## Metadata - Author: [[Freakonomics Radio]] - Full Title: 478. How Can We Break Our Addiction to Contempt? - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://www.airr.io/episode/6167a0821c9c3c000f1e812c ## Highlights - Speaker 1: to the next level one bite and you'll taste what they're talking about. Butter ball, all kinds of good Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by McAra. You've probably heard quite a bit about crypto lately and maybe you're wondering, am I too late? Have I missed my chance? No, you haven't, don't worry. It's still not too late to be early and thankfully now you don't need to be an expert to invest. Macara is crypto investing for everyone. They make it easy, safe and secure the group together different coins and you can choose which group you'd like to invest in. Its that easy. They take care of everything, learn more at macara dot com slash freak. That's M A K A R. A dot com slash freak. Mhm. ([Time 0:00:29](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccb7133aae6012c82f275b)) - Speaker 1: Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by McAra. You've probably heard quite a bit about crypto lately and maybe you're wondering, am I too late? Have I missed my chance? No, you haven't, don't worry. It's still not too late to be early and thankfully now you don't need to be an expert to invest. Macara is crypto investing for everyone. They make it easy, safe and secure the group together different coins and you can choose which group you'd like to invest in. Its that easy. They take care of everything, learn more at macara dot com slash freak. That's M A K A R. A dot com slash freak. Mhm. I have a question that ([Time 0:00:39](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccb7133aae6012c82f2716)) - Speaker 1: They take care of everything, learn more at macara dot com slash freak. That's M A K A R. A dot com slash freak. Mhm. I have a ([Time 0:01:08](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccb7133aae6012c82f2736)) - Speaker 1: learn more at macara dot com slash freak. That's M A K A R. A dot com slash freak. Mhm. I have a question that I'm afraid is going to sound ([Time 0:01:09](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccb7133aae6012c82f2720)) - Speaker 0: those market signals are coming from a whole lot of frustration. And then that of course the tail starts to wag the dog. So the contempt that actually is serving the markets as an outlet of frustration for the lack of progress that's going to the margins of society then actually fires up more contempt. And itself fuels. Speaker 1: Let me be sure I understand because you're saying all this frustration comes from us from the citizenry who feel duly wronged by the big macro events that have ruined our livelihoods. And that feeds into something that politicians and respond to. And it creates this even bigger storm. But you also just told us that most of us don't want to be involved in that contemptuous partisan cycle. ([Time 0:12:33](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccb78f3aae6012c82f956f)) - Speaker 1: you're saying all this frustration comes from us from the citizenry who feel duly wronged by the big macro events that have ruined our livelihoods. And that feeds into something that politicians and respond to. And it creates this even bigger storm. But you also just told us that most of us don't want to be involved in that contemptuous partisan cycle. So you're saying that we're both victim and ([Time 0:12:53](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccb78f3aae6012c82f955b)) - Speaker 0: news or MSNBC, the reason is because your brain is lighting up like a christmas tree, the problem is that you're neutralizing the pleasure you get from that almost immediately leading you to have to take the drug again and again and again and again. These are the sort of the neurochemical predictors of falling happiness and then at the more meta level, what you find is that contempt is going to drive love out of your life. There's a very famous study called the Harvard study of adult development, which is an 80 year longitudinal study of people when they get old, what do they all have in common if they're happy and well? And the answer is love. It's just all you need to know. Happiness is love full stop. Speaker 2: Okay, Speaker 1: so is love a verb or a noun discuss and feel free to show your ([Time 0:17:39](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccb9ab3aae6012c83070f4)) - Speaker 0: news or MSNBC, the reason is because your brain is lighting up like a christmas tree, the problem is that you're neutralizing the pleasure you get from that almost immediately leading you to have to take the drug again and again and again and again. These are the sort of the neurochemical predictors of falling happiness and then at the more meta level, what you find is that contempt is going to drive love out of your life. There's a very famous study called the Harvard study of adult development, which is an 80 year longitudinal study of people when they get old, what do they all have in common if they're happy and well? And the answer is love. It's just all you need to know. Happiness is love full stop. Speaker 2: Okay, Speaker 1: so is love a verb or a noun discuss and feel free to show your ([Time 0:17:39](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccb9ab3aae6012c83070f3)) - Speaker 0: love. It's just all you need to know. Happiness is love full stop. Speaker 2: Okay, Speaker 1: so is love a verb or a noun discuss and feel free to show your homework. Speaker 0: What I'm talking about is the love that we manage that we make meta cognitive. So love is a verb. It is to will the good of the other as other, what is love not. It's not a feeling. And this is incredibly important to remember because in our modern culture, we tend to, in my view over Valerie's feelings, which tends to throw us like bits of jetsam on the surf and we're getting thrown around a lot and it makes our lives have less quality quite frankly, and it makes us bitter and ([Time 0:18:11](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccb9ab3aae6012c8307159)) - Speaker 1: where the supplies come from, where the demand comes from. In other words, how can this lovely theory of yours actually work Speaker 0: your vice. The opposite of your virtue is your contempt divided by your love if you want that force in your life to decline. Absolutely. You should work on your contempt. But the real way to do that where you've got a lever is that you should have a denominator management strategy and the more that you increase the denominator, the more that vicious impulse will just magically decreased. Speaker 1: Are you saying that love is proactive essentially in contempt tends to be reactive. It Speaker 0: generally tends to be because it's being processed by the nucleus accumbens of your brain, which ([Time 0:19:10](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccb9ab3aae6012c8307165)) - Speaker 0: want that force in your life to decline. Absolutely. You should work on your contempt. But the real way to do that where you've got a lever is that you should have a denominator management strategy and the more that you increase the denominator, the more that vicious impulse will just magically decreased. Speaker 1: Are you saying that love is proactive essentially in contempt tends to be reactive. It Speaker 0: generally tends to be because it's being processed by the nucleus accumbens of your brain, which is the part of your brain that governs your habit forming behaviour. And so you can basically say, I won't be that way, I won't be that way. That's what I used to say when I was trying to quit smoking and I always wound up like, you know, seven cigarettes burning at once because ([Time 0:19:22](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccb9ab3aae6012c8307124)) - Speaker 1: by switching to progressive save over $700 on average and customers can qualify for an average of six discounts when they sign up a little off your rate each month goes a long way. Get a quote today at progressive dot com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates National Annual average insurance savings by new customers surveyed who saved with progressive between june 2020. In May 2021 potential savings will vary discounts vary and are not available in all states and situations if I told you there was a public intellectual, a conservative who wanted to ([Time 0:22:59](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccf1633aae6012c85ce144)) - Speaker 1: by switching to progressive save over $700 on average and customers can qualify for an average of six discounts when they sign up a little off your rate each month goes a long way. Get a quote today at progressive dot com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates National Annual average insurance savings by new customers surveyed who saved with progressive between june 2020. In May 2021 potential savings will vary discounts vary and are not available in all states and situations if I told you there was a public intellectual, a conservative who wanted to ([Time 0:22:59](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccf1633aae6012c85ce144)) - Speaker 1: outside Seattle his mother was an artist. His father, a math professor Arthur started playing violin when he was four and piano at five Speaker 0: and I played the french horn, starting when I was eight years old and that one really stuck because I was good at it and it's fun to be good at something when you're a kid. And then when I went away to college, all I wanted to do is play. So I went to California Institute of the Arts where I dropped my required classes and took Indonesian dance in north indian classical drumming and was invited to pursue my excellence outside of the institution. Speaker 1: He spent the next 10 years playing French horn professionally. The last several with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Speaker 0: I moved to spain to get a woman who didn't speak english in a bid to convince her to marry me. Speaker 1: It worked that woman Esther mont. Now ([Time 0:24:09](https://www.airr.io/quote/61ccf1633aae6012c85ce16c)) - Speaker 1: fix me quickly. We're going to land in 10 minutes. Speaker 0: Number one, stand up to the man Like they used to say in the 60s stand up to the man, the man that's in manipulating you is the media that are telling you that you have to hate number two is start running toward contempt because this is your opportunity to show love and you don't get that many opportunities to show love. I mean this is mission territory man. Why is it that all these religious missionaries? Why do you think that they're so happy all the time? You know what nobody has ever said in human life? Oh good. There's missionaries on the porch and yet they're happy. They're happy because they're actually bringing light where there is darkness in their view, be a missionary. And one of the ways to do this, if you're in a habit, This is number three John Gottman says that if you're fighting with your spouse, start carrying ([Time 0:41:11](https://www.airr.io/quote/61cdc67d3aae6012c8066a90))