What Your Anxiety Is Trying to Tell You | Tour Stop: San Diego

So imagine you have a goal in mind. You want to get to work in the morning. I used to ask my students questions like this: is like, what? Maybe they're going to write an essay. Why are you writing the essay? Why are you in class? I'm in class because I, uh, I need to. I need this class because I, it's part of my major. Why? Why did you pick a major like that? Well, I'm interested in psychology. Well, why did you come to get a degree? Well, um, I think I need a degree to get a job. Well, why do you need a job? Well, I need a job to keep body and soul together, and maybe to be productive, and maybe to, you know, establish a name for myself. And why do you want to do that? Well, because, you know, it's part and parcel of living properly.

And why do you want to live properly? And, well, then? And how would you live if you lived properly? And at that point, people are usually unable to answer, you know, because you can just push people with questions about why until they run out of explanations. But the point is, is that you're always doing whatever you're doing because what you're doing is nested in a sequence of goal-directed actions, and those can be more or less sophisticated. If you're not very sophisticated at all, the nesting might be like two structures deep. You know, maybe you're, I don't know, you're bored and you want to go get drunk. You know, and why? Well, because you don't want to be bored. And if someone pushes you a little farther than that, you just, you hit them and you know, you don't want to delve into it.

But if you're sophisticated, you have a pretty good high hierarchy of answers. So you might say, well, why do you want to be a productive and generous citizen? And like I said, people usually bottom out there. But you could say, well, that's part of reciprocal altruism. And if I'm productive and generous, then that'll encourage other people to be productive and generous. And if we're all productive and generous together, then there'll be more for everyone and we'll all get along better, and we'll get along for a longer period of time, and that'll make us all more stable, and that or make our societies better.

And then you might say, well, why is that relevant? You might say, well, because the alternative to that is something like a descent into something approximating hell. And so that's part of a reflection of the divine order and the eternal battle between good and evil. And then you could push it farther than that, and you could say, well, are you going to be on the side of the redemptive hero? Are you going to be on the side of the eternal adversary? Like you can keep digging down farther and farther. The farther down you dig, the more you get down into what you might describe as the implicit religious substrate. And, uh, and it's very much useful to know that and to make as much of that conscious as possible.

So now imagine that you've, uh, you've come to this talk tonight because you've decided to aim up. And maybe you haven't formulated that precisely, explicitly, but something is driving you in this direction. And then you come to the talk and you find out that I'm talking about something that isn't what you expected, and it doesn't seem to be moving you along on your pathway forward to that end. What's going to happen is you're going to be disappointed. And you might be anxious too. You're going to be disappointed because disappointment signals that you're experiencing something that's not relevant to the goal that you are attempting to pursue and that might, in fact, be interfering with it.

That's what negative emotion does. And maybe if you're disappointed in what I say, that also makes you anxious because you assume that you would come here, and I would say something relevant because you assumed that you knew who I was. And then it turned out that I didn't. And then you don't know who I am, and then you don't know what you're doing here, and then you get anxious. The reason you get anxious is because that's what anxiety is for. It tells you when the pathway to your goal has been disrupted. So multiple pathways have now emerged.

So imagine you're driving your car to work and it quits. And what happens is you get anxious. And the reason you get anxious is because, well, you were beadling along quite nicely in your world and everything was reduced to like a unidimensional simplicity. You weren't in a car as an object; you were in a thing that took you to where you wanted to go, and it was just doing what it was supposed to be doing: tracking you along the pathway to your goal. And then it fails, and you're off on the side of the road. And you get anxious because how the hell are you going to get to work?

And what if you don't get to work? And is your boss not going to be very happy with you? And maybe this is the third mistake you've made this week, and what if you get fired? And weren't you an idiot for buying this car? Maybe you shouldn't have a car at all. Maybe you should have walked to work, and you know, maybe you should take a bicycle because, after all, that would save the planet. And you know, maybe now you have to take your car to a mechanic, but the last time you went to the mechanic, you got ripped off 'cause you're too stupid about vehicles to manage one, and you're kind of stupid about technology in general, and aren't you stupid? And maybe you're too stupid, and isn't your wife going to— that's anxiety, right? And that's the emergence of a multiplicity of pathways, right?

And so what anxiety signifies is the degeneration of an attentional hierarchy into multiplicity. And the reason you get anxious and it feels bad is because now your body can't compute how much energy you have to put out in order to get to your goal. And so you can't organize the world; you're apt to use more resources than you'll replenish. And if you continue to do that, then you'll die. And so anxiety is a signal that complexity has reemerged: chaos. That's the eternal dragon of chaos. Chaos has reemerged because your narrative has collapsed. And so, so that's negative emotion; that's what negative emotion signifies: it's the collapse of an organizing narrative. And so that's very interesting to know.

So you feel positive if I walk on the stage and I see I know I'm supposed to go to the front of the stage, say. And the reason I want to do that is because I know I have to talk to you, and that's neat. And I want to talk to you because I think it's valuable to talk to you, etc. That's nested in a hierarchy of value. And if I see a clear pathway to the front of the stage, then that actually produces positive emotion. And that positive emotion impels me forward because positive emotion does impel you forward. That's what it's for; that's how positive emotion is linked to action.

So if you're enthusiastic, you're enthusiastic because you can see a pathway forward to a valued goal, and that enthusiasm manifests itself. This is true even neurochemically; it manifests itself as positive motivation to move forward. And not only that, if you're moving forward and it's working, your brain tracks the fact that it's working. And then that's linked to dopamine release, by the way, which is what cocaine releases. It's linked to dopamine release, and the other thing your brain is doing, even when you're just walking to where you want to go, if you're successfully walking there, your brain tracks what you're doing.

There are circuits that are activated while you're doing it, and if what you're doing results in the result you desired, then the dopamine floods those little neurons that are active and makes them grow and flourish. And so as you practice something that's working, the circuit that is activated as you're practicing is bathed in dopamine, and that makes it stronger, and that feels good; it's growth. It's part of positive emotion. And so the positive emotion moves you forward, but also encourages you to develop a habit of that practice.

And so one of the things I would bloody well say is don't make a habit of pursuing things that aren't good for you because you build that into you. That's what happens. If you become addicted to something, you know, you build a little monster inside you that's grown; it's there. It's after one goal, despite everything else: not a good outcome. So now positive emotion also signals the fact that it's also an energy conservation observation. So as I move forward towards my goal, with each step I take, it's going to take less energy to get to the goal.

And so that means that positive emotion signifies—and what would you say? It signifies the increasing efficiency of your action as you move towards a goal. So negative emotion signifies the fact that things have got too complex for you to manage, and positive emotion signifies that you're approaching your goal and becoming—and that there's less demand on energy output with every step forward. And so that's emotion, and that's pretty much worth knowing.

And then what happens when you're watching a movie is you infer the goal of the protagonist or the villain for that matter. You infer the goal of the character that's being portrayed on the screen; you adopt that goal as your own. Then you play out the emotions in your own body, which mimics the structure of the character that's being portrayed on the screen. You live that all out inside you, and that's also how you understand other people, right? You don't listen to someone and then figure out what they're saying and then infer what they're thinking; that isn't how it works.

What you do is you listen to someone until you figure out what they're up to. As soon as you figure out what they're up to, you can adopt that frame of reference. As soon as you adopt that frame of reference, you have the same emotions, and that's what makes you united. So that's so interesting. So then you think, look, there's 5,000 people in here; if there were 5,000 chimpanzees, you guys would be tearing each other into shreds because no one would be able to know what anyone else was up to.

But because all of you are here paying attention to the same thing in the same way, you have virtually identical emotional states, and that means instantly your behavior is rendered predictable to one another, and there's no difference between that and peace; they're the same thing. And so what that means is that one of the predicates of a civil, productive, and peaceful society is that everyone inhabits the same narrative.

And you might say, well, we don't need the same narrative; it's like, yes, we do. Because if we inhabit a different narrative, then we're running emotionally in different directions, and we will not understand each other, and we will run into conflict. And that conflict can become deadly at the drop of a hat. And so it's a precondition for a civil society that everyone is united in the same narrative. And then that begs the question, right, what is the narrative in so far as we're unified?

And another question, which is, what should the narrative be? Right now, the postmodernists figured out that we look at the world through a story, but they said—they became their mantra is they became skeptical of meta-narratives, which are uniting narratives. And that's all well and good to be skeptical about meta-narratives, but you run into the problem of internal disunion because if you don't have a uniting narrative, then you're divided against yourself.

And you run into the problem of social disunity because if we're not looking at the same thing for the same reason, then we can't get along. And those are big problems. Now, the way the postmodernists glided over that immense cataclysmic problem was to offer the proposition that the narrative that unites us is just one of power and oppression, right? And that the fundamental motivation that guides, first of all, even your internal organization—your own internal tyranny, you know, you're oppressing your id, or your natural self.

And then if you establish a relationship with someone like a marriage, well, that's just a manifestation of patriarchal oppression. And if you organize a business relationship, it's a relationship of mutual exploitation, and so far and so on—all the way up the political hierarchy, all the way back into the past. A more dismal view of human existence couldn't possibly be formulated. And I always think about it as a kind of implicit confession. It's like, so you think the world's all run by power, do you? Okay, I know what game you're playing, and attempting to justify, and it's completely bloody preposterous.

Because first of all, if you tyrannize yourself, you're going to be one miserable creature. Plus, you're going to rebel constantly. As you already know, I'm sure all of you have tried at one time or another in your life to force yourself to do something with a whip, so to speak. And what you instantly find is that you're so condemned to be free that you'll even resist your own tyranny. Right? Try telling yourself to do something and see if you do it.

I'm going to go to the gym; that's New Year's. I'm going to the gym three times a week, two hours a day. It's like, no, you're not. You're going to last like three days, and then you're going to find an excuse. The rebellious part of you is going to find an excuse; then you're not going to do it. And it's a bloody mystery, isn't it? Because you'd think you could tell yourself what to do. Because otherwise, who are you? You know, you're the part that told yourself what to do. But you don't listen.

So what the hell is that part? That's you, that's for sure! So you can't even tyrannize yourself with any efficiency. And then, if you're married men, you're married; try tyrannizing your wife and see how well that works. And like, it might work for 10 minutes. But she's not as big as you, but she's a lot sneakier. And so, and you have to wake up with her tomorrow morning. And so even if you do win the fight—which you won't—she's going to bloody well take it out on you the next day. And no wonder.

And so you're bound in that relationship by the necessity of continual iterative interactions, right? And they have to be moderately peaceful, or you're going to tear each other into shreds. And if it's constant conflict, you're both going to just exhaust yourself and die. So how the hell is that going to work? So it has to be at least mutually reinforcing. And maybe if you really got it together, well, you could interact with each other in a way that improved your interactions across time.

And maybe you're wise enough so that if you were on that track, the way you would experience that in the moment would be as exactly the kind of relationship you'd want to have with someone. And that would be something like the spirit of play and romantic love, and that would be the manifestation of an instinct that orients you across time properly in a relationship in the moment. And that's such a wonderful thing to know, right? That instinct for play and romantic love might be the voice of the wisest instinct you have—the deepest orientation to meaning that you have.

You know, because there's nothing more delightful in a marriage or in a family, if you have children, than to be able to engage in something like voluntary play. And you know, if you could have the world set up the way you would want it to, if you had any sense, wouldn't it be something if mostly what you did was something akin to play? And that's equivalent. Christ in the gospel says, "Know that unless you become like a little child, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven." And what does that mean? It means to rediscover that intense immersion in life and that capacity for play that characterized us all as children, that we can't maintain because we have to mature.

But that we could rediscover as adults if we were sufficiently wise and careful. And then, you know, if you have friends—it's like, well, you tyrannize your friends. Well, then you don't have friends; you're just a bully with henchmen. And as soon as you stumble, they're going to stab you in the back because you've surrounded yourself with craven psychopaths. They're just going to wait for the moment to take you out; that's not a friendship, obviously. And if you're running a business—and those of you who've run businesses who have a clue know this is true—it's like, what happens if you rip off your customers? Well, you can get away with it once or twice, but word gets around in no time flat, and then you're just done.

And bitter and resentful because your idiot machinations didn't work. But if you engage in fair trade and you're reliable and you deliver what you promised and you're half decently good to your employees and the people that you work for, then they're going to be pleased with you, and they're going to come back, and they're going to talk to their friends about how well you did, and you're going to flourish. And none of that's arbitrary, you know? That's all guided by the manifestation of a certain form of attentional priority.

Right? You go to your customer's house; maybe you're a plumber and the first thing you do is you listen to their damn problem. And so at least you have enough sense to engage in dialogos, right? You actually want to hear what the problem is, and then you actually want to solve it. And if you do that with some diligence, they're going to be pleased with you because they don't want sewage all over the rug. And so your interests are aligned. And if you offer what you promise, then you're going to evoke positive emotion in them and quell their anxiety, and that's exactly the service that you're offering. And so that means you're acting out the proper story: you're productive and generous and honest.

And there's nothing arbitrary about that as an ethos that unites you internally, and that also makes it possible for you to exist in a peaceful and productive society.