The Real Reason Modern Life Feels Empty w/ Fr. Mike Schmitz and Dr. Arthur Brooks

Coming up in today’s episode… Does your life feel meaningless? That’s the biggest problem for happiness for people under 30. Father, we’re living in the matrix. It actually happened. Yeah. You check your phone and then you go to work on Zoom and connect with your friends on social media and you date on an app.
There’s a lot that you can simulate. Yeah. There’s one thing you can’t and that’s the meaning of life. Is it possible to break out of the matrix by returning to the God of the Bible. That is the solution. Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and I’m excited today to be joined by Arthur Brooks, who’s a national columnist for the Free Press.
He’s a Harvard professor, best-selling author, sought-after speaker, and devoted Catholic. Arthur, I’m so glad to be speaking with you again. Thank you, Father. Our last conversation was so great. It was, I have told every one of our students back on campus about like, we got there and I had a conversation in the doorway for an hour. Then they sat down and we recorded for an hour.
And then we sat there for another two hour or two and just like, it was so good. Just like we did today. Pretty much like we did today. So I’m so grateful. Last time we uh, finding happiness while in a state of waiting. Yeah. And I just, uh, it was, that was, it was a conversation that actually moved me a lot because I’d been working on this waiting well program and just to be able, I don’t know, just to be able to hear your thoughts on that was, was so, so incredibly important.
Uh, and actually formed how I did Advent this last year. Because you and I had a conversation right between that time, right? Thanksgiving-ish time. Right before the beginning of Advent. Before the beginning of Advent. And it was so significant. So thank you so much. Oh, thank you. For that. And also, just keep in mind, real quick for the audience, now we started the new year.
If you haven’t listened to the Bible in a year yet, one of the things you realize is this is a great year to begin the Bible in new year.
If you haven’t listened to the Bible in a year yet, one of the things you realize is this is a great year to begin the Bible in a year because this is the 50-year anniversary for the Bible in a year. And actually, I recorded a bonus commentary for each of the episodes. And this is the first time period, the first five days that will be available only on the Ascension app. So be sure to check that out. Okay, Arthur, this is a question I meant to ask you last time, but I didn’t get a chance to ask.
And it’s, you converted, you became Catholic at a pretty young age. Can you just tell us, what’s the story of just your faith in relation with the Lord and the church? Yeah, I’m a convert, but I’m practically a cradle Catholic. Okay, what’s that? I was raised in a strong Christian home, in an evangelical home. I had missionaries on both sides of my family. My parents were very strong Christians.
And I love that background because I grew up reading the Bible and doing what evangelical kids do. You get a cookie when you memorize all the books in the Bible and all this kind of, but it gave me a good background. It gave me a good formation. But at 15, I had a strange experience. I was not anticipating at all.
I was actually a very serious musician in those days. I actually made my living as a musician all the way through my 20s. But when I was a teenager, all I wanted to do was play the French horn. And I was on a music trip to Mexico with a band, actually. And they marched us through all this boring Catholic stuff.
And I didn’t even know any Catholics, but we went to the Shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico City. And we’re sitting in there. It’s almost empty for that day. And that is right after the new basilica had been built for the upcoming visit of John Paul II. And so I didn’t know anything about that. And I was just looking at the tilm of Juan Diego. And they’re telling us the legend of the tilm of Juan Diego.
And I’m like, yeah. And I noticed that look that she has, that Our Lady has on that. And that just really struck me for some reason. I was 15 years old. It just struck me, that look in her eyes. I couldn’t quite describe it. And I couldn’t get it out of my head. It’s the weirdest thing. And I went home. Went home to Seattle. That’s where I grew up in Seattle.
And I couldn’t get it out of my head. And I asked my parents, can I go to the Catholic church? I’d never been there in my life. There was one Catholic church in our neighborhood. And they said, okay, I mean, this is more adolescent rebellion, obviously, but I guess this is better than drugs. So I went to the Catholic Church, and I started going more regularly.
And then pretty soon I was going every Sunday, and my parents were none too happy about it. They weren’t telling my grandparents, because that would have been catastrophic.And then I converted at the next possible opportunity. I did RCIA, which OCIA was RCIA in those days, of course. And I converted at the next Easter.
And by the time I was 16 years old, I was a Catholic. I had a mystical experience at the Shrine of Guadalupe. And I’ve had a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe ever since. Wow. She converted me. And by the way, for those of our viewers who don’t know that story, in 1531, Juan Diego was this indigenous guy.
He has the separation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And, okay, right? But you have to understand that this was during this horrible period where the Spaniards were converting the indigenous people at the tip of a sword. This is not a compelling offer, right? And very few people are actually converting.
So, Our Lady appears to him as a mestiza, as a half-Spanish, half-Indigenous woman. So what, right? That’s a big deal in 1531. That’s unbelievably subversive. And then this imprint on his tilma, which is his garment, is actually displayed. And the belief was that anybody who looked at it would be converted. Look at it and you’ll be converted. And 7 million indigenous people were converted in the next nine years.
It’s like one after the other. It’s hard to get 7 million people through, right? And I was one of them. I’m a Mexican peasant. That’s incredible. Yeah. I looked at it and was converted. And even the fact that you weren’t necessarily captivated by it, they’re telling you the story of the tilma. You’re like, oh my gosh, this is a miracle here. It was at it and was converted. And even the fact that you weren’t necessarily captivated by it, they’re telling you the story of the tilma.
You’re like, oh, my gosh, this is a miracle here. It was no, it was actually. I looked at it. You looked. I was looking at it. It’s like you, it’s funny, you know, and I was telling that story to somebody in my office one time. You know, some secular reporter was in my office at Harvard asking me this story because they’d read about it someplace.
And there’s a picture of, in every one of my offices, there’s a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe. And I said, it’s that over there. And she looked at it. I said, you looked at it. And? See you in church. So when you got, you started, so the mystical experience encounter with Our Lady that was compelling enough to like, I want to go to the Catholic church. When you got there, 15, 16 year old, you show up.
What was the next step? What was the, what was it? What you got you kind of across the finish line or like the sacraments of initiation, what got you through RCIA? So you said, yeah, this is my faith now. It’s, it’s the feeling of being home for the first time. Okay. And again, I had nothing against my church. I had nothing against all that.
But when you come to the Catholic church for the first time and you feel like, oh, oh, oh, I’ve discovered that this was my home after all. You know, that’s how I felt when I fell in love with Esther, my wife, you know. That’s how I felt. I was like, oh, I’m home. This is how you know what’s for you is when you finally feel at home.
It’s when you finally feel at rest. And this is a little slice of heaven, of course. God gives you these little clues, these little moments, right? And this is the beginning of the confessions where, you know, the most famous line in the confessions, you made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
I was restless until I came to the Catholic Church for the first time. I was restless dating just other girls until I met my wife. And I wasn’t restless anymore. I needed rest. So it was a kind of whole. It was truth, goodness, and beauty, if you want to say it like those kind of transcendentals, all together. It wasn’t just like, oh, I came to the conclusion of the truth about X.
It was all of this coming home. Well, here’s the thing. It’s a funny thing because there’s these two theories of entrepreneurship. I teach at a business school, and there’s two theories of entrepreneurship. One is that you invent stuff. The other is that you discover stuff. And scholars, they differ on this.
And so some people argue that Steve Jobs, he invented the iPhone. Others will say that he discovered the iPhone. Because there’s this distributed, emergent order going on all around all the time. And then somebody will discover something that’s bubbling up, right? And so Lewis and Clark clearly discovered the Pacific Ocean.
They didn’t invent the Pacific Ocean. But what actually happens in the entrepreneurship of your life, in the startup of your life? Are you inventing stuff? Are you discovering things? And I believe because God created everything that you’re discovering things.
And that your job, your adventure of your life is uncovering the truth for yourself. To go in discovery is how this works. And that’s theexciting entrepreneurial experience that I’m trying to talk about with young people today, that, and point of fact, I’m still trying to do with my own life. And that was one of the moments of discovery for me. It’s like, oh, oh, the Pacific Ocean.
Right. Yeah. Wow. So that, I love that because, yeah, it kind of comes back to, there’s also an encounter there. It wasn’t, you haven’t mentioned that your family, real, like true believers in the sense of the Lord. Strong Christians. Strong Christians, not just nominal. No. But actually, no, we have a relationship with the Lord and this matters, this is important.
And not abandoning what your family had given you, but realizing there was more. Right. Kind of like almost the idea of like, that here’s the inheritance that you got from your family and you realize there’s a larger family that had an even larger inheritance that didn’t discount your original family’s inheritance, but even kind of break it.
I didn’t repudiate any of that. On the contrary, I built on it. It was a great foundation actually built upon. I’m so grateful for that. I’m so grateful for the Christian faith of all of my parents and their parents and going all the way back. I mean, everybody in the line of my parents going all the way back on either side were missionaries and clergy.
And, you know, just they love the Lord. They love the Lord. And I love the Lord in this different way, in this way that God wants me to love him. Wow. Yeah. Is there any connection between Our Lady of Guadalupe and the fact that your wife is from Spain? So probably in the cosmic sense. But, you know, when I met my wife, she was not practicing.
I mean, Barcelona, as some people watching will know, Spain in general is a post-Christian country largely. I mean, in Barcelona, 3% of people attend Mass weekly. That’s it, 3%. It’s like Denmark. Yeah. Basically. It’s not a Christian place is the way that it works. And my wife grew up in basically a hard-read, mostly atheist milieu.
And, you know, she never practiced as a kid. She was baptized because everybody is. That’s a cultural deal. I mean, that’s like following, you know, Barca as the football team or something. I mean, it’s just this, it’s cultural. It’s not religious at all. And she had never done that.
And when we got together, by the grace of God, I wasn’t saying, okay, the screen wasn’t, I need a daily communicant. It was, I just can’t resist her. I just can’t resist her. I don’t know why. But it took a long time. It took a long time, a lot of prayer and a lot of work and all that. But now, of course, it’s funny because now she leads me on paths of righteousness.
It’s an interesting thing because patterns of belief and patterns of practice are different between the genders, typically. There’s this old saying that dad’s job is to get the family into church and mom’s job is to get the family into heaven. And part of the reason is because, you know, neurophysiologically, women are more attuned to the mysticism of religion naturally than men are.
Men are really, really good at liturgy. Men are really good at practice. And women are really good at a length of the divine, a deep understanding of the length of the divine, which is why marriage is so critically important, because this division of labor can give the kids this master class and the full experience of Christianity.
In a complementary… In a very, very complementary way. And so my wife had this inchoate ability to actually have this deep spirituality, but it took a long time. It took years and years and years as we were married to come to the point where our marriage bloomed into something where now she leads me. How has, because you’re the happiness guy. Yeah. It’s a good moniker. That’s right.
It doesn’t mean I’m the happiest guy. No, but. Yeah. Because it a, it’s a good moniker. That’s right. It doesn’t mean I’m the happiest guy. No, but yeah. Cause it’s hard for me, but yeah. Well, that’s the thing is so, so go back to the happiness and we’ve talked about this before and you’ve talked about all the time is the, here’s the ingredients of happiness. Yeah.
So the macronutrients of happiness are, are enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. Right. Those are the three parts. So happiness isn’t a feeling. Right. The first thing to keep in mind, we’ve talked about this before, and the biggest mistake people make is chasing a feeling. Feeling, emotions, they’re a limbic phenomenon. The limbic system of the brain is an ancient set of tissues that is between 2 and 40 million years old.
It predates Homo sapiens. Your dog has a limbic system. You know, good old Fido has, you know, you look at your dog, looks like he loves me. He does. He has a sense of this feeling of, you know, incredible affection for you because our limbic systems between canines and Hobiopapians haveevolved in parallel with each other. There’s nothing unique about a limbic system.
And so for you to take faith and love and happiness and to reduce them to limbic phenomena is really a misuse of this. It’s a real, it’s a mistake that we commonly make. Feelings are evidence of happiness. Like the smell of dinner is evidence of dinner.
So, don’t be fooled by that, right? And it’s the same thing, by the way, with love. You know, one of the reasons that people actually struggle in their marriage is because they don’t feel love. Well, yeah. You know, if I wouldn’t have been married 34 years, if love were a feeling, I would have been married 34 minutes because married to a Spaniard, that’s when we had our first knockdown drag out fight.
It was your wedding day. Yeah, totally. And every day thereafter, it’s like my, my autobiography will be like 10,000 fights or something like that. Right. I mean, cause this is how they express, this is how they communicate is, you know, volatile in a very volatile way. It’s, you know, it’s no big deal. It’s okay.
I mean, anger is a hot emotion. It’s actually uncorrelated with divorce. But, you know, the whole point is that you have to understand that happiness is something deeper than that. Just like food is deeper than the smell of food. The smell is the feelings. The food itself is a combination of ingredients or dishes, depending on your point of view.
But really, you know, science guys like you and me, it’s protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Those are your macros. If you want to get healthier, you need those things in balance and abundance. If you’re feeling rotten, it means your macros are off. That’s almost certainly the case. Probably you’re eating too many highly glycemic carbohydrates, and you need more protein.
And when you’re 61, like me, you better be getting 150 to 200 grams of protein a day. But you don’t understand that unless you understand what the component parts of food are. The same thing is true with happiness. I can, I have a series of tests that I’ve actually developed over the course of my research to find out where people are deficient in macronutrients.
And some people, they need to enjoy their lives more. Some people don’t getrients. And some people, they need to enjoy their lives more. Some people don’t get enough satisfaction. And some people, they’re really, really devoid of meaning. That’s the biggest problem for happiness for people under 30 is the meaning problem.
That’s a whole book that I just finished. Well, you said they need a balance and abundance. Exactly. Of these. Exactly. Enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. When it comes to what you said, the number one maybe deficiency right now in young people. Is meaning. Is meaning. Right. But that’s not my deficiency.
Right. I think it’s not our deficiency. Yeah. And I think our, we talked about is enjoyment. Enjoyment. Yeah. How do you address that? Like, how do you address, okay, I recognize that, but deficiency and enjoyment, satisfaction, or meaning, or maybe in some ways all three. What is a step people can take that would say, okay, let’s go the route of enjoyment because it’s more personal.
What’s a step a person could take to say, okay, I identified I’m malnourished here. What do I do? Well, to begin with, it’s the same thing with nutrition. The first thing is to understand nutrition. The first thing is actually a little bit of the science goes a long way. One of the ways, the most important ways that people get better into diet and fitness and exercise, which you and I are both really into. I mean, we’re both gym rats and outside of our day jobs is actually understanding science.
Science is so incredibly empowering along these lines. And so, you know, the science of happiness, one of the reasons I talk about it as a scientist is because that’s the beginning of the solution to problems in people’s lives. To get happier, you need to understand actually how it works. And so I have a series of protocols and tests.
There’s even a test that I have called the happiness scale that’s on my website. People can take it and they find out whether they’re deficient in the same way that a nutritionist would have you keep a food log. And it would say like, dude, you’re getting 600 grams of carbohydrate a day. No wonder you’re like, you’re crashing all afternoon, having to drink all this coffee and you’re picking up weight and all this. We need to rebalance that.
But you don’t understand that until you understand how the food works, how the macronutrients work and what is in certain kinds of food. So that’s the first thing to actually understand is actually how this works even one of the sources of these exactly exactly right exactly right and that really depends with happiness on what these things mean right because most people think they know what these things are but they actually don’t and so the definition soenjoyment for example we’re talking about enjoyment now enjoyment isn’t pleasure this is really really
important because this is you know the hippies used to say, if it feels good, do it. Right, find your bliss. I know my dad was like, that’s the end of America. He was kind of right. But, you know, the pleasure is a terrible goal. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with pleasure. I mean, we’re Catholics, right? I mean, like God gives us all the bunnies to feel good.
But that’s just, that’s your limbic system. You know, your dog feels pleasure just the same way that you do. There’s this thing in your limbic system called the ventral tegmental area. When you tap it, you go, you get the sense of pleasure. And it’s very thrifty. You can tap it in all sorts of ways.
I mean, your wife can say, I love you. And it’s like the ventral tegmental area, where you can have a huge bump of cocaine, same deal, right? There’s nothing. The same part of the brain? Yeah, same part of the brain. It’s the ventral tegmental area. It makes you go, and you can see somebody’s like, they get this big smile that really involves the mouth, but the eyes and their face opens up.
That’s called a Duchenne smile, by the way. You can tell when somebody’s feeling this intense pleasure because of the look on their face. And that means the ventral tegmental area and the ventral striatum have been activated in the limbic system of the brain. But there’s nothing moral about that.
That’s just physiology is the way that that works. The pursuit of pleasure is not the pursuit of happiness. That’s the pursuit of rehab, man. That’s how people get addicted is because you can hit that with alcohol. You can hit that with pornography. You can hit that in all sorts of ways. And so that’s the first big mistake. It’s like, I need to enjoy my life more.
Okay, I can do stuff that really gives me a whole lot of pleasure. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But that doesn’t mean that pleasure is bad. Enjoyment just means that pleasure is insufficient. See, here’s the problem. When you’re being managed by your pleasures, you’re in trouble. But to enjoy something is when you manage your own pleasures.
And you do that by adding two things to you that feel good. And everybody gets their pleasure from different things. Some people, it’s like, it’s what they eat. Some people, it’s what they do. Some people, et cetera. Some people like different things. You have to add people in memory. Pleasure plus people plus memory equals enjoyment.
Why? Because you’re transferring the experience from the limbic system into the prefrontal cortex. That’s the executive center. That’s the C-suite of your brain. That’s the new part of your brain. The limbic system, millions of years old. The prefrontal cortex, 250,000 years old. It’s brand spanking new. That’s at its current state at the beginning of the Pleistocene, which was when we became basically modern humans.
250,000 years doesn’t sound very modern. We were living in tiny bands of 30 to 50 kin-related individuals. It’s like trying to figure out the secret of fire, but our brains were what they are. And that’s when the prefrontal cortex became 30% of our brain by weight.
And man, that was super distinctive from all the lower animals. If you want to know the difference between homo sapiens and non-human primates, it’s the size of the prefrontal cortex. That’s really what it is. And that’s just, it’s unbelievable. There’s no computer, no AI, nothing is ever going to resemble the prefrontal cortex. That’s what you have to use if you want to be fully in design of your own life.
If you’re living in your limbic system, you’re living in the space of animal impulse. Your prefrontal cortex allows you to this other space of human life, which is moral aspiration, the person you want to be notwithstanding your feelings. And that’s with feeling good, where you need to actually transfer pleasure to enjoyment.
And the way to do that is by not doing it alone, whatever it happens to be, and doing something that can create a memory. So the way to remember this is that I’ve done work with beer companies in the past. They don’t drink beer, but beer companies are super interesting. They never advertise featuring a dude alone in his apartment pounding a 12-pack.
A lot of people use the product that way. They don’t show that because that’s the pursuit of pleasure, and that looks dangerous and pathetic and kind of sad, lonely. Yeah. Right? They show the same guy opening a beer with his friends or his brother, toasting. Yeah. In other words, our beer plus your people making a memory equals enjoyment.
That’s part of happiness. So all I need to do to remember that in my brain is a beer commercial. Because beer commercials have captured what enjoyment is. Exactly right. So pleasure plus people plus memory. That’s right have captured what enjoyment is. Exactly right.So pleasure plus people plus memory.
That’s right. The casino commercial is the same thing. It’s a bunch of people around the roulette. They’re all cheering on the one person who’s playing. That’s what they’re doing. It’s not the dude alone at 4 o’clock in the morning pathetically smoking a cigarette. Yeah, exactly. Wow. That’s how to think about it.
And so enjoyment is like that. But your point is, if you’re insufficient in it, how do you do it? And that you start with the formula. You start with the definition and the recipe for actually getting more of it. Then you say, what is it, that thing, that I could actually do that gives me a sense of joy, right? Do it and do it the right way.
Same for everyone, as you mentioned. No, no, on the contrary. That’s absolutely not the same thing for everybody. Now, the problem for people who struggle with enjoyment is a particular pathology. And that’s addiction to achievement. That’s almost always addiction to achievement. It really does. And part of that is because the second macronutrient is satisfaction.
And satisfaction is the joy of achievement after struggle. And people who are unbelievably excellent at getting satisfaction, often they’ll neglect enjoyment. This is a big problem. And so almost every super high achiever that you meet struggles with enjoyment. Yeah. Almost none of them. You’ll ask, you know, and I’m sort of the billionaire whisperer in my work right now.
You’re talking a lot. Yeah, totally. High achievers, yeah. Amazing things. Invented companies have done all these amazing things. I’ll say, what’s your hobby? And they’ll say, hobbies are for watch. Yeah, totally. I’m a achiever, yeah. Amazing things. Invented companies done all these amazing things.
They’ll say, what’s your hobby? And I was like, hobbies are for losers. Yeah. That’s the clarion call of an enjoyment deficit. Yeah. Always, always, always. Because if it’s not points on the board, there’s no satisfaction. And that means they’ve gone to this extrinsic source, this outside source for understanding whether or not they’re achieving.
That’s what it’s come down to. And anything you do for the inherent joy that it brings, that’s a waste of time. Yeah. So that’s the first thing to actually start figuring out. Yeah. So then the question is, how? How? How? There’s a philosopher that you know who would crack the code on how to enjoy your life. It’s Joseph Pieper.
Joseph Pieper, yeah. Yeah. And it’s not The Four Cardinal Virtues, which is his most famous book, right? Great book. Everybody should read The Four Cardinal Virtues. You know which one it is, right? Leisure, The Basis of Culture. Exactly right. Exactly right. Well played. A plus, Father. Thank you. Leisure, The Basis of Culture.
It’s a little tiny book. It’s a thin little book you can read in one sitting. And what he does is how to become excellent at leisure. Yeah. And leisure is all about doing something really meritorious, something really productive, something really good, and they don’t compensate you for it, right? Doesn’t advance any scale.
There’s no, and the kinds of compensation are money, power, and honor, right? Those are the three things. The resources that the world brings. It has to be something that is really, it’s just excellent what you’re doing, but there’s no worldly compensation for it. That’s your leisure.
And to get really, really good at that, that book actually gives you the formula for actually how to be excellent at leisure. So all the success addicts watching us, like you and me and everybody watching us who is addicted to the achievement of the world, read Leisure, the Basis of Culture, and get great at leisure, and you will start to enjoy your life. Which is, I think about people who, I just do this, why? I enjoy it.
Right. And that sense of- You’re like, what are you talking about? When was the last time- What are you talking about? It’s like, and my wife enjoys her life. Yeah. Right? And the reason that she doesn’t enjoy her life is because she’s with me. You know, the problem is I drag her down. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We could be working right now. And so I just, I can add this envy, um, of those who find themselves in that, but which I imagine someone who struggles with meaning, right. And you know, they could say, no, I have a lot of enjoyment, a lot of satisfaction. But I mean, a lot of good things in my life. Right. I don’t know what it all is oriented towards.
If you’re, I mean, because you’ve recently written a new book. Called The Meaning of Your Life. The Meaning of Your Life. Coming out in March. Because you identified that one of the biggest deficits in young people, or in maybe a lot of us, is meaning. This is the crisis for people under 30. This is the crisis.
This is the best predictor of depression and anxiety for people under 30 is the answer,the affirmative answer to the question, does your life feel meaningless? Yeah. And it’s exploded. Yes. It’s exploded since 2008. Yeah. And we’ve never seen it before. It was always like 15% of the population under 30.
15%. 50%. Since 2008, there’s been the introduction of a couple big things that have probably ramped this up more than anything. Right. And this is a book about how modern life has changed our brains. Right. And to the point that we’re talking about here have made it much, much harder not just to find the meaning of life, but to find the ultimate meaning of life for those of us who are Christians.
It’s obscured our ability to cultivate a friendship with God. How has that happened? So 2007, 2008, right? That’s the introduction of the iPhone? Yeah. Somewhere around there? 2007 is when the first iPhone was delivered. And so we have in the proliferation of the internet and social media, all these things that are combined or connected to this.
Isn’t that just, you know, someone say, well, that’s just another tool. And I could put it down when I were to. How could that? I think I can say that. Like a sinister laugh from the background. But how could that make such a dramatic impact on people who otherwise were like, no, I know that there’s a God.
I know that he loves me. I know that there’s a purpose in my life. But this device or this connection of how does that have such an outsized impact? Yeah. So that’s what I’ve been working on for the past five years, to have a convincing biological answer to that question and not just a kind of an impressionistic answer to this question.
It’s one thing to say, you know, apps and social media and scrolling and all that, well, they’re really depressing. You know, they’re really, really depressing. It’s one thing to say, by the way, that can be true when you overuse something like that. When you overuse anything, that’s going to be deleterious for your life. It’s going to make your happiness decline for sure. But I want to know why that has this unique outsized impact.
And again, I’m not a Luddite. I’m not this believer. I mean, you and I are both on social media like all day. And it’s really important because it’s part of our apostolate to reach people through social media, reach people where they are. That’s really important. It’s one thing. It’s like, I’m going to throw my phone in the ocean and go join a monastery. So no, I’m not going to do it.
I’m going to be on every device. I’m going to actually do it. But I don’t want it to hurt my life. And I don’t want to hurt other people’s lives as well. And that means we need to actually learn how to use these things. So they can be tools is what it comes down to. Now, the basic problem is this. It’s not just technology.
It’s the whole technologized culture. It’s the hustle culture. It’s the grind culture. It’s the achievement culture, which has basically said that life comes down to dominating technical tasks. That’s college, by the way. Right? I mean, college is about dominating technical tasks. And we’ve become obsessed with that over the past 20 years.
And technology is just sort of the tip of that spear. Now, what happens when we do that is we use our brains differently. And the reason is because God gave us two hemispheres. This is a theory called hemispheric lateralization, which is a fancy way of saying a simple thing, which, by the way, is how we get tenure in my business, right? It’s like a simple thing and make it complex.
Oh, hemispheric lateralization. That sounds really complicated. No, what it is is the right and left hemispheres of your brain are fundamentally dedicated to different sets of tasks. I mean, they’ll do a lot of things that are the same, too. A lot of it’s mirror image. But fundamentally, the right hemisphere of your brain is dedicated to the why questions, to the meaning questions, to the mystery of life, to love, to happiness, to dedication to things that you don’t quite understand you only live with.
The left side of your brain is technical tasks. It’s the what and how to. I want to be in love and get married and have a family. And therefore, I’m going to have to go to work and support my family. How I do that is left side stuff. Why I do that is right side stuff. And God gives us the why and the what and how to.
He gives us a brain that allows us to decide what we want and why, and then figure out how to go do it. It’s unbelievable. It’s a miracle. The trouble is that all of these new technologies and ways of living and philosophy of life has pushed us to the what and how to side and made us neglect the why side. This is where we live.
Biologically neglect the why side.And so you find there’s just less right hemispheric activity of the brain. This is work that comes from Ian McGilchrist, who’s a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford in the UK. He’s a psychiatrist and neuroscientist. And he says like the mystery of life, it’s like, it’s just all lump and matter.
It’s just all technical questions, because that’s what we’ve been trained to do. Every time you’re spending your, you know, your hours scrolling and, you know, that’s all left side activity. Even if it feels like connection. But it’s not connection. All it is is a simulacrum for connections. See, this is when we were young guys and before most of the people watching us were born, there was this ancient movie called The Matrix.
By the way, that movie is only 27 years old. It’s now 27 years old. I know. That’s, yeah. Makes you feel great, doesn’t it? Yeah. years old i know that’s yeah this makes you feel great yeah so the matrix um the plot of the matrix was for those who haven’t watched it was this super fantastic sci-fi impossible scenario where a giant artificial intelligence was running humanity in 1999 right and and it was it was actually sucking energy away from human beings because kinetic human energy would supply the machines with the energy they needed, the power. And so we’d put them in these
pods and they would simulate real life that would be pleasant and they would take their energy away. Well, look, Father, we’re living in the matrix. It actually happened. And what’s going on here is the simulation of ordinary life that feeds on human energy and attention is the way that this works. And the simulation is, can be pretty pleasant.
You know, you get up and you check your phone and then you go to work on zoom and then you, you know, you connect with your friends on social media and you date on an app and, and then you, you know, you game because that gives you a sense of accomplishment, et cetera, et cetera. And then that’s your day.
That’s a simulation of life. Feeds on human energy and attention. And just continue to. And that’s the simulation. That’s the simulation of actual life. and then that’s your day. That’s a simulation of life. Feeds on human energy and attention. And just continue to. And that’s the simulation. That’s the simulation of actual life.
And so that’s what, and there’s a lot that you can simulate. There’s one thing you can’t, and that’s the meaning of life. You can’t simulate the meaning of life. Now, here’s where it gets worse. That is what explains secularization. You know, Bishop Barron, that you’ve had all these conversations with, and I have too, talks about the nuns.
I mean, I wish it were the N-U-N-S nuns. I wish there were lots more nuns. The problem is that we have more N-O-N-E-S. The year I was born in the mid-60s was 1% of the population declared themselves nun. Now it’s above a third of people under 30 declare they have no religious affiliation. What explains that kind of not religious, not spiritual, not even very philosophical? The answer is left side dominance.
That’s what explains that because the right side of your brain is the intent of the divine. You know, God gives us the right side of the brain to live with and understand our relationship with him without solving it. You’ll never solve God. Sorry, you can’t solve God. I heard you give a talk last night that basically said, don’t try to solve God, but God is what you can’t solve. You can only live with from day to day.
You can only live in the understanding of love and friendship is what it comes down to. And you can’t be comfortable with that. You won’t even comprehend that if you’re on the wrong side of your brain. It’s the bottom line. Yeah. That explains secularization.
So you mentioned, this is so good, because you said it’s not just technology, it’s that we have technologized, which is all everything you’re saying. It’s not just technology. On the contrary, everything is a machine. College is a machine. It’s a complicated machine. Yeah. The workplace is a machine. The way that we dedicate our lives to accomplishing everything is an algorithm.
That’s why everybody wants this. If I put up a podcast that’s like my five-part morning algorithm, my five-part protocol. You’ve hacked it. I’ve hacked it. It’s one, two, three, four, five. It’s an algorithmic kind of thinking. I get it, too. I fall prey to that. Look, you and I are wearing your multiple tracking devices.
What gives you better biometrics, the whoop or the garment? They’re both good for this and that. That’s all left-ometrics, the whoop or the Garmin? And it’s like, they’re both good for this and that. That’s all left side activity. Right. That’s the left side. And the left side is great. It’s just not enough.
And so if you say like, okay, we’re going to solve for the meaning. Right. And we’re going to say, but the answer can’t be more technology.The answer can’t be, you mentioned before, the left side is complicated solutions. Right. The right side is complex. Yeah, and that sounds like we’re splitting hairs, but it’s actually not.
That’s a mathematical distinction. Complicated problems are really hard to solve, but once you solve them, they’re solved and they don’t change. Okay. A jet engine is a complicated problem. We stamp them out, man, and the plane never crashes. It’s very rare to have a plane crash, but that’s an unbelievably complicated technology.
It took until recently to do that. I mean, your toaster is complicated. If you try to build one yourself in your garage, you’ll probably burn your house down, right? But you can get one for 15 bucks at Walmart and it’ll work for the next 10 years. It’s unbelievable how that complicated technology. Complex problems and complex ideas are very easy to understand and impossible to solve.
So, and all the things we care about in life are complex. So football games, I mean, I’m watching right now, I mean, this will probably, who knows what will actually be happening in the NFL right now, but my team is the Seahawks because I grew up in Seattle and I can’t change my heart.
I haven’t lived there in 40 years, but you know, the Seahawks, I love the Seahawks and the Seahawks are the number one seed in the NFL right now. It’s so awesome. I’m happy about that. And the games are so exciting. But if I could simulate the game with a supercomputer, I wouldn’t love it. I wouldn’t love it. It wouldn’t be interesting. That’s because I would be turning a complex problem that I love, which is a right-side phenomenon, which is mystery and meaning and fun, to a left-side phenomenon, which is a task to solve. And I can’t do that. That’s the reason I love NFL football, is the way that that works.
But it’s also the things we care about even more. Love, right? Faith. My marriage is a complex problem. I’ve been married a long time, right? And we were just before we had mass here, and you said mass, and Esther was with me. And before she left, she said, I love you. And she does. I believe it.
And I might see her in two hours, and she’ll be just like, really mad at me. I don’t know. And part of that complexity is the fact that she’s Spanish. But I mean, that’s why I love my marriage. Because I don’t know. Because I can’t, I’ll never solve my marriage. I can only live in my marriage. That’s why a marriage is a day-to-day living thing.
Your cat, you love your cat because your cat’s complex. Your cat’s not a toaster. A mechanical cat will never do it for you. Even though that’s an attempt right now. It is an attempt, but that’s the thing. Yeah. That’s like why AI will never, I mean, there is a way for AI to make you happier, which is for it to solve a bunch of complicated problems in your life and free up time so you can go spend time with people that you love, which is a complex thing.
Yeah. But that’s not how people are using it. Right. They wanted to make it into the therapist or their friend or their girlfriend. The person in your pocket you’re talking to the whole time. That’s right. And you can’t get to the right by going further and further left. Yeah. And that’s so important.
That is so critical. Yeah. So here’s scripture. Here’s the mystery of God. He reveals himself at some point in the Bible. Is it possible to break out of the matrix, essentially, by returning to the God of the Bible? Yeah. Is that possible? Of course. And as a matter of fact, that is the solution. The solution is to live in an old-fashioned way.
There’s one thing that good old grandfather Schmitz, what did he do for a living? He worked at the Ford plant. He was a maintenance guy. Yeah, yeah. And he worked at a main. And I guarantee you he never came home to grandma and said, honey, I had a panic attack at the plant today. Yeah, yeah. Because his brain was working the way it was supposed to work.
He was bored a lot. He was stuck in his thoughts. And his brain was working both hemispheres. He was using his left hemisphere to solve problems of maintenance and the right hemisphere and all the time in his downtime, thinking about the meaning of life and about his marriage and about his kids and about his relationships and all that. And that’s really important. But that’s not ordinary anymore.
Right. That isn’t ordinary. You know, the reason that people have HPA axis flooding, that’s the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. That’s all your stress hormones. The reason that people have HPA axis flooding, that’s the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. That’s all your stress hormones. The reason that gets flooded over and over and over again is because you’re spending too much time in the left hemisphere of your brain.
And you’re not actually able to have a balance and equilibrium.You know, it’s all of these maladies of depression and anxiety at, you know, super hyperactive levels are because of this, as a matter of fact. And so the way that we do this is by living like people in the past.
Now, that does not mean getting rid of technology, because you’re not going to. That means injecting what used to be ordinary in an extraordinary way in your life. And that’s what I write about it, like the six big things, one of which is practicing your faith, because your faith is fundamentally a right hemispheric phenomenon. Now, we can make it left hemispheric. I mean, I’ll sell these millenarian kind of rapture fundamentalist movements.
It was like, the world’s going to end on October 27th, you know, 2036 or something like that. That’s just a left hemispheric approach to the fundamental right hemispheric relationship that we’re supposed to have with God.
But when you live in the mystery, when you live in the mystery of the sacraments, when you live in the mystery of the experience, when you say, I don’t understand. I don’t get it. I go to mass every day. I don’t get it. I don’t get it. But there’s this window that opens to heaven for this moment that goes beyond my understanding. And a lot of people who aren’t Catholic, they think that we’re trying to algorithmically hack the matrix.
That’s not it at all. trying to algorithmically hack the matrix. That’s not it at all. The ritual. Through the ritual. But the ritual per se is actually a fundamentally right hemispheric experience. Yeah. Because I defy any Catholic to understand that. I defy any Catholic to tell me why is it that we’re doing pretty much exactly the same thing that we’re doing now that we were doing 1,800 years ago.
And that my day is not complete unless I do that one weird thing every single day. And even I don’t understand why. Yeah. And even I don’t understand why. And you’re saying it. It’s bigger than me. And that sense of like, we do the same thing. I mean, I say the same prayer if we’re going to the mass every day. And it is never, I’t, thanks be to God, I’ve been ordained maybe 23 years now.
It has never felt, well, this is just mass quick. No, this is entering the mystery, like offering up the sacrifice of the Son to the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit and being part of that. Like every day, I’m like, I don’t get it. I know. What does this mean? Yeah. The Trinity. Oh, I’ll tell you what the Trinity means.
Oh, I defy you. It’s like. Try. No, super. I mean, I can give you all these metaphors and I can intellectualize all these things, but fundamentally I’m exploring the mystery and that God gave me the capacity to explore mystery without solving mysteries.
And until we do that, and there’s all these things, your relationship with your children, your relationship with your wife, falling in love, doing work that actually serves, expressing and experiencing beauty, looking for your calling, suffering. Right. It’s all part of it. These are all mysteries. There’s, you know, I’ve talked to so many people over the last five years who had the Bible in the air out there.
And so there’s people who have been listening to the Bible in a way they haven’t in the past. Right. In the sense that maybe they go to mass or go to their church service and get a snippet of the Bible and then way they haven’t in the past, in the sense that maybe they go to mass or go to their church service and get a snippet of the Bible and then have it unpacked.
Or here’s a kind of a Bible out of context. And then all of a sudden, wait, here’s every word of the Bible. And you have to kind of reckon with the God who reveals himself in a particular way, who is not the God maybe I heard about, like the brand I heard about or the flavor I heard about from pastor so-and-so or from teacher so-and-so.
It’s like, no, this is God as he actually revealed himself. And there’s this, sometimes people are overwhelmed by the goodness of that. Like, oh my gosh, I never knew. There’s so much more. And I think that might be entering into the mystery. And there’s others who are like, oh, I don’t like this. Right. Literally, I’m going to run away from what I’ve just been presented with, the God of the Bible, which may be for a number of reasons.
But I wonder if one of them is because it’s like I can’t grab onto it. Because I can’t fully understand this. Yeah. And we’ve been trained to, if you can’t fully understand it, that there’s something wrong with it. Right. And that’s not correct. That’s not correct.
The things that matter the most to you are the things that you will work to have an intuitive understanding of, that you’ll live in the mystery, the problems that will never be solved. That’s the life in life. That’s the life in life. That’s the life in life. What would you say? I mean, how would you invite someone to say as they’re exposed to God as he’s revealing himself to them in the Bible?Okay. Here’s some things. Here’s some pitfalls.
Here’s some things to look at. Here’s what your modern brain might find objectionable. Or here’s where you might find like some obstacles as you try to approach the god of mystery yeah the and this is by the way this is hard for me right because you know i’m i’m brought up as a behavioral scientist you know i’m brought up to understand all these things that are actually happening to solve these particular things to give concrete answers to these phenomena well i like doing that too yeah right i would say father what about i heard about this and what
do you think about this like what’s the real answer? What does it mean? Like, great. Let me give you. Yeah. There’s a, and you’ll notice that you tend to want to have to give the killer apologetic. Yeah. But you’ll also notice this weird thing, which is that apologetics, they can be feel bulletproof, but they always leave you feeling empty. Okay. Yeah.
I want to know why apologetics leave you falling, feeling empty. It’s because you’ve given a left-side solution to a right-side problem. Yeah. A left-side, you know, that’s the reason, right? Yeah. And because you’re on your left side saying, yeah, look, this is going to be bulletproof. I’m going to give it to him.
And people will be like, gosh, that really makes sense. I mean, good, good, good. But you’re always like, I feel hollow. It doesn’t feel like there’s love in that. There’s something missing from that. That’s because you’re in the wrong neighborhood. You’re not dealing with it in the right neighborhood.
And so the way to deal with this is to lay down your need to solve. To lay down and say, I don’t get it. I don’t understand, Lord. I’m just going to live it. That’s why devotion to the blessed sacrament is so important. That’s why a holy hour is so critically important. Because you’re like, this you’re not going to get. Let me tell you something you’re not going to get.
Entire life. The body of Christ is right up there. What does that mean? I don’t know. Why are we doing this? I don’t know. What am I actually trying to do? I’m actually trying to connect with the divine through my lack of understanding. I’m not trying to dominate this and to lay that down. Lay down your understanding. Say, no mas. I give. I surrender.
By the way, this is the secret to a happy marriage too, is surrender, is mutual submission. surrender. I understand. See, this is the secret. By the way, this is the secret to a happy marriage, too, is surrender. It’s mutual submission. You know, St. Paul talks about this. Mutual submission. Submission, submission. Love and respect each other.
Love and respect each other. Even if you don’t feel respect, and even if you don’t feel love, love and respect each other, because that’s submission. That’s surrender. Surrender. And people need to surrender. And that’s the solution at the end of the day. You know, all these engineers who are, you know, watching, these are the ultimate left brain people, right? The engineers, right? These are the people who need to surrender the most.
Because when you do that, you’ll be, you’ll turn on the right side of your brain and say, I don’t know why, but it’s different. Yeah. And I can’t explain it. And somebody will say, well, explain it to me. It’s like, you just got to come with me. You just got to come with me. You just got to come with me.
Come with me. Wow. So again, to kind of sum up a little bit is what here is, okay, we’re made for be able to have enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning in order to be able to have the lives that God wants us to have. But we hamstring ourselves when we don’t allow ourselves to be able to have the lives that God wants us to have. Right. But we hamstring ourselves when we don’t allow ourselves to be bored.
We don’t allow ourselves to go to that place of wonder, the place of mystery. We don’t allow ourselves to live in the unknowing. That’s certainly true, especially on the meaning side. Yeah. And that is the great calamity of our time. Yeah. That’s the crisis of our time. And if people want the cheat code to that, go to Mass and pray the rosary. It’s like, you don’t have to figure out the science. You don’t have to suffer through a PhD like me. Just go to Mass and pray the rosary.
Well, I think it’s fascinating. And maybe the last thing here, I think it’s fascinating that as you’re describing this, it goes all the way back to your story, where here you are before the image of our Lady of Guadalupe, and there’s a mystical experience that cannot be figured out, that can’t be broken down.
It’s just, no, I didn’t encounter. And that’s what started, continued it, but started in a new way, this journey of your life. And it comes back to this place of this conclusion of, and that is what every one of us is made for.We are. We’re made to be found.
When I go to these Himalayan towns full of spiritual seekers, you know, they’ll say, I’m seeking, I’m seeking. This is a point that Bishop Barron makes a lot. We’re the faith of being sought. And this is the point when you actually do put your space, put yourself in the space with Mass and praying the Rosary or before the Blessed Sacrament in these sacred spaces beyond your intellectual understanding you’re allowing yourself to be found and God will find you and God will find you when your brain is working the way it’s supposed to work but most importantly when you’re putting your soul in order
wow, that’s incredible okay, so they gave us a couple different find you when your brain is working the way it’s supposed to work, but most importantly, when you’re putting your soul in order. Wow. That’s incredible. Okay, so they gave us a couple of different questions. They gave you a card and gave me a card.
And I have questions on here on my card that I get to ask you. And these are rapid, they say, rapid fire questions, so pretty quick. Right. So we’ll go back and forth. Got it. I’ll ask you one and you ask me one. Okay. And so, Arthur. Yeah. City or countryside? Countryside. Okay. Book or audio book? Audiobook.
Have I read my books to you? Yes. Oh, nice. Yeah, I appreciate that. The dulcet tones of my voice. I appreciate that, by the way. What time do you wake up in the morning? Four. Four a.m.? Four a.m. Actually, 4.30, generally speaking. Four if I’m being really ambitious, but 4.30. And the reason is because I’m in the gym by 4.45.
Yep, gotta go. Father, what’s reason is because I’m in the gym by 4.45. Yep, you gotta go. Father, what’s the first Bible verse to pop into your head? For freedom Christ set us free, Galatians 5, verse 1. Beautiful. Favorite piece you ever played with the Barcelona Symphony? Yeah, the Bach B Minor Mass.
Okay. And not because it’s the most thrilling French horn part, but because it’s the greatest piece of music ever written. One more time, the Bach? The Bach B Minor Mass, written in 1749, six months before he died. It’s the best example of the high Baroque ever written. It was written at the time where he stated that his goal, that the aim and final end of all music was the glorification of God and the enjoyment of man.
And he wrote the B Minor Mass. I’m going to go listen. What’s your favorite song right now, speaking of music? Favorite song? Oh need to, I’m going to go listen. What’s your favorite song right now? Speaking of music. Favorite song. Oh shoot. I’m going to be, I’m going to embarrass myself.
There is a, there are a number of songs that stick in my head and they’re just usually pretty fun. I’m going to say golden by this made for movie band called Huntrix from K-pop demon hunters. It’s just a fun song. I so square i don’t know it’s a bop all right okay um what’s the number one question you get from students what does god want me to do with my life what does god want to do with my life yeah what’s god’s purpose what’s god’s plan what’s my vocation yeah yeah interesting that’s the biggest there’s other you know top five questions but that’s probably overall the last 20 some years.
It’s been that one. Yeah. Number one question I get is how do I fall in love and stay in love? Yeah. Yeah. They’re more likely to ask a married guy that. That makes sense. What is one daily habit you’ve added to your life that’s made a big impact? Daily mess. Daily mess. Daily mess. Daily mess. For sure.
Bar none. That’s a, that’s a. That’s on a walk. Yeah. Yeah, totally. What time do you go to bed at night? Anywhere from, I mean, there are some Mondays where I’ll get in bed and it might not yet say nine. Right. But on average, it’s a little bit later than that. It’s probably more like between 10.30 to 11.30.
10.30 to 11.30. What time do you get up? About 4.15. That’s two. That’s not enough hours. We’re changing that in the’s probably more like between 10.30 to 11.30. 10.30 to 11.30. What time do you get up? About 4.15. That’s two. That’s not enough hours. We’re changing that in the new year. Yeah. It’s amazing. That’s why I’m bald.
What’s your secret? Your go-to prayer for stressful situations. That’s the Jesus prayer. Yeah. The Jesus prayer. And that’s Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner, which is what the Eastern Orthodox monks pray. What’s the number one question you get from fellow priests? Wow. That’s a good question.
One thing they always say is, hey, I’m praying for you, which I really, really appreciate. The wrong question for fellow priests. If they’re in the same field, maybe like campus ministry, one of the big questions they ask is just, how do you know what your students need? That’s the big thing. It’s like, how do you know what you need on campus? How do you know what your students need?And that’s probably the number one I get from other campus ministry priests.
Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. Thank you so much. And thanks for taking the time to sit down. Thank you, Father. Thank you for your apostolate. It’s changed my life a lot. Same. I say the same thing. I quote you, as I mentioned, probably every day to our students. And I’m so grateful. And I bring your stuff into my prayer as well.
And so I’m really grateful. Arthur, if people want to find out more or get more resources from you, where should they go? ArthurBurst. you, where should they go? ArthurBurse.com, where there’s surveys and all kinds of cool stuff and a lot of things to read. And you can figure out what all the books are, et cetera. And then on Instagram is where I put a lot of original content.
And then I have a column at the Free Press. Awesome. Yeah, every week, every Monday morning, it’s a thousand words of the science of happiness by a Catholic. Which is amazing in the science space and in the faith space. Thank you again. And thank you for joining us and for all of us here at Ascension.
God bless. Please know that we are praying for you and please pray for us. you