保羅·孔蒂：自戀、反社會、嫉妒與善惡的本性

Lex Fridman Podcast #357 – Paul Conti: Narcissism, Sociopathy, Envy, and the Nature of Good and Evil Machine transcription by Qwen3-ASR 0.6B (MLX, local, Apache-2.0). May contain recognition errors. The following is a conversation with Paul Conti, a psychiatrist and a brilliant scholar of human nature. My friend Andrew Huberman told me that Paul and I absolutely must meet and talk, not just about the topic of trauma, which Paul wrote an amazing book about, but broadly about human nature, about narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy, good and evil, hate and love, happiness and envy. As usual, Andrew was right. This was a fascinating conversation. As the old meme goes, one does not simply doubt the advice of Andrew Huberman. Allow me to also quickly mention that I disagree with Paul a bunch in this episode, as I do in other episodes, even with experts, in part for fun and in part because I think the tension of ideas and conversation is what creates insights and wisdom. My goal is to always empathize, understand, and explore ideas of the person sitting across from me. This agreement is just one of the ways I think it's fun to do just that, as long as I do so from a place of curiosity and compassion. And now a quick second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got NetSuite for business management, Indeed for hiring, and Inside Tracker for bio monitoring. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team, we're always hiring. Go to lexfreeman dot com slash hiring. And now on to the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I find those annoying. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by NetSuite, an all in one cloud business management system. They take care of all the messy but critical things that make a business run. It's kind of incredible, human civilization together. Has been able to collaborate first in a small village for hunting and gathering and therefore agriculture, then to build and build and build into more and more complex entities. Where each individual human is operating, doing each different roles, like the mitochondria in a cell. Together, the cells make up organs, and the organs make up the human body. In the same way, humans together come together to make a company. It's incredible, and those companies build gigantic physical architectures. They build gigantic software architectures. They connect us, they give us services, they enable the quality of life that is observed in the developed world and that. The developing world is reaching towards. I mean, this is just incredible. But of course, it's not just the idea. It's not just the engineers or the product people that make a company work. It's. The whole thing, everything is needed, just like in the human body, and there is a lot of messy things. There is a lot of things like human resources, management of inventory and e commerce. If you have like an online presence of selling your products, all that the financial stuff, that whole mess. You should use the best tools for the job for that, and NetSuite is just that. For the new year, NetSuite has a new financing program for those ready to upgrade at netsuite dot com slash lex. That's netsuite dot com slash lex. This show is also brought to you by Indeed, a hiring website. Like I mentioned, we're always hiring. Indeed is part of the toolbox that I use. It's the main service I use outside of my own putting together crappy web pages. When I actually want to use a tool that does a lot of the work for you, that's when I use Indeed. You can post jobs there. They have the instant match tool. 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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here is Paul Conti. Do you see psychiatry as fundamentally a study of the human mind and not just a set of tools for treating psychological maladies? Absolutely, I think psychiatry is our best way to understand who we are as people. I mean, it looks at our biology. You know, how does our brain work? How does it connect the parts with one another? How does the chemistry in it work? It's the very foundational aspects of who we are, and then it manifests as psychology. What do we think? What do we feel? What are our strivings? What are our fears? So, I think psychiatry provides tools that we can use to to help each other, but those tools come through it being a discipline of understanding. So with every patient you see, with every mind you explore, are you picking up a deep understanding of the human mind? I think I am trying to. I mean, think we should learn, should be able to take something away from everything we do. You know, every interaction to some small degree, every conversation. It doesn't have to be a patient just anywhere at Starbucks getting a coffee. You can learn something from that little experience. Yeah, even if you just reinforce sort of gentle kindness and gratitude and and decent human interaction, there is a reinforcement of that that even if we don't take away memories or lessons so to speak, we can reinforce who we choose to be. So understanding ourselves from those interactions too, not just the general sort of philosophical human mind, but understanding our own mind. Introspect on how our own mind works. Yeah, because everything we understand about anyone or anything else is coming through here, right? So yeah, we're understanding others. We're we're also understanding ourselves. It's all feeding through us. Yeah, but it's a tricky thing to step away and look at your mind. And understand that it's just a machine, you can kind of control the way that machine processes the external environment and the way that machine converts the things it perceives into actual emotions. Like how it interprets the things it perceives, you just sort of step away and analyze it in that way, and then you can control it. You can you can oil the machine, you can control how it actually interprets the perceptions, you know, to generate positive emotions and be like a what is it like a mechanic. For the for the gears in the machine. I mean, I think to some degree, to some degree of it, the difference I think at least is I understand I think of machines as not being inscrutable, right? That that if there is enough study, there is enough acumen applied that we can understand whatever it is we're trying to to figure out. Whereas part of understanding ourselves is understanding that there are things we can't understand, and I think that's that's. Indispensably important, I think to health and happiness, and also to having enough humility to see how people can be different from us, how we can be different from ourselves at times. So knowing that we don't know a lot and having some idea of what that might be, I think is an indispensable part of the process, which I think is different from machines. I think. Yeah, the machines you are basically saying machines generally because they're engineered from a design they're usually going to be simpler, therefore understandable, and you are saying the complexity of the human mind is. At least from our perspective, nearly infinite. Because there are meta phenomena, sometimes gets described as sort of levels of emergence, where at increasing levels of complexity, you have novelty evolved that you that you can't predict from from lower levels of complexity, like for example, atoms to molecules. You know, it's just one example. I think neurons to consciousness, consciousness to culture. Right, that there are meta phenomena that separate from the phenomenon from the phenomena underneath of them, and and there by adding an entire aspect of novelty. So I think we are. I mean, I really think this is true that we are all infinitely fascinating because these levels of emergence of novelty that are inscrutable because you can't predict from one level to the next or understand fully are what make us and not just us but I think sentient creatures, right? Human beings, right? But sentient creatures inestimably more interesting than than creatures that aren't sentient and and I don't know. I think when when when we think about machine learning and artificial intelligence, I think it's that that we're trying to create levels of emergence that now we don't fully understand anymore, which I guess is both exciting and maybe scary too. Yeah, so you start at the physics of atoms, quantum mechanics, go into chemistry, go into biology. From the biology, you have the functional phenomena, especially as manifested in the human brain, and then multiple brains connecting together through consciousness and intelligence creates civilizations. It's pretty interesting. Where do you think the magic is at which layer of the cake? Every layer because every time you emerge from one thing to another, I see it as an analog like the concept of the dialectic, right? Where I think it was Hegel, right, who who realized, um, hey, when when you have like thing A and thing B and they're complicated and they come together, you know, you don't get a hybrid of A and B, right? You know, you you end up getting something that's new that's novel, and and I think that. Describes to some degree that like what emergence is, except there is there is a whole new since universe of novelty, right? That that comes at each layer of emergence that allows infinite possibilities that weren't possible before, and I think that's why we're so complicated that we are functional neuroscience, right? Which I think is psychology, right? Our ability to think about ourselves about others to be reflective. Is sitting on top of so many layers of emergence, like the idea of standing on the shoulders of giants that we're you know each of us our consciousness is standing on the shoulder of a giant of many many many levels of emergence of novelty, so many of which we don't understand. I think about subatomic particles, everything that that quantum physics means. You know when when does time become important, right? As opposed to things happening outside of time and outside of space, when do we slot into one temporal perspective and then the complexity just I think grows and grows and grows. Yeah, the interesting word you use is novelty. If true, this really blows my mind. In some either shallow or deep sense, it is true. I am trying to figure that out. I don't know if you know something about cellular automata. Is this very simple mathematical objects where you have rules that govern each individual little cell and they interact locally and that you know you understand the very simple operation of those individual cells, but. At another layer of abstraction, when you just kind of zoom out with blurry vision, these matter objects starts appearing that function. You can build a Turing machine with it. You can build arbitrary complexity of of of computation on top of this kind of very simple object. Yes, it's an interesting question whether that was always there. The atoms somehow know about love, right? Like about consciousness, about war and violence and evil and hate and all that. That's already laid in in the the possibility of that, the capacity for that. It's already in the atoms. It's already in the physics. It's already in the. In all the different chemistry that builds up, and it's like even the origin of life, still a mystery. That's that's known that's in the physics. That's known to the universe, the basic background physics in the universe. If because if this that's not the case, it's like where does that come from? Where is that magic? And how many layers can the cake possibly have? How many are we going to keep building? If it's all if there is if we're constantly through this process of abstraction, of adding a layer to the cake, adding novel things. Like where is the ceiling? As we expand out into the cosmos, if we successfully can do that, we're going to keep building like more miraculous complex objects, and then the brain is just like a middle layer. Thing we tend to think of ourselves as truly truly special manifestations of what's possible in the universe, but maybe we're just like the basic like tiny building block of something much much much bigger. We're in the early days of being a brick in a very large building. Sure, I think that's entirely possible. I mean, I think the only emergent thing, so to speak, that that we build is culture, right? The aggregation of us. So you have individual human minds, which are entirely unique. Even the the fact that time is different for you and me, right? It may be by picoseconds, right? But we can engage because our our perceptions of time are parallel enough, they're close enough, right, that we can share a reality, right? But we're all living in a different dimension of time, right? I mean, we know that, right? So we're we're unique in that way, and then the unique individuals that we are just like the cells, right? Start to create. Not just one thing, not just a culture, but culture on top of our individuality. Right, our uniqueness, our even dimensional uniqueness of of time and experience and and consciousness. So we create cultures on top of us, but what could be beyond culture, right? And and what is different from us either on underlying levels like you know like quantum physics or chemistry or biology, or entirely different and unconceived. I think is. It's an immense question, and I think it's one that should create humility in us. Right, that look, look how much we don't know, and then how reckless we are with ourselves, with our resources, with with human life, and and I think there it's. It's important to say, I mean, think about how entropy rules. The universe around us. I mean, how over selected are we? How many not just hundreds or thousands of times, but how many millions of times does there have to be a selection branch point before we get into a sort of eddy pool of counter entropy, right? Where you can begin to create. Which which I think is why you say okay, the the atoms know about love, right? The the fact that anything is being created, right, means there is this over selection for counter entropy where there can be a building of greater complexity of ultimately of novelty, and we don't often think about that of of how far removed. We are maybe light years, so to speak, from any other location temporally, physically in the universe where this could happen, and we don't think about what does that. Mean everything that you just said, love everything is counter entropy goes against the way the basic physics of the universe. So maybe actually the atoms really don't like what we're doing. They want us to stop. They've been trying really hard to stop, and despite that, we somehow started this whole bacteria thing for for like a billion years and now we're here. I actually think of it kind of the other way. I don't think there is any purpose to purposelessness, right? So so why would anything be here if we if the drive weren't towards. Creativity, right? If the drive weren't towards those subatomic particles, not being nothingness that blips in and out of existence, right? Like we think is going on in empty space, you know, for light years upon light years, right? But is. Is there a design, either natural or intentional, for a schema, right? A scenario that allows for the incredibly rare but not non-existent eddy pool of counter entropy where good can happen, right? Where creativity can happen, where ultimately something can grow, something novel can happen. There is no novelty in the vastness of space, even though there is not nothing there. There is novelty here because I think the the layers of of emergence start stacking very very very high when we're in a place of counter entropy, which then. Could provide even thoughts about like good and evil, right? The idea that that creating that preserving is good, right? It's what we build upon. It's how we get to the eddy pool of counter entropy, right? So then destruction is not good. What what good comes of aggression and destruction, right? You know unless we're protecting. We can think of of outline cases, but just think in general concepts, right? Like destruction destroys, it brings us towards a state of entropy, towards a state of nothingness, whereas goodness, commonality, collaboration, right. Nurturing right brings novelty, it brings new existence into the universe, and I think we don't we don't think about that the way that we're in the middle of something so vast and built on top of so many layers, and I think it leads us to be. Cavalier, you know with with human life including often our own. So you think this, there is a underlying creative force of the universe, that that might even have a kind of built in morality to it, where creating is better than destroying, and then that somehow maps on onto our society, where we kind of try to figure out what that actually means, in terms of good and evil. So there that's something is there like that, but it's like but it has to be. It's like so nice, it's so perfect because it's rare. It's sufficiently rare where we have our own space, like you can like close the door and like I need to be alone right now as our human civilization to work on my thing. So sufficiently rare that there's not other alien civilizations that are just like constantly knocking on our door destroying us, but it still exists. That's weird. Right, right. It's so fantastically improbable, yeah. That I think we should be very respectful of it, and I think you said there's a creative force that values creativity. Yes, then to be well sure if it's a creative force right, its existence, its ability to exist and to create, comes from something other than entropy, right? Something other than so much dispersion that there's nothingness, right? So so the creative force will value, the sanctity of things, right? You know keeping things together, not destroying things, right? Building novelty, including novelty of knowledge, novelty of sense. I mean it fits, with the idea that we're not nothing that that's incredibly improbable and that there are these many many layers of emergence that we're standing upon, and I think it tells us something that we're not doing ourselves a service to ignore, right? It's not just a jump to saying, oh there's a religious answer to everything. It's no it's saying, science isn't a god either, right? So if we if we if we think of science as a tool and not as an endpoint in and of itself, what is the science telling us? Like I remember showing up at medical school and it really is true. I mean I knew so little about the human body. I'd only been in hospitals to visit people. I'd taken pre med classes but sort of intensely at once after I didn't take any and I was working in business. I I knew next to nothing and and I had this idea that was so naive in retrospect that I was going to learn so much right. I was going to answer these questions because I was going to what's going on in the body. What are these organs doing? What are these cells? And what I learned was, there was so much more that was amazing and mysterious and seemingly impossible like even how a cell functions, right? Like what is going on inside of a cell the transport mechanisms and energy functions and diffusion functions and then you can go down to smaller levels than that. But when you come back out and you say how all those cells make a kidney, it it's not, explanatory. You know I remember asking the OB who had delivered my first child right. I was so amazed and I asked him like, what do you think like what do you know you do this right you you're seeing this life created and you know and his thought was, nothing. I just marvel you know I mean I get to do this but I just marvel at it and I think the more we know, about us the more we respectfully marvel, and we should do that we should proactively marvel at every aspect, at every layer, that where the novelty emerges. Yes, we'd be a lot less likely to say, hey I don't like you because of something whatever it is you know race religion culture sexuality gender identity whatever it is you know or I want to say I want rights that you don't have right or I want what you have right. I mean there's so much of this and I understand it's driven by scarcity and by human insecurity and envy and all of these things that that I think drive us towards destruction. But all of that recklessness comes from, not having this initial appreciation and respect that you're referring to and just marveling at like wow okay we're here that's amazing let's start with that. But if we marvel at this whole thing, the human project, the human condition, that all the different kinds of human beings that are possible, what do you then make of that some humans do evil onto the world? First of all, are all human beings capable of evil? If if we're in the process now we've got a little bit of momentum in terms of marveling at the layers of the cake. Should we also marvel at the capacity for evil in all of us? Is that capacity there? I believe that it is. Yes. So what do I understand about the psychology of evil? Where does it originate in the human mind? Is it there in the neurobiology? Is it there in the environment? In the upbringing? Can I clarify first? I think the capacity for evil I do believe is in all of us. There's a difference between enacting evil and and a sort of preset followed developed plan of evil right. I don't believe that all of us are capable of doing, what the people who perpetrate the most evil do right. But I do believe that we're capable of of perpetrating evil right and the the thought one thought would be that there are drives in us. I mean there certainly seem to be drives in us towards survival towards gratification in some ways towards pleasure and that can get very complicated because pleasure inside can be relief of distress. So if I feel very badly about myself and I can feel a little better about myself by making you feel worse about yourself right which that plays out in a lot of human beings. Is that an indirect way of bringing pleasure right? So it gets very complicated what's going on inside of us and sometimes the perpetration of evil things can be through misunderstandings anger impulsivity. I mean the things that we can that we can have in us and other times there can be there can be other things going on which are through the lens of unhealthy human psychology. So for example the psychology of envy which I think drives the lion share of the orchestrated evil right. There's a difference between impulsive reflexive, evil and highly orchestrated evil which I think is driven by, envy. Highly orchestrated evil are we talking about at scale societies like totalitarianism so if we're thinking about somebody like Hitler. So at at scale, orchestration of evil envy driving that so I mean that's really interesting to to think about I'd love to hear more about it so some of there might be some psychological forces that are in tension, with each other so one is, if you look at somebody like Hitler, it's difficult to know what was going on in his mind but it's possible to imagine if you just look at dictators thought history, that he thought he was doing good, not just for himself but for the people he believed have value. So one way you can have you can achieve what we consider is evil, is by devaluing some group of people and that could be all group of people so it could have sort of a narcissistic type of idea that you basically don't care about other human beings. That's one envy is different. I mean maybe they can collaborate together, or even like you mentioned you can actually enjoy doing bad to others. That's almost like different because if if all it is is like narcissism, you disregard you don't care what how others feel then you can just make cold calculated military almost economic decisions and you don't care if a million people die here or there. But if you actually enjoy some aspect of that or there is like a resentment that fuels it it's not just cold calculation it's like fueled by some kind of personal or cultural resentment. I think it's all fueled by that. You think so? I think it's all fueled by that. I think the idea that the Hitler thought he was doing good right, is like that is such a thin facade that it flies away like a handkerchief in a hurricane right. That okay yeah thank you that's wow that's beautiful yeah it's it's built upon like it says I'll explain logical lies right because, people can build lies upon specious logic right. So the idea that okay I am doing good because I believe that this ethnicity of people is good and this is bad and now I'm going to do this and I'm going to make the world different and it's going to bring better to the world and now I'm raising armies and I'm building concentration camps and I think like this is all in the service of good is I don't I don't think anyone ever thinks that right or they they think that but with because they're living in the surface patina right like they're not allowing the hurricane that blows away the handkerchief and says like this is this is all this is all evil right. I mean how do you decide that some group of people is good and some is bad and like what what is it that you take upon yourself to to to play god or make decisions about the world and I think what really is going on is people are not doing that right. There's something cobbled together to say like why this is right and this is okay right and this is even good right but it is all, a lie right it's a lie that's adorning, the what I believe is the fact I believe that what's going on is the gratification of envy inside of the person and whether someone says oh I think this is good and it's okay if a million people die or I'm going to enjoy that a million people die I think is the same I think the the enjoyment the gratification of the orchestrated evil is there and that it all comes from vulnerability and insecurity. It all comes from deficits in the sense of self. Right, I'm going at the process that, my my my slow penny and PC is processing that so envy underlies all of it the psychological concept of envy. What is that? I keep putting myself in the mind of Hitler. I guess that that has nothing to do it doesn't have to do with Jews or Slavic people. Does it have to do with specific amorphous, other, in his mind that he's envious of? I think it has all to do with him, all to do with him. There's not a love of the people with whom he allied or even a sense that the people who he persecuted were worse than him. It's all projections out of what was going on inside of him which was an an intense, sense of inadequacy, a rage at being someone he perceived as lesser. Than that's the difference between so we can define words in different ways even within psychology but let's say we take the definition here of sort of jealousy as being sort of benign right the idea that oh I might see something that you have that I don't and I might think I like that maybe I'll work harder to get it right or maybe I can't get it maybe it's that you're younger than I am. They say okay you know okay you know you have that and I don't I mean I have other things too I'm okay anyway but I might want those things but it's very benign the jealousy I like to be younger I like to be richer whatever it is that we people think right. But it's just a thought and it's a thought that can result in striving or acceptance right it's very very different it's completely different than envy which is destructive. It's the thought of I see something that you have that I don't have right and instead of me working for it or accepting that I don't have it. What I like to do then is bring you down, take you down to where I am and then I'll feel better right because from the perspective of envy it is all, relative. So is jealousy a kind of is is because he said completely different but is jealousy potentially like a gateway drug to envy? Like does it does it like is it a slippery slope? I think no I think that jealousy is a natural just part of the human phenomenon that we go through life and we see like oh I'd like to have that I think it's it's part of our incentives right if you know if if if I'm farming and I have one row of crops and I look over and I see that you're working harder and you have two and I'd like to have two that that can make me work harder to have two. You don't think it's a slippery slope from one to the other to at first you're like I'd like to work harder but then you keep failing and the weather sucks and you keep failing and the other person becomes more successful plus he's got a new hot wife now there's a nice tractor there's the field is all working and then you get this idea that you know what I'm going to steal all his stuff, I'm going to murder him, and that you know don't you think that's just like a leap. No, I actually think no no because but I think there are things that are in us as humans right so so the things that just by being human like we can for example feel we can feel compassion right we can feel interest right we can feel jealousy in in that benign sense like it's all part of just being human. If we if we start going from hey you have more crops than I have and and you know it seems like actually have a better life in a lot of ways than I have I'm going to kill you that that's not that is not a progression of something benign right that is. Wait wait a minute but that is a human leap of the same thing isn't it? Is because you're drawing a line stuff you're saying like this is the this human stuff it's regular life it's benign, but it feels like this benign thing is just a low magnitude thing, version of the thing that's not benign. Like there's probably a gray area where it stops being but like jealousy you can have like healthy jealousy you can have a little bit slightly unhealthy. This I think jealous guy this John Lennon song that I love is beautiful I mean there's like, this jealousy inside relationships can make you feel like you know could take your minds in all kinds of silly directions and it's crazy but like it feels like that that's a next door neighbor to like being really crazy and toxic and all that kind of stuff inside relationships and then that feels like a next door neighbor it's like an apartment building that feels like a next door neighbor that eventually gets to Hitler with a with envy and resentment of entire population of people. You're right that there's a causal, there can be a causal chain right like if I'm not feeling jealous maybe I won't ever feel envious right so so you can see okay so it can kind of lead to can open gates to huh like how much do I dislike that you have things that I don't have right so yes in that sense but and I think this part I think is so important that I think there is a disjunction right. There's an asymptotic shift right from one thing to another because now you're speaking my language mathematically asymptotic leap yes that that's it's a way to convey right something that's entirely different because if I start thinking, you know I'm not going to try and make things better right I'd like instead to harm you that's that's qualitatively different. Oh it's almost like you know what it is it could be I don't know what you think about this but, it's in which direction, your motivation is pointing, so if in the response to the feeling of jealousy, your sort of, the motivation says okay I understand this feeling I want to do less of it. I think there there must be a threshold to which you actually want to do more like it becomes a vicious downward cycle so that's what envy becomes like the first feeling this idea, that I'm going to kill the farmer, turns into like more and more and more and you can't sleep and you're visualizing the farmer and it becomes the devil and like you have this very you know it's it's a it's basically a thing that builds into the negative direction versus, returns to the stable center. Now person is cultivating evil yeah right they're saying hey there can be seeds of evil in all of us let me take that seed out dust it off plant it nurture it right and then grow that seed of evil which will affect all other parts of the person's life right they they won't behave the same towards others in their in their life they'll they'll they'll become different as they nurture fantasies of evil as they begin to create with inside of themselves the the motivation and the will right to enact evil right the Hitler analogy would say you take someone who had a bad childhood right who who was not loved who who was taught and told that he was less than okay like that we know that happens I mean that's why child abuse is so evil right it's telling children the the worst possible wrong lessons right they're not good enough they'll always be hurt you know they can't keep themselves safe they don't deserve safety right so then you take someone who then nurtures that seed of evil which is a choice and says why can't paint well enough and no one appreciates me and I don't like how I look and I don't fit in with the people I want to fit in with and then and on and on and on and on and on and there's a hatred of self through that lens of misery of just being repulsed by the self but that's unacceptable to the self so oh it has to be someone else's fault. Right, it's not my fault. Whose fault is it? Right, and then you see on mass the inaction of evil towards groups of people who who somehow in this person's mind right are responsible for his, misery and there's the justification of evil and then all the you know whether it's this will be better for the economy this will be good this will be that like that that's all lies built to justify the evil. Those are surface level narratives yes, and the envy is the the deep down mechanism, that enables and that's the endpoint that's being served what's being served is destruction, right which is why it always brings more destruction right. I mean how many times do do, wars that were started for purposes that we would look and say like those are evil purposes like how many times, does good come of that even we we look at the modern world what comes of it is more evil is more destruction and Hitler's outward destruction eventually came inward and you know you see pictures of what Berlin looked like after the Second World War right it wasn't just destruction perpetrated outward as awful as that is it's it's it's catchy right like people used to worry if you you know before the during the time of the Manhattan Project right if you if you start this chain reaction you know will you blow the whole world up right or will it stop within this bomb or not and we see okay the the chain reaction of evil, hasn't yet blown the whole world up but look at the look at how the catastrophe spreads. I think 50 to 60 million people dead in the Second World War which truly was a world war what destruction was spread around the globe and this is something that can't be stopped once the chain reaction starts like if Hitler was successful like it would just keep going. If he had been think on his personal psychological level I mean right because we think from the perspective of destruction, success would have needed led to the need to conquer more then there's factions and infighting and then eventually you get the same mass destruction right and and never, does the inaction of evil satisfy what the person is initially seeking like people want to feel better about themselves right we we like Winocat who was a British, pediatrician who who wrote about children and adults from very deep perspectives he wrote about the idea of good enough right and then you can sort of extrapolate that to like we all want to feel good enough like not just limp over the line good enough but I want to feel good enough that I'm a decent person in the world and like what I do matters and. You know I can I can have an impact on people and you know people can like me and care about me it's it's there is a simplicity there that people want that when people don't have and there are certain other factors maybe their temperamental factors or historical factors can lead to trying to soothe that deficit right through envy and and I think it starts with with it starts with that and it often starts in childhood not always but it often starts in childhood when when the child's brain and psychology are so vulnerable and you know you see salient child abuse if you look at what was Hitler's background and what was Stalin's background and I