm gonna create a more universalism. It all breaks down. And so that is why super intelligent people go crazy. That, by the way, they're probably, you know, if you're alive, maybe we're all a little dumber, that's how we stay alive, we gotta stay delusional. So maybe my answer to this whole episode is, stay a little bit delusional, let's stay delusional so you can make it through this game. Because if you analyze everything, it's the death of all heroes. It's the death of everything they look up to. It's the death of all social structure. I mean, there's people who look at a little family structure. What's so magical about a family? Man and woman have sex? Okay, who's that? Like, is that so amazing? You know? So stay delusional, ladies and gentlemen, it's okay. Don't go too deep. There's an old poem, how does it go? It's talking about the well of knowledge. It's like, drink deeply or not at all. So I think the only way you should become, when you start analyzing other people's heroes, other politicians, tribal leaders, billionaires, mentors, what I would do, I like to quote a religion, Jesus Christ said, do not judge unless you want the standard of judgment you do to others to be judged back to you. That is a pretty profound, whatever religion you are, that's a profound statement. Because all of a sudden, if you start going, well, I'm gonna attack Donald Trump or Joe Biden and I'm gonna put him under this magnifying glass. Look at all that Joe Biden did or Donald Trump did. Do you want that magnifying glass back on you? Now you might say, but I haven't done anything like these people, I haven't done anything like Genghis Kola. Yeah, maybe you didn't have the courage to act out your primitive instincts. So that's even worse. Like when I meet people a lot and do what, you know, disparate, I'm like, yeah. Because you're weaker. So, hey, you probably have the same, if you absolute power corrupts absolutely, you probably would do the same thing as Putin or Biden or Trump or Elon Musk or whoever it is you like, you probably would do the same things put in their same shoes. But not only, so you have the same, ah, hey, evil, quote unquote, but a throw on top of that, you're weak. So like you're even less admirable by that same standard. At least they got the courage to act it out. Now you could argue against that and say, well, no, I have self-control and I have the ability of virtue that offsets my, whatever. In general, most people that don't pull off that stuff, I saw this as like, make a little money and you'll see this. You get some nice stuff, you'll be like, oh, you're exploiting the world, you have a Lamborghini Rolls-Royce. I'm like, the only reason you don't have a Lambo Rolls-Royce is you don't have money. No, Ty, if I got money, I would be all totally altruistic with all my money. Okay, well, are you totally altruistic now? Let me see your charitable country. Well, Ty, I don't have as much money as the rich guy, so I can't go, well, as a percentage, do you give as much? You know, and then let's examine where you gave it. Did you think it through where you gave it or you just gave it blindly? Like, it's not hard to be a hater, man. And that's why the rise of hater channels and hater comments and they go more viral because they just ride on the negativity called the bias of the human brain. That's why I said, stay delusional, build your own tribe, don't overly judge your own tribe. Judge about as hard as you judge yourself. My mom best advice my mom ever gave was, Ty, remember humans are super forgiving of themselves and super judgmental of others. And I would add to that, humans are forgiving of their tribe, their heroes, but super, super analytical of the flaw of their opposing tribe's leader and hero. See that in politics. Like, oh, it's like Donald Trump's like, oh, Biden. I'm like, these, there's more similarities between politicians than dissimilarities. So if you like one, don't be too, like one people are like, what do you think of Putin? What do you think of Trump? What do you think of Biden? What do you think? I'm like, there's a lot in common. So I don't, I kind of think of people in categories. High level politicians to me have a certain type of exploitation. So I guess my practical advice to you is be delusional a little bit. Don't get overly judgmental or you'll destroy everything. Like I opened with the changing the quote of Nietzsche, you know, he said, God is dead. You have, who has killed them, you and I kind of thing. And I was like, all heroes and mentors and leaders are dead in our mind. All the people who admire is dead and who has killed them, you and I, by being overly judgmental. But what I also say is go deeper, become more intelligent. It's called the period well, drink deeply at the period well, or not at all. Because if you drink just a little bit at the fountain of knowledge, you get kind of well, I could say I'm in Biden or Trump or Elon Musk. Let me tell you all bunch of Bill Gates and Zuckerberg. And I'm like, you're not that smart because if you're smart enough, you realize it's a nuanced conversation. Well, all religions bad, all Christianity Islam is, they're bad. And this is the good one, the one, it's usually the one people grew up with. I said, well, Islam is good or all Christianity good. And if you look at where they're born, usually about 9% of the time, it's just what their family was. Very few people convert statistically. Some do, but not many. And if they convert, they convert into the one of their country. So Americans are like, no, it wasn't born Christian. I'm like, yeah, but you converted into Judeo Christianity in America. That's a Judeo Christian country. You didn't convert into Zoroastism from Iran. You know, because you didn't even know it exists, the unknown unknowns. So my point being is, if you're gonna criticize, then you need to go deeper. Like I said, the way I criticize politicians is I'm like people who seek power, aka to be the leader of a large country, whether it be Russia, United States, Germany, Australia, they tend to fit into a category genetically and environmentally. Their psyche would be higher in narcissism, for example. Narcissists think they can change the world. The end billionaires would fall more likely because the narcissism has some positive effects like high optimism, for example, feeling that the world will work out for you. So the way I think about it, it's called horses for courses. This is what my mentor, Mike Murphy used to tell me. He's like, you gotta pick the right horse for the right course. So for me, for example, before I judge somebody to be, let's say you have a friend who's like super mean, aggressive, low agreeableness, almost violent. Well, is that friend good or bad? Well, in normal times, that person would have highly exploitative traits that society would try to lock up. But remember World War II, World War I, War of 1812. So who would you want protecting you if like in the War of 1812, another country invaded your city? Do you want the nice people or do you want the aggressive people? So this is called, you know, this is called domain specific adaptability. So when you're more intelligent, the ways you start thinking about people. And I'm not saying I am intelligent, but when I want to be intelligent, I think about domain specific adaptions. So you do need some narcissism because you need leaders of countries. But I don't idealize leaders of countries. I don't idealize billionaires. I think of them horses for courses. Mike Murphy used to say, bet on the horse based on the race course. If it's a long race course, that's a long distance. Find a horse that has stamina, but not so much speed. If it's a short one, you need speed. So domain specific, there's never one horse that's good for all racetracks. And it's the same way with humans. You're gonna have a friend whose low agreeableness, there's some advantages to that and disadvantages. So when you examine mentors, I kind of go, okay, if I wanna learn how to build a social media app, I should make Mark Zuckerberg a mentor for that specific racetrack in my brain. If you want to learn how to not be so ambitious, I wanna make Buddha who taught the death of desire and that desire is evil. And so you bring that person. So you gotta create what I call a cabinet or a council in your mind where you have 15 people you admire, but you go to them in their expertise. What was, you know, Genghis Khan can be a mentor on certain things. If you find yourself too passive, not aggressive enough on important things, in that area, Genghis Khan was great. No fear, conquered the whole continent. So start thinking domain specific, stay delusional and think more domain specific and don't get too judgmental. What should I talk about on my next episode? Leave a comment below. Hope this helped. Talk to you soon.