https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=5R92LTgqKl8
We live in a society. You could say, and that’s deep, that’s deep. It’s not just human society. Like, we’ve lived in a society forever. So, you know, lobsters live in dominance hierarchies. And they use their serotonin system, at least in part, to keep track of their dominance position. And so you can use antidepressants on lobsters when they get defeated. And they don’t feel so bad from being defeated in a fight. And so you just think about that, because antidepressants do the same thing to us. We’re so bloody social that the circuits that evolved 300 million years ago, when the lobsters and us had a shared ancestor, are still operating at the base of your brain. That’s why status is so important to people, and reputation. I mean, that serotonin system governs your emotional regulation. How people respond to you and what they think of you. Man, that matters. That’s why you’re on Facebook all the time, and checking your texts, and obsessing continually about your online presence, assuming that you’re doing that. You know, contacting people frantically and seeing what the updates are. It’s like, how are you held in the esteem of others? Very, very important. And that’s because it determines your emotional regulation. It’s really important. So, we exist in a society, always. And the society has two elements. The tyrannical element of the society, that would be the tyrannical king, roughly speaking, a very common mythological theme. You see that in the Lion King, too, right? Because that’s Scar. And of course, you see it in the real world, almost continually. And then the benevolent king, who is the source of all the good things about culture. You know, and you can see these things play out as mythologies in political terms. So, I would say, for example, the continual harping about the oppressive nature of the patriarchy is part of a myth. And the myth is that society is oppressive. It’s like, well, yeah, obviously. You know, because you have to be quite a bit like you, and you have to be quite a bit like you, even if you’re not, so that you can get along. Right? Everybody sacrifices a tremendous amount of their individuality to the common mode of being. There’s a tyrannical element to that. But, you know, by the same token, it’s the basis of cooperation and the stability of society.