If AI Takes All the Jobs, What Happens to Our Purpose? (Existential Psychologist Weighs In)

You've described that we are in a crisis of meaning. Do you think AI and the impact it could have on the workforce is going to exacerbate our confusion around meaning or it's exposing it? Is some new technology comes along and it disrupts that can cause an existential crisis or a threat to our sense of meaning? You're saying we actually have an existential need to mean something to others. It's a big issue now, especially around the topic of mental health, because the advice we get is to turn inward to engage in self-care. We're seeing the rise of this counterculture. People are unsubscribing from dating apps and joining things in person to meet people. People feeling like, oh, I just want to get into nature. We're not trying to go back to the past. We're trying to use the past to build a better future. And what advice would you have for somebody who feels like they're struggling to find meaning? What does it mean to feel like our lives are meaningful? And how do we go about finding purpose? And in an era where artificial intelligence will introduce some major disruptions to the idea of our identity and how we spend our time, how should we be thinking about this? Today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Clay Rutledge, an existential psychologist who studies the role of meaning in the human life, how we create meaning, how we find meaning, and the scientific role, things like nostalgia play in our quest for it. I'm Shnebo Val, and this is I've got questions. Dr. Rutledge, what does it mean to be an existential psychologist? So in my academic training, I was trained in a field that's called social psychology, which is really how humans navigate the social world. But I was particularly interested in the unique human capacity to introspect and ask questions about the nature of our existence and how that is shaped by and shapes our social life. So I was really more into those big questions that as far as we know, humans are the only organism capable of asking. So questions about why am I here? What's my purpose? What happens to me when I die? Is there something larger or more significant than my time on this planet? And a big portion of your work is dedicated to this idea of meaning, right? So how do you define the human need for meaning? And why is the need to feel like one's life is meaningful and existential necessity? Yeah. So one thing that I think is especially interesting about the need for meaning is sometimes it's compared to other needs, like the need to belong. And that's a big part of it. Humans are social, right? We like to have relationships. But it's more than just having relationships. We like to feel like we have a significant role to play in a meaningful cultural drama. So we're cultural organisms. And because we can introspect and ask these questions about the nature of our existence, like why am I here? We want answers to those questions. And we want to feel like we're here for a reason. But it doesn't necessarily have to be a religious question for many people it is. But more fundamentally, it's a question about what's my place in this world? What's my role in this cosmic drama? And then what we find is a lot of that comes from the sense that we matter or that we're useful. And I think that's a big theme for regardless of where you find meaning and people find meaning and all sorts of different places. The core, the common theme is they want to feel like they matter, that they have a role to play in the lives of others. - And it's so interesting that you say that, right? Because we often hear things like self-worth, it has to all come from inside. That's something that you define for yourself or something that you have to just realize. But you're saying we actually have an existential need to mean something to others, to feel significant. And not in a way that we have to be famous or in terms of followers, but it's external to us. We have to matter to something outside of our own selves. - Yeah, I'm really glad you're emphasizing that because I think sometimes people confuse why we need meaning with how we find meaning. And the why is more introspective. It's our ability to turn inward on ourself and realize that we exist. So that's sense of self-awareness and to see how we exist in the larger schema themes. And so our intellectual capacities drive our need for meaning, right? I don't think my dog has a need for meaning. I think she's got a lot of other needs and has social needs even. But as far as I know, she doesn't ask herself what her purposes are introspect about the nature of her existence. We do that. So we turn inward and that makes us want meaning, but we don't actually find meaning inward. We find meaning as you point out by turning our attention outward on the world. And so meaning really is about how can I make a positive impact in the world in the lives of others? And whether it's through our jobs, through our roles in our families, through the traditions and rituals we subscribe to and our cultural life, it's about what can we do to impact the world? And I think that's a big issue right now, especially around the topic of mental health, because so much of the advice we get is to turn inward and to engage in self-care or to spend a lot of time ruminating about or placing the world. And that's important, but it's also important at some point to turn your attention outward and say, okay, I gotta get in the game 'cause meaning's about action, it's about going out and making a difference. - Yeah, and I don't know if it's the rise of social media or what has happened that's really focused our attention inward, we've almost over-rotated. And so when we talk about self-care or this idea of empowerment, what we often hear are terms like, this is my year, this is gonna be the year that I'm gonna be the best version of me, these are my goals, I mean, people set new year's goals. It's now mostly just about the self. But you're saying that could still lead people to feel this void, almost the more we over-rotate inwards. Me, my boundaries, my life, my health, the more it's possible will still feel a bit empty because meaning actually has to be external to us in some way. - Yeah, that's right. And that's not to discount the importance of some, varying of what we might refer to as self-care. Of course, obviously you have to think about your needs and your goals and the things that make you unique and that you want to strive for yourself. Then what we find is even in those what seems like self-directed aspirations, such as a career, which we often think about, this is my career, these are my personal goals. The research finds that it's when people think about how those goals impact the lives of others positively that they derive the most meaning from it. So for example, in one study they had office workers, think about their work in two different ways. In one group they had them think about how their work is helping them climb their career ladder and improve their own situation. And another group they had them think about how their work is making a positive difference in the community or in the world around them. And the group that thought about that positive difference was reported higher levels of meaning derived from their work. So yeah, it's important to look out for yourself and to pursue your own interests and develop your own sense of self, but you're absolutely right. What the research shows over and over again is that the way to generate the most meaning is not to fixate on your own concerns or worries or dissatisfactions or ambitions as much as this to get out in the world and try to do something that makes a difference in the lives of others. And you've described that we are in a crisis of meaning and I feel it, but I want to hear from you why we are in one. So I go back and forth on whether or not to use the term crisis because on the one hand there are data that suggest that young people for instance like high school students are more likely to report that their lives are meaningless today than they were maybe a decade or so ago. And so you do see some trend lines that suggest a sense of meaning is in decline. But at the same time, the story of the human condition, throughout history has been a story of struggle, of challenge, the world throws different things at us, whether it's wars, whether it's social upheaval and people have to grapple with these questions of meanings. I don't think it's necessarily the case that a crisis of meaning is unique to our specific time as much as it's a unique to the human condition, that humans are constantly in a struggle to find meaning. And I think a lot of this ties back to a theme of agency. And I'm guilty of this to be clear, like when we talk about the decline of meaning, we say things like, well, religion is declining and that provided people with meaning. Or the fertility rate are dropping. Or marriages, and so you're saying that these kind of, these factors are why we don't feel as much meaning in our lives, but that's not true. I think that's part of the story, but the way we talk about it is we're not very careful. I'm saying we collectively. I do this as well, but when you see social commentary, you often see things like you just said, well, people used to get married and have families and go to church and have faith in their institutions, and that provided meaning. So I think that's part of the story, but I think the key word is provide. Those things don't actually provide meaning. They provide a framework or guide to building a meaningful life. And we all can look, we all can look to guides, and mentors, and cultural frameworks to do that. That's important. We don't just exist at a vacuum, but we have to be the ones that create the meaning. So I think we've gotten more, you know, to your point about passive consumption. We've gotten more passive, I think, even the experts have gotten more passive in our language. And so I think a more correct way of saying it, if I can rephrase some of my own statements, would be, no, these things don't provide meaning. They provide opportunities to create meaning. But ultimately, you have to get out there and build a meaningful life. You know, when people talk about the decline of churches, for instance, you know, part of me is thinking, well, nothing's stopping you from starting a church or going to church. I mean, they still exist in every community of people can go to church. invest in the institutions that they think are important for their community and for their personal well-being. People can find partners and get married, maybe the marriage market is more difficult. Right now we're seeing tensions between many women that other people have been commenting on. It's not that there aren't challenges, but the answer isn't to say, "Well, these things don't exist, so I can't have meaning." The answer is to say, "Well, what can we do to rebuild these institutions or to build new institutions or to help contribute to the type of culture and climate that inspires people to create meaning?" Because meaning is ultimately an act of agency, it's an act of action. At the end of the day we have to do the work and maybe that's part of the challenge with young people and the lower rights of meaning that their reporting is we're not sufficiently encouraging them to do the work and we're not saying, "Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to build a beautiful life." You don't just inherit meaning, you have to earn it. That's part of the story. Going back to your question, are we in a meaning crisis or what's the cause of the meaning crisis? I think we are going through a lot of technological societal, people's and challenges. I'm sure we'll talk about the rise of artificial intelligence and people's concerns about how that might affect their ability to make a living, for instance, in the future and what their purpose will be if robots can do work. But at the end of the day meaning is really about mattering. It's beginning like you matter. It's feeling useful as a simpler way of saying it. A lot of times that means being entrepreneurial. You have to create your own usefulness. You have to show to others that you actually have a role to play in the world and in their lives. I think the good news about that is even though it's hard, even though people are facing a lot of challenges now, it's accessible to anyone. Again, can get out there and make a difference large and small in the world. Meaning might be difficult, but it's something that's available to anyone, I believe. I'm so glad that you made that distinction because it is so easy just to point to the decline in people, you know, starting families or the decline in going to church or feeling like the institutions around us are crumbling. But meaning making is actually an internal decision and it involves an external action. Maybe we're making it bigger than it is. Meaning could be doing something down the street for someone and that could make us feel like we're doing something meaningful. But we've maybe described this bigger moment to it or why do we feel like it has to come from something outside of ourselves. Yeah, that's a good question, I think. I don't know the answer for sure, but I do think to your point about the self-care culture, I do think that there's a lot of attention being paid to the idea that meaning is some kind of really deep philosophical endeavor that you need to spend a lot of time and search for. And again, there's nothing wrong with having deep philosophical questions. I'm an existential psychologist. I think about this stuff all day. I love it. It's great. But actually, that's not where your life's going to feel the most meaningful. It's going to feel the most meaningful from, like you said, going and helping the neighbor, you're going to get a higher boost to your meaning than doing that than pondering, you know, deep existential questions. And so even if you enjoy those things and find those things intellectually stimulating as many of us do, the meaning you actually derive from life is in the action. It's in doing something. You'll get more meaning from going out there and helping somebody or just making a positive difference in your community and whether you're a philosopher or a painter or a school teacher or a police officer. It doesn't really matter what your job is. What matters is that you feel like you're doing something important and that it's valued and that plays a significant role in improving the lives of people around you. And you'd mention jobs. So when you think about artificial intelligence, do you think AI and the impact it could have on the workforce is going to exacerbate our confusion around meaning or it's exposing it? Yeah, I think that's a great way of framing it. I think it's exposing it because, and I think there's a positive story here, because I think what's happening is when people see the capacity for artificial intelligence to do a lot of cognitive work, which people had thought before was what made us unique, right? It was like we're the ones who do intelligent work. But seeing that maybe these large language models and whatever the future is for machine learning and for artificial intelligence, people seeing that, oh, these platforms are smart too. If force is us to think about, well, okay, well, what is it that makes us human? If it's not just being smart. And there's a whole bunch of other affective and motivational processes involved in human thinking and human decision making beyond just like logical calculation, right? And there's that we're also analog organisms, right? We're multi-century. We're tactile. We like to engage physically with the world. We need to engage physically with the world. And so there's a whole bunch more to the human condition than just being able to solve intellectual problems. And so at a fundamental level, before you even think about jobs and things like that, as I think there it reveals or exposes these questions of like, well, what does it mean to be a person? And a person isn't just someone who solves logical problems. A person is someone who cares about other people, a person is someone who loves, a person is someone who experiences awe, a person is someone who has dreams, a person is someone that will hold someone's hand who is sad or distressed, right? A person is someone that likes to take a walk with somebody and talk to them about their day. I mean, these deeply emotional and intimate experiences are human. And I think we will see more attention paid to that as we see the rise of AI and robotics. But then how people say that their job does give them a sense of purpose. And they do feel some meaning in it, regardless of how much they like it or not or how much they may dread Sunday night for the Monday wake up, that that job as a part of their identity does make them feel somewhat meaningful. So do you think we've over indexed on work in a professional identity as the core of our identity or has work become this defense mechanism for meaninglessness because it's allowed us to not think about the other categories of what is uniquely human. And instead we get to say, I am this identity versus just who are you outside of the title that you may hold? Yeah. So I think the title that people hold is if they think that's where they get meaning, they're wrong. And this is why you can have situations where someone will say, you know, I'm this very successful person, but I'm unfulfilled because it's not because a successful job makes you unfaithful. It's because you're not doing something that makes you feel like you matter. So if you feel like you're not actually making a positive contribution to the team, then regardless of what your title is, you're not going to drive a lot of meaning from that job. So I think work is very important to meaning. And regardless of whether the work is paid or unpaid labor because, you know, being a parent's a lot of work, right? There's a lot of things we do in our communities and our personal lives that involve labor. And work makes us feel productive and feeling productive helps us feel like, oh, like we're in the game, we're doing something important. So I think work is meaningful, but it's that sense of that we're doing something that's actually going to make a difference that is where the meaning of the work comes from. And the future will happen as well. Of course, there'll be a lot of disruptions. And anytime you have a major disruption in your life, I'm like, oh, this is what I did. And then now this is it. You know, this is what I did. These are my patterns. Where I feel like I'm useful and that's, you know, somehow that's taken away from us that can cause, you know, an existential crisis or, you know, threat to our sense of meaning or purpose. But the good thing about humans is we're adaptable. And to the extent that we can take that on as a challenge and say, okay, where, well, it wasn't the specific job itself that gave me meaning is that that job gave me outlet to use my skills and my talents and my interest in a productive way that helped others or that made a positive difference in my community. Where else can I channel those talents and those skills and those efforts to do something that also feels important? So I think the key is going to be as artificial intelligence, you know, potentially starts to change the nature of work, the extent to which people feel like, well, they are still useful and they can still do something that's productive and meaningful. And the next thing that makes a difference is where people are going to find meaning. I think some of the challenges also, the story behind why the jobs that we, you know, identify with are going away, it's kind of tied to this bigger idea of, well, why are we passing it to an AI system that doesn't have needs? Like we're creating this and we're making this disruption happen. It's not some UFO landing that we can't do anything about. We're creating this world where we believe that work does give us some sense of, we feel productive, we feel like we're contributing to something. And then now there, it feels like that choice is being removed from us. And so where does that leave us and why are we even doing that? Yeah. This is, you know, this is the history of technological change and innovation is some new technology comes along and it disrupts the world and people feel like, oh, this is being taken away from me. And part of that's true, right? It's still fun to lose your job because of a new technological innovation. But then you look over the history of human progress and you see, well, people find new ways of doing work. In my book, I give the example of the ATM. Like when the ATM came out, people were worried that the bank tellers were all going to lose their jobs. They actually led to an increase in the number of bank tellers because it became cheaper for banks to open branches. Of course, now we have online banking, so there's disruption again. But any particular job might go away and people might resist that or be frustrated with that understandably. But we often get a lot of benefits from the progress too. And it creates new opportunities for new ways. So when I think about AI, I see two different kinds of responses. And we work at the Archbishop Institute. We do polling on this pretty frequently. We have a survey called Progress Pulse where we ask Americans how they feel about different things associated with progress. And we generally find when we ask people questions about AI, whether they say AI as something that's going to improve their professional life, or improve their life in general, or something that's going to make them more free, or it's going to be good for economy, or it's going to be bad, or it's going to make us less free, and it's going to make us have less of a sense of control of our lives. We see that Americans are split about 50/50, actually. And it's interesting because no matter how we ask the question or how we frame it, it seems like we get about a 50/50 split of people who see AI more is almost like an opportunity to enhance meaning as a way to have your own research assistance to help you in your career, to help you do more, to scale your work more, for instance, and have more of an impact. And then other people see it more as like, oh no, this is going to destroy our jobs, potentially our economy. And so it's kind of an interesting challenge. There's not a ton of consensus. I mean, you might know about this more than I do what current attitudes are about AI. But I think a lot of times people feel like they're not in control, and this is happening. And that's kind of life. We live in a society. We live in a global economy. We don't shape that. But what we can do is Victor Frankroll pointed out, many years ago, is regardless of the environment around us, we can shape our own decisions and our own attitudes about life, and we can take these things as an existential challenge. And this time of major disruption, that's what I would encourage people to do is not feel overwhelmed, they're threatened, but see this as an exciting, scary, but exciting time, that there will be opportunities, perhaps, for new ways of building meaningful lives. With that, it's also the economic reality of what could happen in that disruption period. So I don't think working it in entirety is going to go away, at least not for a long time. What we're doing right now is completely unrecognizable. And most of the jobs that we have are unrecognizable. But I do think AI will force us to decouple our identity from a job title. And what's ironic about that is the idea of jobs is, it's also kind of a new idea. It only really happened after the Industrial Revolution. So technology gave us the idea of we can identify as a professional identity outside of maybe being a member of the Royal Family, or in the military, or maybe you're in the monastery. You didn't really have a title, you just kind of did General Labor. And so, technology can give us the idea of a job. A new technology could take out that part of the identity. But it's how, what tools or frameworks can we hold onto as that disruption takes hold? I mean, if somebody is thinking, I don't really know who I am without this identity. I think I have skills, but I don't know how to apply them, or where I should think about placing myself. How should they be thinking about this moment? Yeah, that's a great question. And I love the point that I believe you've made in previous episodes where the difference between a title and skills and how and the future people are going to have to think more about themselves and the skills that they bring to the table as opposed to the title. I agree with that 100% and it aligns perfectly with my view on maybe this is why I agree with it because it aligns with my view on meaning in life. Meaning doesn't come from the title. Meaning comes from what you're doing and feeling like you're contributing to something. So a title can be a correlate. It's a poor correlate of meaning now because really it's about the activities, the skills, the things that you're bringing. We can look to, I think, retirees as an example, as a model because when people retire, if they've spent their life in a career, sometimes especially historically for men, it's been a very big struggle and existential struggle after your retire. What's my use now? All I did was work and I liked my work and I felt like I did a good job and I felt like I was a good employee for my company, for my organization and I made it and I feel like I made a difference. And then now I don't have these other sources of meaning to invest. And so if you look at people who retire, the ones who channel the skills and those interests into doing community work, whether it's volunteer work or whether it's a lot of times people become entrepreneurial when they retire, like they don't want to have a full-time job anymore, but they still want to have a little bit of a side hustle. Now it's kind of the main thing they do. And so they figure out ways to take their skills and do something with them. They don't have the title anymore, but they still have the same personality, they still have the same experience, they still have the same, you know, knowledge they've built up a lot of times, their great mentors because they have decades of experience and they figure out ways to get involved in their community and to use those skills. And they end up doing pretty well. They end up feeling like, oh, my life's still meaningful. I'm involved with, they do more with their family, they do more in their community, with their religious organizations, community organizations. And they do pretty well. It's the ones who feel like this is all I did, this was my job, this was my life. And now I have nothing and they, you know, going back to a previous point, they turn inward and they're just at home and they're not using their skills in any way. They're the ones who feel like, why don't matter anymore? I don't have a use anymore. And that's not good. I mean, that it's a predictor of not living very, very long. It's a predictor of bad health habits. It's better if you can make that transition at the individual level and to retirement to like, well, what's the next stage of my life look like? And what can I do to be a meaningful contributor to my community? I feel like you can use that logic to think about, well, what happens if it's not an individual who's retiring, but it's a society he's going through some type of economic or societal transition in which we have to rethink the way work, work works. And I think you've offered great advice on this in some of your previous podcasts. Because even for me, and I know I talk about this and I'm very close to the data on this, the reality is going to be some decoupling of dog title to identity. But even for me, I think the idea that I don't have something to strive for professionally doesn't sit very well. And I'm also very aware of what's going to unfold being a part of your community is incredible. But if I'm just kind of floating around and I don't have this anchor of striving and maybe that's something that I have to go internal about, but it doesn't feel great thinking about that. Is that because we have built this society around work being so central to who you are? I mean, when kids are three years old, we ask them what they want to be when they grow up. We bring the idea of your identity as a job. Like the kids don't think in terms of work. But we introduce that to them at such a young age. And then we basically say you go to school for 17 years to prepare for this thing, not just for life, or not just to become, you know, yourself or to become someone, but to do something with the title. And so is that because we've made this world around this construct of jobs and work that it feels much more existential than maybe it really is? Like we've done that to ourselves? I was smiling a little bit because it's funny. We do ask these kids these questions and they say all sorts of things, you know, from superhero to, you know, more like normal or predictable job aspirations. But it's funny. It's like I used to be a college professor. I was a college professor for a long time. And most university students change their majors. And a lot of you'll see this reported in media outlets where look, students aren't even using their college degrees. And that's a bit of a misrepresentation. What it is is they're doing something that's not in a specific major that they did, right? So they might have done a major in psychology, but now they're in banking. But it doesn't mean they're not using their college education or the experience. And so I think the question of work or purpose in the world is tied. You're right. And in the modern economy, it seems more like explicitly tied to professional life or work life. But really underneath that is it's like what what am I doing to like help build and sustain society? And I'm with you. Like I do, I don't think this is an immediate issue. I don't think robots are going to replace workers tomorrow. And I think you've had some good commentary on this of how AI can't actually do people's jobs. But down the road, yeah, maybe we have all these advances. And I think humans will find new ways of doing work where they feel like they're still creating something in a marketplace, whether it's an economic marketplace or marketplace of ideas in which they are able to feel like they're building that they're entrepreneurial, that they're contributing to something. And so I understand what you're saying, but I see work in a more, I guess I see it more abstractly, that yeah, in our current framework, we very much tie it to jobs. But really it's that action, it's that feeling like we're contributing in some way. And there's just there's there's lots of ways to do that, I think. And that's why yeah, I see work as separate from jobs. Jobs is a relatively recent invention. But work isn't. And maybe if we were to zoom out on the macro scale of history, even in the last 500 years, there's a couple hundred years, maybe a thousand years, where we identify based on a religion or community or social belonging. And then there was the chapter where we identified based on jobs. And we're headed into a new chapter and it's undefined. But on the macro scale, it will make sense when we get there. But until then, it feels quite disruptive. But when you hear AI leaders casually say, "We're going to have to prepare for societal disruption." And people will just casually do other things. And the economy will take care of itself. We'll introduce universal basic income. All of the economic needs and labor will be done by AI and robots. And then people will be freed just to do whatever they want. And the idea of just getting at some form of a check to sustain seems like it's just this simple future that we step into. How do you see that idea as an existential psychologist? Yeah. Well, two things. I'll believe it when I see it. Because there's long been science fiction type utopian visions, I think. And things rarely pan out as predicted or imagined. And wouldn't that be a dystopian vision in a way? That's a good point. So I think it would be a dystopian vision if it looked something along the lines of Wally, which actually has a very positive ending where humans reclaim their agency after just being lazy and taking care of by robots, figuring out, "Oh, there's something more here." Where I'm bullish on humans is even if this happens, I think there might be a period of existential decline where people feel like, "Well, what are we supposed to do?" But we're clever. We're creative. We're adaptive. I think people will figure out new ways to build frameworks for meaning. Well, they'll still say, "Well, we still matter. There's still things that we can do that robots can't." Provided a few examples earlier. Maybe a robot can hold your hand. Maybe we'll have human robots. But will it be the same as knowing another person as they're sharing that emotional experience or you're sharing that tragedy or that triumph with you? I think there's something deep about our emotional lives that, whether you're a religious person or not, some levels deeply spiritual because it's about what it means to be a human being and to feel something. And so I think we will privilege that. You already seen this a little bit with the way you're seeing an increase in people privileging real life experiences over digital experiences. And again, people aren't rejecting digital technology. We all love digital technologies and prove that our lives in many ways. But you're seeing people say, "Okay, well, that's good." But there's something missing. There's something about the in-person experience. The COVID-19 pandemic really brought this home when people were not able to spend a lot of time with others in person and it reminded them, "Oh, yeah, that's a big part of what being a human's about is being in a room with other people sharing experiences." And so I think that will continue. And I don't know. It'll be interesting to see what happens, for instance, when we have AI actors and movies. I'm really curious about that. Will people like those movies? Maybe they'll think they're interesting. But a lot of the Hollywood people's interest in Hollywood culture is the actors in their lives and the gossip about it, right? And understanding what they're doing. We like watching interviews with actors because we like to hear their story, what got them into this, what motivates them, how they perform to that character, how they prepared for it. So even in something where we've never met a person and we're just watching them on a screen and it's all very technological, we still like that human backstory. And I think, I'm interested about that too, like how when these transitions happen, will humans respond and will that change the development of these systems as well? Well, we carve out a space for ourselves where we say, "Well, really, maybe a machine could do this, but we think of this more as a human activity. And maybe the arts will be more like, maybe that's a domain where that will exist, I don't know. But it's an interesting time for sure, an exciting time." And I guess it's so interesting to think, "Do we over index on technology and then realize we went too far?" For instance, with dating apps and social media, we did all of this, we kind of re-aligned our lives to this digital world. That felt really insufficient. And now we're gearing away from that. But do we go through a period where we actually do think robots and AI can feel some void? And then we have to over index away from that. Yeah, I think so. And that seems to be the story of progress. We just go for it. Right? We just kind of go wild. We go all the way. And then sometimes we recalibrate and we say, "Okay, that was an interesting experiment, but we need to dial that back a little bit." And I think to your point about social media, you're right. That's what's happening. It's not that people are getting rid of it entirely because they like many of the features that social media offers. But they're saying, "Okay, maybe it was a bit much and maybe I need to carve out some space." There's lots of surveys showing us. The vast majority of Americans are at least reporting that they're dialing back or they're setting time aside without their phones present so they can live in the moment more. And so yeah, I think you're right. I think that's a possibility that well, things will get really wild and we'll be excited about all the shiny new robotic toys and opportunities. But then maybe we'll go, "Okay, now let's figure out. Let's dial it back." And again, that's part of the human condition. And you do a lot of research on the idea of nostalgia. And I think a lot of us can relate to feeling, having those moments where you kind of feel happy or joyful thinking about something but then it's also this longing for the past. And what we're describing, we're seeing the rise of this counterculture, right? So people are unsubscribing from dating apps and joining things in person to meet people. The rise of the flip phone, more articles about offline as this luxury, people feeling like, "Oh, I just want to get into nature and be unreachable by a billion people which I don't think was ever natural in the first place." You could describe that as people longing for life that looked like it did in the 90s. But maybe through the lens of your work in nostalgia, is this actually our desire for a better future? Like we're actually pointing much more towards the future than we are to the past? Absolutely. So I very much believe that nostalgia is a future-oriented experience. We think of it as past oriented because of course it involves reflecting sentimentally on the past. But no one has a time machine that I know of, right? No one can go backwards. And so we're inherently afford looking species. Like we're trying to figure out tomorrow and the day after that and these long term ambitions that we have. And part of the way we do that is we pull from the past. So we're not trying to go back to the past. We're trying to use the past in ways to build a better future. So all the things we're talking about are exciting and scary because the future is unknown. We don't know what direction these technologies are going to take. That's the nature of the future. It hasn't happened yet. What we do know is we can look back and say these are the memories and experiences that I've had that are meaningful. This is what's fulfilled me the most. How can I factor that into the decisions I make, the priorities that I have for different paths that I could choose? And we've also started to find that people don't just do this with their own life. They don't just use their own personal or autobiographical nostalgia. They also use what we refer to as historical nostalgia, which I think is really cool. We only really started studying this in the last few years, which is you have a lot of people saying, I'm nostalgic for a time before I was alive. They don't have any memories from that time, but they are consuming artifacts from that time. They're watching media from that time. They're hearing stories from older generations about that time. They're reading historical documents. What they're discovering is most people, if you ask them, don't want to go live 50 years ago. They don't want to give up the modern advances in medicine and technology and civil rights and things like that. They're not saying I want to go back to that, but they're saying there's something from the past that maybe we've let go of or that we've lost or that we've just neglected. Nature is a good example to your point of people don't want to go live. People did in the frontier, but they would like to spend more time in green spaces. In fact, when they were thinking about planning future cities, they think, well, maybe we should have more green spaces in them because it turns out there's something really nice about that and something that the humans really enjoy, the experiences of awe and connectedness to nature. So, yeah, I think of nostalgia as very much this way as we approach the future to be guided by what's given us meaning in the past and to use that in a way that gives us more confidence to and our decision making because it's very difficult to know what to do. This is why it's difficult to be young when we're talking about young generations and challenges with meaning. I mean, that's just inherent to being young. It's like, you've got your life ahead of you and you're trying to figure out which path to take and it seems overwhelming. Well, nostalgia can help, I think, in this way. It can help us pull inspiration from the past as long as we do it in a constructive and productive way and to figure out what path is the best path for us. And I was on social media ironically and I came across this young girl talking. She was maybe the most kind of guest between 19 and 22 and she was saying, you know, we might be the first generation that dies with more memories of other people's lives than our own. And that comment really. struck me. Because when you think about nostalgia and how you describe it as nostalgia is actually really important psychologically, it helps remind you of who you are and it can be good to go into those moments of nostalgia. But what if there is a generation of people that don't actually have those memories because we've spent more time looking at other people's lives, but you're seeing nostalgia doesn't even have to be a part of our own life. We can be nostalgic for time periods and events that we didn't even actually experience. And that can be a guiding light. Or do you think I'm looking at it wrong by over-indexing on how much time we've given to this algorithmic Truman show? Yeah, yeah. So it's hard to know, you know, because people will say, "Oh, young people aren't having the same opportunity to build, and this does experience the previous generations have." I'm always personally a little bit skeptical of the kids these days, kinds of arguments, because I remember talking to my grandmother. But by the way, wrote a horse to school, which is pretty incredible, right? I remember her saying, "Oh, I feel sorry for you for your kids," because when I was young, we grew up on the farm and we had freedom and we were just outside doing things. And there are aspects of that that sound very appealing, but I look back at my childhood in the 80s and the 90s and like, I think it was pretty cool. And so I do think that it's hard to know in the moment what any particular generation is going to feel nostalgic about. In the future, but to your point, there is research for instance on the concept of savoring, and you're more likely to build nostalgic memories if you savour experiences. And so this is where I think our digital distractions can be a barrier to nostalgia. I go to concerts, and this is going to make me sound old. I'm just always shocked that the number of people who are more focused on recording the concert on their phone than enjoying the concert. And I'm just, you know, again, maybe that just makes me old. But I'm like, well, you came here to see live music, like enjoy it. It's live. You don't have to capture it on your phone. And maybe that's my minority position. But I think the research shows that when you savour something, when you really take it in, you're more likely to build nostalgic about it in the future. So I do think that's something, and it's not as young people who are all getting more addicted to our phones and more distracted. It's good to take a step back and look around and appreciate the world and what's going on in your life. And I don't know if that's a generation specific thing, but I do think it's more challenging now with all the digital distractions we have. But to your point about historical nostalgia, one thing that we've found that I think's really fascinating is how young people are technologies introducing them to a life before this technology, right? They're learning about this by watching TikTok videos and by watching YouTube and they're saying, "Hey, this was what high school was like in the 1990s." And they're getting really into that. So it's just kind of funny that they're learning about it by the technology. But then what's kind of cool is that they're often going and using that to talk to people. So that's maybe a conversation starter for a person and older generation of this intergenerational contact is to go talk to their mom and dad or aunt and uncle or older co-workers. It was like, "Was it really like that? Tell me more." And then that kind of creates a dialogue for inspiration. Which again, I had when I was young, you know, talking to the older generation about what life was like. And I feel like I picked up some things that, you know, were useful. And so I think we're historical nostalgia is even though it seems to be starting for many young people with their phones by watching videos and learning about the past, it often ends with them getting off their phones and going out in the world and talking to people. And so this is why you see a number of interesting consumer trends like increases in final record sales. It's not just people my age, it's young generations. And they're saying, you know what? It's kind of cool to have the physical media one, you own it. And so if your streaming platform takes it down, you have it. So there's a practical motivation. But then there's just something about curating a physical collection that you can handle. The tactile experience. And then that sense of like this kind of, you know, this is part of my, my story of like what makes me me and what I'm into. And so I think you're seeing a lot of those historical patterns reemerge because young people are discovering that there's something as much as we like these digital devices and streaming content. There's something neat about like having that physical shopping experience of it. And then have been able to curate something that feels tangible to you. And if I was to plot the trend line over the next five years, of course, the world's going to look really unrecognizable. But I think one of the trend lines that's not as easy to spot is how much we are going to veer away from this idea of being constantly connected, scrolling, available, or our lives becoming this performance that others can quantify and rate. I mean, talk about living in an unnatural colosseum. And I think we're actually, and we are already intuitively moving away from that. And I think that those numbers are just going to grow. And even your point about to create nostalgic experiences, we have to just savor the moment that we're in and just be more present. There's this pressure for life to look like this performance that you post in share and can get quantified. But to just be in that moment can actually make your life start to feel more nostalgic and in some ways more meaningful or those two not necessarily that correlated. Yeah, yeah. No, so nostalgia is a big driver of meaning. So when people engage in nostalgic reflection, it tends to increase their sense of meaning in life. And it does so because nostalgia, you can be nostalgic for lots of things. But one common characteristic of nostalgic experiences is they tend to be highly social. Most not all, but most nostalgic memories are memories shared with other people. And a lot of those memories are memories in which you have done something that like does it. This is what makes life worth it. What makes life fulfilling. So you've done something with people. And they're not necessarily entirely happy memories either. When we were first doing this research, you know, almost 25 years ago now, we were interviewing people south of London and I worked at the University of Southampton and Southampton, England. And we were interviewing older adults. And they were sharing these nostalgic memories from times when they were children in World War II. And that southern part of England was heavily bombed by German bombers. And so this is not a good time in life. It's like now you're hearing some people talk about nostalgia during COVID. Like this isn't a good time. It isn't a time that any of them wanted to go back to. But they have these memories from that time that reminded them of what's important in life. And to your point, it wasn't like what looks cool on Instagram, right? It was what it was to be with people that really matter in my life. And what am I doing for those people? Nostalgia can help you like really focus on that. There's lots of things that are fun or interesting or distracting or just emulating them in many ways. But nostalgia really helps you focus on what were the things that I really value though, what makes my life meaningful. And so many not all but many nostalgic memories center on meaningful memories. And so yeah, I do think that's that can be useful going forward because it's it serves as sort of a guide for people. And do you think social media has really gotten in the way of our ability to just feel like our lives are meaningful because we can continuously compare it to somebody else that's doing something different, something better, something bigger? Or that's actually just this feeling of never feeling satisfied. Or I think, and I think about even in my own life or life of friends where they'll achieve some sort of a goal that was on the vision board. And then you achieve that goal and suddenly no one says anything about it and it's on to the next thing. Or you get that relationship, but then suddenly, well, I feel still unsatisfied because there's this aspect of my career that isn't fearful of old or you get the career and then it's like, but I'm still single. So I feel like something's still missing. Is that just amplified by social media? Is that actually just part of the human condition to need to continue to move forward? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's both. And so I do think social media can, these social comparison processes can can be bad. So we did this research on what we call digital flourishing and we asked American adults about different dimensions of their digital lives and whether they felt good about them. And on many things, it was a positive story. Like most Americans said they feel like they can control like, you know, whether or not they're on, you know, they can get offline if they want to. They're in control of their the time they spend online. The area in which they had the lowest level of flourishing was what we call positive social comparison, which is when I compare, I'm comparing myself to others in a way that inspires me. So social media could do that, right? You could look to people that energize you. You see them as role models and inspire you. But a lot of people don't feel that way. They feel like they look to others and, you know, they're engaging in a social comparison that makes them feel worse about themselves and and demotivate. So I do think that can be a challenge. But at the same time, I think you're also correct to point out that this is the story of the human condition as meaning as, you know, as always in motion. There's a momentum to meaning. And we actually did this as many years ago, we did a study where we looked at goal completion. And there was this ironic effect that happened that you would think your intuition might be when people complete a goal, they feel more meaningful. And what we found is as people were working on a goal, they felt more meaningful as they were approaching that goal, they felt more meaningful. If they got close to completing it or completed it, their meaning. meaning actually went down because like he said, it's a little bit like, well, what's next? So that's not just a phenomenon of like modern life or social media. There is a sense that meaning has to be sustained. That's an ongoing project. It's not something that you can just pull from. And you know, this was, you know, like the point I made earlier about retirement, people can't just retire and feel like, well, I built up, you know, I built up this bank account of 40 years of meaningful work. And so I'm good. No, they need to feel like they're still in the game. And so I do think that it's important to have these, you know, to have one different types of goals. So if you think about it like an investment portfolio where all your meaning is in one particular investment, right? You have a diverse portfolio, existential portfolio. I think that's important because anything could happen to any one of those areas. And so it's good to be like, have a holistic approach to meaning. It's not just my job. It's not just my family. There's lots of interest. In addition to that, you got to say active. I think you've got to feel like you're constantly doing something. And it's good for our brains, too. It's good for our mental health. It's good for our existential health. It's good for our social health, you know, to stay engaged and active. And so yeah, I mean, it's very much an ongoing project that has its ups and downs. And if you look at meaning and data studies that kind of measure it day to day, you know, people, you know, it goes up and down. Like some days you feel like, oh, what am I doing? Like, is it really, in other days, you feel like, oh, yeah, I'm really making a difference here. And so I do think that is just part of the human condition. But yeah, social media, I mean, it can be tough. And one of the things that we're doing, where we're at the Human Flawishing Lab at Archbred Jinstitute, is we're trying to help people develop those, the skills to use social media or just digital technology in a more healthy and productive ways. Because the technology has lots of great things about it, right? They could really help improve our lives. They can help improve our, you know, people say, oh, social media is anti-social. It's like, what's how you find out where things are, where you can, you know, it's how you find people with shared interests. It's how if you live in a small town, you can find that there's other people that have, are interested in the things you are far away, even if you feel alone there. So there's lots of positive social benefits from this technology. The key is to use it in a constructive and productive way, I think. And if you were to sit in a room with policymakers, knowing that AI is going to create this somewhat sense of disruption as we start to decouple job titles from identity and we can see that that's coming. What would you tell them that they could start to do to prepare society? Like what actions could they be taking or could we all be taking to prepare for this shift that we're stepping into? Or what should they at least be expecting? Because I feel like we don't hear anything from policymakers about the impact of AI on the individual person. Right, right. Yeah, I think a lot-- yeah, that's a good question. I don't know-- I think part of the challenge is a lot of policy needs to be or should be fairly surgical. It needs to be like this is a specific challenge. And we've thought about these different policy mechanisms for responding to them. I think a lot of policymakers are honestly behind an understanding technology that don't have a lot of understanding of how these AI systems are going to affect society. And so it's not at the top of the priority list. But really, I think-- and this isn't a dodge-- but really, I think a lot of the work is more cultural than it is policy. Because a lot of what's going to have to happen is going to be bottom up, not top down. It's going to have to be individuals, communities, organizations, institutions figuring out a path forward. And this is why I think it's important to maintain-- it's not like a naive optimism, but I think it's important to maintain a hopeful spirit because our cultural attitude matters. If people become extremely pessimistic and dissolutioned and depressed, then that's when we start to turn inward. And we retreat from the world. And we retreat from our communities. And we're just more skeptical and negative. And that's not how you embrace or respond to change. It becomes nihilistic in a way. And so I think we need a culture that-- I'm not saying that we should be ignore risks or concerns or that we don't have real challenges. I mean, our policymakers-- they should be perhaps focusing on things-- or adversaries, like in the challenges that pose to. Because there's a lot of potential weaponization. But what we're already seeing is social media, where there's deep bakes and other-- and there's actors from other countries using our social media to demoralize, particularly younger generations of people. And so I think there's-- obviously, there's places like that where policy could be very, very targeted. And how do I-- I don't have the answer to that. It's not my area of expertise. But I do think those are concerns. But I think a lot of the societal-- how the society responds to this is going to happen really more at the cultural level. And how are we going to approach this? And I think the best way is really with to go back to the nostalgia points. We can look back through history. And we can see examples of where the world felt like it was not going in a good direction. When I was a child, it was the Cold War, with the Soviet Union and the constant fear that this could all end at any point because of a nuclear war that could break out between the United States and the Soviet Union. So that was a big existential threat. I think I'm the first generation my age that most of our fathers didn't-- we weren't drafted to go into-- my father's generation was the Vietnam before that was World War II. So that was obviously a big existential threat that we had these major wars that people fought in. We've had-- the COVID-19, we had a good example of we remembered previous and even worse pandemics. And so we've gone through these challenges before-- not the AI thing, obviously-- but we've gone through big world disrupting challenges before and you must have come out the other side. And so I think for our culture, we need to maintain that spirit of agency and resilience and optimism. And policymakers can't-- no matter how much they try, they can't make that happen. I think that that's not their role. That comes from us as individuals bottom up in the cultures we create. And it's funny. I was talking to a friend the other day and I was telling her that kids under the age of five could-- are likely the first generation where it will be a foreign memory or seem radical that people used to identify with what it is that they do in terms of a job. And so they are probably going to grow up and think, wow, remember when people used to think that they are what they do between the hours of nine to five. And that's how they viewed the entirety of their life. And that will seem radical. The same way, if you go into a dinner party, it's a radical act to say, OK, nobody can talk about what they do. Soon, it will seem radical that that was such a big part of who we thought we are and who we thought we were. Yeah, so interesting. This is why I think intergenerational dialogue is so important because it's funny to think about the things that we just take for granted or we just to assume are default. And then you talk to people of different age groups and they'll be like, oh, no, that's-- I remember as a college professor and a student slapping, they would laugh at me when I would talk about that I used to just get in a car and you have to ask somebody where something was or look at a map. You actually would talk to people and say, how do you get to so-and-so's house? But all they knew was the GPS. That was a group in that area. So yeah, I do think it's interesting. And I actually find that someone exciting, I know it can be scary, but I think that's exciting to think about, well, how is the world? How much is it going to change in my lifetime and beyond? And I think it's just healthier and more productive to approach that with the level of curiosity and excitement than to fear it because it's happening. And so it's better to approach it with a bullish attitude, I think. What should be the next step that they do if they're feeling like I don't feel like my life is very meaningful? I don't feel like I'm contributing to something. What should they do next? - So if you don't exercise very much, but you know it's good to exercise, right? Fitness trainers will tell you, the most difficult thing is getting started. You have to go into the gym. And the reason is because exercise is self-reinforcing. It has momentum. You start exercising every day, you start feeling good about it, and then you want to exercise. The exercise itself makes you want to do it more. So there's that challenge of starting, right? And I feel like meaning is similar in a lot of ways. When people feel meaningless, it's the same thing with loneliness. One of the problems, one of the challenges of loneliness is it's self-reinforcing. That's why it's so difficult. It's because if you feel lonely, you actually start to avoid people because you're worried about social rejection. You know, like it'll make me even feel worse if I go out and try to meet people, and then they reject me. And so loneliness tends to encourage more loneliness, right? Meaning is similar. At some point you just have to put yourself out there and you got to go for it. You have to look, this ties back to the idea that meaning is about action. You have to look around, you can say, "What can I do that's going to make a difference?" It doesn't have to be something grand, it could be something small. You can go help your neighbors. This is the story of a lot of entrepreneurs actually, right? It's just like, "Where can I identify a need in the market where I can make a difference?" And you can start a little entrepreneurial operation in my home, right? I can do something and I can feel like people like my products, people like my services, and I'm making a difference. I can go out in the community and I can volunteer. I can do something creative that inspires others. I can offer some kind of mentorship. I have maybe skills that I bring to the table. That's where before I said meaning isn't found within you. It's found by action going out and doing things. That's true, but it has to start with you saying, "Okay, what can I do?" Then you have to just go for it and you have to take risks. You have to be prepared for setbacks. Just like exercise takes going to the gym and it's no fun at first. It's difficult. It's often physically uncomfortable. You're sore, you're miserable. Sometimes you're embarrassed. You're like, "I'm out of shape here." But eventually, everyone who does it, who keeps going, feels better about themselves. Then they take pride in it and then they want to keep going. I think that's the same thing with meaning as you have to. You just have to get out there and throw yourself in the game and you'll land on something eventually and then that becomes, like exercise, it becomes reinforcing. Here's the interesting about meaning. It's a very motivational force. If you look at research on meaning and health, people who have a strong sense of meaning life tend to live longer and healthier lives. There's nothing like magic about meaning biologically, right? The reason is meaning motivates you to take care of yourself. If you feel meaningful, you have a reason to be here. Have a reason to make good decisions because I play an important role in the lives of other people. Meaning promotes healthy decision-making. Like exercise, I think once you get going, that sense of meaning further energizes you to do even better. You got to start somewhere. Is there anything we didn't cover on meaning that you think people should know or nostalgia or feeling like you have or understanding that you have a lot more age and two than you may think you do? I think we did a good job covering meaning, especially the point about, I think it's important that people recognize that meaning is about outward action or then is about inward reflection. And again, that inward reflection is how we come to ask questions about meaning, but it's the outward action that's how we find meaning. And something I would say about nostalgia because I get this question a lot because I'm in the space of what sometimes referred to as progress studies. A lot where people are interested in the technological, economic, scientific, political advances that make the world a better place. So the history of human progress. And most of the people that I encounter in that space are very anti-nistalgia or they think they're anti-nistalgia. And their point of view goes something like, well, the future is about looking forward. So if you're allocating any cognitive bandwidth to looking backwards, you're wasting time that could be spent on looking forward, right? Or worse, looking backwards is actually distorting your, you know, it's a barrier to thinking like rationally or thoughtfully about the future. My response to that is, first of all, that's not at all with the evidence shows. And we're supposed to believe that in science and evidence, right? Nistalgia actually makes people more open-minded and makes them more creative and makes them more motivated and makes them feel more agentic and makes them more resilient. If you talked to, and when I was working in my book, I was talking to artists. I was talking to filmmakers. I was talking to technologists. I was talking to business entrepreneurs and all of them had nostalgic memories. And they were trying to do something innovative and something fresh or something new. And they were talking about what got them into filmmaking. The first time they went to that movie and they, this is what I want to do. A musician's often bring, even if they're doing like trying to do cutting edge, a music, they bring in the music that inspired them, right? And they show some nod to that. They just try to put a twist on it. And so I think that's the story of progress. We never just start from scratch, right? We're always building on history. And Nistalgia helps us access that in an inspiring way. It's the affective component. It's not just like the pure rational history. It's what makes that history interesting. What makes it inspiring? What makes it meaningful? And so my response to people whose intuition understandably is to see Nistalgia as a barrier to progress is this often the fuel for progress. It's the passion for progress. It's the inspiration for progress. And it also can help us make the types of decisions that make change better. Just changing itself isn't good, right? Or bad, right? We can make decisions that make the world worse. We can make decisions that make the world better. Sometimes we're just going to find out by trial and error that we made the bad decision. That's fine, right? We make mistakes. But Nistalgia can help us. It can help us move forward with decisions in a very intentional way. And so that's why I call myself Nistalgia Futurist, as I think it can be a very useful way for building a better future. And even for the individual, if you're feeling a bit lost, don't. be afraid to sit and reflect on some nostalgic memories because that could actually be some sort of catalyst to moving forward. Absolutely. And one thing that's kind of cool about that too is what you'll often find is even the Nistalgia starts out as this very personal reflective experience of like, "Oh, me, sentimentally longing for the past." What we find is kind of like meaning, and this is a big part of why Nistalgia is so connected to meaning. It's most of the time that Nistalgia quickly turns outward. What do fans do when they get nostalgic about what they're into, whether it's Star Wars, Harry Potter, or something like that? They build communities of like-minded people, and they share those memories with others. And so Nistalgia, even though it starts with a reflection, often ends in people building communities talking to others and sharing their memories because that's one of the best ways to experience Nistalgia is to pass it along to others and to share it with others and so Nistalgia in itself, even though often thought of as this sort of withdrawn, like passive activity, ends up turning into a very engaged and active and outward oriented activity in which people find ways to share their memories and connect their memories with other people. Because we all have our own individual memories that are situated and broader and larger cultural memories. And that's part of what makes society function as we can connect in that way. Clay, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. It's been great talking to you tonight. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of I've Got Questions. If you've got questions, we would love to hear them. You can submit them on our website via email or you can comment below. Send this episode to anyone else who you think may find it interesting and we look forward to seeing you at the next one.