Solutions From The Multiverse
Hosts Adam Braus (@ajbraus) and Scot Maupin (@scotmaupin) meet up each week where Adam brings a new idea to help the world and Scot picks and prods at it with jokes and questions. The result is an informative and entertaining podcast that always gets you thinking.
Solutions From The Multiverse
Solving Zoochosis: Introducing Zootopia | SFM E88
Let's kick things off with a bit of unexpected whimsy as Tsunami Jake sends us down a rabbit hole of prison reform, sports, and the colorful world of mascots. It's 'The Longest Yard' meets real life, and you won't want to miss the laughs and insights. But it's not all jest; we segue into the significant topic of plummeting birth rates, picking apart Ezra Klein's take and offering our own solutions from a previous episode that champions accelerated education and women's empowerment. And for those craving some cuteness overload, our live bunny cat cam promises fuzzy feels and spontaneous chuckles.
As we peel back the layers of society, we ask ourselves – could the concept of Zootopia be more than just an animated fantasy? We explore the potential of a society designed to satisfy the diverse needs of its citizens and discuss the phenomenon of "zookosis," where environments fail to cater to natural behaviors, drawing parallels with the human condition. We even ponder Pixar's 'Elemental' and its poignant commentary on community coexistence. This deep dive into the societal fabric is interspersed with musings on the American multicultural experience, proving that thought-provoking content and entertainment can coexist.
Wrapping up this dynamic episode, we ponder the ramifications of industrialization on our youth, society, and even the ethics of zoos, pulling wisdom from psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Can we align societal norms with human nature, referencing attachment theory and Dunbar's number? It's a rich conversation that ultimately lands us in the heartwarming realm of Stone Soup, a metaphor for community and cooperation. So, join us as we cook up a broth of ideas, laughter, and community spirit that'll leave you nourished in more ways than one.
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Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.
Email: solutionsfromthemultiverse@gmail.com
Adam: @ajbraus - braus@hey.com
Scot: @scotmaupin
adambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)
The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)
The Numey (inflation-free currency)
Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.
so we were given a solution by uh someone on discord what but I don't really I don't. I'll just say what it is. So. So tsunami jake shout out to tsunami jake on discord. He said that maybe prisons should have mascots and colors and sports prisons having mascots, colors and sports.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like like the longest yard. The movie where they played football, yeah there you go right.
Speaker 1:So thank you to tsunami jake for that solution. It's very cool. I'd like I don't want to discuss the whole thing, but that's cool. So people should send in their solutions and you'll get a shout out, or just send in anything, and when you'll get a shout out on the podcast also a little I was I was listening to Ezra Klein on his podcast is doing a two part episode on the birth rate and like, yeah, the birth rate is too high or too little.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you sent me a link to the, to one of those. Yeah, and it's good. And too high or too little?
Speaker 1:yeah, you sent me a link to the to one of those yeah, and it's good, and and I just wanted to tell everyone, we solved it. They, they don't have a solution, but we already solved it. If you go back, uh, to episode, uh, episode 448, the title is a woman's issue. We're going to change the title, but basically the idea is like what they talk about in in the episode but then they get totally wrong, is they say, every society that implements higher education for women, the birth rate plummets. And then they don't come to the conclusion that we already came to, or I came to, which is like we just need to accelerate the pace that we do education so that everybody can get a master's degree by the age of like 21.
Speaker 1:And if you did that, then women, the whole birth rate issue would become a non-issue, because women would have the freedom to have both a great education and start families in their 20s or whatever, when they are most sort of capable of doing that. So, anyways, they, for some reason uh, I think it's because these, they they're just, you know, ezra Klein and his guests are just like way overeducated, and so they can't think about like changing education to be better, like shorter, anyways. So we have a solution to that too. So there you go. There's two solutions in the wild, two in the wild, nice kickoff yeah, how are you doing, scott?
Speaker 1:I see this bunny cat cam you've just added to the screen I'm learning to put graphics and things on is that the actual?
Speaker 2:cat live. Yeah, it's right here if I reach over.
Speaker 1:He wasn't moving at all, he was, so still no, he's sleeping, but let's see if I can oh, you're a cutie kitty, yeah that's a live camera. It's a great, the great cat cam, and it's got such a nice little graphic around it yellow frame. It's hilarious. Well, that's great, that's great.
Speaker 2:We're trying to do one with minimal edits, because we're going to put it out the same day.
Speaker 1:We record it, we don't normally do this, we just do no edits. What do we call that? No fill Hashtag. No edits.
Speaker 2:Hashtag it's all in the can. We're all hanging out everybody.
Speaker 1:Everything that goes in comes out the other end.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, this is not our usual. I say no edits and then I would go and cough off the side. No edits. Okay, Let me chew into the microphone. What are all those? Wait, let's just do another. Take here the cardinal sins of broadcasting.
Speaker 1:Are those given? What are they? What are those? What are the cardinal sins of broadcasting?
Speaker 2:Eating on mic, chewing into the mic, yeah, coughing.
Speaker 1:We do all these things Right All the things that make us oh God, we're bad, that make us great. Well, I've got a solution. Should I just go straight in? Should we go straight into the solution?
Speaker 2:Let Should I just go straight in? Should we go straight into the solution?
Speaker 1:Let's go straight in, since there's no edits. We got no edits, we got to do it Okay. So today I'm proposing Zootopia.
Speaker 2:No, I think that's already. I've already. I saw that actually years ago.
Speaker 1:So it's a it's a movie idea that no one's ever come up with before. It's about a rabbit, but that's what I'm saying rabbit turn, decide no hold on one second the rabbit decides to become a police officer actually no firefighter and then she decides she's gonna move from the little bumpkin country village she lives in with the rabbit farmers who are farming celery not carrots, but celery and then she decides to go to the big city where she becomes a firefighter. All right, what do you think?
Speaker 2:now just stick with me here. This might sound crazy. What would you think if I suggested the names of jennifer goodwin and jason?
Speaker 1:bateman good choices those be uh well, well, well, choices for your idea. I I think that would be would be good. I think jason would be a good choice. There's not a good. That was my jason, justin bateman oh, that's the jason bateman.
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think I have one.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't know enough. He just goes up real high. The more awkward the situation, the higher, and then he puts pauses where they don't belong.
Speaker 2:See everybody. This is a perfect thing that I normally would maybe not make it all the way to the end.
Speaker 1:Okay, this would not get in, dang it. Okay, let's talk about Zootopia. So what I'm? Yeah, zootopia is in my, so it is kind of from the movie. But I think it's the deeper meaning of the movie, which is a longing that we have in a post-capitalist industrial society to live in a society where we can enjoy the benefits of technology and trade and science and commerce, but also are not alienated from our own natures. Okay, and I call that concept zootopia, and I think that's what the movie illustrates right. So they go in and they have this whole city, they have all the benefits of technology, but everything's perfectly aligned for each animal's nature. You know, so the right food. You know the bunnies are eating carrots and the camels are eating whatever. And the you know the everyone's at the doors are the right size, the houses are there. Everything's aligned perfectly.
Speaker 2:So everyone's nature is catered to in our society. We don't do that. You've got the mass transit with all the different sizes of doors for the different sizes of creatures. I'm sure you enjoy that and it was multimodal.
Speaker 1:There was cars too. There was different sized cars and different roads for different sized cars, and right, it was all multimodal. There was also trains and bikes and stuff too. It it was great. It was a great city. So I propose that Zootopia become a primary guiding ideology for policy and government and commerce and everything Perfect that we should adopt Zootopia, okay and the alternative is oh, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was going to say step one. We got to get rid of all the humans because I've seen the movie no humans. Step two we've got to you know, Planet of the Apes, all the different species of animals, and make them all talk and walk Up, evolve them a little bit. I'm on board, we can do this. I know a guy, Dr Moreau. He has an island we can use where he's been really working on this sort of things.
Speaker 1:Sign me up, I'm in it, I'm in. So the problem when you don't have Zootopia, you have zookosis. Have you heard that term? No, zookosis. I think that's a lot, and not just I think this, but lots of people believe that we're suffering from zookosis. Is that a real word? Yeah, it's a real word. What it means is the animals, the disease, the sort of syndrome of symptoms that animals get when they're in zoos and they're not in an environment that matches their nature, that's in accord with their nature. They get zucosis. It's like the. You know, when you add kosis onto something, it's like a disease well, yeah, is that like just called?
Speaker 2:is that like mixing zoo and psychosis? Yeah, exactly, exactly zootopia is just zoo plus utopia, which is the perfect city, right and so sure?
Speaker 1:or just topia means place, so zootopia means a place of life.
Speaker 2:You don't think they were going for utopia like the, the perfect city they were.
Speaker 1:They were going yeah, you maybe yeah zootope utopia is right there in the word, but it also is just zootopia. Zone is life and then topos is place so you could yeah, it could be, but I think you're probably right. It is kind of a utopic, although it's not totally utopic. They have like police and crime and you know so it's still a whole conspiracy. It's not like it's not like everything's perfect, you know, sure, yeah but that's what they want it to be.
Speaker 2:That's what they're shooting for.
Speaker 1:I mean, they have it pretty well dialed in, yeah, pretty good. I mean they've got it pretty good, but I mean we also have things pretty good. I mean, look at holland. Holland is already basically a human utopia.
Speaker 2:There's virtually nothing wrong with it so pixar did it, one that's kind of similar. Or recently, have you seen elemental, where the not yet fire people have? To live with the water people and the air, people and the earth people.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, is it the same thing where they?
Speaker 2:it's similar where it's a society, supposedly, where all four things are supposed to coexist and travel around together, and and that causes friction and tensions. It's not. It's not, excuse me no edits no I gotta edit those out, okay. Okay, we'll edit the top so it's not meant to be a utopia. That's why they call it elemental. It's just meant to be like a bunch of things smushed together. I don't know I some people really hated it. I I uh, some people didn't like it very much.
Speaker 1:I did, I enjoyed myself quite a bit, but I definitely will watch it. I need to watch that one because I do like pixar, even if sometimes they miss. I think they missed with luca, although my life, my wife loves luca, so I don't know. It's great. Yeah, it's great. You like luca, okay?
Speaker 1:I do but yeah, I mean, I guess in some ways it's all just like metaphors for a multiracial democracy which, you know, we're very early on in America to have a multiracial democracy. It's only been like 70 years since, or not even 60 years since, civil rights. So I mean, we're only two generations or two and a half generations into a multiracial democracy. We're still trying to figure out how to do it. Yeah but there's a bigger issue, though, which is zookosis, I think, or and I mean not maybe- so tell me more about zookosis.
Speaker 1:So zookosis is like you know. Have you ever gone? You ever seen like in sea world, like the, the killer whales, uh uh fin. On the top dorsal fin flumps over. That's like part of zookosis. It's like a sign that the animal has been living in captivity they can't figure out.
Speaker 2:I've heard that they can't figure out like yeah, how there's no, there's no physical, physiological reason why it's happening, other than just they don't they're not swimming they lost their mojo, right yeah they're not like swimming in the open ocean.
Speaker 1:and there's some, there's some. And then, you know, for human beings you see it in animals, tigers who are kept in too small of a cage will just pace back and forth. That's a sign of them being in like pretty extreme mental distress from being just like locked up when they're supposed to be ranging across you know hundreds of acres of of land and hunting and stuff. They get zookosis and human beings might be suffering from zookosis as well, because we are wild animals that sort of domesticated ourselves, like 400 years ago or 400 years ago, 400,000 years ago, we sort of domesticated each other in a wild context. So we're still a wild animal. That was that, that self domesticated, Right, a wild animal, just the human beings. We're kind of putting humans into these sort of zoos and the question is, are we building zoos, zootopias, or are we building sort of zookosis wards, you know, like these sort of zookosis environments?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, we are primates, we are, you know, a member of the apes family.
Speaker 2:You know, like that there is something very primal and you can see that sometimes, when or feel that, when, like you have rage surge up or you feel strong emotions of like, uh, love or happiness or any of the strong emotions don't think I get to pretty much any other time and that feels very tied to like DNA and primal stuff and it doesn't feel like it's something that sitting and typing on the keyboard or walking around in clothes and driving cars, it doesn't come anywhere close to touching. I think there are parts of what we've engineered as a human society that very much cut off things from our just natural animal self and I do think that affects us in some ways. I bet yeah, you know, there's not a lot of. When you get the ability to kind of consider existence and your own existence and like zoom out and think about meta things, that comes with a lot of like anxiety and different issues that are going to come along that, like, my cat is not dealing with because my cat is not pondering those, those issues yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 1:I totally agree. I think there's, there's some we see glimpses of it right of like our nature, of feeling more at ease and feeling more in our, in, you know our, environment. I forget, I forget where exactly, but I was, I was, I was learning about um, some it's gonna sound trite, but some tribe in africa, right, that was un unindustrialized and and un technological, technological, but they had interactions with um, you know, uh, more industrialized africans from travelers from other parts of the world, and one of their impressions was when they were asked would you ever like to go to, like New York, would you ever like to go to, you know, to like an industrialized place? One of their interesting things they would say this one tribe would say was they'd say no, I'd never want to go there.
Speaker 1:That's where people jump off of buildings to kill themselves, and that's the crazy, like. That was like the craziest thing they could possibly imagine, and that anyone would do that to them was a sign that the whole society was just like sick, beyond um, beyond recognition. You know something they would want to be a part of. You know, sure, yeah, um, now, granted, that's I mean. I'm sure there's a lot of other concerns and they're just anchoring on something. But the fact that they anchor on something that I think even we would say is really distressing, which is like a suicide rate which you know is pretty consistent across industrialized countries. Country suicide rates are like four and four and a thousand, or four and a thousand or four and ten thousand people commit suicide is very consistent, even if society is different.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's very consistent I mean, they may not like the idea of possibly jumping off of buildings, but have they tried candy crush, because maybe that would change their mind.
Speaker 1:That's true. Or driving like 100 miles an hour on a highway. Yeah, with the windows down. Well, maybe not the windows down going 100, but radio on.
Speaker 2:Maybe riding in an AI thing that's driving for them. I feel like going from a non-car lifestyle to driving that's a pretty big ask. I don't think. If you don't grow up in a car culture, I feel like the idea of having to drive somewhere seems more like why would you do that to me? Have someone else do that for me? Why do I have to make decisions at 100 miles an hour in the midst of doing this? That makes no sense at 100 miles an hour in the midst of doing this.
Speaker 1:That makes no sense, right? So we could build a society that was a Zootopia. So it's just an interesting proposal. I think it's different from other proposals for better societies, right? So people would say let's make society more just, right, like more fair, you know, more egalitarian, like that's one, that's one like intent, you know one kind of guiding principle for how to make society better. Um, another another that's maybe a more kind of progressive sort of left-wing one, uh, another. Another one might be like a more of a right-wing one, like let's more fully live up to the ideals of tradition, um, and, and, and, and that's that's good society, right, a society that more fully lives up to these sort of virtue, virtuous traditions, which seems to be kind of a conservative right.
Speaker 2:It feels like one side is sort of like let's clamp down on people and that will sort of create the shape of society we want, and the other side's like kind of let's let loose on people and that will produce the shape of the society we want yeah, and that's that's like from the the first stage of like, what do you do to people?
Speaker 1:but the other one's the outcomes right. So one want one in egalitarian society, wants that outcome where where, whatever you do, it leads to greater, greater equality, fairness and equality and justice across not just race and gender and stuff, but also economic stuff. And then the other one says, well, let's not worry maybe so much about the only outcome. We really want is that we get to these sort of ideals of tradition strong men, beautiful women, you know, healthy children, you know these are the traditional sort of things. We need to hit these.
Speaker 2:We need to hit these sort of aesthetic those weird traditional people with their desires for healthy children. Yeah, not like us modern smart people. We are like we don't care if our children are healthy or not. We're just indifferent to that whole right, right you know.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, to some extent, is you know it's more about the equality, right, if you, or healthy or not, we're just indifferent to that whole idea, right, right, you know Well, I mean, to some extent it's more about the equality right if you think about it. But anyways, this is sort of proposing another alternative to either of those right. Okay, so if, instead of saying well, we want greater equality and justice or we want greater sort of living up to these sort of traditional ideals, if you say no, we just want a society that lives up to our nature and eliminates zookosis from humanity. And signs of zookosis would be like malaise, uh, mental illness, uh, drug addiction, um, um, you know, low satisfaction rates with work, low satisfaction rates, you know, uh, high levels of neuroticism, high levels of anxiety. Honestly, I think I would just say I think women are more susceptible to zookosis than men, I think maybe because of the patriarchy.
Speaker 2:No, it's because men have those big, strong muscles.
Speaker 1:So we're too, strong the zookosis yeah, we just punch zookosis when it gets to us. You're the Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Speaker 2:You put them in like a clamp lock, a double leg clamp lock.
Speaker 1:Take that. Well, I was going to say because of patriarchy. Men have basically built society and I think we've built it wrong even for men. But we made it made it even worse, I think, for women than for men. Um, just because, like, for example, if we've made a society that's kind of lonely, which I think is universally believed, if we built a society that's kind of lonely, women are more social than men, so the loneliness is even worse for them, right, right.
Speaker 1:And if we've built a society that's sort of disjointed socially, by kind of having people move away from their nuclear families and having people, you know, moving all over the country and world all the time and kind of totally disjointed, you know, for men we're, you know, evolutionarily, we would have been able, we would have like wandered off from the tribe and like joined other tribes, whereas women would have like been kind of closer into their tribe, you know their band.
Speaker 1:That's just. I think that's a well-known thing about human beings, you know. Just like you see with chimps chimps, the males just wander off and spend time separate from any band and then join other bands, whereas the women chimps stay more close into the band that they're in. So our society that lets everybody move, the men. That kind of is an analog to like, maybe, a male experience, or you know, the average male, maybe you know, it's just all statements of trends, right, women can have all kinds of lives and desires and things, but I'm just saying it's a statement of a trend maybe even in guerrilla cultures, like guys through go through this, um, this phase of just being like insufferable and terrible, and they're just like they wanted to talk about.
Speaker 2:They're like you know what? I have some ideas for, uh, for a, for a jungle startup that we could like. Actually, if you want to hear, if you want to hear my new ideas for how we can really climb these trees, what, what look, if you climb a tree 1% more efficiently every day, then by the end of the year you're like you need to go and walk around another. Get out of here, please leave Like just male apes, get to a certain age and they're just like okay you need some time.
Speaker 2:Like you might go find some other people who aren't already tired of you and didn't see you grow up, and maybe they'll find you interesting, but not here my guy Not here.
Speaker 1:We've seen where all this has come from. It's boring, it's tiresome. Please get out of here. I think that probably is what was it Two?
Speaker 2:years ago you were taking your poop and throwing it against that thing over there. Yeah, Don't try and convince us. You're some sort of super genius now.
Speaker 1:I guess it is right that's a young, young males. They probably get sort of annoying, they get a little aggressive, they get a little bit like kind of sticking their fingers that they don't belong certainly get the hell out of here you know, and then they kind of wander off and it serves an evolutionary purpose, right?
Speaker 2:because it serves this sort of widespread right and yeah, sort of spread, we are the Right and yeah, sort of spreads the genes, right, we are the dandelion, the floating dandelion, things trying to find a new spot Right, and so we're more comfortable with a little bit more loneliness.
Speaker 1:We're a little more comfortable. I think it's even too lonely for men, I think you know it's just too much.
Speaker 2:I want to make it clear I don't think there are necessarily these differences between men and women. I'm just playing into the joke of it, but yeah, you don't think there's a difference.
Speaker 1:You don't think women are more social. Look at how they. Look at how they behave. How could it not?
Speaker 2:I don't know. I think they seem more social.
Speaker 1:Some of it is like that's not a that's not a diss.
Speaker 2:I actually think it's probably better to be more social than to be like more of a loner my, my brain is thinking like is it that they it that women are naturally more social, or because of the patriarchy society we've set up? They have to become more social.
Speaker 1:But chimps behave. That way is the thing. It makes me think we're like chimps, even baboons the same thing. Baboons, chimps, all of them. The men will wander off and the women will stay closer. But don't chimps also eat other chimps? Yeah, so do baboon.
Speaker 2:So I mean so not everything we've stopped the eating what if zookosis scientists find out that zookosis is caused by us not fully experiencing like the eating? Cannibalism yeah right, like they're like you need to be like full animals, which means eating other. Like you need to fight each other in the streets and then eat each other so there's also.
Speaker 1:It turns out there's a game, there's a video game called zookosis that looks horrifying. It's like a horror game where animals are being killed by like an alien monster and you have to like kill the alien monster. This is not what I mean by zookosis, no people shouldn't go by the the video game. Video game, no version of it so the idea of zookosis in humans is a mental health theory. That is I don't know how well, how well documented I I can look it up on Google Scholar quick.
Speaker 2:Remember you got to go quick, no edits.
Speaker 1:So if I say zookosis humans, then you can see there's a few. Yeah, this is not a lot of citations. This is very much like a wackadoo. I'm talking about a wackadoo thing here, just so you know so just so I understand the practical version of how we would.
Speaker 2:You're like we got to get to a Zootopia, but what are the steps to? Where do you start?
Speaker 1:Well, I guess I'm more just proposing what do you think? What if people thought about it that way instead of saying egalitarianism or socialism or capitalism or conservatism, and instead they were like Zootopia? Let's try to make a society that is in a line as closely as possible with our natures.
Speaker 2:But then it becomes a question of what is our? That's a question. What's our nature? That's a question that they've been trying to answer forever, right?
Speaker 1:And I think you're right, and I think part of it, the dangerous part would be to try to define positively Our nature is this way, therefore constrain people to that. I think that's not good, right. I think the better idea would be to say what is it not in our nature to do and try to avoid bad things, rather than try to constrain people to a certain sort of mold. Right, but it's the same question what is our nature? It's just the response of whether do we eliminate things that are not in our nature or do we constrain people to a sort of positive impression of what our nature is.
Speaker 1:The second one is bad, is dangerous because of people, especially humans. There's a lot of humans who are just wacky and they go way outside, drive way outside the lines, and I think that's fine and good for them to do, you know, as long as they don't like hurt other people. But there's a lot of things in our society that are just against our nature and we just persist, we just keep them, and they're clearly like causing people well, I was gonna say the first one, where you just start eliminating things you see as problems.
Speaker 2:I feel like, isn't that, isn't that how we got to here? Like, isn't that? Yeah right, like you would just be out of food.
Speaker 1:Let's make agriculture.
Speaker 2:It's a problem to steal things, so let's make stealing illegal. It's a problem to kill people. Let's make killing, let's outlaw these things so that we can build our society to the next level of.
Speaker 1:Maybe one theory that would help us is this guy named Ivan Illich, who is a sort of social theorist, who was Austrian but he worked in Mexico in the 60s. Actually my dad met him a few times when he was down there. But he's a well-known social theorist guy. He's kind of like a little bit of a marxian, but he's not explicitly like marxist, and anyways he wrote he had this whole theory that he called uh, he called conviviality or or hyper industrialization those are those are opposites.
Speaker 1:So hyper industrialization is when you industrialize too far and you start to eliminate what he called conviviality, which is kind of what I'm describing as utopia, but I'm using a more of like a biological framework for it and he's using more of a kind of I don't know common sense. He's just saying what's convivial, what is a nice way for humans to live? I'm saying no, let's look at the actual biology of human nature and then use that as a model for Zootopia, whereas he was just saying let's be Anyway. So Ivanilich describes this idea of hyper-industrialization. I think we can use that as a model for what's going on in our society. We've, we've, we've. Industrialization was good. Like you said, solve these problems, let's solve this problem, solve that problem is all this problem. But then what it led to is like too much and we started to get diminishing returns and then we even started to get inverted negative returns because we surpassed.
Speaker 2:They're like oh, pumping all this coal dust into the air makes everyone's health go way down. Pumping all this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere makes the global warming go way up.
Speaker 1:The seeking for profits over all other goods has caused mental illness and caused all kinds of anxieties and depressions. Yeah, exactly, Separated mother from child. At this point we're in a position where most technologically advanced children, at least in America, don't have a childhood. That doesn't seem like a good idea.
Speaker 2:Like they just are exposed right away to don't have a childhood. That doesn't seem like a good idea. You know, Like they just are exposed right away to.
Speaker 1:They just immediately are put on phones and they just spend hours every day on screens and they don't go outside. They don't play and when they do play, it's completely observed by their parents and moderated by their parents, which is not play. We all know that when adults were around, we didn't really play and then, when adults were gone, we actually did some like serious play you know, we like actually we could do some fun stuff.
Speaker 1:Um, so like, basically and this is not me saying this this is jonathan height. One of the leading psychologists today, is going on tv right now. He's selling his whole book something anxiety generation where he talks all about this. And he I just saw him on he's in, he's on the New York times, he's on Joe Rogan, he's on everything saying this and I don't think he's wrong. I think he's wrong about other things, about his psychology stuff that he does, but he's not wrong about this. He's really saying like this is a big problem. Children saying like this is a big problem. Children are not having a childhood anymore. That's the opposite of zootopia, that's the opposite of conviviality. Yeah, that's gonna, there's gonna be some.
Speaker 1:That's not good yeah, I don't know I mean I.
Speaker 2:We have a generation of people that grew up with a certain set of issues, but I think there's another. Not not being able to go out and really experience the world until you're a certain age is gonna cause a whole nother set of issues with people who are just, like you know, like letting, letting people lose. Some people will handle it, some people. It's just going to be way too much like all at once.
Speaker 1:It's, I guess, not good the trade anyways, it's just all these things that we I hear I'm kind of synthesizing all of this into this. Maybe we're doing a theories from the multiverse today, kind of synthesizing everything into this term, this idea of Zootopia. And then it's opposite Zookosis. So when you don't have Zookopia, you'll see increases in Zookosis, which will be anxiety, depression, low level, low level mental illness will go up. And we've talked about this before with the attachment issue, right.
Speaker 1:So if we, if we force women and men to go to work right after they've had a kid and they don't we don't give them the first, you know, year to three years of a child's life to form proper attachments, um, then, and if we reckon yeah, reckon, yeah, then, then then we'll have, we'll have major zookosis. It's just like if you said, hey, we, we have the baby, we have the baby seal is born, and then we keep the mother seal in a different cage from the baby seal, it's like, well, you're gonna, meant, you're gonna harm the baby seal that way, like it's so obvious, like the mother right need to stay together and the dad should probably be there too, unless, like I don't know, dad seals like eat the babies or something like I don't know what the nature of seals are.
Speaker 2:But in the nature of humans, like you know, everybody should be like around the baby, forming connections and bonds right, or they should be allowed to form whatever connections and bonds that they would do in the wild.
Speaker 1:Right like right, there are some, I think, polar bears, it's like the dads you have to be out of the picture, but, like dads, just need to go, yeah, but some, some species.
Speaker 2:They're like yeah, we do this as a group, and some people, some species, do it not just as like a, a parent child group, but as like a group of parents and a group of children. You know, it's like.
Speaker 2:I think we, when we pull people, zoos are. Zoos are this whole thing where it's like it's good to be able to see animals up close and kind of get the safe kind of a safe experience, that close to a real animal. But it's also terrible to remove an animal from its natural spot just so we can like Google at it and point at it and take pictures, so it's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to the San Diego Zoo next weekend. Great, so we'll see. I'll report back what animals I thought had zookosis and what animals didn't.
Speaker 2:I didn't. I mean, I feel very conflicted about American zoos anyway, but going to zoos in Japan I was like, oh, american zoos actually take a lot more care for it than some places in the world where they're just like no, these are animals.
Speaker 1:They're animals, put them on display.
Speaker 2:There was like a rhino. There was like a rhino. So in Asahikawa, which is in Hokkaido, is one of the most famous zoos in Japan and I went to the zoo there and they have like a rhino just standing on like a small concrete pillar, basically like rhino-sized pillar, and they're like, look, there's a rhino. And you're like, yeah, of course there's the rhino, it can't go anywhere else.
Speaker 1:It just has to kind rhino. And you're like, yeah, of course there's the rhino. It can't go anywhere else.
Speaker 2:It like it just has to, kind of like you're saying pace back and forth and that's all I can do, but it's uh like on a plinth. Yeah right, american zoos have been better than that, but still, you know, now we're in the age of high, high, uh high frame rate, 4k, you know, 8k film and documentarians who can go out and get it. So I'm like almost at the point where I'm like I don't know, I think I'm good just seeing it on on screens and stuff or make the zoos like you know, like the san diego zoo.
Speaker 1:I've never been to san diego zoo but I've heard it's like an experience, like a safari. The animals are like in a huge environment. That that is. You know. They're not going to be experiencing zookosis and I think they do it the best. Yeah, and and, but you could just say the laws are, you have to meet that standard, and then the zoos would just have fewer animals, right? I mean, that's the only thing the zoo could still operate. It just has to have fewer animals give them more space you know yeah yeah, but that, yeah, it's just.
Speaker 2:It's probably low on the list of people's priorities because they're like we gotta well, I'd like the human zoo to be better first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd like the human zoo to be better. That's what that is.
Speaker 2:If you're like, hey, we need to take care of.
Speaker 1:They're like we got people problems we need to take care of yeah, you could always divert someone to somewhere else although the japanese could do it, they don't have as many people. I mean, they have people problems, but like there are a bunch of people problems there, yeah, but they definitely are. I think they are having zookosis. This this also comes back to what we said, what I was talking about a little bit at the beginning, which is the birth rate thing. You know, in some ways not having babies. That's what animals do when they have zookosis, right, when animals are like, oh, they're in the wild, they would have this many children, but we can't get them to breed in captivity. We don't know why.
Speaker 1:It's like that's zookosis, right? That's a sign that you've taken. You've put them in an environment that's not natural, that's not fitting with their nature. And one of those signs of zookosis is no reproduction, whether it's not having sex or not being fertile or or whatever it is. And if you look at Korea, they hyper-industrialized very rapidly. If you go to Korea, it is gray, it is like cement everywhere and it is like a gray.
Speaker 2:I'm sure there's some neon and yeah.
Speaker 1:Neon. Oh great yes. But they hyper-industrialized, and now their birth rate's 0.7. 0.7? That's 2.2 is just steady state, right? Because the 0.2 counts for people who die. And then 2 is replacement. So 2.2 is replacement, 0.7 is less than 50 percent replacement, which means that in one generation their population will get done by half more than half. Wow, so right now there's 50 million koreans. If they keep this up for for 40 years, they'll only be 25 korean.
Speaker 2:25 million koreans, so half as many koreans it's going to be twice as easy to get into a Korean girl band or boy band. That's true.
Speaker 1:You're looking at the upside. Oh my goodness, there's some major upsides Right now. The competition to get into one of those is just incredible.
Speaker 2:But you're telling me that in a mere 50, just naturally, I'm going to have a twice. My shots are going to double.
Speaker 1:I like I like you'll be old but, I'll be the. No, I'll be.
Speaker 2:I'll be the old member.
Speaker 1:Like you know how they all every member of the group has a thing like there's the bad boy. And there's, I'll be the like super old guy that's always what people are looking for in boy bands, yeah for for my verse in the song.
Speaker 2:I'll just be like hello. I remember when there'll be like a really weird group of fans that are just like that, are super into you, way into me they're really into you, but you know about scott.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, scott, he's great. I like him it really went out on a limb to get Scott in there, but I think they did a good choice.
Speaker 2:I think he's really great. You've done a bad job. Now you have me all the way off of your idea, because now I want yes.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, all this birth rate stuff is kind of interesting because it's like, well, people can do whatever they want. If women want to have fewer children, it's up to them. You can kind of see it as like a personal choice thing. But then you look at it and you're like but this is clearly a sign that things have gone off the rail. This is a sign that something's bad, right yeah?
Speaker 2:but the statement if women want to have more children, that's up to them and then being like, well, maybe that's not so you could see any alternative to that is if women want to have, if women don't want to have children, that's not up to them and that feels like no part of that is no, it is no, it is exactly.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the danger. The danger is right-wing powers who are not faint of heart about reducing people's rights. They can come in and say well, I've got an explanation, I've got a solution, we'll just like take these women and have them not go to school anymore. Look at that. All of a sudden, we got moms in the kitchen.
Speaker 2:You know exactly.
Speaker 1:So what I'm trying to propose is, I think if we, as utopian approach, could be a left wing or a not even left-wing, just a sort of not fascist, not gender patriarchal approach to, to to solving, among other things, I mean, I think it would solve lots of things. All. I think a lot of these issues that we're facing in the developed countries are zookosis. I think that that's a that's a kind of fringe idea, but I wonder if it shouldn't be so fringe, but I, I guess I don't understand that.
Speaker 2:If you're trying to say, hey, everyone be more zootopian, or what? Yeah, let's make everyone follow your nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's use zootopian policies. So, for instance, attachment scientists will tell you that, with evidence and proof, that human beings form attachments in the first years of life and that those attachments are deeply, deeply important for the well-functioning of our psyche for the rest of our lives. Sure, sure that's not like, that's not like a religion that some guy made up a thousand years ago. That's science. We figured out the last 50 years and so that'd be zootopian. Okay, let's make a raft of policies that support human attachment boom, and it would probably be the obvious things parental leave, and. But there's other things about human, human nature, like, like these questions about loneliness and and community. You know which? We'd have to find the actual science to really show it. There is that, that number you talked about it to me the other day the, the 150 dunbar's number?
Speaker 2:yeah, dunbar's number tell.
Speaker 1:Do you want to tell people because you just had in a brunch a brush with dunbar himself or something right, didn't you? I was editing?
Speaker 2:yeah, I was editing a podcast that he was a guest on, so I heard a long interview of his and. Dunbar's number is he's talking about. Like historically, there's a number of people that you can kind of group and have a strong connection with. Or you know, you're not going to have strong connections with thousands and thousands of people, like just across time and across cultures. It seems to be about 150. They were saying 150 is like the number of human connections before you really just can't manage it anymore.
Speaker 1:So so there you go so that's, there's science behind that, so that's some kind of starts to in sit in, propose this idea that we need to have like support for human communities, human connection, right, and you might think, well, people just do that without us having to support it. It's like, well, clearly not. People are saying they're lonely and people are saying they don't have any friends. Like, right, we might actually need to make policies and and actually structures in society, maybe even the built environment needs to be made in such a way that, just like in zootopia, they had like the little doors for like the little mice and then the doors for the rabbits and the doors for the giraffes, like we might actually have to build the environment in such a way that it suits our natures.
Speaker 1:I don't know. Piazzas, uh, or, or public transit, or just getting cars, because cars are dangerous and divide, cut up and cut up neighborhoods so people can't connect. Maybe just getting cars out of a third of all streets, so 30 of streets have no cars, just as an example of like sure what you could do well.
Speaker 2:And they say it's way more successful to to change the environment than to try to alter people's bit, you know like right, right to change the environment so that it naturally creates the behavior you're wanting to incentivize, instead of trying to just scold people into doing the right thing. Right, yeah, no, you don't want to do anything like that.
Speaker 1:No, and you certainly don't want to take rights away from people and you certainly don't want to, you know, make them conform to some mold of like nature that you're supposed to be. That's all bullshit, because part of human nature is like choice and controlled randomness, where we like go off and try new things and do. That's part of human nature. So you don't want to constrain that. But, yeah, I wonder if this is a way to approach where it's not left, it's not right, it's not conservative, it's not socialist, it's Zootopian. And people can ask you, you what's your politics? And you can say zootopian. I think we should live in a world where society suits and upholds our nature as human beings. Okay, and, and you couldn't say that 50 years ago, because we didn't have the science, we didn't know about attachment theory, we didn't know dunbar's number, we didn't know, you know, uh, about the effects of loneliness on people. We didn't know about these things.
Speaker 2:We didn't have the movie Zootopia. People wouldn't understand the reference at all. No one would have gotten it. It would have been 1974. You would have had to been like hey man, what do you think man?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:It wouldn't have worked out. You're right, we had to wait 50 years, jesus 50 years ago was only 1974.
Speaker 1:Okay, sorry, 70 years ago, that's how math works. 70 years ago we didn't have it. God, we're old. Well, cool, I don't know. This was sort of about movies, which is part of solutions. I feel like we're always talking about movies, but it took Zootopia to a deep, deep, profound philosophical level. So next profound philosophical level. So next time you're watching those little, that little you know, bunny bounce around on the screen with her fox friend, you can be like whoa this is deep.
Speaker 2:You're like this is about more than just what they're saying. Oh, wait a minute. All cartoon wait movies have like themes and meanings and oh my gosh, this is blowing my mind do?
Speaker 1:I sound like an insufferable adolescent gorilla right now.
Speaker 2:Get out of our troop of gorillas. But when you rear back and bang on your chest real big, then I do.
Speaker 1:Is that what you guys do at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu? Is that a common move, that's?
Speaker 2:the most common move. You're not allowed to finish a match without doing that At least once.
Speaker 1:Thanks everybody for listening to this. No edit, I know.
Speaker 2:This is the closest we're going to get to a live stream, because I'll basically end this, go back and upload it and it'll be out today.
Speaker 1:All right, we'll see everybody in the soup. Please message us See you in the soup.
Speaker 2:We can start a bit of a dialogue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, see you in the dialogue. Yeah, see you in the soup. You've never heard that. What kind of soup? I'm thinking like a little bit of a broccoli, maybe broccoli floating by maybe some mushrooms. Are you thinking like a chili?
Speaker 2:you're thinking like beans I was going tomato, tomato. You know what I like to make is a wild rice soup, so good.
Speaker 1:I make it with cashew instead of milk, so it's like dairy-free. It's's so good.
Speaker 2:Okay, thanks for inviting me over. I'll come over for some wild rice soup. Wild rice soup.
Speaker 1:Just bring some celery and some carrots. I got everything else we need.
Speaker 2:I make it mean stone soup. Have you had stone?
Speaker 1:soup before. Yeah, stone soup, that's like everything right, that's like whatever you got in the kitchen. Well, no, Like my neighbor puts in.
Speaker 2:I just need some onions. He puts in, and then another neighbor brings in some carrots.
Speaker 1:Have you seen this.
Speaker 2:Do you know this story?
Speaker 1:I just know what Stone Soup is. Stone Soup is whatever you got in the fridge, whatever you got in the house. Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:It's an old kid's story where, like, a guy tricks a bunch of people who are mad at each other and not wanting to cooperate into making soup together, and then, by the end of it they're all. They're all friends. So oh, shout out to stone soup.
Speaker 1:The kids book oh, get your stones ready, everybody all right, all right. Thanks everybody for listening go live your zootopia enjoy be in the soup.
Speaker 2:What is that? Be in the sea in the soup. See you in the soup, everybody be in the soup.
Speaker 1:Bye, bye-bye, thank you.