love

We start this episode with a question about the Enlightenment & Ego Trap – left over from last episode. The rest of the questions are about interacting with children/kids.   1.  I have a number of friends who come from difficult backgrounds – a family history of mental illness and/or abuse, poor decision-making, relative poverty and very little work experience. I’ve found that they’re generally unwilling to consider most basic employment options to alleviate their financial difficulties, figuring they are “better than” most realistic jobs and even enduring a great deal of debt to get dubious education credentials which – most anyone with a critical eye can see – are not going to simply leapfrog them into a high-paying job, especially given the lack of work history. Can the “ego trap” exist for those who don’t have much outside esteem coming in? Is it a form of deferral of failure? 2. I have a 2 yr old and another baby on the way. Being a dad is teaching me that I have to constantly fight my disagreeableness, because I am having to give more of myself to my kid and can’t sustain trying to trade at 75/25 with him. My brain keeps telling me I am getting a bad deal with my kid, but I know I signed up for this and need your help beating my genes. What tactics or advice do you have for someone to at lease fake trading at less than 75/25 with a toddler?  3. Why kinds of adult things should generally be kept from kids, say 8-12 year olds? Is there any harm in letting them have unfiltered access to the internet, as long as we make sure they aren’t getting into drugs or risk of pregnancy? In other words, to what age should they be kept fairly innocent, if at all, and why? 4.  This listener’s question is about her mother, a school teacher, who lost her cool with an unruly child and had some significant resulting guilt.

In this show, we discuss showing weakness as a sexual strategy, then we move to a question about dominance hierarchies vs. competence hierarchy (is there a difference?).  Next question is about the mixed perceptions of evolutionary psychology.   Finally, Dr. Lisle then takes some time to discuss elements of the ego trap.   The questions are as follows: 1.  Do you think there are situations where a man showing weakness to a woman can be positive? Can women get away with it easily, or weakness also a signal of sexual interest when it comes to them? 2.Some people seem to be so driven to compete and rise to the top, however their internal audience is constantly asking them, “are you sure you’re not being too dominant? Is this step up worth it?”, either directly or indirectly in the form of general stress. Emotional stability seems to be a huge component in how this plays out on an individual basis.  I’d be curious if you think this competence/dominance inner battle is part of what plays into the pleasure trap. 3.I want to spread the truth of evolutionary psychology but I also don’t want to hurt my mating chances by getting labeled a reject. Should I keep my evolutionary thoughts a secret and only explain it in easy to digest chic talk or should I spread these ideas with testicular fortitude? 4.I am wondering about how the ego trap might apply to people who have not been given reason for high expectations. In a sense, whether there is some interaction between the ego trap and the Dunning-Kruger effect of lower-capacity individuals being less likely to recognize their own limitations.  Can the “ego trap” exist for those who don’t have much outside esteem coming in? Is it a form of deferral of failure?

Dr. Lisle goes in depth about why nature has selected for subjective experiences.  The question is as follows: What is your take on why a subjective experience would have been selected for, as opposed to animals simply being like machines with no subjective experience inside?  More importantly, what is your take on how a subjective experience can possibly be created in the mind? How could neurons firing create a personal experience? Next, he tackles this broad few questions: Why were we given the intellectual capacity to overshoot our evolutionary advantage and create inventions that cause our demise?  Why would our minds become so advanced to create a world where we live with and around multiple pleasure traps daily, where even the strictest, most conscientious of us will fall prey to decision fatigue and give in to a few of these traps, thus affecting our happiness? Why do they have the capacity to do this? It seems as though we would have been happier animals as a species with a little less intellect.