- Speaker #0
Hello, my sweet creative cutie. Welcome to Unleash Your Inner Creative with Lauren LaGrasso. I'm Lauren LaGrasso. I'm your host. And today I have an incredible treat for you. You are going to hear an episode of one of my new favorite podcasts, Bewildered, with Martha Beck and Rowan Mangan. Martha and Rowan are both amazing people. I've had the pleasure of meeting them in real life a couple of times. They're always insightful, always inspiring, as is this podcast. I love Bewildered because It has a very similar mission to Unleash Your Inner Creative, and that is to help you reconnect with your true nature and your authentic voice. Here's a little blurb on the show. What if we stopped listening to the controlling voice of culture around us and instead learned to reconnect with our own true nature? Sometimes we aren't even sure why we feel so bewildered and discontented and even downright miserable. Often it's because we have let the forces of society replace our own instinctive knowledge of what is right for us. Now it's time for us to find that voice again and find it you will. So check out this episode of Bewildered, hand selected for you by me about feeling like an alien, which you know I love. But in this instance, it's about when you're on a healing journey and you realize you've started to outgrow the people around you. Martha and Rowan give great tips. on what to do should you find yourself in that situation, or if you just in general feel out of place and are looking for your community. They give great tips on how to navigate that. So check it out and make sure when you leave here to give Bewildered a follow and to rate and review, okay? I'm gonna put all the information for you to do that in the show notes. Enjoy this episode of Bewildered and I will talk with you next week. Love you and I believe in you.
- Speaker #1
Hey, Marty.
- Speaker #2
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
So we've got a good episode for the peeps coming up today. I think so. Yeah, we talk about, in this episode, we talk about what it's like to feel alien when you're among the very people that you're supposed to feel at home with, right? And that's come from, it's a bit wildfire, it's come from one of our beautiful listeners.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. And we're going to talk about how the spirit of community is different from the simple grouping together of people into clusters and how if you have people that you feel different from that can be a good thing because it enhances the wisdom of the crowd yeah it's it's like um
- Speaker #1
we sort of went in two directions and I think it will be an interesting listen because on the one hand you know we want to be with who we want to be with and on the other hand sometimes we need to challenge ourselves so that is a great episode ahead for you. Settle down, make a cup of tea, enjoy, and we'll see you on the other side.
- Speaker #2
Hi, I'm Martha Beck.
- Speaker #1
And I'm Rowan Mangan. And you have arrived at yet another episode of Bewildered. You know it. It's the podcast for the people who are trying to figure it out.
- Speaker #2
And as usual, I'm wondering what you're thinking. That is us. So what are you trying to figure out? right now, my Rowie.
- Speaker #1
Well, Marty, I was going to talk about one thing that I had been thinking about, but in the process of setting up this podcast, we have had so many technical snafus that I just feel like I'm just trying to figure out, because I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I honestly feel like either they're all spectacular actors or shit doesn't go as wrong. for most podcasters as often as it does for us because they come on and it honestly just sounds like i mean we live together so it's a bit different but say there's two people they're like hey hi how you doing oh my god i'm in philadelphia yeah oh i'm in new york and it's like honestly they're so fresh like they just right
- Speaker #2
their sound is perfect their look is perfect they did not struggle with nine different types of ethernet connection or whatever they just They just roll out of bed and everything works for them. That's my theory on everyone but us.
- Speaker #1
I think what I'm trying to figure out today, Marty, is why me? It's an original question that no one's ever asked.
- Speaker #2
No one's ever asked that question before.
- Speaker #1
And there's no self-pity. The thing was that I decided to get incredibly high on caffeine before we started. And so at the height of... our technical issues it was also the height of my caffeine high that's not good and so it was like i kind of got some version of roid rage with it oh yeah i could tell it was real it's real yeah so that's what i'm trying to figure out is just Why don't the things, why they don't work?
- Speaker #2
For you, for me, for us.
- Speaker #1
For us. Why they don't work for us. I don't know. And if anyone knows, please answer on the back of a postcard. Send them to freaking space. I don't know because I don't know how that works.
- Speaker #2
I know. They'll never get to us.
- Speaker #1
Just write it on a postcard and throw it out your window. So I love you, everybody. Thanks. bearing with us until this moment. And if we're frazzled, that's why. Caffeine and mercury. Mari, what on earth are you trying to figure out? And this better be good.
- Speaker #2
Well, for me, it's like I watch you put all the gizmos together and you are like the gizmo girl.
- Speaker #1
Yes.
- Speaker #2
I knew when computers were invented that they would be a thing. I was like, someday I should learn to use one of those. Meanwhile, you're doing all the, like you do every kind of computerized function there is, but you also, you are, my dear, homo habilis. Yeah, habilis.
- Speaker #1
Am I? Yes, you are. Homo, I won't argue with. Yes,
- Speaker #2
exactly. So do you know what the homo habilis did?
- Speaker #1
No, my darling.
- Speaker #2
Tool use. I think that you have like... a genetic if we could do a genetic screen for massive amounts of straight down the line tool using tool inventing charisma you would have inherited a huge amount of it the problem is that i will do everything um
- Speaker #1
literally with a piece of wood and a toothpick and yeah not even exaggerating no she will eat she actually told this story last week and i was like this is so true and people don't think this about you she'll if she wants to avoid human beings and she's like at a retreat center or something, she'll have a jar of peanut butter and a Bic biro. Did you say biro in America?
- Speaker #2
Pen. Nobody knows what a biro is.
- Speaker #1
Well, that's true because it's a biro.
- Speaker #2
A biro is you because you've dated men and women. You homo habilis, you.
- Speaker #1
Full-time homo these days. Hashtag blessed. Yeah, well, biro is a kind of pen. So congratulations. Yeah, eating peanut butter with a pen out of the jar to avoid humans. And she'll use a Bic Biro for anything.
- Speaker #2
If I don't have a spoon. I mean, it's not like I put in my suitcase a jar of peanut butter and a pen to eat it with. I put in my suitcase a jar of peanut butter, which I think is really incredible tool use. Usually I just smear peanut butter on. No, but here's the thing. All right. Yeah, I just grab whatever is handy. I remember I used to do watercolor when I was a teenager and you need things to blot it with. And if I didn't, I wouldn't have a Kleenex or a paper towel around to blot my painting. I would just think, well, this shirt isn't really that great. Take it off and start using it to blot paint. I use crossover tools.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, it's like we're actually at sort of two ends of the spectrum.
- Speaker #2
We are.
- Speaker #1
Of how we interact with the objects and tools in our lives. Like I am always flabbergasted by how you can grab something, use it in a way that it wasn't, as you say, like ever intended to be used. But then as the function for the thing is made redundant by you using it, the object itself ceases to exist for you. And so things just get dropped all around at all times and it's very... Whereas for me, it's like I want the perfect thing. Yep. I want the exact thing. Yes, you do. And I will want something, and I don't know if it exists or not, and I will go to a thing that is kind of like a blah, blah, blah. And it's a wonderful thing to live in the age of Amazon. It's all the same.
- Speaker #2
So here's the thing. Anything that I do or anybody in the house, anything we do, Ro is scouting the gizmos for us. So something comes in the mail and it's something like, for example, and I love you, but this thing that you bought, it's for applying mascara, which as a good Mormon girl, you might not know this, a good Utah Mormon girl, we learned to use appropriate makeup when we're like 12 and then you're not supposed to ever go outside without it. So I've been putting on with a mascara. applicator for 130 years. And Ro bought me this thing that's difficult to describe. It sort of looks like the mouth of an eel. And the function of it is you press it up against your eye in some way. And then you can like mascara that crap out of your eyelashes in a way that is supposed to be easier. But in fact, for me, nearly blinded me the first time I tried to use it because I would put on mascara with my like with my fingers if I had to.
- Speaker #1
It was the first time I'm hearing about my thoughtful gift by that time.
- Speaker #2
Yeah it was a wonderful thoughtful gift and I'm very grateful that you went through the trouble.
- Speaker #1
China that came from, all the way from China for you.
- Speaker #2
I know, speaking of watercolour, Ro bought me this little gizmo that it's a plastic bottle turned upside down on a plastic stand with a little button and it's meant to be that you press the button and you Empty the dirty water that you've been using in your paint and then clean water flows into it. And it works. It works. It works very similarly to a bottle of water. Like it's so fancy.
- Speaker #1
You use it.
- Speaker #2
I do use it because I love you. And it works as well as a bottle of water. It's great. It's fantastic. I love it. Oh, boy. Our relationship is degenerating as we speak.
- Speaker #1
Thoughtful, kind, loving gifts that until this moment I thought were very gratefully saved.
- Speaker #2
I love the water tool. I do love the water tool. Unfortunately, Karen, we just had a thing. We got her. Ro and I got together because Ro showed me something. And I was, I understand how you feel because it was like this thing Karen will love. Because what Karen does. for enjoyment.
- Speaker #1
You can't buy for Karen. I just have to say like you cannot buy for Karen.
- Speaker #2
But she watches Scandinavian movies on her phone, like not on a computer, not on a television, on her phone. So she will hold her phone up in front of her face for three to five solid hours. Now at that point, I would be losing an arm, right? So Ro found this thing that goes, behind your head and over your shoulders and it sticks out in front of you and holds your phone up at exactly the right level to watch.
- Speaker #1
You can rest your arms.
- Speaker #2
Karen just started laughing hysterically and refused to use it. It's not the Danish way, apparently. She's into the Danish way. It's like, we used ice for that.
- Speaker #1
People don't understand how much easier I can make their lives.
- Speaker #2
But I have to say the joy of watching you use your special gizmos. It just makes my heart sore. We recently went on a trip, and every time we unpacked in a different room, Ro would go, it's here! It is a special pad that she puts around one leg, one knee specifically, so that while she's sleeping, the other knee will not knock against it uncomfortably. Really?
- Speaker #1
I love that thing.
- Speaker #2
Like how? Yes, you love it. And I love to see how much you love it. It's amazing. And I, oh boy, it's like I'm confessing on a live public forum that I'm not as good a tool user as you, even when you buy me a tool that I should enjoy using. And I'm trying to be a better tool user. And that is what I'm trying to figure out.
- Speaker #1
Well, I think, I think we've all. Just learned a lot about you in this past little segment. And your gratitude.
- Speaker #2
Ooh, the librarian in you is coming out. All right.
- Speaker #1
Let's move on. We'll take this offline, I think, my darling. We'll be right back with more Bewildered. We don't say this enough. We are so glad you're a Bewildered listener, and we're hoping you might want to go to the next level with us, by which I mean... If you rate and review the podcast, it helps new people find us so we can keep bewildering new souls and you know how much we love that. Ratings are very much appreciated. Obviously, the more stars you give us, the more appreciation is forthcoming. Reviews are quite simply heaven and we read every one and exclaim over them and we just love you all. Mwah. Hey, so we haven't done a Be Wild Files episode for a while, have we?
- Speaker #2
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Which for any uninitiated listeners is the kind of episode where we... talk about what you're trying to figure out for a change because as i like to say it's not all about us what look hey i don't make the rules so listen today we're gonna hear from alia hi
- Speaker #3
martha and rowan i feel like i'm connecting more frequently with my true nature and as a result i feel like an alien from another planet in particular when it comes to relating to people that have been part of my life for a long time, whether it's friends or colleagues or extended family. And I grew up in a culture with an understanding that your family is central. It's everything. You almost don't exist if you are not somehow enmeshed with your family. And that no longer feels true for me. And it's a bit disorienting. Is it normal that I prefer to hang out with just a couple of folks who really get me? Shouldn't I be trying to develop a greater sense of connection and community with others? I'd love to hear about your experiences. Thanks.
- Speaker #1
I've felt like an alien from another planet. Have you? Oh,
- Speaker #2
yes. This moment, I do. And I have for years. And when I first told this to Karen, she panicked and called a bunch of people to come turn me normal. It didn't work.
- Speaker #1
Maybe she didn't call them to turn you normal. Maybe she just called them for backup. because she felt like you were about to turn into a giant lizard or a praying mantis, a human-sized praying mantis or something.
- Speaker #2
It's a fair, it's a fair bet. Yeah, I could see why she would do that because most people need other people, you know, and she needed other people around her to feel calm.
- Speaker #1
I think there's like something that like we've talked about recently on episodes about neurodivergency and I do, I can't help thinking that there's a correlation between that alien feeling, maybe, for some of us at least, and having neurodivergent tendencies. Because if our brains do work differently, and you're in a group of people who are neurotypical, for example, I'm just saying, that could make you feel like an alien. I know I do.
- Speaker #2
I remember when I first heard the phrase stranger in a strange land, which was the title of a book, but I think it comes from the Bible. And I remember resonating so strongly with that as a child. And I was, I had never traveled. I had never been a stranger in a strange land. I grew up in this huge family and I felt completely alien. And yeah.
- Speaker #1
It's a conundrum, I think, because we do, as you say, need each other. And I know that. There are quite clear directives from the culture, as Alia is kind of intimating, that tell us how we should cluster into groups. Absolutely. You know, like there's a sort of immediate family, extended family, close friends, you know, it's sort of smudged together. I mean, for instance, and then, you know, there's things like, you know, like there's little social categories that you can fall into. Like moms at the...
- Speaker #2
drop off school drop off or whatever yeah oh my gosh the mom thing I remember when I had grade school kids and this other mom from who was she brought her kid over for a play day and we were talking and she said isn't it just amazing how you just want to watch your kids constantly and she would she and the other moms had been watching their kids at swim practice so intensely that the coaches had banned them So they rented a hotel room across the window and across the street and watched through the window through binoculars. And she said, isn't it just amazing how you feel compelled to do that? Because we all do. And I just looked at her and thought, what planet am I from? Not your planet. And trying to fit in when it was supposed to come naturally, it drained my energy. You're supposed to feel fulfilled in these clusters. That's, I think, what Leah is saying. That you not only are clustered with people, but that's meant to feel fulfilling to you. But to me, trying to fit in with almost every group I've ever been in just sucks energy out of me. Now, being with a community of people I feel really relaxed around, just one or two people or a whole group, that actually adds to my energy. So that must be what it does for other people.
- Speaker #1
I think so there's almost something here that we can start to delineate right is that with there's like assigned community which are the people that the culture tells you you should enjoy spending time with and many people do and good on you like that nothing nothing wrong with it but it's uh if that works that's lucky and then there's like what we're going to call true community and sometimes they could be the same thing and we're not saying otherwise but um so so marty's saying that being with people that we're supposed to be with if they're not true community is going to suck her energy and and being with people who is is going to give her energy which i think is sensible I think that's a fairly sensible and fairly, to me, normal kind of thing. And I think, you know, the size, like what Ali is saying about a few people versus a lot of people, I think that probably changes over time maybe. Yeah. And I also think these questions are, it's just an interesting moment in history to be thinking about this stuff because. I do think that these ideas of like these assigned community notions that they feel like a sort of holdover to me from when the village would be the whole world. Right. You know what I mean?
- Speaker #2
You know, when you read fairy tales about the most beautiful girl in the kingdom, the bravest knight in the kingdom, the kingdoms they're talking about were about 135 people. That's the... The span of human attention before the band has to sort of break up, we have the attention span to hold like 135 humans in our heads and that was the village size and that was it. That's who you got to see.
- Speaker #1
Oh, my God. I just thought of another correlation is what about high school? Like when you say about the most beautiful girl in the kingdom and the bravest knight, it's like. oh, you can see that as your kind of, I don't know what you would call it, but like your year level, your group of people that you go through high school with is like that would also nourish that sort of idea of the village, right, because there's a whole little society in there.
- Speaker #2
There's a really strong tendency to start like a band size from 50 to 135 that our brains seem to have really. like locked in in terms of evolution. And we, whenever we're in a group that, between those two sizes, we start to create the same dynamics. And you're right that it's a village environment and it takes hold of us whenever we're in a subgroup. And in the past, those were the only people you ever got to meet ever.
- Speaker #1
And, you know, like, because, and that's a survival need in that instance, right? Yeah. Yeah. you know because otherwise you're cast out and um or i don't know what thrown in a well or something i don't know about villages um but like now that we can connect in all sorts of ways including the way we're connecting right now with you listening on your little headphones in your little car i don't know where but i know that we're connected they may get a well maybe
- Speaker #2
they're in a well save your battery so yeah
- Speaker #1
Because it's not a survival need, then suddenly just being shoved together with someone or being told that the people you're shoved together with should be a community, that doesn't create the same sense. So it's like, okay, so what does create a sense of community, Marty?
- Speaker #2
Well, I looked up the word community because I'm a massive nerd.
- Speaker #1
You're a nerd,
- Speaker #2
yeah. And it comes from the Latin communitas. And I was interested to see that there are two meanings. And one is that it's just a group of people. who happen to be together. And the other is a spiritual sense of communion that arises between people who feel connected. And that can arise whether or not somebody is physically with you. So somebody goes out traveling, that sense of community with them doesn't go away just because they're physically absent. So yeah, even back in the days of spoken Latin, they differentiated between the sort of physical reality of a group and the spiritual sense of connection.
- Speaker #1
And interesting. Yeah, it wasn't assumed to be the same thing.
- Speaker #2
No. And then there was an anthropologist in the 1960s who started using the Latin word communitas to refer to the connection that can arise. And this is so interesting because we're talking about stepping out of culture. Communitas arises when people who are together step out of their social roles.
- Speaker #1
Hmm. So, yeah.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. And this is why in villages, as you correctly surmised, where you have that, that. um necessary clustering of people even there they did things every pre-modern society did something that was meant to create partly meant to create that spiritual sense of community even though they were always physically grouped together and depending on each other and and the thing they would all do is ritual oh as a as a way of stepping outside the role yeah yeah it's a way of Like there would be something where maybe you'd be isolated in a hut or a cave or something for a day or two so that you can find out who you are. Sometimes some societies would take the young men out, obscure their faces so they didn't know who they were anymore and bewilder them. You know, it's like the Bewildered podcast. Like they take, I think in Australia and many other places, the young men would be taken out into the... wilderness and then the indigenous of the indigenous yeah the older male elders would use these things called bull roars which you'd whirl them in the air and they made this terrifying sound and it wasn't natural and they never these the the pubescent boys men who were going out there would not have heard this sound and it was meant to make them feel like they were in an alien place And then they would have to figure out between themselves how to handle a completely new situation when they had dropped their social roles and they were in what's called a liminal space on the threshold, neither one thing nor another. And so in some ways, nothing. And in other ways, able to become or do anything. And that created communitas, right? Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And, you know, I mean, I think we had that experience. We went to Costa Rica earlier in the year and we were basically on a retreat. We went to the Imaloa Institute where we're going to be running retreats in future. And we had that experience of communitas, of stepping out of social roles through ritual and through getting away, which we've talked about before.
- Speaker #2
Right, right. And since we're so antisocial. I expected there to be lovely people and I always get along with people at a kind of surfacy level. I can mask up and be like a human, even if I feel like a stranger in a strange land. But we did rituals that MLOI had already established. There's this gorgeous waterfall, shouldn't spoil it for people who want to go to the retreats, but there's this sort of sacred place you go to and they did a ritual where they have this special blue mud. And you obscure your identity. Clay, blue clay, yeah. And it was shocking to me how it took me out of culture, out of our culture. We do not typically in our culture, I don't know if you know this, Ro, but in Manhattan if you go, you know, for a job or something, typically they will not smear you with blue clay.
- Speaker #1
No, but wouldn't you be expected to show up already like pre-smeared?
- Speaker #2
Pre-smeared? Probably in some places.
- Speaker #1
I thought you were a self-starter.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. But I have to say, you know, we were busy putting on the clay and I turned around and you looked like a character from Avatar. I know it was super cool. But there were other people there, as we said, and they all sort of looked like characters from Avatar. But as our faces became obscured and people's bodies became obscured, at first people were really self-conscious. But one of the effects of the clay was it sort of covered up body flaws.
- Speaker #1
Body floss?
- Speaker #2
Flaws!
- Speaker #1
Flaws, okay.
- Speaker #2
I don't mean flaws, but things that people consider flaws in their body, or people, you know, it was covering up, it made everybody look really smooth and avatar and awesome. Yeah. Everybody looked awesome.
- Speaker #1
Everyone looked awesome, yeah.
- Speaker #2
But not human. No,
- Speaker #1
that's right.
- Speaker #2
And I could f- feel myself relaxing as everyone got a little confused and shy and then surrendered their identities because they could see that nobody could actually see each other's faces the same way or bodies.
- Speaker #1
And even in that like little tiny short-term microculture that we'd built up as retreat participants. Yeah.
- Speaker #2
And I was with someone who had gone through my coach training program, but I'd never met them ever. And
- Speaker #0
When we had the blue clay on our bodies, suddenly I was like, I'd been thinking I need to connect with her because I love people who go through the program, but I'm so shy. When we had the blue clay on, my shyness went away and my sense of separation went away. And it was very, very bonding with that person and many others.
- Speaker #1
I feel the same way. Yeah. And I mean... It's funny because it's like that's part of the purpose of going on a retreat, right, to retreat from culture. Yes. And we're constantly having roles assigned to us and therefore groups that we're supposed to belong to. And to have that opportunity to rediscover who we are separate from all those roles in culture.
- Speaker #0
And the whole the idea of I love retreat because it's a subtraction work. You're not adding anything. And it's like my favorite quote from the Tao Te Ching, in the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the pursuit of enlightenment, every day something is dropped. So you drop and drop and drop. You retreat from something, this world where we feel like aliens. And it's not specified where we go because we don't need to know who we are when we're there. It subtracts our social identity and all the codes of how we're supposed to associate with. with people who are supposed to be in our groups. And we don't have to have an individual special self. We can just disappear. And weirdly, as you drop your sense of a separate self, which is so much what our culture is about, be a separate self, be individualistic. As you drop that need to be a separate person, you drop into the nature of relationships. without culture. Wow. And it's really lovely and intimate.
- Speaker #1
That's so cool. Yeah. It's, it's funny because our retreat that we're going to be doing at Imaloa is called Pure Wild Self. And we use the word self in a very different sense from the way you just used it, not as the egoic individualistic separate self, but in, but self the way that it's talked about in internal family systems therapy, where. Self is actually a standing word for kind of like higher self.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Soul. And as Dick Schwartz, the founder of IFS, told me himself, the self is in everything and everybody. So part of it, part of what was so intimate about that, sorry, we're raving about it because we had a really fun time. But the self included. these gigantic trees and plants and the waterfall and it included the the mountains and the ocean and self was everywhere so you didn't need to do anything to protect yourself. You could go into that liminal space between what you used to be and what you're going to be and you're just present as part of the self that was the entire ecosystem.
- Speaker #1
I love that. I love that. So to be free of the role in a sense is an opportunity to find yourself in your essence, whatever it is beneath.
- Speaker #0
Yes, drop the role and you don't feel that you've lost anything. You feel that you've found the essence of who you are.
- Speaker #1
So, Marty, it's normal, I think, we've established, to need to cluster to some extent, right, as social apes. You know, this is part of our makeup. So... you know, some people I think are very solitary creatures, and that's good too. But, like, I think that in our socialisation a lot of within culture, again, a lot of our personality gets kind of downloaded into us from our family of origin and, like, local culture and all those sorts of things. So if that personality that you've downloaded, like, is a good fit for who you are. that's great you might never need to question that original cluster right yeah um but and and people can get really into it as though i don't know like maybe this is this is just a personal sort of bugbear but you know i think some people can take their family of origin or their community of origin and it can be like a football team or nationalism or something and people get so like And because it's a good fit for them, then it's superior or something. And that's so strange because it seems to me like such an accident if you feel like a good fit in your family or in your community.
- Speaker #0
Speaking of parents and sports, there was a time many years ago, but these two. children's hockey teams were playing against each other and two of the fathers got into such a violent fight over the game that one of them killed the other he pushed a vending machine on him and it killed him that's the most american like murder i've ever heard american murder vending machine so true we we dispense death um very good you're so right it's come completely arbitrary. They just group a bunch of people together. Here, there's a little thing. You push it around with a stick. Go on the ice and your fathers will kill each other because of it. What? That's it. I do think we fall into that and part of feeling like an alien is maybe not having that gear.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
I think I want to kill the other hockey team's parent.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
So some clusters actually... What we try to create and what we're trying to create with the Bewildered podcast is to gather people where the common culture is actually to encourage people to be their unique selves, to find self with a capital S. But a lot of the groups you'll fall into get into the othering that is very, very inherent in the human brain. And those groups, they prescribe conformity and then they other. groups that or anyone who's outside the group and and if you happen to be in that it doesn't work for you you get this feeling of being an alien i had a client once who said it this way um she said i don't love the people i belong to and i don't belong to the people i love just
- Speaker #1
on the thing about like the um pressure to all be the same i think that like that the idea of diversity and spectrums and any ideas that don't just divide people into us and them, like that stress plurality rather than duality among people is always going to kind of confound that othering thing that's definitely part of our psychology and you can see why it would be from an evolutionary point of view. Yeah, I don't love the people I belong to and I don't belong to the people I love. I totally, I mean, I do love the people I belong to.
- Speaker #0
Now I do. And I mean, I did, I loved my family growing up, but as I matured, I got less and less like them. And because we were all raised in a very sort of rigid religious system, there wasn't a template for encouraging individuality that I could find. So if you just happen to be in a group that wants conformity and you naturally are like that, you'll thrive. But if you aren't, then the very pressure that holds bands together can make you feel pushed off your true nature. And then you may learn to act like you belong, but you'll end up feeling lonely and isolated like a stranger in a strange land. And if y'all are feeling that way out there in podcast listening world. just we're just validating that's a real thing and if you feel that way um it's because of the dynamic we're talking about yeah yeah um it's i i
- Speaker #1
and i think that there's just a a tendency is towards absolutism like you know sometimes like you can there can always be a both there can always be an every in it as well like I love the people I belong to and I live a really long way away from them yeah because I I connected so deeply with you and with our family that that we've chosen and I just mean like you can it doesn't all have to be so all or nothing you know and right and I just wanted to say what I sort of brought up before about diversity this is I mean there's almost a a kind of problem with our post village world where like if you were in the village and yes you have a role and it's all very problematic and you don't get to express your true self and la la la but one thing that you do get access to is you have to learn to tolerate a lot of different people and a lot of different types of people and now I think there's this this sort of and trend where we're kind of algorithmically connected or exposed only to people who think the way that we do. Right. We never have to be exposed to different opinions. And that's much more comfortable for us, right? But is it like shrinking our comfort zones? And, you know, are we kind of vulnerable to being triggered really easily because we're not? building our resilience again to um to difference to different ideas like what are we losing at the same time as we're gaining um so much opportunity to connect with like right and i just want to say as disclaimer i am totally like that i hate dealing with people whose politics are different from mine i will go to great lengths to avoid it i'm not saying i practice anything different i'm just saying hmm that's could be a bit of a problem.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I know what you mean. It's like the first time in history, there can be a vast crowd of introverts.
- Speaker #1
Right, right, right.
- Speaker #0
I remember one time we were planning a conference and the extroverts were going, you know, we should have a special meeting for the introverts. They should have a place to go. And I was like, we do. They'll all have their own hotel room. I'll be in mine. They'll be in theirs. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
They know where to go, guys.
- Speaker #0
Exactly. They don't need a crowd. It doesn't make us unhappy the way it makes you unhappy when there's no crowd. And you know, when we went on our little retreat, as research for the retreats are running, I was like, there's going to be other people there. Oh, dear. And when we got there, OK, it was very self-selected, people who are sort of into the same things we are. But I was out of my comfort zone, and my comfort zone got bigger. Because I connected so deeply. And I have to say those, the ancient tradition of ritual was very, very powerful in creating that. There's also something, it reminded me that when we avoid diversity, we lose a bit of what I call is called the wisdom of crowds. I may have mentioned it on the podcast before. But it's this weird thing in economics, where if a group of people, a crowd of people. I'll try to say, come up with the number of beans there would be in a barrel. The average, if you add them all up and divide by the number of people, the average guess will be closer to accurate than any one person's guess.
- Speaker #1
So a crowd-So what's the benefit of that?
- Speaker #0
A crowd ostensibly is wiser than any individual in the crowd. But, and here's the big- big thing that we've got to remember. The more diverse the crowd is, the more wise its decisions are. So for example, when my son Adam was diagnosed with Down syndrome at Harvard, I was surrounded by Harvard professors and Harvard doctors. And they were basically saying, you really need to get rid of this kid. He's not going to be smart. He's not going to be like us. But the wisdom of crowds says that a group of people that has that person with Down syndrome and people with all kinds of diversity is going to be wiser than a bunch of intellectuals who are all alike.
- Speaker #1
For me, the equivalent of that would be, and where that would be confronting for me, is that would include people who wear red baseball caps, right, with letters and words on them that make me feel scared, that that's also true.
- Speaker #0
Exactly. that the crowd's going to be wiser if it includes those people too which yeah so let us accept our individuality and our differences in our sense of being alien and the the urge to belong with the people we love and let's keep certain like this was a huge light bulb for me um that we can you were saying you should challenge the algorithm once in a while you should challenge
- Speaker #1
The let's we can't we mustn't get too comfortable in our algorithm.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, you can find people who are really, really exactly like us, at least when you're both chatting online. You know, there may be times, as I used to say, what remember when we went to the Redwood Forest and I was like obsessed with nature and just wanted to be out in nature. And then it got dark, and there were no stores. And all I had to eat was cheesecake. And I was driving along in the dark going, I'm all about nature until I need something. So yeah, it was a huge thing for me that let's bond with our alien pals. But as you said, challenge the algorithm. periodically to keep our lives from shrinking and our purview from getting smaller and less wise.
- Speaker #1
And in doing so, we will all stay wild. We hope you're enjoying Bewildered. If you're in the USA and want to be notified when a new episode comes out, text the word WILD to 570-873-0144. We're also on Instagram. Our handle is Bewildered Podcast. You can follow us to get updates, hear funny snippets and outtakes, and chat with other fans of the show. Bewildered is produced by Scott Forster with support from the brilliant team at MBI. And remember, if you're having fun, please rate and review and stay wild.
