Evolution's Grip on American Politics with Dr. Melvyn Lurie

What if our bitter political divisions aren't just about policy differences but reflect ancient biological drives hardwired into our DNA? Dr. Melvyn Lurie, Harvard-trained psychiatrist with expertise in genetics, presents a groundbreaking framework for understanding America's current crisis through evolutionary biology.

Drawing from his observation of nesting species and historical civilizations, Dr. Lurie identifies two fundamental drives shaping human societies: survival drives (focused on resource acquisition and protection) and reproductive drives (centered on nurturing the vulnerable). When a civilization becomes successful, it naturally shifts from survival orientation toward reproductive concerns – a transition Dr. Lurie believes marks America's current precarious position.

This biological perspective illuminates why our politics feels so intractable. Those facing economic uncertainty naturally prioritize survival needs, while those with greater security gravitate toward care for the vulnerable. Neither side recognizes these as biological imperatives requiring balance, leading to wild oscillations between administrations rather than healthy equilibrium.

Rome provides a sobering parallel – a civilization that could once mobilize massive armies against Hannibal couldn't defend itself against barbarians centuries later as its survival orientation diminished. Dr. Lurie sees America approaching a similar tipping point as we reach the 200-250 year mark that typically signals civilizational decline.

Yet hope remains if we can recognize these drives for what they are. By developing a new vocabulary that acknowledges both orientations as legitimate and necessary, we might escape the tribal "Red Sox versus Yankees" mentality currently gripping our discourse. As Dr. Lurie explains, "Once people understand what's really going on, things go right."

Join us for this fascinating exploration of the biology behind our political moment and discover how evolutionary science might hold the key to preserving American democracy for generations to come.

You can visit his website here: https://melvynlurie.com/

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Transcript

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Speaker 1 0:49

Hello , welcome to VARM blog and we are with Dr Melvin Lurie today . He is a physician specializing in psychiatry with a strong interest in genetics . He received his doctorate in medicine from Harvard Medical School , where he taught for over 20 years . He has extensive knowledge of genetics from practical medicine , as well as work with four Nobel Prize winners at the Pasteur Institute in Paris . He has additional experience in national politics , having worked as a field director in a presidential campaign where he spoke on the same stage with two future presidents . Once he started his family , he focused on local politics ,

Introduction to Dr. Melvin Lurie

Speaker 1 1:38

speaking at legislative town meetings and running for office . He has also served in his town's elderly housing committee .

Speaker 1 1:40

His current interests stand from the fear that lots of us have , including myself , that America is in decline . He has moved scared when read that the average civilization has only lasted 200 to 250 years and we're about there . I mean we're almost exactly 200 years after this . I mean 50 years after the centennial . So we are definitely there Before we started today . You were talking to me about the Goliath effect and you know kinds of path dependencies that come up from that . Would you like to talk about how these like path dependencies and the biggest , you know , the biggest actor in the room often has very little incentive to change and what that may mean for us right now .

Speaker 2 2:30

Sure . Well , I call this the Goliath effect because Goliath really didn't change his tactics . They were so successful in the past . When little old David came along and this is not unusual , remember the British had to march in formation because that was the way it always worked and that was the way they did it . But the Minutemen were nimble , they were clever , they shot from behind trees , for example . Well , the war went on .

Speaker 2 2:56

But the point is , when you're so secure about what's going on in your world that you can't see ahead and you're stuck on rules that worked in the past . In the past , then you've got trouble because there is a nimble force , as I think most people agree . The Chinese Communist

The Goliath Effect Explained

Speaker 2 3:17

Party is doing a lot of infiltration here , and we don't want to be Goliath and get knocked off by maybe not such a little David , but a bigger David . We just don't want to do that . Well . So that's the problem , I see , and so I started thinking about a solution to that , and the only one I came up with is that Donald Trump perhaps can use his skills at negotiating to negotiate really online not directly , but online with the Supreme Court , because they seem to be stuck on old ways of doing things . That's really what I think is going on now , and I can lead into this as we really get started on what's going on with country in general in general .

Speaker 1 4:19

Yeah , I mean you're interested in the relationship between biology and politics , which is not something that a lot of people know much about , or when they do hear it , they automatically see you're talking about eugenics and nothing else . So what is the relationship between biology and politics for you ? What is the biology of politics , so to speak ?

Speaker 2 4:36

Okay , well , biology of politics started because I tried to understand the biology of history and why we humans create civilizations that collapse . But I couldn't really get a sense of it , because historians talk about wars and they talk about royalty , but they don't talk about the dimension of science . So I really pondered that and the only way I thought I could get at it in real time is in politics , because politics reflects the culture . Some people say politics drives the culture , the culture drives politics . The point is that if you can really view politics from a scientific perspective or evolutionary perspective , you perhaps can get an insight into what's going on . Anyway , from that point on , I became obsessed with

Biology of Politics and Nesting Species

Speaker 2 5:23

this and I used the old technique that scientists have used for years , biologists have used , and that's to look at simpler species because , gee , our human society is so complex it's hard to figure out one thing from another . Well , I won't go into that a lot , but if you think of nesting species , which we are , we raise dependent young in an enclosure they have . And if you look at , say , the robin take one as an example the robin has some characteristic behaviors . One is to bring food and other essential resources into the nest for the family the fledglings and the mate and the other is to protect it against would-be intruders . And I actually got too close to a robin's nest once and was dive bombed by a robin . I didn't want to deal with that . Actually , I solved it by running away . So anyway , it turns out that inside the nest , where things are focused on reproduction and we're not talking about just having sex , we're talking about reproductive development from birth to adulthood that inside the nest there are some drives that occur that we can see in animals because it's simple , and we can then extrapolate that to humans . At least that was the goal . So we can see the outside the nest is pretty easy . Bringing resources into the nest is manifest in humans by bringing money into the nest nowadays , or focus on the economy or on jobs and protecting a nest against would-be intruders . This is so axiomatic we don't think of it in these terms . It's so natural is to have a strong military , to have protection for people and property in their houses and dwellings Inside the nest .

Speaker 2 7:23

If you start with the robins , what goes on is number one . There's a drive to do things for cleanliness . There's a drive to do things for cleanliness , for example , when the fledgling gets some partially digested worms or nuts or whatever . It then turns around and delivers to the adult inside the nest , the inside the nest parent . It delivers a fecal sack which then the robin and other nesting species take out of the nest to keep it clean . Well , we certainly focus a lot on keeping things clean . We want to keep our entire environment clean .

Speaker 2 8:01

But you see , to see , the connection makes you realize that this is a drive . This isn't some idea somebody came up with . It might be a manifestation of the drive , but it's from a drive , and a drive is really an urge to do something , but it's genetically determined . So if you don't accomplish that urge in one way , you'll try it in another and another .

Speaker 2 8:26

Well , the inside the nest drive , it's really getting in the way of our society , I believe , and it's unrecognized . It's unrecognized as a drive and this is what's important is the drive to take care of the most vulnerable at the time . Now , think of it If you've got eight fledglings and one is and they're all survivable we're talking about the survivable fledglings and one for some reason fell or whatever , if the adult doesn't take care of that vulnerable one , then child who doesn't really demand as much , falls and hurts himself . Well , the

Inside vs. Outside Nest Drives

Speaker 2 9:17

mother's got to put that baby down and go deal with the most vulnerable at the time . So we see this . It's not unusual .

Speaker 2 9:25

The problem is it's manifest in our society in ways that are obscure and that are not recognized as drives . And the reason that's important to see this is because once we see that it's a drive , then we can start to take steps to manage it so we don't overdo it in one direction and ruin equilibrium between all the drives and ruin equilibrium between all the drives . So how is this manifest ? Well , we see the drive to take care of the vulnerable . We have a whole welfare system , we have a healthcare system and there's some strategists in some adversarial cultures that feel that we should . One strategy against us is to focus in on that drive and bankrupt the country .

Speaker 2 10:17

If you really look at literature , you'll see this . The point is because it's not recognized as a drive , it can't be dealt with . We have a sex drive . We have a sex drive , everybody recognizes that . But it's dealt with in a way that each culture can manage , so it doesn't get out of hand with respect to other needs of the culture , other drives . And because we've not established equilibrium between the drives , we have this seesaw effect . So Biden does , trump does one thing . Biden erases it and does his thing . Trump comes in , erases that and does his thing . That's not balance , that's not equilibrium . Equilibrium is when you make adjustments as you go along to keep the society going , to achieve sociostasis . So the society maintains a sense of equilibrium , of balance , and things don't get overdone in one direction or another . And this is the evolutionary manifestation of what you can see in simpler species .

Speaker 1 11:27

Yeah , I mean that seems to describe the kind of positive feedback loop that leads to the seesaw effect that we see today . Like you do something , the other side responds does something more , undoes what you do . The other side responds does something more , undoes what you do . And all of a sudden you know , let's say , three generations of that . It's hard to tell what institutions work and which ones you even want to work actually , uh is , it seems very unclear to me , um , how I mean this ? It seems to me both obvious and a little obscure how this relates to civilization as a whole . But how does these drives operate in a civilizational framework ?

Speaker 2 12:17

Okay . So the collapse of civilization has been hard for a lot of serious anthropologists to define , and the reason is , they say , that a successful civilization must have incurred society stressors like famine or war or climate before and overcame them . What is what's going on now is a shift from a focus on survival functions and survival drives , because , after all , we figure those are all satisfied , things are going to be okay , and that's why , by the way , we're stuck on old rules . But the other thing is that this shift from a focus on survival drives to reproductive drives is what's going on . We're at a flex point and that's why there's a lot of tension . The real problem is , if we continue on this path and we're not dealing enough with survival drives , well , we just might not survive , and this is what we're facing in America . This is what a lot of people are afraid of . So what I'm offering is a way to look at this that might help us manage it better .

Speaker 1 13:44

So I mean the paradigmatic example that you've talked to me about and you note example that you've talked to me about in your note and that occurs to everyone , is usually Rome . And Rome is kind of an interesting case study because it does kind of fit this 200 and 250 year pattern in one way . If you look at the age of the Republic , then the age of , like , the first set of empires , then our empire , and then the second set and the end of the , the western side , and then the eastern empire , which goes through several changes and then falls in 14 , you know 91 ish um , and yet what I just described , there's also a very long history that's longer than uh 200 to 250 years . How is Rome , you know , helpful in understanding this and looking at where we are today ? Because we do have different economic systems , different kind of radically different social codes , and yet the patterns are still pretty recognizable .

Speaker 2 14:50

Yeah , rome's a great example , of course , because there is so much that we know about it . First of all , what I was saying about 200 to 250 years that's an average that some anthropologists come up with Rome lasted a lot longer . In 200 BC they fended off Hannibal , for example , wasn't much trouble to raise an army and they finally defeated Hannibal . But 700 years later , 500 , 450 or so AD , they couldn't defeat barbarians . So what were some of the things that were going on ? Well , I had to look

Rome's Decline: A Biological Perspective

Speaker 2 15:25

at Gibbon and boy , there's a lot to look at there , but I was trying to pick out certain aspects of what's going on there there and see how it might help us understand our culture a little bit better . So one is that the Romans couldn't fill their military ranks as time went on and in fact they hired mercenaries . You know who ? They hired Barbarians . So this drive to keep out the enemy , the would-be enemy , had diminished to the point where they could trust barbarians to come into their military ranks , learn how they do things and presumably although again , this is not written , presumably could inform the other barbarians into how Rome fights . Another is that Rome couldn't mobilize these big armies that it was able to mobilize , you remember , around Caesar's time he could rally 50 , 100,000 soldiers , and so could Brutus , and maybe not as many , and Cassius too . And so you know , the people from Rome were survival-oriented . My God , rome might fall . We , you know , we have to save Rome . Save Rome , but after a few hundred years it's not an issue . Rome's going to survive , don't worry about it . You know I have to study for an exam , or I have to go down to the forum and listen to a lecture by Cicero , you know . But but not join the army .

Speaker 2 17:01

So what's going on here ? Well , we've had some trouble filling our ranks . It got a little bit reversed because Trump is so survival oriented . The economy , immigration , and not just immigration , but the infiltration is more devastating , I think , than the immigration . But in any case , trump swings this pattern back toward the survival focus . Now , he might be successful in this and he might not , but he's creating a mentality that is heard and that's one reason that people have signed up for the army that hadn't before .

Speaker 2 17:49

One issue comes up is suppose Trump is successful in moving the curve back towards survival and maybe they can kind of coexist . But the problem is , what happens after Trump ? After Trump , we're just going to drift back into the old system if we don't recognize what the heck's going on , because we're in decline . I mean , you know , so many people think that you have your head in the sand if you don't see it and we have to deal with it . The old ways we've dealt with it don't seem to be working , at least right now , and so that's why I got into this , tried to understand it from a more fundamental level , and this is what I hope can take hold as we go along .

Speaker 1 18:38

So you kind of break these down into a cluster of two drives that have very massive political implications , and you mentioned them . They're the reproductive slash . Reproductive slash , maybe even expansive drives , but that's we might think of . Society is working , doesn't have a lot of enemies , is not hoarding resources . And then there's the survival drives , which is uh , which is basically uh , a scarcity mentality you are . You are hoarding resources , but you're hoarding them back altogether , maybe for offspring , but you're also prepared for attacks .

Speaker 1 19:23

And yet , I mean , it does seem like a society that switches into either of these drives as their only dominant operating modus operandi , as you've implied , gets out of equilibrium really fast , and so we've often been in the reproductive drive for a long time , but we've also gone in and out , I think in the past 30 years , of of survival drives , some of them very real .

Speaker 1 19:59

Some of them probably were not the actual existential threats , but it did sort of represent this move and this has happened , you know , in roughly half generationalgenerational cycles , which is almost perfect for mapping on the presidential campaigns in a weird way . But you seem to think we're moving back into a survival drive and that that might be logical but might have some real implications if we just switch back into the old way or if this new way I don't does not have any other homeostasis , because I mean , you could see , you could see where this could also tip , like a barrack . Society is not usually a healthy society either . So , um , what do you think is going on right now ? I mean , clearly , you seem to think that trump is uh indicating , like his popularity whether we think he's good at it or not does seem to speak to this . You know survival mentality , but it does seem like there just seems to be massive amounts of imbalances between all this . What are you thinking ?

Speaker 2 21:17

Well , there are yeah , there are , and there's a concrete reason for the extremism , which I can get into in a second

Survival vs. Reproductive Drives

Speaker 2 21:23

, but I think mentality is really the best word to describe what's going on . Right now . You have almost equal number of people who are focused on the reproductive drives and the other half or so of the people focused on survival drives . What did Trump do ? Now , he did this intuitively Believe me , he's not heard this from me . He he dealt with people who are dealing with survival issues , these Midwesterners who've lost their jobs , that that that really was supporting themselves and a large part of the country . They were dying out there and somehow he saw that helping them out might help him with a large constituency , and so what's interesting is he's taken the path of supporting the working man and has kind of undercut the Democrats who are always for the working man . However , that's worked . I mean , that's ultimately his focus . He could tune in because he has a survival drive . He can tune in to the survival needs of the whole middle part of the country , the farmers , the machinists that work for the auto industry , and they they got that . You know , they really saw a hero there because he fulfilled needs that they had . They had survival needs . So you know , there we are .

Speaker 2 22:58

By the way , I wanted to mention one thing that is considered a reason for the extremism we see today . So one reason that's been offered is that gerrymandering has gotten to the point where there's so many districts that are gerrymandered for only Democrats or only Republicans . Now , what happens in one of those districts , if everyone , or most people are Democrats say , well , a Democrat is going to win the general election . So the real contest is in the primary . In the primary , who's going to win ? The person who's a pure Democrat and really is behind all of the issues of the Democrats , or someone who's more moderate , all of the issues of the Democrats ? Are someone who's more moderate , you tell me , most of the people in that particular district might be , would be , democrat , and they vote for the person who's more of a Democrat , you might say extreme .

Speaker 2 23:59

The same thing goes on the Republican side , and this is this is a kind of a , an operational reason , uh , a lot of the extremism we have today . Again , it's got to be recognized . The beauty of our society is that , you know , we can shine the sun , uh , the antiseptic sun , sometimes the best antiseptic . So said , I think , oliver wendell holmes and others , but it sure is .

Speaker 1 24:30

And once people know about what's going on , well , we can of course correct .

Speaker 1 24:35

Something that occurs to me about this a little bit is maybe I would agree with you that if you were to analyze the rhetoric of Harris and Trump , you would probably see a kind of a reproductive slash , status quo bias in the Democrats and then kind of under threat focus of some Republicans , particularly Trump .

Speaker 1 25:06

This and it does seem like this rhetoric very much does reach out to certain , say , beleaguered demographics that despite the fact that the Democrats rhetorically have supposedly reached out to working class people for a long time , they are not seen as a working class oriented party anymore and in fact their primary growth demographic is college educated people above you know 200 , $250,000 a year in earnings , um , which is a major change in their own political demographic about 50 years . But it does seem like , despite the talk about these situations in the center of the country and some real action and concerns in regards to terrorists and whatnot , at least in the first Trump administration and so far in the second , that hasn't manifested in people feeling remarkably more safe in any particular way . Why do you think that is ?

Speaker 2 26:14

Well , I mean safe . Let's change the word safe to secure . So , first of all , we have a safety net that helps everybody feel pretty secure . It's one of the reasons we keep buying things and China doesn't . But , in any case , why does it ? Why do people pick up on that ? Because this is what Trump's all about . He really tunes into this and he transfers his mentality into his followers and they follow him because he shares that mentality . Followers and they follow him because he shares that mentality .

Speaker 2 26:49

And why did the Democrats support the college educated people ? Well , they're not so afraid of survival . I mean , they'll get a job and if they don't get that one , they'll get another because , after all , they've got that degree . Now , a lot of people in the Midwest don't have that degree and they , they feel it . They feel it People with with the degrees . They don't . They take it for granted and they take their survival for granted . Now , it's not survival in terms of dying , but it's survival in terms of our bellies are going to be filled . If gasoline goes up a bit , it's not going to not going to be a real problem for us . Yeah , we don't like paying more for it , but we don't have to compromise other aspects of our life , and this is what's going on , really , on the coasts , but with the , you know , with the college educated called the elite . So they're not so focused on survival issues , they're left with reproductive issues .

Speaker 2 27:48

Look , what does a ballplayer do who's aggressive and can be vicious on the field . As soon as he makes a lot of money , what does he do ? He establishes a foundation to give to the underprivileged . This is so natural because his survival needs are satisfied . He's got enough money to make a foundation . And what is he directed towards ? Directed towards helping people who are in need . This goes on all the time .

Speaker 2 28:15

We see this in wives of industrialists . When the industrialist dies , well , the wives tend to support more . Some people call them feminine , but they're reproductive drives . The main one is to take care of the most vulnerable , and that's obviously necessary for society . But the problem is , if it's not recognized as such , then it can be overdone . It could be underdone , but nowadays it's being overdone . Well , this is what Trump is unwittingly , I guess , because he hasn't spoken to me doing , and there are a lot of followers that don't feel secure in the sense that they're going to have food on the table next month or be able to pay for gas . So those are the people he . Those are the people for whom survival is not that guaranteed , is not taken for granted .

Speaker 1 29:18

Hmm , Now , what are the things that lead you to think that US society may be fraying to the extreme at the moment ? As a nation about 250 years old and we're also a nation that civilization and culture is clearly delineated with our government . That's actually not true for all the other cultures and nations in the world , but with ours that's very clear . That you know . Our culture begins separately from the British at about the same time that we become a nation formally , and so it is sort of easier to see in that regard . In some ways that's similar to Rome . But what are the tendencies that you think are tearing this society

Extremism in Modern Politics

Speaker 1 30:17

apart that are really showing up now ?

Speaker 2 30:21

Well , I think it's because certain people are taking advantage again , without realizing it . They're taking advantage of , right now , the reproductive drives . Look how much money we spend and energy we spend on the environment . We care about the environment . The problem is you have to balance it against , for example , the economy . Against , for example , the economy , and we talked about the vulnerable . Health care is another . You know , we spend a lot of money on health care , but our longevity is not that great compared to other countries . Same with education . So these reproductive drives are not being fulfilled in the kind of way that could add to society . Rather , there's a sense that things are going to be okay , and so a mentality , and so people aren't that concerned . Let's throw some more money at the schools . Okay , let's throw some more money .

Speaker 2 31:19

Trump gets up and he's wait a second , wait a second . He's a businessman . He thinks of money all the time . Wait a second , wait a second . He's a businessman . He thinks of money all the time . We spend more money on education and yet we're the lowest of 40 developed countries . This is what he talks about . Well , that's not good . Somebody's not managing the house that well . He's got an uphill battle .

Speaker 2 31:42

He really does , because so much of our society is focused on these reproductive drives , because so much of our society is pretty secure . I mean these folks who are in the government , I mean they have a sense of security ? They sure do . They have a strong union , they have benefits , great retirement , they're pretty secure . But when they I mean people don't talk about the pain they suffer when all of a sudden the rug's pulled out from under them . That's just another way of looking at this , but from their point of view .

Speaker 2 32:16

But that's what's happened Now . They're survival oriented , because their survival is not as guaranteed as it was . So they're out hunting for jobs or panicking , doing whatever . We'll find out more about that later . But again , this is another manifestation of what Trump is doing . He is focusing on what's absolutely necessary in his mind , or Elon Musk's mind , and he's trying to streamline things . And , in the wake of that , the people who have been having this mentality of security kind of pay the price . They've come to the realization that they're not that secure and they've got to have more of a mentality of survival . Get a job , you got to get a job , and um , and that's what they're trying .

Speaker 1 33:10

That's what they're faced with this does kind of lead me to an interesting uh kind of third party and all this , which is which I also think ironically might have a reproduction mentality . But that is like the very rich and I'm not just talking about college-educated elites , but I'm talking about billionaires who do think a lot about money but , for example , kind of assume that the cultural and material world that they currently exist in is going to be the same enough in 10 , 20 , 30 years for them to project growth patterns based off of current events . And I find that to me it's always been a specific tension in Republican politics because , on one hand , there's this want to streamline uh survival , get rid of unnecessary complexity , and on the other hand , there's a sense of wanting to keep the money , uh , the money machine and and I real actually here do mean the money machine more than even like real material production um flowing , because if you freak out the business , the , the upper business elites , they can do some damage on their own . And that has always seemed to me to be a major tension uh in a lot of attempts to simplify us society , because it , because it will necessarily um lead to , let's say , uh associate a social disequilibrium from where we are right now . It necessarily breaks up the status quo , which business people might want , because they want the free up of resources , removal regulations or whatever , but they also want a fairly predictable endowment so that their portfolios can go exactly as they did before and they can report to stockholders .

Speaker 1 35:14

In a boring way , and I've found that to be one of the things that really makes some of these drives difficult to to to go through .

Speaker 1 35:29

I'm thinking about this in terms of the the um ecologists and uh complexity theorist joseph tainter a lot , and he talks about um societies that are super successful often breed their own uh , you know , uh demise in the fact that they become overly complicated . Those complications have too many energy inputs and you have a fairly decadent and stagnant subject of that society , um , and then when they go to realize that they need the course correct and simplify that it's very hard to do because everybody in that society doesn't like you know . Yeah , we can make the poor give up something , but making other elements of society give up something is really hard to convince people to do unless , frankly , you have a very strong military willing to enforce it . Um , so what ? What do you ? Do you see , like , how is could this be related to these drives of survival versus reproduction actually almost being replicated within these other systems ? Like , is that part of what's going on there ? What do you think leads to that seeming contradiction ?

Speaker 2 36:37

Well , first of all , I think that is what's going on in other cultures and has gone on in other civilizations in the past , because it's part of human nature . These drives are part of human nature . We all have them , but to different degrees . Problem is , we need to recognize all of them and then we can achieve equilibrium . So , Taser , you know I've read his book and the Collapse of Complex Societies . That's what really got me going on this , because one of the things he does say is that this idea that serious anthropologists will say that the same society that falls has incurred the same stressor again , whether it's an enemy or drought or famine whatever in the past and overcome it . And so he raises the question of why it happens now , why the collapse happens when it does . He talks about overspending on projects , making them more and more complicated . He talks about that , but he doesn't address the biological part . I wish you were alive .

Speaker 2 37:38

I'd love to talk to him about this because it's it's an answer . It's an answer to to these serious questions , and he certainly raises them , that's for sure . But he he like all the other historians and anthropologists , I guess they don't think like evolution evolutionists and they don't think about things like as genetics is through , and they don't think about the dimension of science as it as it applies to society . Don't think about the dimension of science as it applies to society , and that's again . That's something I'm trying to add and I hope it does get added and you know what I'm saying is going to get changed over time and that's fine .

Speaker 2 38:16

I hope it gets refined and expanded on . But basically , if you don't have the dimension of science involved in all this , you're kind of you know science involved in all this , you're kind of you know you're floating on the waves . You're not even dealing with the currents . It's the tides that really are moving things , and if you can't recognize it the tides , you know then you've got some trouble . You're still floating on what you're floating along like waves . Oh yeah , I really wish you were around . I'd love to get through to him and talk to him about this .

Speaker 1 38:50

Yeah , one thing that I mean that's interesting about Tainter because he's an ecologist , but even I noticed there was a distinct lack of talk of biology in his book and it does seem like , well , that's where you would mention it . One of the things I wanted to ask you about is why do you think both left and right in most of the West so at least the Anglophone West , but I also think it's pretty true for continental Europe , this pretty true for continental europe uh , there's a kind of refusal to link human behavior to biology , um , in in any significant way . I mean it's . It is you . You will hear about evolutionary psychology , but even that sort of a um micro use this . It's not looking at larger societies . Why do you think this is so taboo , to look at political and social developments from the standpoint of a biological system .

Speaker 2 39:57

Yeah , I think they don't think in those terms . You know there are some scientists that measure the DNA of the left and the right , but what's come to me is just , I don't know why it's come to me . I guess it has something to do with my background genetics and politics and I practiced psychiatry a large part of my career and have a pretty good beat on people .

Trump and the Survival Mentality

Speaker 2 40:21

So when you ask the question , I think if they could consider this what I'm talking about , know in a refined way , more more studied way they take , they jump on it because there is a groping that goes on . And so what ? What people do is describe what goes on .

Speaker 2 40:41

So so Gibbon describes that the Rome couldn't fill its ranks , but doesn't talk about why . And if you talk about why you got to get into the biology , I just think people haven't , haven't felt maybe that they could get very far with it . But what I mean ? As I started looking at this , I had a few breakthroughs over the years , but it's amazing how it seems to fit . And why don't they ? I don't think they thought of it . They don't think like scientists . That's not been their focus . That's a simple explanation , but I think that's probably all it is . I don't think he would reject it . If Joseph Tainter were around today , he'd want to hear this what I'm talking about , and maybe argue about it , but he'd want to hear it . It's not around .

Speaker 1 41:34

Okay , well , so you know , when we started this conversation it wasn't clear who was going to win the last election , because I think you had initially messaged me or it was just after the election these drives more invalid . You've talked about like there's a structural . There's actually just like a structural impetus for those in charge to be relative , to be in relative reproductive mode , because they're already safe . That's why they're in charge and that's usually part of that . There is also a kind of long deray thing for people to you know . You know I am generally associated with the left , but I have also just like laughed at the idea of just throwing more money at education because I'm like , well , it'll just get sucked up into administration anyway , it's not even going where you think it's going to go . Um and uh . I've been surprised at how little outside of people kind of complaining about at college , at um , at colleges , because the cost is more readily apparent , how little oversight that is in like secondary and primary education , where I'm like , well , you know , we spend double the money that we used to spend 20 years ago , and that that's not , that's not even dealing with inflation On educating a singular child . Less of that goes into teaching than it did 20 years ago . Less of that goes to the student directly than it did 20 years ago . More and more of it goes into oversight Proving to the federal government . We're using like you spend more oversight proving to the federal government we're using like you spend more money sometimes proving to the federal government you're using the money in the way they gave it to you than you would spending it on what they gave it to you for . And we have more and more , you know , council specialists and whatever in education . So our , our , what we call teacher specialists . But they're often like quasi administrative positions that have advisory capacity that when we go through an academic downturn , for example , we don't get rid of , even if we're getting rid of teachers who actually serve the children directly .

Speaker 1 44:10

And it does seem to me that there's on a lot of the liberal left that there's a naive thrust that institutions will be efficient just because they're institutions and that there's no such thing as an overly complex register , uh , like regulatory issue . I mean one of the things that I was talking to someone that I found kind of ironic . I was like it's , there's less regulation on development in some ways in china , which is , you know , ostensibly a communist country than there is in the united states , which is ostensibly a capitalist one , and it's not even all that obvious to me when we talk about , like environmental cleanliness or whatever , that those regulations work . Um , because it's such a complicated uh , set of overlapping institutions that you have to navigate that . One there's a lot of places for the regulations to just fall apart because of oversight or this , that and the other because there's so many different things involved . And two , that eventually there is like a diminishing returns on investment .

Speaker 1 45:34

Now , the one thing I would ask about this that is complicated to me , about our society , is that we do spend a ton of money on the military , but I don't know how much that money seems to come back into any sense of security . And so what ? What do you think leads to these kind of contradictory developments in our society ? Because I do see these things as like a real threat , rather not your left or right in orientation about where these things are going to go , like , like if things are so costly and yet not very effective , and we see that in schooling and we see that in hospitals , but we also see we kind of see it in the military . Frankly , how do you handle that when the institutions that you would naturally be associated with these drives might have similar problems that we're talking about to the general society ?

Speaker 2 46:38

Okay , well , first of all , there is self-interest . I mean the teachers want to have more money and more freedom , whatever , for example , and the military industrial complex , the companies that make armaments , they want to have more . So there are these vested interests , or special interests . I think again that sunshine is the best antiseptic . For example , my I'm trying to stay in the middle as much as I can , and I would love it if people started saying , well , wait a second , wait a second , that's too reproductive , that's too reproductive , Not that's too Democrat , that's you know , wait a second , it's too much on survival or not enough on survival . And instead of saying , you know , oh , you're a Republican , you have to get off that and try to see things at a little deeper level . But there's so much , not only vested interest . But look , I'm from Boston . I think the Red Sox are great , and the mantra here is Yankees suck because Boston's our team . Well , what do you think they say in New York ? Same idea , and this team effect is part of what's going on too . These people that are demonstrating this really don't know the issues , but they're on this team today anyway , and they're on that team and it's because of our all the drives in our social society . People want to belong somewhere . Belong in other places . Very hard to break these the longer they go on , and that's why a different vocabulary and a different perspective , a different prism , I think has a chance . But it has to be seen by a lot of people and the right people . And this is why I'm trying to really publicize this , to get the word out , hoping that people who really are influential can start to think in these terms , because then there's a chance . You know that we're not the extremes will be on their teams . You know the Red Sox and

Fraying Society and Declining Civilization

Speaker 2 48:42

the Yankees , that's it . But there's a whole middle ground . That's there . And once we get moving on something , people start to come in line .

Speaker 2 48:53

One of the , by the way , I think , from an evolutionary standpoint , one of the secrets of success of our society , of a free society , is variation . I mean , when people talk about diversity , that's nothing compared to the variation that exists within each of us and between us as a society . Some people are interested in this , some people are interested in that . Some people make a breakthrough here , some people make a breakthrough there . It's all over the place and our society supports that and feels that . Successful adaptation to the environment , say , the economic environment rises to the top , and so we have to really keep that in mind , that the variation in our population is crucial .

Speaker 2 49:46

I think , unless this , this , this or modification of what I'm saying is start to be recognized and people can can deal with it , they can change their vocabulary , change their outlook , and maybe we can come together more as a society at least to reestablish equilibrium when things start to go out of hand one way or the other . I think this is you know , as a psychiatrist , you've often heard that once the person understands what's really going on , things go right . Well , it's not that easy , but it's true . When people start to make inroads , they come in the next week and the next and they're tying their lives together and they're getting a better job and they're getting a better relationship and they've made some understanding that's been blocking them . Well , this is the kind of thing that I feel can happen with us .

Speaker 2 50:48

That is , if we can see what's going on , see as a society , if we can see what's going on , we can look at things from this evolutionary , scientific perspective , then we can start to move ahead , because we won't get , we won't get tripped up by losing equilibrium , going too far in one direction or another . That that's one way . Going too far in one direction or another . That's one way , I think or hope , that we can get out of this extremist self-interest mode that we're in . You can't have too much self-interest if society is not doing that well . When the oceans were everything , we didn't have to have regulations , we could do all kinds of things . But there are no more oceans really , and so we're faced with a real stressor of invasion bankruptcy . This is how it's going to be manifest .

Speaker 1 51:49

The long-winded way of saying One thing it just seems Go ahead .

Speaker 2 51:58

It's a long-winded way of saying sunlight is the best antiseptic . That's one of the best phrases I've ever heard .

Speaker 1 52:11

One thing I would agree with is we need a much more transparent society and we need people to be able to process that . And one of the things that I have been quite concerned about about our society is , despite all the money we spend on education , despite all the money that we spend on healthcare , and I think in our society is , despite all the money we spend on education , despite all the money that we spend on health care , um , and I think in our society we can see where a lot of that gets lifted out , uh , by various middlemen who are who are acting self-interestedly or even if they're not acting self-interestedly , um , they're acting in the context to a smaller system . I mean , one of the implications of your thought here is that , like someone like Trump , whether you like him or not , is a response to these drives in our society in a way that you know he's not thinking about , he's not . You know he clearly doesn't use these terms . That that you do , but he any . If it was purely self-interested and even maybe corrupt , it doesn't really matter , because he's seizing on on these vulnerabilities in society that other people have left out , where people are being thrown to the wayside . And I agree with you , I remember talking to someone at the end of the Obama administration when I was coming back to the United States I'd been abroad for a while and them telling me that like , oh , these people in these red states , they just get in line with the economy and move to New York , and I was just like that won't work , you can't .

Speaker 1 53:50

I mean one , you don't really have the economy to absorb all of them . And two , like that's a very , uh , um , presumptuous view of the way technological development goes on and that everything's just going to go on in the same thing and nothing's going to change . That , where you're asking people to uproot their lives and their social infrastructure for no promises , in a culture that's seemingly hostile to them and that doesn't really consider their needs in the first place . And it does seem to me that that has led to a mentality that just makes people viewing the system as a system as opposed to viewing the system . You to know that , like , maybe some of these things are about forces that are larger than , um , than individuals . And how much despair does it give you ? Because it does seem like , well , you know , organisms can die and so can cultures . Uh , humanisms can die and so can cultures and civilizations .

Speaker 2 55:16

And you know that's a real possibility here . You know , for me it's very sad that America could die . America is such a beautiful thing . I mean , these founding fathers really had a lot of insight . They studied what had gone on before them . It wasn't all of theirs , but they pulled this together in a way that's really worked , and if America dies , there'll be a dark ages , basically , I think . Does it make me sad ? Yeah , makes me sad , makes me concerned enough to do this , to write a book , to get out there and talk about this , and that's that's really it . I don't want America to die , period . I don't want my offspring to have to live in a totalitarian system . I want them to experience the America that I grew up with . So how do I feel about it ? I'd say more pessimistic than optimistic , actually .

Speaker 1 56:20

Yeah , Mm-hmm , so you've written oh , you've written several books , but you've written two books on this topic and specifically maybe three . I was looking over several books , but you've written two books on this topic and specifically maybe three . I was looking at where it's like uh , uh , what , um the looking at your recent publications , um , would you like to plug your books ?

Speaker 2 56:49

Sure , I mean , I think it would be great for them to be out there . And , by the well , the current one is called

Finding Balance and Final Thoughts

Speaker 2 56:58

the Biology of Politics . So America Won't Die . And you know , this is a mission for me . I mean , I'm older , my kids are grown , my mortgage is paid off . The financial aspect of this it's nice , but it's not a focus in the least . It's a mission . There are a lot of people that have missions . I'm not unusual . A lot of people have missions . They really get out there and have people understand and feel like life will be better if they do so . This is my mission and that's why that's it's really explained in the book and there's some more coming . But I think that what pulls it together is the biology of politics . So America won't die . There you go .

Speaker 1 57:54

All right , well , thank you so much for your time . I will put links in the show notes for where you can find your work and get the book . And is there any final thought you'd like to leave everyone with today ?

Speaker 2 58:14

Recognize that America might die and think seriously about how to deal with that . Yeah , that's what that's my message To recognize it , and then things will start to come into place . I think I hope . Yeah , that's my message .

Speaker 1 58:32

Yeah , alright , thank you so much .