Bret! Evergreen student here. Never got a chance to take one of ur classes but I had couple friends in ur class when the shit hit the fan last year.. just wanted to say, you are absolutely loved in my househouse and accross my friends. We've still been experiencing some incredible BS at Evergreen but I just wanted to say thank you for standing up for what is right and helping lead students away from some of the toxic propoganda taught at this establishment. It has been incredibly meaningful and i hope ypu continue to post more videos! -Orion Valencia
Orion Valencia Why don't you guys rise up and ask for George Bridges resignation. He doesn't stand up for justice. Social justice is not tribalism. Where one group gains power over another due to perceived injustices. Equity comes from all people being judged by their character not their skin color. Frankly, Bridges is a very weak, brainwashed and deluded liberal.
My mother passed away just last evening and I wanted you to know that I found this video very interesting, and strangely comforting. It also helps explain to me how I was so effected by the recent death of someone I knew only online, first playing games with him a decade or more ago, and then watching him on UA-cam, and watching his channel, grow to over 2 million subscribers and him becoming one of the biggest names in online gaming journalism and champion against anti consumer practices by gaming companies. Thank you Dr. Weinstein for sharing this with us.
There is a theory in cognitive science that memory in humans extends beyond our brains and we actually "store" moments or memories within the memories of those closest to us. Many individuals who have cohabitated for a long period of time with a significant other who find themselves suddenly without that person, say a loss from a death or even a divorce of a spouse, speak of the loss almost in terms of an amputation - "a part of me is missing." This can actually be very true. We begin to rely on people to recall certain things and function in harmony with us in both thought and action. Over the years this symbiosis creates a sort of mental fusing where two people, while not physically connected, share a bond that is almost just as palpable.
Hey Bret great video! I was wondering if you could do a video on the evolutionary meaning of depression (clinical). It seems counterintuitive for individuals to undergo vegetative states and experience adhedonia to me and be such a prevalent psychopathology. Keep up the great work
I would also love to hear Brett's thoughts on this topic. It's something I have wondered about before, and I think it has to do with cutting out distractions and ruminating. There's an awful lot of thinking and internal dialogue involved with depression (which could be very beneficial), and I wonder if it was something that started out as adaptive, but can get out of control and become counter productive. The metaphor in my head is something like an auto-immune disorder, or an allergy, where the immune system identifies something innocuous as an enemy, and then goes into overdrive and actually harms itself. I wonder if our ancestors had to be able to deal with such difficult circumstances that they developed an emotional immune system, but like a sterile environment leads to allergies, our attempts to make modern life much safer and 'trouble-free' has lead to an increase in depression. Situational depression has gone down dramatically, but depression for seemingly 'no reason' has become more and more prevalent in the most 'developed' countries in the world. I want to elaborate, but I haven't thought it through yet.
Excellent thoughts, Donnie Dread. I too would like to hear Brett's thoughts. 'safer' and 'trouble-free' is an interesting claim. While I can see that with an objective, physical-threat analysis, this is true. My difficulty accepting the idea that we can describe this to be the case intellectually, is that all the threats immediately present in society are typically abstract in nature, or have such a significant non-physical value as to be easily misapprehended as 'not a threat'. Consider the case of my losing my income. The money I gain from it is abstract, the absence of money is an abstract value, the mortgage on my house is abstract, the bank deals in abstract values, and so on. The social factors are abstract, if I don't work, I am not fulfilling the ideals my parents or partner place on me, my peers won't respect me if I remain unemployed, and if such a state is perpetuated for some length of time I will no longer have friends, the people who respect me, respect me on the basis of abstract criteria. At some point there is the abstract idea of failure that must be dealt with. We hate people over abstract social items. It doesn't matter whether I work physically or not, it is whether I am paid for that work that counts, whether I am 'independent' or not. Something like this. In addition to this type of abstract threat, which looms because I am a wage-worker in a company that could replace me with a robot in the near future, there is the MSM, informing me about how threatening the world is, how large the government is, how vicious the criminals are, how useless the millennials are, how entitled the pensioners are, how low the birth-rate is, how crazy the liberals are, how hateful the conservatives are, and on and on it goes. Most of these problems are not problems I can solve. If I am presented with a large number of problems I cannot solve, how do I resolve the sense of threat? My point is, if it isn't already obvious, that we do not live in a trouble-free era. We are told about countless troubles we can do nothing about (the middle-east, North Korea, Islamic extremists), amidst a set of personal problems the elements of which are not physical, tangible or transient. A wolf is an threat that is measurable, the solution is straight-forward, transient, and if I have a rifle I have the power to deal with it. An employer suggesting to me that perhaps a robot could replace me if I cause problems for him is a far more abstract threat. [Note that the example of an employer threatening to replace me is a fabrication for the sake of argument] Good thinking, Donnie, I would suggest that the 'trouble-free' premise, even in a relative sense, is false. The threats are simply different, and this difference in the nature of perceived threats may actually be part of the problem.
Dave Wilson this is all good stuff, and well thought out. There are myriad chronic stressors, some of which can debilitate us directly or indirectly (eg. drug addiction secondary to chronic severe pain, or severe anxiety/insomnia). The threat of brutal social stigmatization atop already harsh, or even horrifying struggles, create a sense of unavoidable ego catastrophe. If not death, then a sense of looming, abject failure of an almost unbearable kind. Again, the stressors are now largely chronic, and egoic/emotional, rather than transient and existential.
Bret, keeping making these videos. People crave pure unadulterated, calm and thoughtful conversations in science and philosophy without all the crazy sensational graphics, click bait, and political/social and cynical garbage that tends to creep into these subjects.
I appreciated hearing the bit about already being prepared for the loss of someone and to not feel guilty for not needing to grieve after they actually die. My parents were a generation older than most of my peer group’s and I began anticipating their death at a young age so by the time they died I felt I’d done all the work already, but other people didn’t understand this.
My father said, "Take the marble off the steps NOW!" Or, "Move slowly . . . get hurt slowly" (example: working in a low ceiling attic with nails protruding) and scores of other wisdoms that have become part of me.
In addition to everyone's advocating Bret to make more videos on the philosophy behind evolution; love the background. Great setting for the interview!
WEinstien is Such a brilliant mind and so likeable, too! This also added to my understanding of grief - yes, others are wired into our nervous system and we hit upon little wired -in pockets less and less as our life carries on and we need to deal with the new challenges and new people creating more and different wiring connections. ....and yet, a grandfather can still see through your eyes! Beautiful!
I was with my brother when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, I found out he was stage 4 and landed up telling him he had a 4% chance of living for 5 years. He went from being clinically obese to looking like he was anorexic in 9 months. I was upset before he died but not really upset after he did die. I had told other family members to get comfortable with the idea that he was going to die, he lived in my house so I did see the whole thing until he went into oblivion.
This is so interesting! I originally found you as many did via evergreen, but as time passed I find your explanations of biology so much more interesting! You are an amazing professor!
Cats can feel grief 100%, both acute (crying out when finding a dead friend) and prolonged (not eating for weeks and looking almost half their weight). I have seen this myself on several felines since I work with them for many years. For me this is indisputable.
Sounds like a fan on a compressor unit is unbalanced. Might need a new blade, or motor. Install a hard start kit and new high value capacitor as well. Check your refrigerant levels and contactor
We grieve our own deaths 'ahead of time.' This is obvious. We aren't going to be bothered by death (or anything else) when we're dead. The time to realize that our ability to experience things will be taken away from us, and to lament the loss, is when we're still alive to contemplate this prospect.
Intrograte I also think it is a brilliant solution, but you can see what he's saying... Some goofball is going to complain about how concieted he is to compare himself to Einstein...
Bret, I just found your channel today (your testimony on evergreen was in my recommended feed). Love what I’ve seen so far - this video in particular. I feel the presence of loved ones in situations similar to the one you mentioned about moving a ladder. I feel the presence of loved ones both living and deceased- have you experienced the same?
To the point of the Jewish tradition of not placing a headstone until a year after burial. When my father passed away a few years ago, my mom and I were advised not to pay for a headstone until at least a year after the burial because the earth can shift and settle for a while and it might interfere with the headstone. So I'm not sure if these are related.
I had a cat mother who was griefing about her dead kittens, she stayed days at their side, and she knew they were dead. On the other hand my grandparents had a cat who killed all her kittens without any sign of griefing. So, i would say it is not that easy!
The unveiling (in Judaism) signifies the end of the official period of both public and private mourning not grief. While they are related, they are also distinct things in which someone can engage in mourning but feel no psychological grief, or be greatly aggrieved but no longer continue to mourn the death (probably the case). I'd be interested to know how well the official mourning period of a single year actually maps to someones typical experience of grieving over the loss of a parent or child. I imagine a year is probably enough for an adult to recover from the loss of a parent, a child, perhaps not. However I have always appreciated at least the idea that one is both obliged to mourn the loss, but also obliged to stop it at some point, as it is not healthy to become fixated on it forever
Bret, do you have any comments on the long term effects of grief on mental health? What happens to a person when they experience several traumatic events in a row that cause their own separate states of grief? What is the limits of grief a person or animal can handle without damaging the mental well-being of the creature?
Benjamin Boyce is the interviewer in this, and his channel is fantastic! He covers the Evergreen scandal in great depth, and I highly recommend checking out his content.
There is something I feel he missed when he talked about grieving for John F. Kennedy. I think, it's not so much Kennedy that many people were grieving for, but the idea that nobody would assassinate the US president, that we were immune from a certain kind of political strife. They were grieving for the assumptions about how their country operated that they'd woven into how the interacted with the world.
There's a way. Write a script to generate 4000 email accounts. Also make the script create and login to their youtube accounts. Finally hit like, then subscribe.
Bret I'll be going to see you and Jordan and Sam on the 23rd of June in Vancouver - would you be available for an interview sometime? I'd like to get your take on the evolutionary utility of ritual practices like yoga. Thanks for your work.
This notion of a person's lost loved ones living on within them isn't one I've ever given much weight to. Interestingly, in the way Bret explained it here, it does make some sense, if only as a metaphor or a pleasant psychological trick to play on oneself (something I imagine we do all the time, both knowingly and unknowingly). I wonder if it can't be explained along biological or mimetic lines insofar as one's ancestors really do live on in our genetic material and their teachings (as in the case of a grandfather, as here described) 'run as software' that informs our behaviour and, by extension, our 'self'. With regard to the latter, I guess one could say our notion of self includes much software of a mimetic kind, the most valued of which likely stems from those individuals closest to us, those we view as mentors especially. Then again, subsuming an element of someone's teachings into one's own view isn't necessarily paramount to some vestige of their personality living on(This, I think, is what Benjamin was saying). One could argue that we conduct a kind of emulation of an imagined thought process, Bret employs his grandfather's sensibility in beholding the ladder and the danger may pose, maybe he runs a lo-fi copy of his grandfather's personality in assessing his environment. While this is interesting, I guess it isn't really the crux of the topic. I understand the hypothesis, or think I do, that the grieving stage is a readjustment or reorientation to a social world that has been altered by the death of an important individual. Why exactly such a process is necessary/advantageous is not, however, entirely clear to me. Would we not be better off moving on immediately, as a cat would after losing a kitten? Is the suggestion that highly social creatures cannot avoid such a stage? That the nature of their social structures created grief as a sort of by product, or that it is somehow important for an individual to show that they are grieving? Does a deep investment in other individuals, with all the activation of emotional circuitry that goes along with that, necessitate pain at their loss?(Assuming a creature of high intelligence) I guess its probably the last of those, if I understood correctly. In any case, fascinating topic, thank you.
It's possible that one of the reasons for why some organisms experience grief is for the purpose of remembering what they said or did wrong to die. I suspect that older peoples deaths are grieved less. Because it was expected and we know they did nothing 'wrong' to die. Notice that when a person dies they suddenly become more memorable and the things they said are now looked at as more important. When a person dies they become kind of mythological figure and above a normal human being. When a young person dies unexpectedly we think about them. Our minds go into the past and we repeat experiences in our minds whilst feeling sadness. We could think about the neurotransmitters that are released during grief. Maybe it's adrenalin and cortisol. Both adrenalin and cortisol play a role in the strength of memories. And if it's not to remember what they did wrong to die (or what you did wrong to allow it to happen), this person must have been important (and therefore useful) and it would pay to remember their words and teachings. We then can learn from them and at least their death can be somewhat useful
It seems like Bret wants to explain everything as a beneficial adaptation instead of an unfortunate and maybe irremovable bi product of a different adaptation.
I would think the grief over losing a dependent would instead be about learning from mistakes made. It doesn't make sense to me that the adaptation-scenario would take that long. Moreover, one would think this would apply to any mammal and bird. Mistakes made though would make more sense: this takes a lot of analysis. It also has a clear benefit (not dying yourself, or having other children/dependents die by the same errors). And there it makes sense that social animals have more of it: we would get that when a hunting partner dies; a cat wouldn't. Though the cat should still have it when a kitten dies, one would suspect. And of course it has the advantage of explaining why we don't have seperate words: both are about learning after a death, by revisiting their lives and incorporating the past into ourselves. Differentiation: one would think that if it's about not repeating mistakes, you would be riddled with "what could I have done differently"... guilt. A final consideration is social to the core. While this couldn't evolve initially, it could add on, a need to signal that this person was important to us, that we're learning from past mistakes and so forth. As always, the best way of faking it, is doing it sincerely.
Social justice mobs should run all these types of profs out of their respective universities so that they'll end up exiled to UA-cam where we can have the pleasure of watching them.
the right should want a vibrant left? i think the right would settle for a left that's at least able to engage in a conversation. The left needs to provide some articulated arguments about the merit of helping those disposed by the system. No one on the right will ever be persuaded by chanting and ranting.
and maybe we have regrets that we didnt spend more time with the ones we lost because our brain may want us to scan reasons on why we lost them and what we could have done better for the next replacement.
I clicked on this thinking you were referring to "griefing", the video game term where you destroy someone's hard work in a game. VERY different topic. lol
Trying to process a loss like Anthony Bourdain is confusing to me. I never met the guy but feel some sense of grief. How is this an evolutionary advantage?
We are social creatures, not solitary predators. Our survival depends on each other entirely. We live or die by each other. Your individual adaptations are there to serve your species, not the individual you.
I think its that the evolutionary adaptation does not account for the ability to have a distant stranger speak or show themselves to you in person while not actually being nearby. If you consider the fact that our senses are the main source of input, there is no largely apparent difference for the brains interpretation mechanism in having a person sending you sensory signals in real life or through the screen (only considering sound & light).
Bret, your frandfather IS there, at least the copy you made if him when he was alive lives amid the other models of loved ones and enemies that you constructed in your subconcious mind. I bet that is how elephants do It too...
The idea of explicating a process like grief from a scientific perceptive almost seems incongruous to me. It's as if to say we can dilute the experience through the dead mechanistic (scientismic) process yet also talk about the solemn experience of the individual, which doesn't explain a whole lot. It's putting the cart before the horse.
I would argue that grief is the downside of human mercy for it is the curiosity of the animals. In another' words: " If a man mates with an animal, he shall Surely be put to death, and You shall kill the animal."!! "If a woman approaches any animal and mates with IT , You shall kill the woman and the animal. They shall Surely be put to death. Their blood IS upon them." ( Orthodox is not up for an argument) For: " I shall return Again to My Place till they acknowledge their offense. In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me "!! Surely Moab shall be like Sodom and the people of Ammon like Gomorrah - overturned with weeds and saltpits and a perpetual desolation... The RESIDUE of My People shall plunder them and The Remnant of MY PEOPLE shall possess them. But now ( VIP) entreat God's Favor, that He may be gracious, while this is being done by Your Hands : " Such also shall be the plague on the horses and the mule, on the camel and the donkey and on all the cattle that will be in those camps - so shall this plague be : grief, no mercy . And if any PERSON who does any work on that same day, that person , I will destroy from among his people. So YOU shall rise before the gray headed and honor the Presence of an old man and fear Your God: I am the Lord :)
His grandfather's teachings are a mark left past the man's own death. The marks on the people who are still alive, and the lessons they pass on after that. That is the human spirit that carries on over millenia.
Bret is an amazing thinker but his hair is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. He looks like a black singer from the 1950s. Like Sam Cooke or something.
His older brother was also a pretty important role model for him (among others). And I bet his older brother had role models of his own. If you want to be smarter, you have be inspired and be aspired to be greater than who you currently are.
Bret!
Evergreen student here. Never got a chance to take one of ur classes but I had couple friends in ur class when the shit hit the fan last year..
just wanted to say, you are absolutely loved in my househouse and accross my friends. We've still been experiencing some incredible BS at Evergreen but I just wanted to say thank you for standing up for what is right and helping lead students away from some of the toxic propoganda taught at this establishment. It has been incredibly meaningful and i hope ypu continue to post more videos!
-Orion Valencia
Orion Valencia Why don't you guys rise up and ask for George Bridges resignation. He doesn't stand up for justice. Social justice is not tribalism. Where one group gains power over another due to perceived injustices. Equity comes from all people being judged by their character not their skin color. Frankly, Bridges is a very weak, brainwashed and deluded liberal.
Bret is my favorite bagel. I wish I could watch one of these every day.
Invin bagel?
17:10 to end
Is that a code word for jew? Shame on you
Mert Su Why do people always assume racism? Geez, it's just a joke about what was said at the end of the video.
Mert Su coffee meets bagel
My mother passed away just last evening and I wanted you to know that I found this video very interesting, and strangely comforting.
It also helps explain to me how I was so effected by the recent death of someone I knew only online, first playing games with him a decade or more ago, and then watching him on UA-cam, and watching his channel, grow to over 2 million subscribers and him becoming one of the biggest names in online gaming journalism and champion against anti consumer practices by gaming companies.
Thank you Dr. Weinstein for sharing this with us.
There is a theory in cognitive science that memory in humans extends beyond our brains and we actually "store" moments or memories within the memories of those closest to us. Many individuals who have cohabitated for a long period of time with a significant other who find themselves suddenly without that person, say a loss from a death or even a divorce of a spouse, speak of the loss almost in terms of an amputation - "a part of me is missing." This can actually be very true. We begin to rely on people to recall certain things and function in harmony with us in both thought and action. Over the years this symbiosis creates a sort of mental fusing where two people, while not physically connected, share a bond that is almost just as palpable.
it's nice seeing bret loosen up and be more casual/lighthearted at the end there...just something i've never seen from him
Thanks. Lost my dad, who was my anchor and mentor in almost all things, and everything you say mirrors my experience since then. (2014)
Finally bret! You got to post more!
Hey Bret great video! I was wondering if you could do a video on the evolutionary meaning of depression (clinical). It seems counterintuitive for individuals to undergo vegetative states and experience adhedonia to me and be such a prevalent psychopathology. Keep up the great work
i’d love this too.
Yes.
I would also love to hear Brett's thoughts on this topic. It's something I have wondered about before, and I think it has to do with cutting out distractions and ruminating. There's an awful lot of thinking and internal dialogue involved with depression (which could be very beneficial), and I wonder if it was something that started out as adaptive, but can get out of control and become counter productive.
The metaphor in my head is something like an auto-immune disorder, or an allergy, where the immune system identifies something innocuous as an enemy, and then goes into overdrive and actually harms itself. I wonder if our ancestors had to be able to deal with such difficult circumstances that they developed an emotional immune system, but like a sterile environment leads to allergies, our attempts to make modern life much safer and 'trouble-free' has lead to an increase in depression. Situational depression has gone down dramatically, but depression for seemingly 'no reason' has become more and more prevalent in the most 'developed' countries in the world. I want to elaborate, but I haven't thought it through yet.
Excellent thoughts, Donnie Dread. I too would like to hear Brett's thoughts.
'safer' and 'trouble-free' is an interesting claim. While I can see that with an objective, physical-threat analysis, this is true. My difficulty accepting the idea that we can describe this to be the case intellectually, is that all the threats immediately present in society are typically abstract in nature, or have such a significant non-physical value as to be easily misapprehended as 'not a threat'.
Consider the case of my losing my income. The money I gain from it is abstract, the absence of money is an abstract value, the mortgage on my house is abstract, the bank deals in abstract values, and so on. The social factors are abstract, if I don't work, I am not fulfilling the ideals my parents or partner place on me, my peers won't respect me if I remain unemployed, and if such a state is perpetuated for some length of time I will no longer have friends, the people who respect me, respect me on the basis of abstract criteria. At some point there is the abstract idea of failure that must be dealt with.
We hate people over abstract social items. It doesn't matter whether I work physically or not, it is whether I am paid for that work that counts, whether I am 'independent' or not. Something like this.
In addition to this type of abstract threat, which looms because I am a wage-worker in a company that could replace me with a robot in the near future, there is the MSM, informing me about how threatening the world is, how large the government is, how vicious the criminals are, how useless the millennials are, how entitled the pensioners are, how low the birth-rate is, how crazy the liberals are, how hateful the conservatives are, and on and on it goes. Most of these problems are not problems I can solve. If I am presented with a large number of problems I cannot solve, how do I resolve the sense of threat?
My point is, if it isn't already obvious, that we do not live in a trouble-free era. We are told about countless troubles we can do nothing about (the middle-east, North Korea, Islamic extremists), amidst a set of personal problems the elements of which are not physical, tangible or transient. A wolf is an threat that is measurable, the solution is straight-forward, transient, and if I have a rifle I have the power to deal with it. An employer suggesting to me that perhaps a robot could replace me if I cause problems for him is a far more abstract threat.
[Note that the example of an employer threatening to replace me is a fabrication for the sake of argument]
Good thinking, Donnie, I would suggest that the 'trouble-free' premise, even in a relative sense, is false. The threats are simply different, and this difference in the nature of perceived threats may actually be part of the problem.
Dave Wilson this is all good stuff, and well thought out. There are myriad chronic stressors, some of which can debilitate us directly or indirectly (eg. drug addiction secondary to chronic severe pain, or severe anxiety/insomnia). The threat of brutal social stigmatization atop already harsh, or even horrifying struggles, create a sense of unavoidable ego catastrophe. If not death, then a sense of looming, abject failure of an almost unbearable kind. Again, the stressors are now largely chronic, and egoic/emotional, rather than transient and existential.
Bret, keeping making these videos. People crave pure unadulterated, calm and thoughtful conversations in science and philosophy without all the crazy sensational graphics, click bait, and political/social and cynical garbage that tends to creep into these subjects.
I'm so glad you made this
I appreciated hearing the bit about already being prepared for the loss of someone and to not feel guilty for not needing to grieve after they actually die. My parents were a generation older than most of my peer group’s and I began anticipating their death at a young age so by the time they died I felt I’d done all the work already, but other people didn’t understand this.
My father said, "Take the marble off the steps NOW!" Or, "Move slowly . . . get hurt slowly" (example: working in a low ceiling attic with nails protruding) and scores of other wisdoms that have become part of me.
What an amazing explanation of grief! I never thought about it this way, fascinating and illuminating
In addition to everyone's advocating Bret to make more videos on the philosophy behind evolution; love the background. Great setting for the interview!
WEinstien is Such a brilliant mind and so likeable, too! This also added to my understanding of grief - yes, others are wired into our nervous system and we hit upon little wired -in pockets less and less as our life carries on and we need to deal with the new challenges and new people creating more and different wiring connections. ....and yet, a grandfather can still see through your eyes! Beautiful!
I was with my brother when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, I found out he was stage 4 and landed up telling him he had a 4% chance of living for 5 years. He went from being clinically obese to looking like he was anorexic in 9 months. I was upset before he died but not really upset after he did die. I had told other family members to get comfortable with the idea that he was going to die, he lived in my house so I did see the whole thing until he went into oblivion.
This is so interesting! I originally found you as many did via evergreen, but as time passed I find your explanations of biology so much more interesting! You are an amazing professor!
This is awesome man. Keep putting these up. Really enjoy them.
Cats can feel grief 100%, both acute (crying out when finding a dead friend) and prolonged (not eating for weeks and looking almost half their weight).
I have seen this myself on several felines since I work with them for many years. For me this is indisputable.
Sounds like a fan on a compressor unit is unbalanced. Might need a new blade, or motor. Install a hard start kit and new high value capacitor as well. Check your refrigerant levels and contactor
We grieve our own deaths 'ahead of time.' This is obvious. We aren't going to be bothered by death (or anything else) when we're dead. The time to realize that our ability to experience things will be taken away from us, and to lament the loss, is when we're still alive to contemplate this prospect.
I noticed Einstein with a W a while back. Rather appropriate imo.
Intrograte I also think it is a brilliant solution, but you can see what he's saying... Some goofball is going to complain about how concieted he is to compare himself to Einstein...
The inappropriate part is the accidental association with tungsten.
Grandfather looks through my eyes . . . Fascinating thought.
I love the fact that this was pulled from a conversation with Ben. Good work guys! Remarkable discussion as always. Keep talking.
True wisdom resonates through time!
Bret, I just found your channel today (your testimony on evergreen was in my recommended feed). Love what I’ve seen so far - this video in particular. I feel the presence of loved ones in situations similar to the one you mentioned about moving a ladder. I feel the presence of loved ones both living and deceased- have you experienced the same?
This is worth some serious consideration.
Thank you for sharing your ideas, excited to hear more from you professor!
To the point of the Jewish tradition of not placing a headstone until a year after burial. When my father passed away a few years ago, my mom and I were advised not to pay for a headstone until at least a year after the burial because the earth can shift and settle for a while and it might interfere with the headstone. So I'm not sure if these are related.
Also, my mom had two cats, and then she had one, and the survivor was in a state of grief for months and month.
Wonderfully easy to listen and learn from you. Thank you.
Thank you for this fascinating series, it tugs right at my sense of wonder and its bolstering my coping mechanisms... more please..
This is great, I suggest you use super chat to allow paying participants to ask specific questions
I had a cat mother who was griefing about her dead kittens, she stayed days at their side, and she knew they were dead. On the other hand my grandparents had a cat who killed all her kittens without any sign of griefing. So, i would say it is not that easy!
I simply remember I'd like to have a large stein of beer with Bret.
Why not make it be a stein full of wine? Because then it would be a wine stein with a Weinstein.
He should have a Wine-Stein called Brett on his online store,
Now THATS an idea!
James K -- because if you drink wine out of a Stein you're a heathen. Steins are for beer. Not wine. Not whisky. Not soda.
Not water.
Beer.
LOL GREAT ENDING. Nice levity to 17minutes deep in thought
Excellent - wish you would put these out more often but I know you're a busy man. Who is whacking weeds in the background or whatever?
The unveiling (in Judaism) signifies the end of the official period of both public and private mourning not grief. While they are related, they are also distinct things in which someone can engage in mourning but feel no psychological grief, or be greatly aggrieved but no longer continue to mourn the death (probably the case). I'd be interested to know how well the official mourning period of a single year actually maps to someones typical experience of grieving over the loss of a parent or child. I imagine a year is probably enough for an adult to recover from the loss of a parent, a child, perhaps not. However I have always appreciated at least the idea that one is both obliged to mourn the loss, but also obliged to stop it at some point, as it is not healthy to become fixated on it forever
Needing this talk. Thank you
love that stinger - well done!
Really nice ideas - thanks!
Bret, do you have any comments on the long term effects of grief on mental health? What happens to a person when they experience several traumatic events in a row that cause their own separate states of grief? What is the limits of grief a person or animal can handle without damaging the mental well-being of the creature?
Dustin M look up stuff about CPTSD complex post traumatic stress disorder.
Freakin love this guy
Benjamin Boyce is the interviewer in this, and his channel is fantastic! He covers the Evergreen scandal in great depth, and I highly recommend checking out his content.
There is something I feel he missed when he talked about grieving for John F. Kennedy. I think, it's not so much Kennedy that many people were grieving for, but the idea that nobody would assassinate the US president, that we were immune from a certain kind of political strife. They were grieving for the assumptions about how their country operated that they'd woven into how the interacted with the world.
Keep them coming!
DAMMIT! I wish there was a SUPERLIKE BUTTON !
There's a way. Write a script to generate 4000 email accounts. Also make the script create and login to their youtube accounts. Finally hit like, then subscribe.
Shout out to Mr Boyce, who also has his own interesting UA-cam channel. Thanks for posting this.
"If you have other childs."
The Grammar Gestapo will be at your door shortly.
Bret I'll be going to see you and Jordan and Sam on the 23rd of June in Vancouver - would you be available for an interview sometime? I'd like to get your take on the evolutionary utility of ritual practices like yoga. Thanks for your work.
This notion of a person's lost loved ones living on within them isn't one I've ever given much weight to. Interestingly, in the way Bret explained it here, it does make some sense, if only as a metaphor or a pleasant psychological trick to play on oneself (something I imagine we do all the time, both knowingly and unknowingly). I wonder if it can't be explained along biological or mimetic lines insofar as one's ancestors really do live on in our genetic material and their teachings (as in the case of a grandfather, as here described) 'run as software' that informs our behaviour and, by extension, our 'self'. With regard to the latter, I guess one could say our notion of self includes much software of a mimetic kind, the most valued of which likely stems from those individuals closest to us, those we view as mentors especially.
Then again, subsuming an element of someone's teachings into one's own view isn't necessarily paramount to some vestige of their personality living on(This, I think, is what Benjamin was saying).
One could argue that we conduct a kind of emulation of an imagined thought process, Bret employs his grandfather's sensibility in beholding the ladder and the danger may pose, maybe he runs a lo-fi copy of his grandfather's personality in assessing his environment.
While this is interesting, I guess it isn't really the crux of the topic.
I understand the hypothesis, or think I do, that the grieving stage is a readjustment or reorientation to a social world that has been altered by the death of an important individual. Why exactly such a process is necessary/advantageous is not, however, entirely clear to me. Would we not be better off moving on immediately, as a cat would after losing a kitten?
Is the suggestion that highly social creatures cannot avoid such a stage? That the nature of their social structures created grief as a sort of by product, or that it is somehow important for an individual to show that they are grieving?
Does a deep investment in other individuals, with all the activation of emotional circuitry that goes along with that, necessitate pain at their loss?(Assuming a creature of high intelligence)
I guess its probably the last of those, if I understood correctly. In any case, fascinating topic, thank you.
It's possible that one of the reasons for why some organisms experience grief is for the purpose of remembering what they said or did wrong to die. I suspect that older peoples deaths are grieved less. Because it was expected and we know they did nothing 'wrong' to die. Notice that when a person dies they suddenly become more memorable and the things they said are now looked at as more important. When a person dies they become kind of mythological figure and above a normal human being. When a young person dies unexpectedly we think about them. Our minds go into the past and we repeat experiences in our minds whilst feeling sadness. We could think about the neurotransmitters that are released during grief. Maybe it's adrenalin and cortisol. Both adrenalin and cortisol play a role in the strength of memories. And if it's not to remember what they did wrong to die (or what you did wrong to allow it to happen), this person must have been important (and therefore useful) and it would pay to remember their words and teachings. We then can learn from them and at least their death can be somewhat useful
Bi-Polar would be an interesting topic.
Are you planning on returning to Academia? If so I’m on board to take your class
Wish my Grandpa had told me about leaving things on ladders. Would have saved me a few potknots!
Would you say parental investment correlates with the amount not grief in a species or groups/populations within species?
That's a beautiful thumbnail, any links to it?
Grief to me seems like a consequence of a species' evolution to feel love.
Incredibly wise man
It seems like Bret wants to explain everything as a beneficial adaptation instead of an unfortunate and maybe irremovable bi product of a different adaptation.
Very interesting. Make more.
I would think the grief over losing a dependent would instead be about learning from mistakes made. It doesn't make sense to me that the adaptation-scenario would take that long. Moreover, one would think this would apply to any mammal and bird.
Mistakes made though would make more sense: this takes a lot of analysis. It also has a clear benefit (not dying yourself, or having other children/dependents die by the same errors). And there it makes sense that social animals have more of it: we would get that when a hunting partner dies; a cat wouldn't. Though the cat should still have it when a kitten dies, one would suspect.
And of course it has the advantage of explaining why we don't have seperate words: both are about learning after a death, by revisiting their lives and incorporating the past into ourselves.
Differentiation: one would think that if it's about not repeating mistakes, you would be riddled with "what could I have done differently"... guilt.
A final consideration is social to the core. While this couldn't evolve initially, it could add on, a need to signal that this person was important to us, that we're learning from past mistakes and so forth. As always, the best way of faking it, is doing it sincerely.
Social justice mobs should run all these types of profs out of their respective universities so that they'll end up exiled to UA-cam where we can have the pleasure of watching them.
Grief does go longer than a year. It actually lasts forever.
the right should want a vibrant left? i think the right would settle for a left that's at least able to engage in a conversation. The left needs to provide some articulated arguments about the merit of helping those disposed by the system. No one on the right will ever be persuaded by chanting and ranting.
Bret is so fucking adorable.
good talk from the einstein with a w
and maybe we have regrets that we didnt spend more time with the ones we lost because our brain may want us to scan reasons on why we lost them and what we could have done better for the next replacement.
this is so interesting
God damn beautiful.
Yes more of these videos
I wish I could take a class with him as a teacher. Evergreen lost a great man
I clicked on this thinking you were referring to "griefing", the video game term where you destroy someone's hard work in a game. VERY different topic. lol
PLEASE UPLOAD MORE
Who is he talking to?
A chair
To the angel of death
so many new videos!
Trying to process a loss like Anthony Bourdain is confusing to me. I never met the guy but feel some sense of grief. How is this an evolutionary advantage?
We are social creatures, not solitary predators. Our survival depends on each other entirely. We live or die by each other. Your individual adaptations are there to serve your species, not the individual you.
I think its that the evolutionary adaptation does not account for the ability to have a distant stranger speak or show themselves to you in person while not actually being nearby. If you consider the fact that our senses are the main source of input, there is no largely apparent difference for the brains interpretation mechanism in having a person sending you sensory signals in real life or through the screen (only considering sound & light).
Nice thoughts, Rabbi Weinstein.
Bret, your frandfather IS there, at least the copy you made if him when he was alive lives amid the other models of loved ones and enemies that you constructed in your subconcious mind. I bet that is how elephants do It too...
I would like to discuss the ideas I heb formed about this.
I wish I knew my frandfather
Gerard Mulder Douglas Hodftstater talks about this in his book: I am a strange loop. Worth a read
WA Represent!
The idea of explicating a process like grief from a scientific perceptive almost seems incongruous to me. It's as if to say we can dilute the experience through the dead mechanistic (scientismic) process yet also talk about the solemn experience of the individual, which doesn't explain a whole lot. It's putting the cart before the horse.
Very dark and flat color. Maybe bump up the exposure and contrast a bit next time.
I would argue that grief is the downside of human mercy for it is the curiosity of the animals. In another' words:
" If a man mates with an animal, he shall Surely be put to death, and You shall kill the animal."!!
"If a woman approaches any animal and mates with IT , You shall kill the woman and the animal. They shall Surely be put to death. Their blood IS upon them." ( Orthodox is not up for an argument) For:
" I shall return Again to My Place till they acknowledge their offense. In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me "!!
Surely Moab shall be like Sodom and the people of Ammon like Gomorrah - overturned with weeds and saltpits and a perpetual desolation... The RESIDUE of My People shall plunder them and The Remnant of MY PEOPLE shall possess them. But now ( VIP) entreat God's Favor, that He may be gracious, while this is being done by Your Hands :
" Such also shall be the plague on the horses and the mule, on the camel and the donkey and on all the cattle that will be in those camps - so shall this plague be : grief, no mercy . And if any PERSON who does any work on that same day, that person , I will destroy from among his people. So YOU shall rise before the gray headed and honor the Presence of an old man and fear Your God: I am the Lord :)
meme time: Bret *wEinstein*
Pornography for systems thinkers.
Watched a couple of your videos and now YT thinks I want to watch CRTV. Just an FYI.
I think dolphins / whales show it as well
English is strange: 'A child you had banked on', is so money related, so ugly.
His grandfather's teachings are a mark left past the man's own death. The marks on the people who are still alive, and the lessons they pass on after that. That is the human spirit that carries on over millenia.
DUNE!!!
I want to kick it with Bret in his back yard.
Whoa Bret, comparing yourself to Einstein! What an inflated ego. Jkjk
his assertions are mostly opinion. Why can't we put forth facts for these issues. IE: brain scan.
Pro tip for helping people remember how to pronounce your name:
Weinstein rhymes.
Weensteen
You have a noisy back yard
Bret is an amazing thinker but his hair is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. He looks like a black singer from the 1950s. Like Sam Cooke or something.
You sayin dogs is more intelligent than cats bruv?
GTFOH
Why is this guy so much smarter than me?
His older brother was also a pretty important role model for him (among others). And I bet his older brother had role models of his own.
If you want to be smarter, you have be inspired and be aspired to be greater than who you currently are.
Birds will die of grief when losing a partner
That tail end clip was great
grief...yikes...it's hard for me to even listen to you talk about it...