 Okay, May 40 here. So I'm looking at an essay in the Washington Post by Robert Keegan so he's a neocon and He's got this big long essay in the Washington Post our constitutional crisis is already here You may be thinking oh anything that makes Robert Keegan cry I'm enthusiastic about that so This is what he writes He says Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024 Right. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls. He's building a massive campaign war chest and the Democratic ticket looks vulnerable So barring health problems Donald Trump is running Second Trump and his Republican allies are preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary So his charges are fraud in the 2020 election now primarily aimed at establishing the basis to challenge future election results that do not go his way and The amateurish stop the steal efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized national campaign To ensure that Trump and his supporters will have control of the state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020 So those recalcitrant Republican state officials in 2020 who effectively save the country from calamity By refusing to falsely declare fraud or defy more votes for Trump for being systematically removed or hounded from office So Republican Legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process So Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift Election authority away from the purview of the governor the secretary of state or other executive branch offices to the legislature so Robert Kagan is worried the stage is being set for chaos imagine weeks of competing mass protests across multiple states as lawmakers from both parties claim victory and charge the other with unconstitutional efforts to take power and From Jerusalem. We've got a message All right, hug some a heck hugs the cat some a heck I'm in my suit car and that makes me That makes you my wish be zine. That means honored guests in the soccer So Jews at this time of the year like booze or a suit car to dwell in but a lot of strong reasons in this article to believe that Trump will be running in 2024 the Republican Party will be increasingly united behind him and increasingly effective at wedging elections, so Robert Kagan's afraid this can to lead to massive amounts of Political crisis is going to effectively Lead to a constitutional crisis That's his long up-ed in the Washington Post other thing that grabs my attention this weekend is the Is the intercept so Peter Zion says this is the most serious and the most detailed version of the lab leak theory I've seen also the most credible So the intercept says leaked grand proposal details high-risk coronavirus research. So the proposal was written by the eco health Alliance Peter Dayzak is in charge of that and It was rejected by the US military research agency DARPA But it Describes the insertion of human specific cleavage sites into SARS related that coronaviruses so the eco health Alliance was working on very risky areas of research and the Coronavirus has sparked all sorts of research into Coronaviruses and much of it is quite risky So Peter Dayzaks Eco health Alliance Wanted to do all this risky research They wanted to create full-length infectious clones of bat SARS related coronaviruses and insert a tiny part of the virus and I went there into all the scientific language into bat coronaviruses So I'm obviously not an expert on bat coronaviruses any coronaviruses. I'm not a scientist But many scientists that are interviewed in this Essay in the intercepts say that this information has changed their minds And there are decent alternatives to Trump. He's got a court of personality behind him He is a Trump is a unique figure in American history in world history and Someone who can galvanize both massive support and massive opposition and he only needs to change about 50,000 votes from the 2020 election to you have to win in 2024 So he came close in 2020 So many people who believe that the coronavirus that caused our pandemic Merged from a laboratory rather than natural origins. They claim it's unlikely that this particular sequence of amino acids That's in the coronavirus would have occurred naturally And so there's Alina Chan. She's a Boston based scientist She's a co-author of an upcoming book viral The search for the origins of coven 19 and she says a threshold has been crossed So she's been vocal about the need to investigate the lab leak hypothesis And she says the revelation of this proposal from 2018 by Peter Dejak's eco health alliance and the very risky research They wanted to conduct Uh, you know promotes the idea the possibility of the lab leak hypothesis We've got this novel SARS coronavirus emerging Out of Wuhan with the novel cleavage site in it and we now have evidence that in early 2018 This eco health alliance had pitched inserting novel cleavage sites into novel SARS related coronaviruses in the Wuhan lab. So This definitely tips the scales for me. I think it should do that for many other scientists, too So here's my number two guy aside from Trump. Well, I think uh, Tucker Carlson I think he would probably be the most effective republican standard bearer We've got Richard Ebright. He's a molecular biologist at Rutgers University And he also believes that there's strong evidence that the coronavirus may have emerged out of a lab So this particular coronavirus is the only virus in the entire genus of SARS related coronaviruses That contains this fully functional cleavage site at the s1 s2 junction And here is a proposal from the beginning of 2018 by p2djax eco health alliance that proposes explicitly to engineer that very sequence that we see at that very position in lab generated coronaviruses And martin wilkowski is a director of the max plank institute of animal behavior in germany says this Revelation has made it more open the idea that the pandemic may have its roots in a lab leak Says that the information in this 2018 proposal Changes his thoughts about the origins of covid And now we see that a possible transmission chain is now logically consistent with the very research that they wanted to do and laid out in 2018 And it was also interesting how much effort that peter dayjack went to And other related researchers to Hide what they were doing. So he did not reveal Along with linfo wang two of the researchers have submitted this 2018 proposal They did not make light what they had proposed to do in 2018 So they've been very little awareness until now of this dangerous research that they wanted funded And dayjack and the eco health alliance have sought to quash interest in the idea that the coronavirus originated in a lab So he gathered together all sorts of scientists To sign a letter strongly condemning conspiracy theories suggesting that covid 19 does not have a natural origin so remember you're for about a year after the origins the coronavirus The prevailing opinion that was the only acceptable one in the news media Was that the coronavirus emerged naturally? It was not the result of a lab leak And if you thought it was a lab leak then your conspiracy theorists you're another you're probably racist and Trump supporter but This is this is the most credible logical reason That we have seen so far for the lab leak hypothesis because the very Very research that was proposed in 2018 We're seeing we're seeing the results of that in the coronavirus Okay, third topic. I'm really interested in the topic of energy Because when I have energy I can do great live streams. I can do great writing. I can do great work I am more of a joy to be around life is more of a joy. I am more optimistic I am more happy and helpful. I'm easier to be around I can just contribute more to others and to myself so energy is Like a vital concern to me particularly as I struggle most of my life of chronic fatigue and So I was interested in this article in time magazine why you feel so tired all the time and Since coronavirus we All tended to have fewer social interactions and I know for myself and I think for other people We get much if not most of our energy from interacting with other people face to face Like interacting with people via zoom and youtube does not transmit the same energy That you get from interacting with people face to face. So when you get on the same page with people and you have synchronicity you have Rhythm in your interaction so that when you speak there's a pause the other person's speech You're not just talking all over each other But when you get on the same page with people that tends to transmit emotional energy So that's a large part of the reason why people Socialize join groups go to events that there's tremendous emotional energy that's released when you get on the same page with other people So you get this from going to synagogue or church or attending concerts sporting events movies going to restaurants All right, and many of these social events People are doing much less since the coronavirus so people are going out less often So there's a lack of collective excitement now lives And then people are replacing I think that lack of collective Excitement with doom scrolling right you feel kind of sluggish you feel kind of bored So you go online you check out trending topics on social media you visit new sites And you're not going there to learn anything specific You're going there because you want to jump jolt to your otherwise flatlining system And the jolt may come in the form of a horror story about politics or about covid or afghanistan or any other unsettling topics And so you get a jolt and it feels like the excitement that you used to used to get interacting with other people But it's probably less excitement than anxiety and repeated bouts of anxiety lead to exhaustion so We have lost the the positive and energizing forms of excitement that we used to get from our interactions social interactions And we're replacing the these positive sources of excitement and energy with negative and exhausting exhausting sources of anxiety So This time magazine says we need to stop replacing our desire for excitement with anxiety So when you feel the urge to doom scroll Ask what is fueling that urge? Maybe there is something healthier So I used to get excitement by looking at pornography at certain times in my life It wasn't like an every day every week thing for 50 years of my life But there are times and places in my life where I tend to turn to pornography for excitement And one thing I did was that I changed that up when I needed excitement. I switched to disaster documentaries That's so like 60 seconds from disaster Or all those plane crash documentaries or true crime documentaries or the first 48 hours after a murder Or all those documentaries So that was for me a healthier form of excitement than pornography. So we replace pornography with true crime disaster documentaries Second we have to do everything we can to insert positive excitement into our life Because there is inertia in fatigue So there's there's physical fatigue. There's psychological fatigue and then there was another article in the Huffington Post that I liked 12 industrial disasters. Yeah, I mean they're exciting to watch docos about industrial Disasters like 60 seconds from disaster. I think I've seen every every episode of that series Then I was intrigued by this essay in the Huffington Post on the same issue 12 mindless habits that are secretly exhausting you Oh, that's interesting. So one And after I read this I realized, oh, this is there's something to this Yeah, good mountain climbing disaster I mean, what was that great great book on Mountain climbing disaster at Mount Everest I mean that that was incredibly compelling book and exciting So watching emotionally charged tv shows. So if you binge watch on the emotionally charged tv show That leads to mental exhaustion. Why because trait identification? Like I don't know about you, but when I watch a tv show, I'm constantly imagining myself experiencing the same events and the same feelings and the same The same emotions of the specific character that's being portrayed in the tv series So this experience allows us to see the world differently to acquire and gain access to various Emotions that we weren't formally able to experience But sustaining these high intensity emotions can result in a state of heightened arousal and over stimulation And so it then takes additional mental health effort To dampen these signals with emotional regulation So this can be true for both positive and negative emotions because they activate similar pathways in the brain So if you're watching, you know, a lot of emotionally compelling tv and movies That can lead to emotional fatigue and mental fatigue Create difficulty focusing on the activities of day-to-day life and reduce your energy levels So I think we have to use some consideration with the type of entertainment that we consume We have to take note of how we feel after watching some emotionally compelling tv or movie series And how it affects us in the hours and days afterwards So there may be some themes that that are say triggering and the best avoided So there are certain tv shows or movies that I don't watch because they just don't have a have a good effect on me So other strategies may be put a time limit for emotionally charged viewing Maybe consume more neutrally turned shows to balance the scales or restrict intense tv shows to days off So that you control the cumulative emotional load sustained on any given day Yeah, watching Luke will make you excessively aware of your vulnerabilities Death may own worker fails Okay, waiting too long between meals. Yeah, that that I think definitely reduces energy Working at a messy desk Yeah, I find if my environment is organized and clean That that's more conducive for for me feeling good and clean in my in my energy flow, bro Planning too far in advance or over planning over scheduling, right? I find that can be exhausting I having too many tabs open All right, so not only may overwhelm your Your laptop but having two more too many tabs open in your browser can be sucking up mental energy Because it can distract you Taking phone calls right away. So I almost always 90% of the time I have my phone on do not disturb because allowing someone else to just call me and interrupt me That it's very distracting because you have to Your nervous system has to process, you know a big task change at the flip of a switch They have to process the conversation that you're having without say any facial cues of body language So your brain has to work harder and once the phone call is finished. It can often take you 20 minutes or more to regain your focus So I think it's a really bad idea to allow people to just you know, call in and interrupt you at any time Leaving a task half finished, right that that leaves you with a tension residue Right, your brain is working overtime thinking about the tasks that you're now on Ruminating about the previous tasks that you had to leave unfinished So the more tasks that you're leaving unfinished the harder your brain has to work to stay focused And this reduces your energy reserves Then slouching bad posture Uh shallow breathing I think a whole bunch of little tasks just pile up pile up pile up. So when you avoid And when you refuse to confront say certain painful emotions Then you are you're reducing your emotional range And it just and your life just gets smaller and smaller and smaller Anxiety builds up the more that you avoid So ideally any task that takes less than five minutes should be done right away. That's the most energy efficient option Not dimming lights at night. So having a dark bedroom. I think it's it's important for sleep And I like the metaphor here that our energy is is like water in a cup and The things that leak our energy are like holes in the cup Right, so there are two ways you can ensure that your cup of energy contains enough water You can constantly pour more water into it Or you can make the holes in the bottom of your cup smaller So boosting energy is like filling the cup And then reducing the the drainage in your cup of energy That that can keep you More more energized So when I usually think about energy, I usually think about How I can get more energy, but I hadn't thought as clearly before about Things that I may be doing that unnecessarily drain my energy. So yeah, I love watching things about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as well I remember I went away for a weekend stayed with an acquaintance and I brought with me a book It was like a book on the different ways that people die at Yosemite National Park It's just wow I think I've got a lot of insight into your character, but this is the type of book that you take away with you So there are lots of things you can do to boost your energy, right? Probably the number one thing that we can do is get a good night's sleep Eat eat healthy exercise Set boundaries Minimize contact with toxic people Okey dokey, so I was I was blown away By this book I read on religion in secular society So it's such a smart book and it came out 55 years ago And it talks about how much less influence religion and a mystical magical World view has on us in today's world, which is increasingly rationalized increasingly pragmatic increasingly scientific and where we have many ways of finding emotional comfort and human connection outside of religion Josh Randall, you gotta let me borrow that book and have people died at Yosemite I'll see if I can find it for you on amazon. I think I've borrowed it from from the library so Perhaps the best example of how we are steadily becoming less religious and I'm not sure that this can be changed Right. I think it's pretty much inevitable That the modern world is going to become increasingly less religious and this is this is unique in human history Right. We've never had this before We've never had non-religious societies so You often hear now of particularly christian religious leaders Emphasizing that there's no conflict between religion and science But you only say that sort of thing when you're willing to seed no vast swaths of of of life to a different genre science So science is increasingly prestigious in the minds of average people It's providing answers that people used to turn to religion for And religion can't even compete So that's why religious leaders are saying oh, there's no conflict between religion and science And so this is the first time that we've had secular societies. So maybe there's no way back for religion in In our western world So this is a professor at the University of Essex But I should explain that I'm a quantitative social scientist And I'm going to be talking about the decline of religion in the western world Help whether measured by belonging believing participation in services or how important it's felt to be in life Religion is losing ground across the western world Societies being transformed and the momentum seems to be unstoppable At this point you might be asking yourself a couple of questions First is it actually true? And even if religion is losing ground Could things change in the future? Religion really is true and no things won't change Modernization has predictable and permanent effects One of which like all the secular transition can't so This is the first time in human history that we've had secular societies religion has almost always been dominant in human history So a natural reaction to oh, this is the first time we have secular societies This is not sustainable like there's a religious impulse. It's just inherent in people So there's inevitably going to be a swing away from secularism back to religion. Now this professor Says no, it's inherent in the processes of modernity, which tends to make people more individualistic Our human community gets diminished because our Our occupations become more specialized and our recreational pursuits become more specialized And we find more specialized ways of attaining emotional comfort So that removes the communal feeling of which religion was so important. So he says there's no way back Which I find interesting So there's a process of generational replacement and they're replacing the population It's a process that's been happening for decades across the western world in some cases for a century or more Take us The example whether people say they have a religion And I'll use the example So when people Arrays without religion. It's very rare that they go from a secular background to becoming religious So approximately only five percent of people who are read secular then feel Feel the need to become religious later in life Oh, come on, man Why are you dropping a a new browser on me here? So we have an increasingly Specialized world. All right, we've got we've got the we've got work We've got no, I don't want to help you two by answering one question. Come on, man Bloody hell Sorry about that Okay, anyway interesting academic talk there on One professor quantitative social scientists arguing why there is no way back for religion in the west so There was a famous book published in 1966 called religion in secular society and it's just republished five years ago And it makes the point about how divided our lives have become compared to traditional lives. So The economic sphere of production has been separated from consumption Family and its concerns have been separated from the productive sphere. Education has developed a certain autonomous sphere We've now got You know politics and and law which is largely away from the control of religion We've got the separation of recreation from religion Away from the community and the family. So religion seems to govern less and less of our lives It does not dominate our social institutions the way it once did. So our lives have become increasingly compartmentalized And particularly when we're mobile when we're moving from place to place Uh traditional ties such as religion and family tend to have less hold over us So religion once had general presidency over people's concerns and endowed their activities with a sense of the sacred and this attitude towards life regarding activities in life as sacred has increasingly diminished over the past About 150 years So our activities have become secularized. So in a sense many americans go to church But this has almost no effect on how they do business or how they participate in recreation Religion in america is overwhelmingly vacuous. Well, if you meet someone in europe or australia who goes to church That's someone who takes religion seriously and their religion pervades You know vast swathes of their life So our lives have become increasingly secularized and the sense of mystery the sense of the sacred The religious meaning of everyday acts and objects are steadily decreased So we've had this steady demystification of the world So our thinking has become increasingly instrumental matter-of-fact scientific and rational And our emotional involvement with nature with the community with other people has been steadily reduced and our external world Has been drained of meaning. It's been drained of the sacred. It's been drained of the magical So we we steadily have fewer and fewer people who Who feel the imperatives of the religious interpretation of the purpose of life And it's not just churches lost numbers But people largely cease to think of or respond to the world with a sense of mystery and or with that that religious impulse That has diminished Increasingly morals just private matters Like people are less and less prepared to be their brother's keepers The force of community opinion about what is down and what is not done That diminishes its local community life itself diminishes as Our connections become increasingly specialized by our profession and our recreation So we're increasingly less concerned with morally regulating our fellows So We had in the 19th century the rise of economic laissez-faire which brought with it Moral laissez-faire so economic laissez-faire essentially the free market and we have moved into an arena of a free market of morals Even when our economic policy is switched back to more planning So used to be we held that moral values came from God And so therefore prescribed morality was unchanging and it was authoritative but churches and synagogues and masks are increasingly facing circumstances in which the authoritative will of God is making less and less impact on men in society where social and legal and professional control is increasingly separate from religious control and men are increasingly Ceasing to put themselves under the the guidance of clergy So the church used to be the arbiter of moral behavior But the churches instead have become more and more reflective of the practices of the times And they're gradually and hesitatingly endorse change in things like birth control So churches of of emphasize getting up to date and liberal synagogues, you know, we want to be up to date We want to be with the times So By saying that they want to get up to date churches and synagogues are recognizing their own diminishing capacity to influence their members and society and when you look at the shifts of Of various churches with regard to birth control shows the ways that moral theologians Are trying to come to terms with the changing moral practices in society And realize that they know Not very much about what's going on in society and therefore feel that they have less authority So many things that churches and synagogues at one time condemned the sins A few decades later later, they acknowledged these behaviors as perfectly appropriate So at one time almost all churches and synagogues regarded homosexual sex as a sin Now most you know regarded as appropriate in certain contexts From a secular perspective the primary person purpose of religion is to provide emotional consolation And now people get their emotional consolation from Going on youtube going to therapy going to a psychiatrist getting medicated going to yoga Like watching movies and tv shows so people Often receive more effective emotional consolation that they feel more quickly more easily more effectively from other sources than religion At the same time in our increasingly divided and compartmentalized world I think people are under greater continuing strain in their daily lives But they're trying to handle this situation by means other than religion. So we've got government welfare services Right, they once were promoted by christian motives, but they become completely secularized So what was once done from a sense of christian duty? Has now become an accepted service of secular government It's just an extension of general political civic and social rights Now in our increasingly mobile and compartmentalized society people feel under more strain more stress They have a weaker sense of identity Then you know growing amounts of anxiety, you know people feel Less at home less sure about who they are But they're not searching for answers for these problems generally speaking from religion They're going to secular therapy and they're getting medicated and they're going to yoga Or they're going to 12-step programs So affluent industrial societies produce seemingly high rates of mental ill health You know drug addiction suicide crime delinquency But the solutions for these problems no longer routinely sought in religion So we have lost that religious orientation of the individual and our society and There seems to be less and less common consensual communal solutions possible for our problems instead our problems are seen as individualistic So people may go for therapy for example, and it's the specialist techniques of secular mental health that people often turn to for emotional consolation rather than religious pastoral care And as people have shifted away from a religious and sacred mindset Then clergy have lost social status Like scientists have risen above them in social status literature in the arts have often risen above religion in social status So our societies have become increasingly rational and skeptical and pragmatic And this has affected clergy They are increasingly reluctant to believe that religion provides answers to social questions Just as they have shifted away from believing that religion can provide answers to physical questions and scientific questions So we are living in an age of empirical observation and information and it's the acquisition of these empirical skills And the acquisition of the skills to analyze the data that has passed beyond clergy to secular scholars So it's this awareness of the relativity of modern knowledge that makes The cleric increasingly guarded and less confident in his declarations So a professional cleric All right can play an intellectual game But at the same time he is bound By economics dependence upon his religion. All right, so he may think So he may think outside the box But he usually has vows of obedience and loyalty In addition to economic and social dependence And religious laity. They only want assurance and certainty. So pretty much most people all they want Are assurance and certainty whether it's politics social cultural existential questions people The common people want assurance and certainty and clerics feel increasingly less confident to provide this so Clerics are becoming increasingly skeptical They're ceasing to believe in many of the foundations of their religion They're ceasing to believe in many of the essentials of their faith or believe them in a different way and so this Contributes to a source of confusion and despair to those who want to believe in simple truths Most people want to believe in simple truths. Most people want to believe in simple truths about their health Most people want to believe in simple truths about covid people want to believe in simple truths about politics All right people the average person wants a simple truth And they want assurance and they want certainty and people who can provide that to them will get a large audience Now the united states when compared to europe has a high level of religious activity but outside of church America is at least as secular as any other western country so America has a very you know pragmatic Lays a fair attitude to life. It's very instrumental in its values. Americans tend to be very pragmatic Americans have you know bureaucratized rationalized Procedures for living they have technical legal methods scientific methods And the instrumental rational technical scientific Approach has probably gone further in america than any other western country. We have the most productive workforce in the world so america is probably The country in the western world in which the sense of the sacred the sense of the sanctity of life And deep religiosity is most conspicuously absent So as my father told me religion in america is a mile wide and an inch deep so Previous visitors to america who commented on the apparent extensiveness of church membership They also also said that they found religion in america to be vacuous and superficial So the dominant values of american society are not religious and american culture is marked by A central stress upon personal achievement, especially secular occupational achievement so The tenor of life in america compared to other industrialized nations is highly impersonal There's less of a sense of community. There's less social cohesion social trust in america compared to any other industrialized nation of which i'm aware so Tenor of our life is highly impersonal We lack social trust and social cohesion in america Individuals are constantly feeling manipulated The economic organization Of society has reached giant proportions that threatens the identity of the individual So there is a persistent demand for something which provides a communal orientation And americans probably move more probably more mobile than any other people in the industrialized world So americans are often on the move For work for pleasure And when people are constantly moving it's hard to establish communal life So there are a few You know agencies to produce communal life So the church and the synagogue takes on the functions of providing community So it's the church and the synagogue essentially represents the values of agrarian society It provides the warmth the stability The mutual involvement of a type of community life so The synthetic nature of the community It stands out to non-americans when they visit here because usually community meant That you live within a few miles of where your grandparents lived And that that's the way life is in much of europe and japan You will tend you will tend to live where your parents lived and where your grandparents lived That's that's real community. So community in america seems much more synthetic So the personalized gestures of our impersonal society Acquire like a macabre quality for those who experience genuine community Those who have felt the natural spontaneous operation Of rural community life So for non-americans that That friendliness of american churches that strikes them as jarring Because for people from europe They frequently experience real community so The the number one Religious ethic in american Is probably civility, right? so So on the one hand, this is this is Enable different religious people to get along in america But it has come at the cost of religious authenticity that people have sacrificed the authentic claims of distinctive truth of their religions In order to have easier relationships with their fellow citizens And this has produced a vacuous and superficial religion in america So religion has become privatized in america So president eisenhower said a man should have a faith no matter which faith it didn't really matter President johnson who was a thing a church of christ and his wife an episcopalian They asserted that their daughter's conversion to roman catholicism did not disturb them It's considered unamerican if you are disturbed when your children convert to a different denomination or a different religion Because from from the typical american perspective religions just a private matter And faith in one religion is as good as faith in another religion. So this is an american value This is not a christian value. This is not a jewish value. This is not an islamic value This is an american value which dominates religion in america So belonging to a denomination or religion in america Is generally unconnected with any distinctive religious belief and this is completely unparalleled in europe and australia So in europe church adherence has a content of distinctive teaching So with the protestant reformation The early protestants such as montluther john calvin. They conceded the supremacy of state authority above priestly authority And then american churches subordinated their distinctive religious values to the values of wider american society So religious practice then increased in america in the 19th and 20th century But the vacuousness Of popular religious ideas increased with it So the content and meaning of religious commitment in america became acculturated to the american creed of The individual getting ahead Now Men in the west developed religious rights before political rights So religion in england Was an agency for general discontent and disaffection but in america it's been The the distinctive claims of the various denominations have been muted So religion of your choice is an american phrase which amuses europeans Because from a european perspective you don't really have a choice over religion. You're born into it or not in europe religion has functioned to vindicate the fixed status that you have in society but in america Religion is an expression for getting ahead For claiming more status So religion in america abandoned many of the functions it fulfilled in europe So in america religion has emphasized love joy personal security getting ahead in life Rather than you know, eternally burning hellfire Now consider as someone who's born into a low status religion who then rises in the world He cannot afford to continue associate with religious groups to practice lower class religious rituals At the man who's brought up as a holy roller as he invents us in the world It's less and less Advantages for him as a businessman with a public reputation to roll in the aisles with the least sophisticated members of his community so In in america religion is another status marker because religion Because the american ethic is all about the individual getting ahead So in england secularization Manifested in the widespread abandonment of the churches as in other european countries in america secularization manifested in the absorption of the churches by the wider society and the loss of claims of distinctive religious teaching So in america churches are agencies for the expression of community These communities are not natural communities These are not communities of people who've lived face-to-face contact over many generations They're rarely receiving strangers Churches in america are agencies of synthetic community life So american churches have this distinct welcoming characteristic About which europeans Frequently comment So people who don't know each other whose lives have impinged relatively very little on each other Suddenly Subscribe to the fiction that they're now part of a community And everyone wants to belong to a most everyone wants to belong to a community The mobility of american life Diminishes the capacity for community. So church and synagogue give you the semocra of community Now most people want to belong Now the various churches in the united states express status differentiation They don't really do that in europe and england So the various christian denominations in britain express the basic divisions of social political and economic orientation They represent the class stratification of england so There was a sociologist in the late 1950s to examine different attitudes to work among jews Protestants catholics he found that Jews and Protestants had positive attitudes to work Catholics had a negative attitude that jews and Protestants regarded it as important that a child should learn to think for himself Catholics thought it was more important that a child should learn to obey They found that Catholics attached themselves more to kin groups And the the Protestants were much more individualistic So the general sense of moral rectitude which once extended to almost all of our social and personal activities Even in peasant societies That demonstrated how we dressed how we spoke how we ate in courtship attitudes to strangers neighbors kin All right, this this used to be a manifestation of a real local unity and community That was entrenched within a religious view of the world But the influence of religious morality and religious beliefs have been largely swept away in our modern secular age Christianity has become de mythologized traditional ideas about god have been challenged by bishops in the church and ecumenism the You know the finding the beauty in the truth and all religions has become the one thing that many religious Leaders can believe in so in england and europe The tiny proportion of the population that goes to church Implies considerable commitment to their religion that in the united states high church involvement is associated with low commitment to religious values So in britain and europe the doctrinal positions of denomination Speak to the distinctiveness of the past But their denominational organization has grown weak in the united states Denominational doctrinal distinction has little consequence, but the organizations enjoy wide support and they're relatively strong So the history of descent Is really the history of demystification Where the functions of religious specialists are increasingly shorn of their mystical and magical attributes This is max vapor's analysis So you begin with the protestant denial of the doctrine of transubstantiation The rejection of the idea that priests configure sins The rejection of the immediate efficacy of the confessional Israel aspects of emerging Protestantism So Protestantism stressed the priesthood of all believers and in Judaism There's no distinctive function that only only a rabbi can perform now. There may be some very complicated Legal procedures such as writing a divorce that the generally speaking only a rabbi will perform but in in general religious services There are no distinctive Categories just for rabbis So think about work work When when we were primarily farmers was just a part of life itself Then work became a calling And it was recognized as a distinctive activity of life and it was sanctified in religious terms And now in our secular world The calling of work has become a job And It's no longer sacralized So those are some of the highlights from this terrific book religion in secular society 50 years on By brian wilson And here's what else i've been reading DSM a history of psychiatry's bible So the DSM the diagnostic and statistical manual used by the mental health profession They will be the most influential book of the past century but Prior to 1980 it didn't have much influence It was with the publication of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders the DSM The third edition in 1980 Right and DSM Define what mental disorders are legitimate How patients conceive of their problems who receives government benefits for having certain problems Which conditions psychotropic drugs target and which conditions insurance companies will pay to treat And the DSM also came to delineate the curriculum that is taught to psychiatrists and other mental health professionals it Defined the diagnoses that researchers and epidemiologists explore And it also came to define the psychic problem Problems of public policies attempt to remedy. So the DSM has had increasing influence since 1980 And they've become a part of our culture. So now we know that environmental activist Greta Thunberg has asperger syndrome That donald trump is commonly seen as displaying narcissistic personality disorder That the singer mariah carry has discussed publicly her struggles with bipolar disorder And the same condition that's dramatized in the main character of the homeland tv show Kerry Matheson lady gargar Speaks about her struggles with post traumatic stress disorder tv mobster tony soprano sick treatment for panic attacks His son is suspected of having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD You've got the author of the best-selling memoir girl interrupted Said she discovered she had borderline personality disorder while she was reading the DSM 3 In a local bookstore. So many patients today enter therapy already knowing what diagnosis they expect to receive Let me have a look at the chart ironwood says I think we will see new religions grow Very possibly Judaism is strong. Otherwise luke would not have jumped into it Five of the founding fathers of the united states are not even christian Claire core is annoyed with denis dale says free speech no longer exists on denis dale's platform The west sleeps right now will it wake up or will it die? modern science Is the new world religion? Okay, so the DSM its importance for psychiatry is unique among various medical specialties So overall psychiatry is the least prestigious medical specialty It's the least likely to be considered real medicine by other doctors So other areas of medicine rely on biological markers that can confirm or refute a diagnosis of some disease So cardiologists use PET scans to see whether a heart has tissue damage or not Nephrologist takes x-rays to search for a kidney stone oncologists can perform biopsies to detect cancer cells Psychiatrists have none of these tools All right, there aren't any confirming markers for any common mental disorder. So psychiatric diagnosis Is highly subjective It has none of the objective physical markers of other medical diagnoses. So psychiatric DSM diagnoses depend upon self-reported symptoms and the The mental health professionals observation of what what he sees as symptoms So clinical observations and self-reports. So there are no independent criteria that can verify the accuracy of a clinician's assessment of a mental health disorder The american psychiatric association owns the DSM Which allows that organization, which is the psychiatric You know union the union of psychiatrists to monopolize the diagnoses of mental disorders for all mental health professionals So all professions want to maximize their reach maximize their power maximize their status and maximize their income Now psychiatrists use the DSM for getting paid And they will use it for rhetorical purposes, but very few psychiatrists consider its diagnoses accurate portrayals of underlying natural phenomena But they use DSM for educational training for obtaining reimbursement for treatment submitting grant applications providing measures for epidemiological studies But they don't think it actually reflects reality And other mental health professionals are clinical psychologists Psychiatric social worker psychiatric nurses mental health counselors. They must all use DSM categories to receive third-party payment for their services And the DSM serves as a benchmark for determining mental disorders in our judicial system. So There are about 6,000 court opinions citing the DSM So there are court rulings citing the DSM in legal areas Including defense from criminal responsibility Exemptions from the death penalty Eligibility for disability benefits Determinations in child custody cases DSM very powerful in our legal system Now the use of DSM diagnoses make it seem that mental orders are running rampant in our population So psychiatry has changed from prior to 1980 1960 it was a specialty that would treat just a small group of seriously disturbed people or primarily treated people who are institutionalized Now psychiatrically, psychiatry primarily treats people who come into the office voluntarily So now psychiatry thanks to the power of DSM is charged with the mission to To confront a large and growing public health epidemic of major depressive disorder that threatens virtually everyone So When psychiatry and any profession can convince Large and large in numbers of people that they're in need of its services that increases the profession's ability To make money to gain power and to achieve status It's not necessarily in our best interests So since the 1960s federal regulators insurance companies and medical schools have increasingly wanted to portray Psychiatrists as doctors practicing medicine So psychiatric legitimacy stems from how they name define and distinguish their central concepts The diagnosis is the first step In transforming a person with an ambiguous complaint Into a client with a defined mental disorder Right someone who you can bill and who you can medicate so the credibility of the DSM depends on its depiction as evidence-based you know scientific research This is the product So the DSM and the psychiatric profession will will often claim. Hey these diagnoses stem from empirically derived data But it's just not true So prior to 1980 people thought of mental disorders as something that happened After 1980 the public increasingly considered mental disorders just something independent of individuals like they have depression Or they have bipolar Prior to 1980 people consider mental health disorders as an individual attribute. I am depressed. I am bipolar So it's the medicalization of psychiatry So SSRIs came to prominence in the late 1980s things like Zoloft and They're probably least effective for treating depression. Right. They're primarily marketed for treating depression But according to clinical results, they are the least effective in dealing with depression Right. They are less successful in treating melancholy and depression than auto medications But they are more effective at dealing with anxiety But because of the DSM and its straitjacket, you have to prescribe for just very specific mental disorders SSRIs are primarily being promoted as antidepressants even though they're not effective as antidepressants They do have much more effect as anti-anxiety medication So whatever it is that SSRIs do Has virtually no relationship with any specific DSM diagnosis But the FDA in 1962 ruled that Drugs could only be advertised for treating specific mental disorders. So things like Xenax Which, you know, treated generalized anxiety You couldn't you couldn't advertise that you have to relate it to very specific DSM Diagnoses So these diagnostic changes in say DSM4 we got childhood bipolar disorder Right. So millions and millions of kids got this diagnosis, which has very little basis and empirical fact So millions of kids were medicated For no good reason because As the DSM grew in prestige As psychiatry grew in prestige It relentlessly expanded The notion of what counts as mental illness To accommodate all these new medications that are flooding into the market from the pharmaceutical companies So we've got this Through DSM3, 4, and 5 we've got this relentless expansion of what are purported to be mental illnesses Primarily to accommodate new medications that purport to treat these purported illnesses contrary to DSM assumptions of disorder Specificity genes for virtually all psychiatric disorders are non-specific. There's no disorder that corresponds to a distinct gene or group of genes so all Mental disorders share large amounts of genetic vulnerability with other conditions Now medical diagnoses in general tend to be uncertain and ambiguous But most medical diseases are distinct from health, right? So you've got blood pressure or cholesterol level. You've got specific cut points that indicate likely pathology So physicians tend to think in black and white And specific either or diagnostic categories make mental disorders seem more real to the public To insurance companies to other physicians and the federal regulators So even though mental health illnesses are usually on a spectrum rather than categorical, yes or no but rather just varying degrees of intensity, but that doesn't work for Insurance billing purposes for social prestige for federal regulation So psychiatry now Is in a position that most of medicine was in 200 years ago of having to define as disorders by symptoms by syndromes That there's no ability in psychiatry yet to Develop etiologically informed diagnoses etiology means how did this come about? So psychiatry is divorced symptoms from context So psychiatry is blurred situationally appropriate psychological phenomena from mental disorders So virtually every symptom of various mental disorders can be biologically and psychologically suitable adaptation to a given context or to a given cultural expression So symptoms resemble depression arise naturally after a loss loss of a job loss was a prestige loss of money loss of the death of a loved one And that that indicates that your grief mechanisms are working appropriately not inappropriately that you're not pathological Now a panic attack is an understandable reaction when facing an impending fall off a cliff But if there's no danger A panic attack is the is a sign of disorder Like hearing voices, right? That can be a hallmark of schizophrenia But in particular culture and religious settings. It's the cool thing to do So by contrast a heart attack always signals a failure of natural functioning regardless of context or culture And then I just started reading a new book moral acrobatics How we avoid ethical ambiguity by thinking in black and white And he notes, you know rarely do we observe all moral laws? Right virtually everyone pays as little tax as they can get away with We all tend to preserve and defend our privileges As if we were naturally entitled to them. So we in our head. We are all monarchs Thinking that we were chosen from above. I love that in our head We all think we are monarchs chosen chosen by God essentially So unlike most characters in Shakespeare's plays or Dostoevsky's novels We are not inclined to acknowledge that we all meet up of a bundle of conflicting values So monsters only exist in our simplifying head. So someone who you call a monster They're probably vast areas of his life where he's very nice like Hitler was a vegetarian the Nazis were very concerned about cruelty to animals And so we tend to talk about outgroups Jews blacks Chinese Russians Arabs Muslims with no nuance Without any awareness of the various cultures and languages represented by these groupings Uh criminals for example are never just criminals And good people are never just good people so How do we deal with The complexity of reality We trick ourselves We simplify We create order in our head whether it's none We give ourselves illusions of control We reduce unmanageable complexities by building shortcuts by staging and challenging ourselves by dramatizing by representing situations to enhance our Happiness level. So we're ceaselessly creating Comfort values for our souls and for those we identify as extensions of ourselves our in group our family our allies So we're constantly creating comfort values now When we reflect we Understand that we are mortal that we will die that everyone we love will die that everything we experience is transient And that we're all doomed to disappear from this earth so this this gives Our life an inescapable sense of absurdity if we dwell in this place very long So we then have to struggle to find meanings That allow us to transcend our realization of our doom on earth And this is the main existential framing of what we consider to be right and wrong so when we reflect Hitler loved gay sex but loathed poppers well There's no evidence that Hitler participated in gay sex So when we reflect on these things we realize how dependent we are on other people And how elusive our freedom is Because most of what we do is to please other people to get their validation We are highly dependent on how other people perceive us and evaluate us so We're naturally obsessively concerned with our status with our social situation And our emotions such as guilt and shame and hubris and pride and contempt. They shape our morality They frame our moral decisions Because when we think about it we realize that without other people we are nothing So for many of us our deepest fear is being rejected And this fear makes us desperate for social recognition for social validation And desperate about how we are perceived and evaluated by others So above everything else we care about our reputation because we exist through our good relations With other people without other people we deteriorate and die physically and psychologically So what drives us Is ban ban basic affiliation need and we all have this deep fear being rejected by others So this is the basic foundation of our insatiable need and struggle for human recognition So the main moral rule is that our moral compass is constantly recalibrated Depending on people and situations We hold different moral standards in our moral decisions Whether people are in our in-group Same family same social class same religion same language same party Or in our outgroup Bye-bye