Dr. Samuel Wilkinson on Why Life Is a Test of Good and Evil | EP 581

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We have become disconnected from real human interaction, which is for most people the source of the deepest sense of meaning and purpose. We were created for in-person interaction, and there's been overemphasis on the individual for the last 50 years in Western society that has, I think, paradoxically led us to more suffering.
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Welcome to episode 581 of PassionStruck. Let me ask you, what if everything we know about evolution, purpose, and human existence was only part of the story? Today, I'm joined by Dr.
Sam Wilkinson, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University and author of the new book, Purpose, What Evolution and Human Nature Imply About the Meaning of Our Existence. Dr.
Wilkinson challenges the idea that life is a random accident, offering a fresh perspective on how evolution itself may point to a deeper purpose. But before we dive in, earlier this week, I had an incredible conversation on Tuesday with Natalie Namaste about intuitive healing, overcoming limiting patterns, and aligning with your soul's purpose.
If you missed it, I highly recommend checking it out after this episode. And if you're new here, welcome to the Passion Struck podcast.
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Sign up at passionstruck.com and start making intentionality a habit. Now back to today's episode.
In this conversation with Dr. Wilkinson, we explore why our existence isn't a random accident and how science may actually point toward meaning.
We go into the dual nature of humanity, our capacity for both selfishness and altruism, and how understanding this helps us make better choices. Dr.
Wilkinson explains why relationships are the key to happiness and how they anchor our sense of mattering. We discuss how life is a test, an opportunity to choose between good and bad, and what that means for living with intention.
And then lastly, we go into practical strategies to align your daily actions with a deeper sense of purpose. If you've ever questioned why you're here or struggled to find meaning in your life, this episode will give you a new lens to look through.
Dr. Wilkinson blends cutting-edge science with timeless philosophical questions to help us live with more intention and fulfillment.
Let's dive into this fascinating conversation with Dr. Sam Wilkinson.
Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.
I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Dr. Sam Wilkinson to PassionStruck.
Welcome, Sam. John, thanks for having me on.
I'm excited to be here. Sam, I'd love to start these interviews out by going into a bit of my guest background before we explore the core topics so people get to know you before we really get into the nuts and bolts.
And I understand for you that your religious background has played a really foundational role in your life, even including going on a mission for a couple of years. Can you talk about why that has become so pivotal for you and how it's influenced the work that you do today at Yale and your entire education? No, I'd be happy to.
So as you mentioned, I grew up with a religious background that was an important part of my family's life. And I served a two-year mission for my faith when I was 19 or so, 18 or 19.
And that really opened my eyes to the way that some people live. I served mostly among Spanish-speaking people.
It was here in the United States, but mostly working with immigrants and such. And I think one of the ways that it really impacted me was actually during my medical training.
So I finished my undergraduate education and then I started medical school. And within the year of starting medical school, I really went through this period where I was struggling almost in a religious sense, where it seemed like what I was learning in school was at odds with the sense that I had that most people have that life has purpose and value and meaning.
And I went through this internal struggle, this wrestle, where I had to draw on different sources, both religious, but also scientific and figure out how, if I could, first of all, and then how I could try to fit these together in my mind and say, yes, I think there is a purpose to our existence, a purpose to our lives. And it fits in with science in this way.
And that really was a very pivotal moment and changed the way that I think see people and also see life. And it has laid the way for a lot of the topics that I tried to study and research in my career.
And as I understand it, as you were in medical school at Johns Hopkins, there was a pivotal moment in your first year that impacted both your spiritual life and your intellectual curiosity. And that was, you were wrestling with the compatibility of your faith and the theory of evolution.
If you think back upon that time, what questions were weighing on your mind and how did they challenge your beliefs at that time? So one of the aspects of the theory of evolution that I didn't was this sense that the way that life came about was totally random and haphazard. This, what some scientists have called the doctrine of randomness, right? That would seem to be at odds, at least to me, with the notion that we have a purpose and a meaning to our existence if things just randomly and haphazardly came about.
That was one of the issues that I didn't like. Another aspect was what I thought the theory of evolution implied about human nature, and that is that we are ultimately selfish and aggressive and self-serving and so forth.
And that was a bitter pill to swallow. And it turns out that my understanding of those two issues were just naive from a scientific view.
And I studied, I reflected, I did a lot of reading and recognized that my assumptions were not quite right, were not complete. And that the way that evolution has unfolded has definitely been not random.
And also the way that nature has shaped us, even through evolutionary mechanisms. Yes, there is a part to us that is selfish and self-serving and aggressive and so forth.
But there's another part to us that is altruistic and can be quite cooperative and peaceful and so forth. And those are the two issues that I really struggled with.
And as I pulled things together, really had this kind of aha moment where it just changed the way that I viewed the world and the way that I viewed other human beings. Thank you for sharing that.
And that's actually how you open up the book is talking about this experience. And the book I'm referring to is titled Purpose, What Evolution and Human Nature Imply About the Meaning of Our Existence.
And congratulations on the book and it also being featured as a member of the Next Big Idea Club.

Thank you. That was a pleasant recognition from the Next Big Idea Club.
So one of my favorite authors that I have referred to on a regular basis is Clayton Christensen. Okay.
Clayton Christensen. And my understanding is early on, over a decade before you even wrote Purpose, you reached out to Clayton Christensen for advice because you had seen him speak, and it was really a transformative experience for you.
What stood out for you about the way that Clayton integrated faith with intellectual rigor? And how did his approach influence your own perspective of bridging science and spirituality? And thank you for noticing that in the acknowledgements. So he came to Baltimore to give a talk when I was a medical student, and it was not in a professional capacity, but he was a religious leader in my faith.
And this was at the height of when I was struggling with this. And he's just such a dynamic and powerful speaker.
And it really, he was just an example to me of someone who could, while at the very highest of academic institutions, could hold both of these things in his mind at the same time, this faith, but also these academic pursuits. And I really had no business at all reaching out to him.
I mean, he was, as those who know him, he was incredibly busy. He was talking with leaders of government and states and companies at the highest levels.
But he was just so kind to respond to me when I literally just emailed him. And he gave me kind of the confidence that I needed.
I explained a little bit about this struggle I was having and told him that at some point I wanted to write a book about it. And he encouraged me.
And that, I mean, I feel like that more than anything gave me the confidence that I needed at that time. I was just a first year medical student and this public intellectual of a very high level corresponded with me and encouraged me.
And just such a kind thing to do on his part. I regret that he passed away before my book was published, but hopefully at some point, I'll be able to pick up that conversation and thank him face to face and remind him the way that he touched my life in a very personal way.
So in a very personal way, he was just a real inspiration and just built my confidence and will be forever grateful for that token of generosity that he showed to me. Thank you for sharing that and thank you for honoring his legacy.
So Sam, many scientists have argued that evolution is purely random and devoid of any overarching purpose. However, you highlight evidence throughout the book that suggests otherwise.
Can you walk us through some of what you think are the most important findings and how they may reshape our understanding of human significance? And let me, I'll just highlight the problem here. So this issue, there's a well-known physician scientist who put it well, I think when he said he was at one point, the Dean of the Yale School of Medicine, where I now work, he said, I cannot make my peace with the randomness doctrine.
I cannot abide the notion of purposelessness and blind chance in nature.

And yet I do not know what to put in its place for the quieting of my mind.

We talk about the absurdity of the human situation.

We do this because we do not know how we fit in

or what we are for.

It's a man named Lewis Thomas.

That was again at the crux of one of the things

I was struggling with because it would seem to be that if life came about through totally random means, then it's hard to see how there is a purpose to our existence or any sort of deep meaning in our lives. And it turns out that this is not quite the way that evolution has worked.
And a lot of this work has been discovered by a well-known and well-regarded scientist named Simon Conway Morris. And he has noticed there are these patterns that have emerged where you have different features and functions that have developed independently over and over and over again, so that you see that there are these maybe higher order principles

that have constrained or guided the process to go in certain directions and not others. So I'll

give an example. Birds and bats and butterflies, they all have wings and they're all slightly

different, but they all independently developed the wings. And this has happened about a half

dozen times, maybe a little more, a little less, that organisms have independently developed the

Thank you. they all independently developed the wings.
And this has happened about a half dozen times, maybe a little more, a little less, that organisms have independently developed the capacity for flight. There's another famous example is eyes.
So eyes have developed independently about 50 different times. Humans have pretty much the same exact type of eyes as an octopus or squid, but our eyes, they independently develop these remarkably identical structures, despite the fact that they were not that closely related.
A dolphin and a shark look very similar, but they're really not that closely related.

They each develop this similar body form independently.

So over and over again, this notion that there's something that is guiding evolution to go in certain ways and not others. Now, a big part of this is what is helpful for survival or this principle of natural selection, but there's something in addition to that seems to lead the process to go

in one direction and not a host of others. So there may be some randomness going on,

but it's a much, much smaller piece of the puzzle than I think we originally understood.

it thank you for sharing that and one of the areas I really want to deep dive into is this, I'm going to, is this crisis of meaning that you write about and I've heard you talk about. So I'm going to introduce this to you like this, Sam, so you have some context.
Earlier in my career, I was a senior executive at Fortune 50 companies like Lowe's and Dell in very senior roles. And in the midst of all of that, I got a calling from whether you refer to it as source or God or whatever that I was supposed to help.
The words that were given to me were the helpless, the hopeless, the lonely,

the broken, the battered. And for years, I really struggled with who were those people and how could I possibly make a difference and why was I being called? And as I was reading your book, and I'm going to read this for the audience, I saw these words, and it connects to the same thing that I believe I am called to help people with.
I call it the disease of disconnection, and that we are disconnected as a society. We're disconnected in our relationships, but overwhelmingly, we're disconnected from ourself.
And so you write, as I've worked with hundreds of depressed patients over the years, I found that many people struggle with a sense of purpose or meaning in their lives. You write, I find this tragically ironic compared to those earlier time periods.
People who lived in developed countries today have so much to live for. They have greater access to medicines that can reduce the risk of death and disease.
Through the marvels of modern technology and the vast amount of information that's available, they can readily learn about the rich cultures of countless societies past and present. And they have opportunities for both education and leisure that far surpass those of past generations.
Yet so many struggle to find hope and meaning in their lives. And I don't think this is just a Western culture issue.
My research and when I talk to more and more people, this is a worldwide issue. My research and when I talk to more and more people, this is a worldwide issue that's probably impacting a quarter at least of the population, if not more.
Can you go a little bit deeper into this? Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the blessings, but also the curses of technology.

We have essentially become atomized as a society. We have become disconnected from real human interaction, which is for most people the source of the deepest sense of meaning and purpose.
As we essentially live on the internet or on our phones. They're part of, we are small cogs in large bureaucracies through our jobs or other very vast organizations, some of which are essentially all virtual.
And that has, I think, taken us in a way and disconnected us from the way that we interact with each other in a face-to-face way.

That is essentially how we were created. We were created for in-person interaction, and a lot of the ways we spend our time now are not in that setting.
And there's been, I think, an overemphasis on the individual for the last 50 years in Western society that has, I think, paradoxically led us to more suffering.

and do you think that the suffering is tied ultimately to how we feel about how we hold significance to ourself and then how that evolves with how others feel that we hold significance towards them? Is that the root of what the issue is? Well, there's a lot of issues and it's not a simple thing, as you probably know. One of the problems, as I see it, is that there's a principle in psychology that's called affective forecast.
And this is the ability to predict how we're going to feel in a given situation. And it turns out that we're surprisingly poor judges at this.
And we're not necessarily poor judges at what's going to

make us happy versus not happy, but the intensity and the duration of those emotions, we're not great judges at. And this was, there's a very influential psychology study from the 1970s that really drove this point home.
It had the provocative title, Lottery Winners and Accident Victims.

And as the title suggests, the researchers, they assessed two different groups, those who had suffered terrible accidents and were now quadriplegic, and those who had won the lottery. And they compared them along things like satisfaction and well-being and so forth.
And surprising to many people is that there weren't a whole lot of differences. In some ways, actually, the accident victims had a better ability to enjoy everyday pleasures and feel reward.
But of course, if I asked you, which group would you rather be in? Everyone hands down would say, well, I'd rather win the lottery than suffer a terrible accident. And this is because we think, this is going to solve all my problems.
I'll have enough money. I won't be worried about XYZ financial concerns.
But with so many things that we hope for, we desire a bigger house, a new car, a promotion, these things, they do bring pleasure and reward and so forth, but it is fairly temporary. And after a couple of weeks or so, our happiness set point goes back to where it was.
The exception to this is long-term and uplifting relationships. When we are engaged in warm and healthy and uplifting relationships, this really elevates our happiness and well-being set point in a fairly permanent way.
one of the ways I think about this is, look, if you had an extra hour or two that you find yourself at the end of the day, how are you going to spend that time? A lot of us are caught in this kind of treadmill, this kind of hamster wheel where, okay, I got an extra hour. I'm going to catch up on emails.
I'm going to catch up on a work assignment that I fell behind with. And if you conduct this exercise, honestly, this, what would I do with an extra hour? I find it disturbing.
And I find myself automatically going toward things that are not necessarily going to bring me an enduring sense of happiness and satisfaction and meaning, which are relationships. So I think the right answer is, well, if you with an extra hour or two at the end of the day, is to write a love letter to my spouse or to read to my child or something like that.
That is what is going to build relationships. But we have this, another part of the problem is that we have this, in the West at least, we're obsessed with measuring things.
And there's some good things about that. But so many of the things that we're driven to do are measurable.
You can publish a paper, you can send a shipment, you can land a sale, whatever it is. These provide very tangible measurements of, quote unquote, success.
But the strength of relationships is much harder to measure. It's much messier.
And these relationships often don't seem to pay out for sometimes many years, especially as our children grow up and so forth. And so it's easy to kind of, to take other quote, more tangible measures of success and put them higher on the priority list than a relationship.
But I think that is a mistake. So it's important to be continually reminding ourselves of what it is that does bring, you know, deep purpose and meaning.
And for almost everyone, that's in some form the way that we relate with other people. Yeah, I'm going to just jump on this.
I saw one of the people who gave you an endorsement for the book is a mutual friend of both of ours, Arthur Brooks. And Arthur is the latest person who talks about that we get the equation wrong when we consider happiness and success doesn't bring happiness.
It's the inverse. But what he's really referring to is work that was done by Sean Acor and the Happiness Advantage and also in the work that Laura King and Ed Diener and Sonia Liebermischke did years ago on this subject.
But where I want to dive into is it is interesting that if you look at Bob Waldinger's work, most recent director for the Harvard study on adult aging, and you also look at the work of Richard Ryan and self-determination theory, they both bring up what you're talking about. It's our relationships that matter so much.
And if you look at self-determination theory on top of that, it's our autonomy and also our mastery. And sometimes I think that mastery and our will to succeed at what we think society wants us to succeed at gets in the way of those relationships, which is what you're describing.
We get so caught up in our extrinsic motivations that we're really losing that intrinsic fire that's driving us and giving us that meaning. Is that kind of a good way to think about what you're describing? That's a great way to summarize it.
Okay. So here's where I want to go with this.
I've heard you talk about Simon Conway Morris. For those on the podcast who aren't familiar with him, British paleontologist and evolutionary biologist best known for his work on convergent evolution and his studies on Cambrian explosion.
And he describes just as biological systems independently develop similar traits. These are like wings on birds, bats, butterflies, or eyes on different species.
I contend that a theory that I often cite, social cycle theory, suggests that societies and civilizations often experience recurring patterns of behavior structures and dynamics over time these cycles convergent evolution and the so-called social cycle theory might point to higher order principles or constraints guiding the development of human systems what are your thoughts on that? Well, there's certainly a lot of variability in the ways that cultures can develop and unfold and so forth. But there do seem, and human nature is quite malleable, but there do seem to be some constraints and some kind of deep principles that seem to push human cultures in one way or the other.
So it's this, I see it as a bit of a tension between a high amount of variability and then a lot of recurring themes. You know what, if I can go this way, I'm trying to backtrack or piggyback on our last comment about the importance of relationships.
One of the things that I try to bring together,

and I'm definitely not the first in any sense as to proclaim that relationships are fundamental to our happiness and well-being. One of the things that I'm trying to do is link that to biology and link that to evolution and ask the question, well, why is this the case? Why is it that relationships are so rewarding.

And this, I think, goes back to something called attachment theory, which was developed by one of my professional heroes, a psychiatrist named, see where I'm going. This was John.
Yeah, I'd love you to. Okay.
So John Bowlby, he came of age professionally in the early 1900s. And at that time, many of the now outdated theories of psychoanalysis and psychology still held great sway.
Among them was this sense that relationships weren't really all that important. And Bowlby, this didn't really make sense to him.
Even among animals, he saw that some of the behaviors, they didn't really have any purpose other than to strengthen relationships. So he pushed back against this very quid pro quo approach to relationships that many of the psychoanalysts had at that time.
And as he searched for kind of a way to understand this, he studied, in fact, he studied babies. And both babies of animals and babies of humans.
And what he noticed is that human babies are incredibly immature at their birth really more than any other creature a baby giraffe the first thing he experiences upon being born is actually a six-foot drop to the ground because female giraffes give birth standing up actually but within an hour that baby giraffe can be up and walking and nursing on its own and standing. And you can imagine for those of us who

are parents, how our family lives would have been different if our babies could walk within an hour

of being born. That's hard to fathom.
But he noticed that human babies are utterly helpless,

and they are so helpless that many scholars who study infant development refer to the first

six months or so of life as the, quote, fourth trimester. We are essentially born half-baked.
And Bowlby hypothesized that pretty much everything a baby can do, which isn't a whole lot, cry, coo, suck, laugh, smile, that sort of thing. In part, these behaviors are intended to draw together the baby with the parents.
And this is necessary and evolutionarily adapted because without a strong bond, that baby wouldn't survive. Now, the behaviors of the baby are just one side of the coin.
In order for this to work, there has to be a strong reciprocal attachment on the part of the parents. And fortunately, most of the time, Mother Nature cooperates.
And those of us who are parents can think back to the very deep and profound sense of love and affection that we feel upon the birth of our children. Again, I think this is where the strongest forms of love in the flesh that nature has created, is where they come about is through these family relationships these most biologically relevant relationships between parents and their children and right now as you probably know john there's a there's a national discussion going on about the value and the worth and so forth of having children.
Fertility rates are falling among developed nations pretty much everywhere. As people recognize, look, it's really hard to raise children.
But I would also try to expand people's vision and recognize that, yes, it is hard, but that is precisely why it is meaningful and why you feel this deep sense of love. Those two are connected, and I think it goes back to the immaturity of our children when they are born.
They really need us for such a long period of time, and so you can't really, as I see it, you can't separate the deep sense of love and meaning and purpose that we experience as parents with the sacrifice that it requires. If you have a room full of 100 parents, you ask them, what's the most challenging thing you've done? Most of them will say, raise my kids.
You ask the same parents, what's the most rewarding thing you've done? Most of them will say, raise my kids. And I think those two are inextricably linked.
It's almost the convergence of biology and psychology. You can't have this deep love without compelling sacrifice.
And that's at least how I see it. And that, you know, that's very interesting to me.
It's interesting to me too. And I mean, you can take this so many different ways.
A sidebar, one of the reasons that I've heard people say that Russia invaded Ukraine at this time is because Putin realized that they, in the next few years coming up, are not going to have the mass of people to fight a war. And so if he was going to deal with these choke points, now was the time he needed to act.
I don't want us to explore this in any way. It just shows you how big this gap is becoming in populations where families used to have three, four, five, six, seven kids in Russia, and now many are choosing not to have any, or they're only having one child, for instance.

But what you speak to really highlights that our evolutionary significance of deep abiding relationships is really central to our sense of mattering and human purpose. and when those deep relationships go to the wayside or we fundamentally are not having that human to human interaction in the way that I think evolution wanted us to have it, it's very difficult to do that on a phone.
I believe, as you were talking about, that it's the family relationships and their deterioration that may be the most alarming aspect of this, because growing up as a family unit, we did everything together. And I remember, especially on weekends, it was all set around doing activities around the whole family, going to church together, watching sports together, going to visit other relatives together, or doing things like looking at museums or pieces of art together.
And I think this whole family unit structure is completely breaking down. And the more that it goes away, I think so does our feeling of our connections with others.
Do you think there's a direct link to that? Yeah, I do. Look, the most biologically relevant relationships are those that nature has shaped among the family, right? I think the most primal, the fundamental relationship is between a mother and her child.
That's where you get the strongest forms of love and affection and so forth. You mentioned this is what you think evolution wants us to do is have these relationships.
Certainly, there's a drive to reproduce, and that's an important part of evolution. Again, we are left with what I call competing natures or dual potential of human nature.
There's a part of this that leads us to family life, but there's another part of us that would direct us away from family life. And I think it's not necessarily popular among the academy, but I think we miss an opportunity if we talk about family without talking about the importance of marriage.
And let me try to tie this back to biology a little bit. I mentioned that this strong attachment between parents and their children, and there's a bit of a difference, and I say a bit, that's an understatement.
There's quite a bit of a difference between the biological ties between men and their children and women and their children. And in a lot of ways, this is very self-evident, right? A woman carries the unborn child for nine months.
And for most of human history, a woman has been compelled to breastfeed the infant sometimes for several years. This creates a very strong bond between women, mothers, and their children.
Now, men, on the other hand, have a fairly comparatively tenuous link, right, to their children. And there's quite an imbalance that nature has left us with between the strength of biological and emotional ties between men and women and their children.
And I think there needs to be some strong kind of cultural mechanism that tries to level the playing field a little bit and link men to the biological children. And what I would propose is that this is a really important but under-recognized purpose of marriage.
One of the purposes of marriage is to link men to their biological children. And researchers, sociologists, especially as the sexual revolution unfolded of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, they recognized that marriage and fatherhood were actually fairly linked.
And they would sometimes refer to them as a package deal because when a man was married to the mother of his biological children, his relationship with his children were generally better. Now, of course, there are exceptions to this.
And certainly at the high end of the income ladder, men can be not necessarily married to the mother of their children and still be fairly present. But as you go down different kind of rungs of

the socioeconomic ladder, it becomes harder for men to be engaged with their children if they're not married to the mother of those children. This is a sensitive issue, and I understand why, but I think it is important if we're talking about family, we're talking about the importance of marriage as well in linking men to those biological children.
To me, there's a real connection between marriage and biology, even in some ways evolution. That's something I haven't really thought a lot about, but I'm definitely going to put some attention to that.
I've never thought about the sanctity of marriage as being that link to bring the father to their biological children, but it does make sense. Something you brought up there was the dual potential of human nature.
And you write that humans are endowed with competing impulses, selfishness and altruism, aggression and cooperation, love and i want to go into this question like this i have been bringing on many more spiritual experts onto the show and one of the things especially when i talk to spiritual mediums is they often refer to earth and our time here as earth school. And they say that what we're really going through is this idea that life is a test and that we are going through a test and that we have direction over the events that make up that test.
And I introduce it like that in the hopes that maybe you can take that concept and maybe expand upon it. I actually 100% agree with that conclusion.
I also feel that one of the purposes, again, there's a lot of principles that we're trying to deal with here, but the fact that evolution was not random for me, this provides some room for there to be a purpose. And when you look at the way that I think that nature has shaped us, it leaves us pulled in these different directions, right? These, as you mentioned, this capacity for altruism, but also selfishness, cooperation, but also aggression, love, but also lust.
In theological terms, good and evil. And I really feel that we have both of these capacities in our flesh.
And when you combine that with this notion that we choose, we can make choices. To me, it seems that one of the purposes of our existence is to choose between these competing natures within us.
And it wouldn't be a real test unless we were pulled in one direction or the other. There's a, as you probably know, there's a somewhat cliche motif of a cartoon character walking down.
She's got a little angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. And I think there may be more truth to that than we realize.
A lot of times when we're making choices, there's something whispering to us in our psyche of do this or do that. We fundamentally have to choose between these competing impulses.
And now, of course, culture makes a big deal. And we make decisions within the context of our culture.

And it's so important because culture shapes and impacts the decisions that we make. And we need to do our best to reshape the cultures in ways that I think will lead more people to develop families.
Because I think when people find themselves in families, they are more likely to choose the better angels of their nature.

Okay.

And in the book, you write that shortly after Darwin's theory of evolution became public, the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a famous book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde. And everyone has heard of the story, but one of the central themes of the story is that every person has the potential for good and evil within themselves.
And something I talk a lot about on the podcast here is, as I've talked to a lot of behavior scientists, they talk about the power of micro decisions. I call them micro choices.
And we don't realize the impact that the compounding choices, something that people refer to as choice bracketing in that world, amount to. Meaning, if you keep making a bunch of choices that are leading towards that choice to be Mr.
Hyde, it results in a certain outcome. If you make more choices to become Dr.
Jekyll, it results in an outcome. And I think people don't take a step back and look at that enough in their own life.
Based on your research, can you explain the power of these choices? I like this concept of the small choices that we make, they definitely compound over time, and that's true. And to me, I constantly have to reevaluate how much time am I spending on my phone versus with my children at night or something like that.
This concept, I think, is also relevant for at least a personal decision I make, which is to go to church every week. So there's a lot of data that going to church is associated with better health, better happiness, and so forth.
I was giving a lecture to students here at Yale, and I mentioned that people who go to church, going to church is associated with living longer. There's a mortality effect, a protective mortality effect.
And he made the kind of the smart aleck comment, you mean if I go to church enough, I might achieve eternal life? And I said, yeah, you've got the picture. Going to church, there's a lot of what's called social priming at church where you're reminded, hey, you're supposed to look out not for number one, but you're supposed to look out for others.
You're supposed to give to the poor. You're supposed to treat others kindly and treat others the way that you would want to be treated.
I've made a commitment with my wife that, you know, unlike violently ill, we are going to church, whether we're on vacation, whether we're visiting family somewhere. Every Sunday, we're going to be there because we feel that is important.
And those small choices over a lifetime, they make a difference in who you are and who you become and the types of character, the type of character that you develop over time. And we want that, especially we want that for our children.
There's a lot of, I's a, I think there's a lot of people who will say, look, I'm spiritual, but not religious. And I think one of the reasons they say that is because look, in any organization, there's a risk of corruption.
There's a risk of bad things happening. Humans, hypocrisy is embedded within human nature.
And it's unfortunate. And we need to figure out ways that we can make our churches less likely to have those corruption and so forth.
But at the same time, so many of the beneficial aspects of believing is being a part of a social organization that also believes and that reminds you on a daily basis and really confronts you with opportunities to think outside of yourself and think outside of your own home and to serve others who may be struggling or in need. When you talk about these micro choices and how they compound over time, I view that as without knowing that theory back when my wife and I got married some 17, 18 years ago, this is one of the reasons that we've decided to do this over and over again, because we know that it has an effect over the long term.
Thank you for sharing that. And I wanted to ask a follow-up question to that.
I'm not sure if you've ever read Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth. I know Joseph Campbell.
I know that work. I've never read it in cover, unfortunately.
It's one of the ones that's on my bookshelf somewhere. One of the things that he points out in the book is that when you look at all religions, they all teach people through the power of metaphors.
And so many of the metaphors are exactly the same in each religion. They're just told through different characters.
But what he was talking about when he wrote it in the 1980s was that he felt that he predicted that more and more people were going to move away from organized religion. And he said that the primary reason for that is that over time, new religions have been born and they've been updated to the times.
And he said part of the reason people are moving away from it is because the way that the stories or the metaphors are being told don't relate to modern society. Do you think there's any validity to that? I don't know.
I mean, certainly people are moving away from organized religion. I think that's not a great trend for society.
I honestly don't know. I'm going to have to think about that.
So if you can give me a little bit of time. Maybe just take it with you after this interview.
I've thought a lot about it because the religion you practice is a relatively newer religion compared to some of the religions that are out there. But he was just saying that the metaphors that we talk about, it's hard for people to understand it.
And I was lucky when I was in my mid-30s, I was going to a Methodist church and our minister was both, had a PhD in divinity, but he also had a PhD in history. And what he was able to do is he was able to take stories from the Old Testament.
And he was able to bridge the gap and to talk about how they relate to modern society. And it really helped me make the connections that I think so many people are missing.
And it helped me understand how the points that were being made apply to me today, just as they did back then. That's my whole point.
I mean, it's great when you have a teacher like that, who can do that, because I mean, some of these truths, we talk about these people who are studying happiness and the importance of relationships. A lot of these truths were known for a long time.
So, but I think because we are not farmers anymore, so many of these parables applied to how you farm the land and that sort of thing, it's sometimes harder for people to contextualize and understand the culture during which, around which these stories are told. But when you have a teacher like that who can translate them and help people understand them, there are remarkable truths in them.
The wisdom is timeless, I think. Where I'm going to go is a completely different direction.
On this podcast, one of my favorite things to do, in addition to talking to experts like yourself, is I really like to bring on what I call our everyday heroes onto the show.

And an example of this is in episode 550, if people want to tune into it, I highlight this

gentleman, Dr. Abraham George.
And Dr. Abraham spent much of his life in the United States

acquiring wealth so that he could solve a systemic issue in India that he felt compelled to act upon. And so for the past 25 years, he has been, he started a school that has now helped 15,000 children break out of the lowest caste system that they were in India to provide them a better life.

And in the book, one of the things I thought was really touching is you highlight this woman

named Barbara Goodson, who in 2015 started giving free haircuts to the homeless. And you're right, at first it was just a few cuts per month.
Then she started giving haircuts to people coming out prison. Next, she included battered women.
It soon turned into hundreds of haircuts and then eventually became a nonprofit that continues to grow. Where I want to go with this is I think they're everyday heroes walking all amongst us all the time, yet that's not who we typically are pointing our kids to for inspiration.
What ends up happening is they tend to follow professional athletes or actors or a comic book hero that they see. So how do you think we start developing more of an evolutionary process where we're starting to reward more people like Barbara? Yeah, that's a good question.
I don't know that I have a ready answer, but I totally agree that the things that we read about on the news, the things that really get our attention and drive ratings are often negative, right? Because fear is a very powerful emotion and there's reasons for that evolutionarily. Unfortunately, most of the time, especially these national news networks do not showcase stories like Barbara Goodson or others who perform these relatively quiet acts of selfless service.
I mean, I think it goes to how do we spend our time and attention, especially for parents? What kind of role models are we putting out for our children? And this isn't to say don't take your kid to a movie, but I think it's important to talk to them about who are the real heroes who are the people that we're trying to be like are they people who have achieved fame and wealth a lot of times fame and wealth can make it hard to be a good person and can go to people's heads so i don't know that i have a magic answer for you john John, but other than to say, I think a lot of

this is how, what do we teach our kids and what role models do we hold up for our kids and really

for ourselves? Because there are those people among us and they are, they aren't on the nightly

news channel. So we need to do a better job, at least in our local communities of recognizing that

and pointing ourselves and our families to recognize those examples and try to emulate them.

Thank you. at least in our local communities, of recognizing that and pointing ourselves and our families to recognize those examples and try to emulate them.
It really ties into the work of Dacher Keltner, and the listeners are probably so sick of me bringing him up. But Dacher, in his latest book, brought out the scientific research that he found that the way we most

experience isn't by walks in nature or seeing majestic pieces of art. The way that we most commonly experience moments of awe in our lives is by watching others do acts of service onto others, something that he calls moral beauty.
And these

acts of service are most likely done by what I refer to as these everyday heroes who are walking

amongst us who don't get the recognition that they should. But I think it's important to highlight

this aspect of moral beauty because it is so important to our feeling of significance inside. I love that comment.
And I've heard of his book and I need to read it. It's been on my again, one of those books on my shelves that I need to move towards the end table by my bed so I can read it.
So I want to go as we're ending this interview back to where i started your book was cited by the next big idea club and one of my favorite things about that club is that they give the author the opportunity to describe their book around five thoughts and as i was reading yours and preparing for this, one really stood out to me.

And I'm going to read it.

The point of life is not to point out the weaknesses of your spouse, your neighbor, or even your political opponent. The point of life is to point out and overcome the weaknesses in ourselves.
And this takes me back to the comment I made that I think we're facing a crisis of disconnection and the person we're most disconnected with is ourselves. And if we don't have an innate, if we're not sitting with ourselves, if we're not digesting the weaknesses that we have and how we're loving others, how we're in relationships with others, how we're serving the world.
If we don't see those weaknesses, then we can't overcome them. I don't know if you have any parting words based on that last point.
I think you're right. I mean, this is the, I think the great teaching from Jesus, which is to, before you, you look for

the moat in your neighbor's eye to, to remove the beam in your own eye.

And again, a lot of people don't understand what those words mean.

The moat is basically a splinter.

So before you see the splinter in your neighbor's eye, take out the beam, which is literally

like a two by four in your own eye, which is, there's this aspect of human nature that it's difficult to see our own weakness. It's easier to see other people's weaknesses than to see our own.
But taking the time to disconnect from technology and to reconnect with meditation, with prayer, with internal reflection of what am I doing? What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? Where am I lacking? I think would do a world of good for society if we could help people to internally reflect more on their own purpose, what they're trying to do and the character that we are trying to develop. Sam, my final question is your book gives us a profound framework for understanding our existence.
If there was one intentional action or mindset shift you'd encourage listeners to adopt today, what would it be? Prioritize family relationships. I think if you're young, what are the steps you might need to do to form a family? Most people, despite the fact that people are having less children, most people still want to have families.
There's a strong internal desire to do that. And we make roadmaps for our careers, but we often don't make roadmaps for what leads to marriage, what leads to family.
And so I think the most important thing we need to do is prioritize our family relationships. Well, thank you.
And where's the best place the audience can go to learn more about you and your work? I have a website, samueltwilkinson.com, or you can look me up on the Yale website. I'm at the Yale School of Medicine, and I'm relatively easy to find there, Samuel Wilkinson.
Sam, thank you so much for joining us today, and congratulations again on your very thought-provoking book. That wraps up today's powerful conversation with Dr.
Sam Wilkinson, a deep exploration of evolution, purpose, and the human experience, challenging conventional thinking, and offering new perspective on how science and meaning can coexist. Dr.
Wilkinson's insights into human duality, the power of relationships, and the idea of life as a test have given us invaluable tools to approach life with greater intentionality and connection. As we close, I encourage you to take a moment to reflect.
Are your daily choices aligned with a deeper sense of purpose? Are you investing in relationships that bring out your best self? And how are you navigating the ongoing challenge of choosing growth over complacency? These are the questions that define a life of meaning and fulfillment. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to leave a five-star rating and review.
Your support fuels this mission and helps us bring impactful conversations to the Passion Star community. And if you know someone who could benefit from this discussion, share it with them.
Because one idea, one conversation can change the course of a life. For links to everything we discussed, including Dr.
Wilkinson's book, Purpose, What Evolution and Human Nature Imply About the Meaning of Our Existence, visit the show notes at passionstruck.com. You can also check out the video version of this episode on YouTube and explore exclusive deals from our partners at passionstruck.com slash deals.
Supporting them allows us to continue delivering these transformational episodes. And if today's conversation sparks something in you and you'd like to bring these insights into your organization, team, or community, visit johnrmiles.com slash speaking to learn more about how we can work together to ignite intentional change.
Next week, I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Lori Santos, Yale professor and host of the Happiness Lab to the show.
We'll be diving into the science of happiness, what truly makes us happy, why we often chase the wrong things, and how to rewire our brains for long-term fulfillment. If you've ever struggled with stress comparison or finding lasting joy, this is an episode you won't want to miss.
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