30. Sex, Aliens, and AI?

Hi friends,

Welcome to the thirtieth dispatch of How Humans Flourish, a research-informed newsletter on how humans thrive.

For our last week of July, we’re finishing Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by neurologist Dr, Matthew Lieberman, Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab Director at UCLA. 

Personally, it’s been exciting incorporating Dr. Lieberman’s insights into building break*through. Of late, we’ve started partnering with sexual health organizations and one of the results is Vibe & Thrive, a first-of-its-kind text based support group curated to enhance intimacy. 

Vibe & Thrive takes a holistic approach to sexual wellbeing. I’m considering releasing an affordable version for public access, but I’d like to know if there’s interest first. If 1,000 people join the waitlist, I’ll make it happen! Click the button to learn more.

One of the most interesting components of this work is not just in introducing new knowledge, but in facilitating opportunities to incorporate the knowledge into real life. It’s not enough to “know” something, it’s what we do with the information that makes all the difference. But, in order to do something long enough to reap the benefits, we must demonstrate self-control…which often feels incredibly unsexy. 

Dr. Lieberman offers an interesting take. 

He asks: imagine you are abducted by aliens who want to conduct brain surgery on you. Though they are excited to start experimenting, they are gracious enough to give you a choice– would you rather they alter your brain so you permanently lose all impulses, urges, desires, and emotional reactions (i.e. ambition, love, etc.) or leave you permanently unable to control those very impulses, urges, desires, and emotional reactions?

Though it’d lead to some embarrassing situations, I imagine many of us would rather give up self-control rather than lose all emotions and desires.

The aliens up the ante. They’ll no longer do the experiment on you, but they will do it on all the people living in your city. You get to choose– would you let everyone in the city keep their impulses and urges at the expense of self-control, or opt for self-control at the expense of desires and urges?

Here, I imagine many of us feel as though a city filled with emotionally impulsive people with no mechanism to control those impulses would be…terrifying. 

This dichotomy between self desire and societal wellbeing represents one of Dr. Lieberman’s fundamental insights: self-control is the price of admission to society. 

He writes, “Our intuitive notion of…self-control is” that it “promotes our individual private goals and values…New evidence suggests it is more of a mechanism to help shape our behavior to be in line with the group’s goals and values when they conflict with our own…” (Lieberman, pg 234 - Kindle) 

Hence why social forms of accountability work. A buddy system, a support group, a mastermind. We are neurologically wired to do what is right by society, especially when we are being observed socially.  

He leaves us with this wisdom, “This alignment between our private beliefs and the beliefs of those around us motivates us to be useful members of society. It helps to ensure that others will like us, and it increases the ratio of social pleasure to pain we will encounter in our lives…

Just how much are social aspects worth in terms of our well-being? In one study…having a friend whom you see on most days, compared to not having such a friend, had the same impact on well-being as making an extra $100,000 a year. Being married is also worth an extra $100,000, while being divorced is on par with having your salary slashed by $90,000…  

Harmonizing is hard work, but apparently evolution thought it was ‘worth it’ to make our attitudes and beliefs aligned with those of the group rather than at odds with them.” (Lieberman, pg 235-247 - Kindle)

With gratitude,