Mark Divine [00:01:20]:
Right. Yeah. I don’t even know where to begin to unpack that. It’s surprising that it’s been going on for over 10 years though. Right. It seems like it really accelerated with COVID And I think ultimately fear has to do with a loss of sense of control. And I say that word sense deliberately because I don’t think anyone really has control over anything besides ultimately how they perceive the world and how they react. And that’s if they do a little bit of work.

Mark Divine [00:01:50]:
Right.

Sam Wilkins [00:01:50]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:01:50]:
So the sense of lack of control has been slipping away because the narratives have been, you know, the narratives of what it meant to be, you know, human and what it means to be like sane American. In our case, they’re really dramatically shifting. And so people’s center is like, been tilted in a lot of different directions.

Sam Wilkins [00:02:13]:
Right.

Mark Divine [00:02:16]:
Let me. I mean, you’re an expert in depression and the psychology of how to like break free from that. And there’s so many ways to, to look at that. Let me start by talking about my personal situation. Right. So I, I believe that I have experience kind of low grade depression. And it’s because I grew up in a traumatic kind of family situation. A lot of alcoholism, a lot of anger, you know, emotional abuse, and probably, you know, with.

Mark Divine [00:02:50]:
Because of that withheld love as a child. And I compensated with that with extreme exercise. I became a Navy seal, you know, you couldn’t, they couldn’t hurt me in the SEAL training program. Right. And then of course alcohol helped with that as well. But my sense is that my brain, and I think there’s some research to this, I’m not really clued in on 100%, but there, when an individual experiences that kind of trauma as a child, the brain doesn’t produce enough of the feel good hormones like serotonin and dopamine. And this is one of the reasons why exercise has been so helpful for me. But is there, I guess where I’m going with this is is there a physiological basis of anxiety and depression emanating from childhood trauma?

Sam Wilkins [00:03:37]:
There definitely is. My field still has a lot of work to do to untangle what exactly is depression. And there’s likely many different forms. But trauma, neglect, difficult circumstances, stress. Now I’ll caveat that a little bit because some stress is good and you know, challenges that we overcome and that are time limited help build resilience and confidence. But if it’s unpredictable stress for a long time, high intensity and we, you know, the person gives up, then that is harmful to people’s psychological wellbeing. So there’s a number of factors and early childhood as well as adolescence are critical times when as much as possible, we want to stabilize and reinforce profile love and nurturing and warm relationships as young people develop.

Mark Divine [00:04:33]:
Right. In stress lexicon, you had the acute stress, which is a shock like a really traumatizing event, like a car accident or the loss of a loved one, and then you had the chronic, which is over time it’s just this kind of, it could be just hyper arousal from conditions in the household or anything like that. How do, how do these differ in the context of contributing to anxiety or depression? You know, let me just add some color. It would seem like if you’re relatively have relatively normal development, that an acute stress could actually be a resilience builder. Right. Whereas long term chronic stress is what would be really debilitating in terms of anxiety and leading into kind of depressive symptoms.

Sam Wilkins [00:05:25]:
Yeah, And a lot of this, especially when we refer to long term stress, has to do with a concept, it’s academic lingo, but something called learned helplessness, which is basically where if, and some of this is dependent on a person’s attitude and expectations and mindset that, that if you get into your head that look, nothing I do is going to make a difference, I may as well just roll over and give up. It’s in a way a self fulfilling prophecy. Not that all you need to do is pull up your bootstraps and buck up. And so, I mean, I’m a big proponent of doing that, of pulling up your bootstraps. But there are other. It’s a complicated interplay between, you know, an individual’s attitude as well as their kind of own individual makeup, genetically neurocircuitry, wise and so forth, as well as the environment. So lots of different factors, but ultimately chronic, unpredictable, high level intensity stress is not good because it raises the probability that someone’s just going to say, there’s nothing I can do, nothing I do seems to make a difference. That’s what is referred to in psychology as learned helplessness.

Mark Divine [00:06:43]:
Right. I could tell from reading your background that you, you have a orientation toward, you know, Eastern psychology and consciousness, you know, studies that maybe are juxtaposed to the traditional Western, scientific, materialistic viewpoint. And I know that’s a generalization, but that’s leading to my next question. At what level do you think karmic forces, the energy that an individual’s soul brings into an incarnation, could play into whether that individual has a life of anxiety and depression or is free, so to speak?

Sam Wilkins [00:07:32]:
Well, I think the most I can speak of this has to do with my writing and thinking around free will. I definitely think there’s a lot to be learned from Eastern traditions and so forth. Certainly I believe that our decisions are shaped in large respect by the circumstances in which we find ourselves. But there is also an individual, a personal component to, you know, how you react, how you, you choose to either face or run away from or whatever, how you handle with a number of different challenges. One of one of my favorite books and one of my, I guess, professional heroes was a psychiatrist named Viktor Frankl. And he wrote a very influential, it still sells very well, influential book called Man’s Search for Meaning. And he wrote this book in a very short period of time following his liberation from a concentration camp during the Holocaust. He was Jewish and like so many others, suffered a terrible experience during that camp.

Sam Wilkins [00:08:44]:
And his experience, although difficult, he noticed that even in those very, very difficult circumstances that a man could choose, a man or woman could choose how he responded to these difficult circumstances. These difficult circumstances. He observed men that would give away their last morsel of bread to a neighbor, to a fellow, a man or friend. And he observed those who in those difficult circumstances just doubled down on their selfishness. And that even in those very limited circumstances that there was still an aspect of choice and that a person could influence the type of being that they Were becoming.

Mark Divine [00:09:30]:
That’s amazing. I love his work. I think he called his therapy logo therapy. Am I right?

Sam Wilkins [00:09:35]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:09:35]:
And boil it down. I mean, you express it really well. It’s just basically, if you can turn your eye towards service, right? Turn your eye to your fellow human being, take it off yourself, and in that moment, you know, you will. You know, you’ll be generating some positive energy, right. Which in repeated acts of that kind of service and kindness can be uplifting. And those who did that in the concentration camp survived, and those who didn’t, didn’t. And so I guess my question here is, how does this relate to free will? Is Victor saying you have the free will, or is he only saying only those who can find themselves serving others in those most dire circumstances have free will? In other words, is free will free? Is it accessible to everybody?

Sam Wilkins [00:10:21]:
His writing was very much in favor of. Look, free will is a real thing, and we need to recognize it and teach people that. As you probably know, in some circles, this is a controversial area. And when I say in some circles, most people go around their daily lives with the assumption that I can do the things that I choose and so forth. And I believe that’s true to some extent. Certainly culture and the people you surround yourself and habits, these all play into it. But the best level of evidence that I’ve read is that behavior, even in relatively simple organisms, behavior is not deterministic, which means that there’s a level of unpredictability there. And this, I think, is in part, I think that’s a critical part of what we refer to as free will.

Mark Divine [00:11:18]:
Right. And I think that gets into the intentionality, like Heisenberg principles are. The observer paradox of the way you observe something will change the behavior of the thing that you’re observing.

Sam Wilkins [00:11:31]:
Yes. This reminds me of a great. If you don’t mind just the quip in academics is that you have Heisenberg, and he’s driving along and he gets pulled over by a cop. And the cop asks him, do you know how fast you were going? He says, no, I don’t, but I know where I am. And he says, well, you’re going 80 miles an hour. And he goes, oh, great, now I’m lost.

Mark Divine [00:11:57]:
I love it. That’s awesome. Yeah.

Sam Wilkins [00:12:01]:
I got that from professor at Stanford, Robert Sapolsky. Great writer.

Mark Divine [00:12:06]:
And most academics probably don’t love the Heisenberg principle because it basically says that all research is biased ultimately from the positionality of the researcher.

Sam Wilkins [00:12:16]:
Well, I mean, at certain levels. Right. I think that’s true. At many levels that when you, certainly with people and apparently with electrons, when you observe them, they behave somewhat differently, you know, and in other areas of research, that’s maybe less true or less applicable, but it’s certainly, I think, through the scientific world for a. It threw them a curveball when they realize, oh, this may not be a totally deterministic system after all.

Mark Divine [00:12:51]:
Right. Yeah, it’s a puzzle, right. For the last few years, I’ve been puzzling over this concept of free will because, you know, I have a deep meditation practice and, you know, I more and more come to experience what some of the yogis and Eastern philosophers like Krishnamurti and Ramana Maharshi talk about in that, you know, from the non dual perspective, everything is consciousness and we are instruments of consciousness. So we perceive consciousness from our unique perspective, but it’s a universal subjectivity. It’s not an individual subjectivity. Meaning that. Well, that’s the universal perspective. But simultaneously, I mean, the Advaita says it’s not two.

Mark Divine [00:13:41]:
Duality and non duality are not two. So simultaneously we have this body brain, this body, mind and brain that has the conditioning and the training and the environmental conditions, as well as maybe karmic energy conditions that cause that limited perspective of universal consciousness to be radically unique. And so therefore it’s taken to be an individual consciousness, individual sense of self. And that’s what the Buddha said. That is the cause of suffering. That’s the cause of suffering. To think that it’s an illusion that you are an individual separate self with an individual consciousness. And so from the perspective of the Eastern traditions, there is no free will.

Mark Divine [00:14:28]:
Everything is universal consciousness, but it’s being played out through the conditioning of that body mind, the individual body mind. And that’s just a positionality. But from the perspective of duality, you have a sense of being an individual self. And that sense also includes the sense of having a free will. Yeah, I know. What do you say about that? It’s like confusing.

Sam Wilkins [00:14:51]:
Yeah, I would probably agree more with the latter, certainly. And the thing that I would maybe does resonate with me from the first is that, yeah, we do have this individuality and this free will. But one of the things that’s interesting about human nature is that we’re not very good at predicting. We’re surprisingly poor judges at predicting what circumstances and situations and activities are going to be rewarding to us. So, yeah, interesting. This is, this is something in psychology that’s called affective forecasting. You’re. You’re forecasting.

Sam Wilkins [00:15:33]:
How are you going to feel your mood state in a given situation. And there’s this great psychology research article from the 1970s that really epitomizes this. It has this provocative title that is Accident Victims and lottery winners. Okay. So it compares these two groups. Some, sometime after this pivotal event happened, either they got in a terrible accident and were left paraplegic, or they won the lottery and were rich. And after some time, their kind of levels of mood more or less go back to where they were. And really, there wasn’t any difference between the groups in the ability for the people in each group to feel reward from everyday tasks and so forth.

Sam Wilkins [00:16:21]:
So we think that if I could just get a nicer car, a bigger house, a 20% pay raise, then I would be satisfied, then I would be happy. And there’s a time when that’s true. And for two, three, four weeks, whatever it is.

Mark Divine [00:16:40]:
It’S not lasting.

Sam Wilkins [00:16:41]:
Yeah, your mood improves, you’re feeling better, but then you go back to your set point and you just kind of want more and more and more. Nature did not prepare us well to live in times of relative abundance. Now, one of the exceptions to this is relationships. A warm and uplifting relationship. And by the way, relationships, for better and for worse, a warm, uplifting relationship really does, in a sustained way, elevate your happiness, well being, mood, sepulchral, whatever word you want to call it. What we consider this is a good life, the relationships really do affect that. And the counterpart to that, though, is that a really difficult, negative, toxic relationship will also persistently decrease your happiness and well being and so forth and just takes away at your, you know, at your psychological state of mind.

Mark Divine [00:17:45]:
Right. Wow. So can one. Again, this is such a complex topic, but most, you know, we come into this world not choosing our relationships.

Sam Wilkins [00:18:09]:
Yep.

Mark Divine [00:18:10]:
Again, unless you are willing to accept the prospect that our higher power or our, you know, spiritual self, you know, architected the situation, you know, chose the parents to, you know, learn certain lessons or to be able to fulfill a certain destiny or Dharma. And I choose that. Right. That’s kind of my belief system. But again, I don’t have any direct proof of it, but so we come in. I’ll use my example like I, you know, came in and my family was my family, and there was a lot of chaos, a lot of negativity. And then the friends were my friends from my environment. It really wasn’t until I was a full adult in my 20s where I started to recognize that I could choose.

Mark Divine [00:18:56]:
And. But I don’t think a lot of people Ever break out of those initial environments where they can choose, truly choose, like with what we’re talking about, free will. And when I say free will, I mean fully autonomous, free from conditioning, free from, you know, the subconscious trauma induced patterns that drive most of human behavior. Right. I don’t think you really have free will. I think you’re just you, you think you do, but you’re acting on some sort of algorithm that’s been conditioned into you based upon that early environmental conditions.

Sam Wilkins [00:19:26]:
Yeah, but just a couple thoughts. I, I also believe there was some element of choice before we, you know, we were born. I don’t have scientific level proof of that, but my particular and religious belief has this notion that somehow we chose to be here.

Mark Divine [00:19:43]:
Right.

Sam Wilkins [00:19:43]:
I don’t know if it’s we chose a particular family or what. I mean, it’s hard to think why would someone choose to be in this terrible situation.

Mark Divine [00:19:50]:
But I’ve had that thought several times. Why did I choose?

Sam Wilkins [00:19:54]:
But certainly that this was an important part of our, of our overall growth and development, that we chose to be here and that there’s a purpose to our existence. Now, going back to this issue of free will, in many ways I agree. Sometimes people think, oh, free will has to be totally independent from other factors, whatever. I don’t think that’s quite right. Because if your decisions had nothing to do with your past experiences and so forth, that would nullify the concept of a self.

Mark Divine [00:20:25]:
Right?

Sam Wilkins [00:20:26]:
Right. A person that decides in a totally random way. And there’s no room for personality, there’s no room for consistency of self over time. So I certainly think our choices are influenced in very strong ways by past experience, by environment. But I think there is room for you to make a genuine decision. And I wonder also if there’s not really such thing as free will. In a vacuum, there’s not really a choice unless you have two or more competing options. Interesting.

Sam Wilkins [00:21:05]:
You have to be pulled in one direction or another. And this is critical to. I mean, I think one of the reasons I’m on here is I have a book that came out earlier in 2024 about what I think is a framework that science provides us that might give a little hint at what is the meaning and purpose of our existence. And I think choice is a big part of that. I think the way that nature has shaped us leaves us pulled in different directions. And in many ways we refer to this as good and evil. We have capacities for selfishness, but also altruism, aggression, but also cooperation and so forth. And depending on our choices as well as the environments in which we find ourselves and in which we place ourselves.

Sam Wilkins [00:21:53]:
This determines kind of the trajectories that we choose, the life paths that unfold before us. And I think that in that way there’s this cliche motif, right, of a cartoon character that has a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other shoulder. I think in some ways that’s maybe truer to life than we often realize.

Mark Divine [00:22:16]:
Yeah. And actually it fits perfectly with the east west dichotomy. Right. Because the angel could easily be pure consciousness enlivening our existence. And the devil is the ego. Right. And so, or from Freud’s ego ID and super consciousness, super conscious really is the non personal universal consciousness that is love. And the ego is everything that’s less than that.

Mark Divine [00:22:42]:
It’s the split mind that lives in a dualistic good, bad, up, down, left, right, time denominated reality where we’re constantly chasing things that bring us pleasure and running away from things that we fear or that cause us suffering. And so that’s. So when it comes to free will, you could say it is that higher self or that super conscious or that, you know, that universal consciousness, the spirit that runs through all things from the native tradition’s perspective that is nudging us toward the good, nudging us toward the life affirming actions. Whereas the ego, which is completely designed and rooted in our natural instinctual selves, is always going to choose the path of least resistance to survival, which is often the wrong choice or pleasure. So your book purpose, what evolution and human nature imply about the meaning of our existence. So I guess based upon this recent kind of thread, how can we prove that we have a higher purpose? Is there any way for an individual to come to move beyond kind of belief to like certainty that we have a higher purpose or a higher self even?

Sam Wilkins [00:24:12]:
It’s a good question, and I think that’s a personal question. I don’t know that I can provide evidence that is irrefutable, that there’s a purpose for life. What I’m trying to do here is provide a framework where I’m trying to provide a framework that goes against this long running perception that science and biology in particular evolution implies that we have no purpose, that life is meaningless, any purpose that we concoct is purely an illusion. I’m trying to push against that and provide an alternative framework and a competing framework where. No, actually when you bring these things together. Yeah. You know, what do we find meaning in? We find meaning in relationships and it seems like we’re designed by that way. And most importantly, we find meaning in close personal and sometimes family relationships and this concept of choice between good and evil.

Sam Wilkins [00:25:17]:
I think the way that nature has shaped us is that we, you know, there scientists have argued for a long time what is at the root of human nature. We ultimately, you know, altruistic or selfish. I think we have both capacities within our flesh. And there’s interesting evidence or there’s interesting cases from biology where, oh, actually it looks like nature shaped not only a survival of the fittest individual that would have led to selfishness, but a survival of the fittest group or family that led to the opposite of selfishness, cooperation and alteration, so forth. So I can’t prove beyond a doubt, and I don’t think it was designed by that. I honestly think that on purpose there was room for choice of belief. Whether you’re going to believe one system or one framework rather, or do you.

Mark Divine [00:26:13]:
Think, again, getting to the question of whether evolution was strictly biological, survival of the fittest, or was it whether it was divinely inspired? Is that again, back to that choice? Could that choice be the divine inspiration?

Sam Wilkins [00:26:28]:
I think there’s room for that. So if I can, I’ll share just a little bit. I decided to write this book when I was younger. I was a medical student and I studied engineering. So I didn’t have a ton of exposure to biology. I did the pre, the required courses to get into medical school. But it was that during that first year of medical school, I don’t know why exactly, because I had heard of evolution and a little bit. But so, so many of the faculty, the professors there just keep referring back to it.

Sam Wilkins [00:27:01]:
And I thought about. And it bothered me, right? It bought, you know, it was like this. Does this go against what the sense that I have that most people have, that life has purpose and value and meaning? Because on the surface it seemed to. And when I dug further, I uncovered a number of principles that were really satisfying to me. And the reason I wrote the book is to try to provide a framework for people who struggle with similar challenges of what does biology actually really imply? What does evolution imply about us, about our existence, about a purpose or lack thereof of existence. And one of the things that I didn’t like was the sense that it was a totally random and haphazard process. I think a lot of lay people, when they think of evolution, they think, oh, that’s totally random. We just happen to be here, Good for us.

Sam Wilkins [00:27:58]:
I’m grateful, but you know, there’s not really a Higher purpose. Because if you could rewind the tape of life, you know, a million, a billion years or so, and watch it unfold again, a totally different result would have, would have come about. And I think there’s a lot of evidence that that’s not exactly the case. There are these patterns that recur over and over and over and over again in evolution that point to deeper structures or constraints or higher laws that have guided or shaped this process to go in some ways and not others. And many of the. There are a number of vocal atheists that are biologists that have said evolution totally dispels any notion of God and so forth. And they would agree, they would agree that this was not a random process. They would bristle it at theological implications that I’m trying to draw.

Sam Wilkins [00:28:50]:
But, but they would agree, yes, this is definitely not a random process. There’s something here, we don’t understand exactly what it is, but there’s some forces in the laws of nature, whatever, that have constrained the process to go in some directions and not others.

Mark Divine [00:29:04]:
Right. And so if we were to take this to the individual level, do you believe that every individual has a unique purpose or they can construct a unique purpose through some thoughtful effort?

Sam Wilkins [00:29:24]:
Yeah, I think there’s at least two levels here. I think there’s a general purpose and I think for pretty much everyone, everyone who has a certain level of cognitive capacity. I think one of the reasons that we are here is to choose between the good and evil within us. I think all of us in our bodies have capacity for, for a variety of traits that we generally categorize as good and evil. I think that’s a general purpose. But at the individual level, yes, I think people can find great meaning in an individual level purpose. And whether that’s. You found a particular talent that you excel at and you develop that talent and use it not just to help yourself, but to help others, that often provides a great source of meaning and satisfaction.

Sam Wilkins [00:30:15]:
So I think there’s both levels and I think at a general level, for people who have a minimum level of cognitive capacity, I think one of the reasons we’re here is to choose between good and evil. But then there’s different individual purposes for all of us that are in some ways up to our making.

Mark Divine [00:30:40]:
This is kind of funny what was going through my mind right now. You said a minimum cognitive level. You have the capacity to choose between good and evil, which means, you know, generally you would want to choose more good than evil. But why is most of humanity choosing, you know, the opposite?

Sam Wilkins [00:30:58]:
Well, and There’s a number of reasons. I think. One, the pull of selfishness is strong.

Mark Divine [00:31:02]:
Right.

Sam Wilkins [00:31:03]:
And then to another reason I alluded to is that we’re not good at predicting what is going to be rewarding.

Mark Divine [00:31:12]:
So we don’t know what’s good.

Sam Wilkins [00:31:14]:
Well, we’re bad at predicting what’s going to bring us happiness. And ultimately my belief is that goodness will bring happiness and there is data to show that service, helping others. And so that is very rewarding. But most of us don’t go around thinking, oh, I could just find another person to help today. Then, you know, can you imagine how the world would be different if we did think that it’d be great? But so, you know, I think this is maybe what we’re taught when we’re told to lean not unto our own understanding.

Mark Divine [00:31:48]:
Right.

Sam Wilkins [00:31:49]:
Is to try to remind, and this is one of the reasons that I go to church on a regular basis. I need to remember, okay, it’s not the money, it’s not the fame, it’s not the proceeds, it’s not the status. It’s my relationships that are going to be rewarding and what do I need to do in my life to put those at the top of the priority list?

Mark Divine [00:32:09]:
Right. In your book and your work, are you prescriptive in any manner? I mean, you’ve already talked about obviously seeking good relationships and finding, you know, purpose and moving toward the good. But you know, we have difficulty knowing what that is. But you know, for an individual listening to this, they’d be like, yeah, Professor Wilkins has got some great ideas. How does it apply to me? Where do we go with that?

Sam Wilkins [00:32:37]:
Yeah, so there are two things and they’re going to sound maybe a little old fashioned, but I think the data really back them up and that two of the factors, the modifiable factors, meaning something that you can do something about, not like genetics, but the factors that most lead to, well, being, happiness and are good for staving off depression and anxiety and so forth. One is marriage, okay, long term partnership marriage, and the other actually is religious participation. So there is, there is, there are very noticeable, observable, tangible benefits to being part of a religious organization. And this, I think this trickles down to non religious organizations to some degree and you know, being part of Rotary Club, whatever, some shared group in which you’re contributing to something greater than yourself, I think that’s, that carries a lot of the benefits. But there seems to be something somewhat unique about religious organizations that when people are a part of them, they seem to experience really Tangible benefits.

Mark Divine [00:33:55]:
Right. I have more question on that. But I’m curious, because you’re an expert in depression, can someone be happy and depressed at the same time? I mean, because my experiences, I generally I’m happy, I’ve been happy. The only time I wasn’t happy was when I was completely having an existential crisis myself in my early 20s, which led to a complete shift in everything. But like I’ve had periods of, you know, not feeling great, but I wasn’t not happy.

Sam Wilkins [00:34:33]:
Yeah, yeah. So a lot of this depends on how you define your terms. And these terms, we throw them around all the time, but they’re kind of vague. What’s the question and what is happiness? There’s a lot of researchers who don’t like happiness. They’ll use the term well being. So can you have relatively high well being and really severe depression? I think if the severity. I think it’s really hard to have both at high levels. Yes.

Sam Wilkins [00:35:03]:
So to be severely depressed, it’s too capturing and intensely happy. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a person that would fit that description. But certainly kind of low levels of depression and things that, and some of this may have to do with again, childhood experiences, adverse childhood experiences that kind of still are lingering in the background. But again, most of the time, most days, generally happy, feeling mostly fulfilled. So that, that is possible when, when the levels of intensity are, are not at the extreme.

Mark Divine [00:35:37]:
Yeah, yeah. And do you like, do you work with clients or are you mostly a research psychologist?

Sam Wilkins [00:35:46]:
I’m mostly a researcher, but I, I do see patients. I mean, my research is clinically focused, it’s running clinical trials and, and then I, a couple hours a week, I do a private practice.

Mark Divine [00:35:55]:
Okay, so in your private work, how have you, or what have you seen to be most effective to help individuals uncover, discover, access what they believe to be their higher purpose? This is something that we struggle with in our end too.

Sam Wilkins [00:36:11]:
Yeah, it’s a good question because. Well, it’s very individualized. Right. Traditionally, my field as well as kind of therapy is at least we’re taught not to necessarily be directive, not to tell people you need to go do this and it will make you better, but to kind of what is it that is meaningful and valuable to them? There are definitely surveys though, that we tend to as a field. We tend to sometimes skip over things that are probably more meaningful to people than we would think. And again, one of the things that comes to mind is religion, psychiatry, psychology. For a long time there’s been this sense we don’t really ask about that. But obviously for many people, it’s very important and meaningful, and I think we probably should.

Sam Wilkins [00:37:00]:
And again, not necessarily in a directive way, like, if only you went to church, you probably better that. Probably not a helpful comment, but is there something in there? Did they used to have a religious community? Maybe they don’t anymore because of COVID or whatever. Maybe you could nudge. Is that something you wanna think about? If. No. Okay, that’s fine. But. So it’s.

Sam Wilkins [00:37:22]:
I don’t have a magic bullet for this. Seems to help everyone that I’ve seen, because people are just so different, human beings from one to another. Certainly we are. We have a shared humanity. But the reasons for a person’s depression or anxiety are very individual.

Mark Divine [00:37:41]:
Right. I think you just described the difference between psychology and psychotherapy. Because psychotherapy will be prescriptive, like cognitive behavioral therapy. You know, change your behaviors here and it should lead to, you know, subjective shifts in your perspectives there.

Sam Wilkins [00:37:57]:
I guess I’ll walk that back and say, you know, for major life decisions, we’re taught not to be prescriptive, but certainly. Yeah, you’re right. The cognitive behavioral therapy, which has been very helpful and I’m a big fan. Yeah, it is in many ways prescriptive. Like, okay, you’re thinking the wrong thoughts, but again, we tend to shy away from you should do this type. Well, let’s think about what are the consequences of thinking this way versus thinking another way? How do you feel when you’re thinking this way versus another way? And then hopefully the patient will connect the dots and say, yeah, well, yeah, I certainly don’t want to be thinking like this all the time. I’d like to be thinking more positive and so forth.

Mark Divine [00:38:34]:
So, yeah, we touched on this at the very beginning of our conversation. I have a saying in one of my books that to bring the challenge to you before the challenge, like, presents itself, and what we mean by that is deliberately construct things that are going to be scary and challenging for you so that you can really face your fears and develop the capacities to handle that. That level of stress, you know, And I learned this through Navy SEAL training where we deliberately stress the crap out of ourselves with scary all the time and through that process become more and more resilient. And I believe my personal belief is that has allowed me to avoid life or my higher power from smacking me down with the very same lessons that I would have had to endure anyways for my own evolutionary, you know.

Sam Wilkins [00:39:27]:
Yeah, growth.

Mark Divine [00:39:29]:
And. And the reason I bring that up Is because I want to ask you, you know what, Whether you think kind of your higher power will present challenges that are specific to you as an individual so that you get the right lessons and you know, back to. That kind of relates to karma too. So you bleed off negative karma or, you know.

Sam Wilkins [00:39:52]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:39:52]:
Evolution.

Sam Wilkins [00:39:53]:
Yeah. My personal religious belief is that, yes, these challenges are in some way tailored to you. And again, that’s sometimes really hard because.

Mark Divine [00:40:03]:
It’S hard because you say, well, how could Covid have been tailored to me?

Sam Wilkins [00:40:07]:
Yeah. Or my wife’s death or my father in law is terrible. Life’s hard.

Mark Divine [00:40:15]:
Life is hard.

Sam Wilkins [00:40:16]:
It’s really hard. I try to keep a hold of that, hope that, look, this isn’t the end. If I really believe as I do that life, it’s a test of our character and we’re meant to develop our ability to choose between good and evil, then to me it doesn’t make sense that this is all there is. There’s something beyond this that, okay, things are going to be better that those challenges that were insurmountable during your life, that there’s going to be some way around those. Even if not, it doesn’t happen in this life.

Mark Divine [00:40:56]:
Right. Yeah, I choose to believe that as well. Maharishi and the Indian sages would say that when the moment of death is like waking up from a dream.

Sam Wilkins [00:41:13]:
That’s interesting. Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:41:14]:
And. And then the real you is suddenly recognizes that you just had a dream of this life that we call life.

Sam Wilkins [00:41:20]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:41:21]:
Just a pretty fascinating perspective. So we got to wrap up here.

Sam Wilkins [00:41:29]:
But.

Mark Divine [00:41:32]:
What’S your view on artificial intelligence and this kind of transhumanism push? Right. And do you think that will. Do you think that kind of merging of human mind with this technological fantasy is going to make things better or worse when it comes to the human condition around anxiety, depression, happiness or not?

Sam Wilkins [00:42:06]:
It’s a good question, and I guess no one really knows the answer. I’ll tell you my experience with AI. So the most common way I interact with artificial intelligence is through my phone. And I frequently will ask. I have an iPhone. I have an iPhone, so it’s Siri. Right. When I’m driving, if I need to call someone out, call so and so.

Sam Wilkins [00:42:31]:
And about six months ago, I was driving and I had. And by the way, if. If you’ve noticed, sometimes if you have more than one phone number for the person you’re trying to call, Shira will prompt you and say, which one? Meaning which one you want to call. Right. So about six months ago or so, I have two of my kids. I’ve got five kids. I had two in the backseat, ages 8 and 10. And for whatever reason, I got in my head at this time that I needed to call my wife.

Sam Wilkins [00:43:00]:
And I got in my head, I wonder if Siri’s smart enough to figure out who my wife is. Instead of saying, call Sarah, it said, call my wife. Siri says, which one? And then I had to do a quick double take and tell my boys.

Mark Divine [00:43:15]:
If they were listening.

Sam Wilkins [00:43:18]:
But back to the seriousness of your question. I mean, I think certainly AI can be a helpful tool. I don’t think it’s going to, you know, I was on a consulting call not too long ago with, with the group that was thinking about, well, can we just have AI perform the, the function of therapists?

Mark Divine [00:43:37]:
Right.

Sam Wilkins [00:43:38]:
Can you? You know, because there’s a shortage of therapists. And be great if we get more. It’d be cheaper if it’s automated. And a big part of why therapy is helpful is just that there’s another warm, helpful.

Mark Divine [00:43:51]:
Right. There’s the heart connection. Right.

Sam Wilkins [00:43:53]:
Yeah. There’s a hard. And I don’t think you’re going to imitate that with AI. Maybe if it gets really, really good, but I don’t think you’re going to imitate that with AI. So certainly there are going to be limitations in some contexts. AI is going to be probably very helpful.

Mark Divine [00:44:12]:
Yeah. But you know, you said 10 years. Like it’s been 10 years since we’ve been getting more and more anxious and depressed. And it’s about 10 years. A little over 10 years. 2011, 12, when social media kind of popped on the scene.

Sam Wilkins [00:44:24]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:44:25]:
And now you have AI driven social media, which is feeding up all this crazy negative stuff and, you know, self reinforcing, you know, silos of information.

Sam Wilkins [00:44:34]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:44:35]:
So I think that, you know, if we project that into the future and magnify that, then you can probably extrapolate more and more, you know, and so, but people are waking up to that now. I mean, your profession, all sorts of people, even the, even the giants themselves, like Google and Apple and Amazon, not Amazon, but Facebook, they know this. They’re just addicted to the profit. Right.

Sam Wilkins [00:44:55]:
And a lot of people will make analogies with tobacco companies. Right. So tobacco companies, it’s pretty clear that they knew before the general public did that the products were harmful. And I’m convinced that’s the case with many of these social media companies. So you’re right. You know, this 10 year, especially for younger people.

Mark Divine [00:45:16]:
Right.

Sam Wilkins [00:45:16]:
Their depression rates and anxiety rates really Started to take off between 2010 and 2015 when, you know, 90 plus percent of the population had a supercomputer that they walk around with in their hand and it was linked to these social media feeds where it’s a very different way of interacting than we’ve done for, you know, hundreds of thousands of years face to face. So I am convinced that social media is a big culprit, especially for teenagers and young adults. If you’re 40s and you jump on social media and so it’s probably not the best thing to do and there’s other things you could be doing with your time, you know, 20 minutes here and there is not going to be terrible. But for young people, especially the data, it’s really damning that social media and so many of these kids, they only spend eight hours on their phone. I know I’ve got two teenagers and we were driving home from camp, I was giving a ride someone else and they got their phones back after the camp and they were excited to look at. And I just asked, check your screen time. What is your average screen time? Minutes per day. And it was something like eight, nine hours.

Sam Wilkins [00:46:35]:
That’s like one and a half full time jobs. Right? Like that’s a lot of time that you could be spending doing other things, developing a talent, playing a musical instrument, something like that. You know, I mean, and again, not all phone time is bad. It’s face time, you know, calls, you know, especially the ability to connect with My wife and I, our parents are in the, are thousands of miles away. That’s a great aspect too. But the social media aspect, it’s a very, very different way of interacting with the world and overall seems to be causing some serious harms.

Mark Divine [00:47:11]:
Yeah, yeah, it’s going to be interesting to watch that because like you said, they’re so baked in the tech into the technology that you know, just saying to them, hey, you know, you’re going to feel a lot better if you just put your phone down for, you know, three or four hours a day and get out in nature. They simply can’t do it. And that’s why back to free will. It’s almost like they’ve lost their free will because there’s an addictive aspect.

Sam Wilkins [00:47:34]:
You get the same reaction if you tell the patient who has an alcohol issue. You can feel a lot better if you put your bottle of booze down. That’s not the, you need something more than just telling them to put their bottle. So there is an addictive aspect to this and many of the studies they’ll look at, you know, you have two groups. One, you tell them to restrict social media use. The other, you don’t tell anything. And then the people that restrict social media use, they almost always score better in psychological outcomes after. But there’s kind of a week period or so where they’re almost going through a withdrawal period and oh, I’m anxious, I got to see my phone.

Sam Wilkins [00:48:11]:
But after about a week or so, that kind of passes into a different phase where, yeah, they psychological well being, their mental health and so forth is just. It’s better.

Mark Divine [00:48:20]:
Yeah. This is amazing. A great conversation. I could talk forever about this stuff with you, but. So your book Purpose what Evolution and Human Nature Imply about the Meaning of Our Existence came out this summer. Congratulations. So you can find that on Amazon or wherever. And what about, you know, just following you? Do you use social media yourself or how can people reach out to you or just learn more?

Sam Wilkins [00:48:45]:
Yeah, so I have, I’m on LinkedIn. That’s kind of my only social media at this point.

Mark Divine [00:48:50]:
That’s a good one.

Sam Wilkins [00:48:51]:
It’s bad for business, but good for mental health.

Mark Divine [00:48:57]:
Okay, so reach out to you on LinkedIn.

Sam Wilkins [00:48:59]:
Sure, yeah, that’d be great.

Mark Divine [00:49:01]:
Terrific. Sam, thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

Sam Wilkins [00:49:04]:
Mark, thank you very much.

Mark Divine [00:49:07]:
Oh, yeah, awesome. So just.