ASM058 Chivalry, Singleness, and the Science of Grief

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chivalry singleness and the science of grief all that and more on this week's episode of ask sciencemic

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welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life so much to talk about this week we're going to be announcing details about a series of conferences with the liturgist called the liturgist gathering you can find out more by going to the liturgist.com gathering and stick around to the end of the show for more news regarding events but for now we got a show to do so let's get it [Music] started hey mike got a question for you i'm wondering about the science of singleness for a long time i think there was this trend in western christianity that said you have to get married that's one of your main duties as a human as a christian and in my life i'm i'm a pretty young guy it seems like there's been a push back to that and people saying well no you can be called to singleness they like to point to the apostle paul who was was single advised some of his readers to just stay single if they weren't like just go ahead stay single no big deal i'm wondering about the science of it what is scientifically beneficial about a partnership i mean you've talked about that kind of thing a little bit on your show already but what is scientifically beneficial if anything about being single evolutionarily speaking psychologically speaking in terms of sociology all that stuff i would love to hear your thoughts thanks for what you do and thanks for listening to this question well as we've discussed in a few of our after dark episodes there's nothing necessarily evolutionarily driven about human marriage that's a cultural institution and you can look more in my archives of the show and hear a lot more about this but basically biologically speaking humans are pair bonding animals we do well when we are pair bonded to another member of our species but it appears that uh probably our most natural inclination is for multiple serial pair bondings biologically speaking we're not super ideally suited to lifelong pair bonding pair bonding for the lifespan of our offspring is is pretty natural that's not to say i'm anti-marriage i'm deeply pro-marriage i'm speaking to the science of it and acknowledging a scientific idea that's pretty well supported by data i almost said truth but that might be an overreach but this is an interesting question because i'd never actually looked up studies showing the scientific benefits of singleness as a married person and as a person who gets mostly questions about marriage on the show it's just something i've never looked up before and i was surprised to find that there are a lot of studies uh at least you know a few dozen that dive into the scientific benefits of remaining single and there's nothing surprising in this data well maybe one thing that's a little surprising but let's look at some of the documented scientific statistical sociological benefits of singleness one in general single people are thinner they tend to have a lower body mass index and lower body fat percentages you know my personal anecdotes certainly illustrate that i was a relatively thin single man and i'm a relatively rotund married man you do a lot of shared meals together in a marriage that's a factor there but it's not just that in terms of their activity level single people are just more physically active they get more exercise they tend to travel more they tend to go out more and therefore they burn more calories now uh talking about some psychological benefits single people are in general much less concerned about money than married people at similar levels of income per capita income so a single person who has the same amount of money as a equivalent married person is less concerned about their finances and that you know that's related to the degree to which you're sharing resources uh and therefore sharing your financial autonomy with another person when you're married single people socially have more close friends than married people not just friends as an aggregate number but self-identified close friends close friendships which we understand to be psychologically beneficial now surprisingly most studies support the idea that on average single people have sex less often than married people that kind of conflates some stereotypes we have in our culture but it appears that married people actually have sex more often than single people obviously we've listened to the benefits of singleness here but a good marriage is very beneficial to people it has lifespan benefits health benefits some heart health benefits even it appears that married people on average recover faster from surgery than single people but that data if you start to tease it apart reveals something pretty profound and that is good marriages healthy marriages stable marriages are extremely beneficial to your health and to your well-being but unhealthy marriages are actually very detrimental so it's not really a matter so much of whether you're married or not but the health of your most significant pair-bonded relationship studies are mixed when they look at unmarried partnerships compared to marriages we probably have a lot of cultural bias that's difficult to tease out there so i'm not going to weigh into that that that is too controversial but in general it seems that singleness is a perfectly viable survival strategy or happiness strategy scientifically speaking as is a healthy marriage so i would say you have a great case scientifically to choose to be single if you so desire and also to approach marriage with care and with caution because if marriage appears to be an emotional force multiplier good marriages are very beneficial and bad marriages are very detrimental and i can totally understand why some people would say you know what maybe i'll just bow out of this marriage thing altogether find happiness fulfillment and service in my own life and science backs you up our next question came in via email and it reads hey science mike my question for you is about chivalry specifically the tradition in which men show special courtesies toward women such as giving up seats opening doors abiding by the ladies first rule those sorts of things as a female i appreciate such gestures but as an egalitarian it doesn't seem consistent with my views to encourage such a one-sided tradition however it feels like it would be awkward for both of us if i were to insist that my husband take the only open seat on the subway while i stand or let him wear my jacket if he's cold why is that can or should that short of chivalry exist in an equal society what are the alternatives more importantly can i get my husband flowers for valentine's day what a great question and it's one i've been thinking about a lot i'm a southern male feminist if that is not a contradiction in terms i don't know what is i grew up in a household where my parents had a very egalitarian approach my mom is a very strong female figure in my life but i was also taught that you hold the door open for ladies and women get to eat first at meals seemingly very pleasant approach to women so i've always kind of been a male feminist who emphasizes chivalry and i've been thinking along the same lines that you have because it seems like some acts of chivalry really do reinforce gender stereotypes and box women into a weaker or submissive position in society here's what i mean how often do we comment on women's appearance versus men's very often when when men complement women we tend to complement their appearance and i don't even mean in a creepy hay baby kind of way i just mean conversationally uh if if men compliment women it is very likely to be about their appearance even in professional context we tend to offer women assistance primarily in physical tasks let me help you carry that heavy thing let me open the door for you and this subtly reinforces the idea that women are weak or not physically capable but on the other hand those are still nice things validation is good for people we have a disturbing tendency in society to objectify people and emphasize their physicality but at the same time people still like to know that they're attractive that they look good that other people appreciate their appearance that's a psychological need that we have it's good to help someone carry something heavy it's good to take on social niceties that make it easier for people to share spaces so here's the solution i've adopted and it's chivalry for all that's been my solution to eliminate the gender gap so i hold the door open for men and for women and i understand that by holding the door open some people are going to appreciate that act and other people are going to conflate it with some sort of anti-feminist notion so if a woman is offended that i would open the door for her if i know that woman i'm going to remember not to do that next time i offer to help both men and women with physical tasks so if someone's trying to list something heavy or get something off a shelf or or any of the things that we would typically associate with chivalry i help men and women i make sure that i complement and comment on the appearance of men and women guess what men like to be told they look great today that their clothes look good or whatever people like that reinforcement i also make sure that i comment on the talents and capabilities of men and women so i make sure that my compliments about women in my life are not primarily or exclusively physical in nature i make an intentional effort to observe i'm not talking about false flattery but to observe their real talents and gifts and capabilities and then tell them i appreciate them for both men and for women now we'll cut to the heart of something much deeper here when we talk about who pays for dinner because some studies have found that generosity can be a form of economic dominance a sort of power display in other words i can afford to buy this meal and i'm showing you that i'm economically powerful and in my own life i've actually struggled for most of my life with allowing anyone to buy me a meal even though i readily buy dinner not only for my wife or back when we were dating but also for friends and and business associates and when i saw that data i realized that my reticence to accept gifts was a form of pridefulness so i'm learning to balance my natural generous giving techniques with being a gracious recipient of other people's generosity so when we look at that in a chivalry context i think it's great and admirable for a man to buy a woman dinner but i also think it's great and admirable for men to graciously accept a woman's gesture to do the same so absolutely buy your husband flowers for valentine's day if he likes flowers it's always good to show acknowledgement and appreciation for people in relationships there's an unfortunate tendency for humans to take for granted those people that are closest to us and i thought i couldn't be a bigger fan of emma watson and her work and especially her work on feminism but i'll have a link in the show notes on ask sciencemike.com to emma watson's take on chivalry which i was very pleased to find is very similar to my own which lets me know i'm on the right track because emma watson is awesome hi science mike uh my name is bethany i'm asking you a question from honolulu hawaii i discovered your show about six to seven months ago and i've just been eating it up and i had a question about something you said um on pete holmes podcast as you made it weird episode um you said something along the lines of the one of the big paradoxes that people have is that god can't possibly be all loving and all-powerful because it doesn't make sense and i believe that the example you used was there could be a little girl um born in the developing world who all she knows her whole life is a life of sexual slavery and then she dies and a god who is all loving and all-powerful could not allow that to happen because that wouldn't be love but then you never provided any sort of uh answer to this paradox and it's been eating me up for months trying to figure out how to rectify that so i was just kind of wondering what your thoughts were on that on that kind of paradox and what that means for someone who wants to who believes that the god that they worship is all loving and all powerful but we live in a world where these atrocities happen um how do you kind of make that make sense to you thanks so much have a great day so the last few episodes of ask science mike have been the most downloaded and the most shared episodes i've ever done and that's because uh i got an email from someone who said they'd like to help me with the show his name's andrew golucky and he said you know what can i do to help what's taking a lot of your time and i said digging through all these questions people send in and picking questions and getting the questions to the patrons on patreon takes a ton of time and if you really want to help you could do that and he took it on he's done a great job and i've noticed that andrew's primary approach is to pick the questions i'm afraid to answer because either i think the answer will be controversial or because i just think it's too difficult to answer and your question i'll just be honest would have had no chance of ever making it on the show when i was picking the questions because it's one i've said that's a great question i'm going to answer when i have more time and i would never have enough time so thank you andrew for making me answer difficult questions [Laughter] here's why i didn't pose an answer to the problem of evil also called the theodicy on the pete holm show i've never found a good solution to the problem of evil now if you're not familiar with theodicy the idea is if god is all-powerful and all-loving why does such awful and unnecessary suffering happen in the world suffering happens because of people's free will sure and that's one solution that is presented that god gives us the freedom to act with our will unconstrained and that's a terrible justification for the problem of evil because i'm a dad and if i were to let one of my daughters stab my other daughter out of respect for her free will i would go to prison i would be arrested and people would frown on that and i would be considered a very negligent father and i'm just a dad just a man on the earth and we're talking about a cosmic deity with all-encompassing love so i don't buy the free will answer for a second but it's not just that evil is a matter of free will or suffering things happen on this planet completely unrelated to human action that produce tremendous suffering i would say natural disasters like tsunamis would be a fantastic example no person creates a tsunami no person directly influences the tectonic and geologic activities that drive a tsunami and yet people suffer and die because of them insurance companies call them acts of god it's a thorny issue and it's one that drives a lot of people away from faith i'd love to tell you i have a good answer i just don't have a good answer for the problem of evil i will say that my approach to theology sidesteps the problem of evil when we assume that god is like us that god is a being with will and consciousness and agency observing the world from some vantage point and then acting or not based on conscious decisions the problem of evil is pressing indeed if you follow my work you know i'm a mystic and if you've read my axioms you know that i don't define god in such personal terms i mainly define god uh in a very similar way to the way physicists define the fundamental forces of physics that god is the fabric in which we find embodiment god is the source of all and the ground of all being and the source of all is in physics something called the singularity a mysterious uh unification from which everything emerged and the ground of all being that's the fundamental forces of physics that's the higgs ocean or the higgs field animating forces underneath all of reality and none of those things could be considered conscious by any stretch of the imagination and that sounds deeply unchristian because the bible shows a god that loves humanity that acts in the world and i'll be honest i experience that personal god and that's why i lean into mysticism there's a there's a scientific insight about how the universe is structured there's a logical framework that makes an acting god ethically troubling but i still encounter god in prayer i still encounter god in the bible i still encounter an active god in my own life i just embrace that i as much as possible try to let god's love that i experience motivate me to address the problem of evil personally where i see suffering where i see evil in the world god's love compels me to act even though i can't define exactly what god's love is or who god is because when i think about a universe with a singularity when i think about the degree to which relativity undermines our assumptions about time and space a lot of these questions seem to be framed within a newtonian cause and effect type of physics with an arrow of time and our larger reality doesn't seem to incorporate that at all i don't have time to go into a lot of depth on the podcast i spend a whole chapter on this in my upcoming book finding god in the waves which i'll have a link to on the website if you want to pre-order it doesn't come out until september but that's where i a huge motivation for me writing the book was to be able to go really deep into this issue and to talk about you know the implications of modern physics and space-time honor theological beliefs about god but ultimately all of those things represent an intellectual surrender not a mastery of the problem of evil i think a lot of christians because the problem of evil is so thorny avoid talking about it and when we avoid talking about it people discover it on their own and it undermines their faith i think a better approach is to bring it out in the open and say this is a problem this is a confusing thing i i'm sorry i can't give you an answer i don't have there are theologians who will say they've addressed it i've read many many theologians work on the problem of evil and i've never found anything that is satisfying or that i would tell the mother of a child who's lost their life in a way that you alluded to in their question it would be insulting it would minimize their suffering ultimately the only answer we have to the problem of evil is our actions and so i stand with humanists who think human action is essential to creating a better world and that's why i consider myself a religious humanist that the way god acts in this world the way god reduces suffering the way god produces justice is the changed minds the changed hearts and the changed approach of people who choose to help others without any regard to personal gain because they are motivated by divine love it is the only answer to the problem of evil that makes any sense to me [Music] our last question came in via email and it reads hey science mike thanks so much for the show this past weekend my dad passed away after a battle with cancer my family friends and i have been grieving his loss for the last several days and our faith communities have been so supportive however my always inquiring mind has had to wonder what is the evolutionary purpose of grief it's widely known that many animals from elephants to apes to even dogs and cats experience at least a form of grief when a member of their social group dies what purpose does the grieving process serve in the survival of a species well first i want to tell you i am so sorry for your loss cancer is uh awful it's frequency it's common occurrence in humans does nothing to minimize its brutality and i'm just so sorry for what you've experienced now when we think about the evolution of grief it's important to remember that evolution isn't exclusively focused on producing positive traits natural selection's main role is to eliminate features in an organism that prevent it from reproducing a secondary effect is to boost traits that are advantageous or create additional advantages in reproduction and evolution pretty much ignores benign features of organisms and so evolution can drive a trait and then there can be a secondary effect of that trait that is benign and therefore ignored by natural selection and that's probably where grief comes from here's why animals that pair bond and animals that create social bonds have a survival advantage individual humans would not be a competitive predator on this planet but bands of human tribes of humans are very competitive and so evolution especially in mammals has rewarded feelings of affection and social bonds friendships relationships between animals and for animals that are especially dependent on one another elephants apes humans dogs there can be a separation anxiety we don't like to be away from the people we're close to and the way separation anxiety is alleviated is to get in the presence of that other organism that other animal that other person to whom we feel close in grief that alleviation is impossible so some social scientists and some evolutionary biologists believe that grief is unreconcilable out of control separation anxiety we become aware that we can never see this person we care for again and we go through an acute intense separation anxiety that may take a very long time to resolve and may leave permanent scarring permanent trauma on our psychological makeup so it's not that grief has an evolutionary purpose it's that separation anxiety has an evolutionary purpose that said i think grief is beautiful accepting and honoring our grief for another person is a way of keeping them close to us emotionally keeping their memories valuable and carrying them with us i would encourage you to not be afraid of grief to not be afraid of tears to lean into them and you may find that in time that grieving process is cleansing that creates a clarity and it creates a deep and profound appreciation for what your dad did in your life and what your dad left with you that his ideas his view of the world they go along with you every day that in a very real sense your dad's cognition stays on this earth in your own mind in your own neurons in your own synapses the philosopher and scientist douglas hofstetter in his book i'm a strange loop talks about this some that our consciousness if it's a pattern of neurological connections the people closest to us build a facsimile of that an approximation now it may be about as detailed as a an image made of mosaic tiles versus a photograph but that overall pattern continues and because you knew your dad so well you could probably if someone said what would your dad say in response to this question you could answer with a high degree of accuracy because you have that shadow that neurological image of your dad in your own mind so grief may not have an evolutionary purpose but it can drive you to a profound appreciation for those things that you keep in the world on behalf of your dad that because you knew him so well he will be with you for the rest of your life [Music] well there's another episode of ask science mike done completed let's talk about some events that are coming up first of all this week i'll be in phoenix in los angeles doing lost and found with the liturgists if you don't have tickets and you want to be at that event go get tickets right now go to the liturgists.com events or you can go to our facebook page there's links to the tickets there here's why in phoenix all the vip tickets are gone and the ticket remaining tickets are going fast you don't want to wait and try to get tickets at the door phoenix listen up we're coming you're going to miss us if you don't get your tickets same thing los angeles the first showing is sold out and less than 20 tickets are left for the second showing go get your tickets don't wait okay because lost and found is an incredible event you don't want to miss it people that have seen lost and found in other cities have told us it's one of the most powerful things they've ever seen and frankly i'd like to see you i'd like you we'll be hanging around after the event and uh i'd like to meet you i'd like to talk to you and hear about your life and how you're walking in your journey of faith we're also doing a tour gunger's doing their one wild life tour and the liturgists are going along in most cities that will look like a gunger show with a little bit of science mike spice splashed in there followed by q a it's not a deeply choreographed event like lost and found it'll be a gunger show plus a q a podcast style there's a ton of events in the southwest and in texas so we'd love to see you on the gong one wildlife tour now a huge announcement is the liturgist gathering our upcoming conference series we're doing four cities uh dallas denver chicago and los angeles going to be about 500 tickets available at each of those we're going to announce details about that this week so go to the liturgist.com gathering to learn more and then in about another week tickets will go on sale they're going to be much more affordable than belong tickets were that's why we've made it a little bit larger event to try to make it something that people can afford to go to without stretching the bank but not so large that we can't spend time with everybody who goes so go to the website sign up for an email alert and watch out for when tickets go on sale because i'm expecting these to go fast almost every event we do sells out and we're trying to go to four cities they're geographically dispersed that you know it's either an easy drive or an affordable flight for pretty much everyone in the us who downloads this program we're working really hard on that i'm telling you you don't you don't want to miss out when we opened uh belong ticket sales for the first time 3 500 people tried to buy a hundred tickets so you know some people missed out and i've got a lot of events coming up too so in addition to the literature events i'm doing an event with pete ends in ventura california that's going to be really exciting just a ton of different cities coming up if you go to mikemcarg.com events or just go to asksciencemike.com and click on events you can see in the next few months i'm doing more events than i've ever done before i've heard your requests that you'd like me to come see you and i'm trying to now look at that list if you look at that list and you say ah my city's not on here it's no problem i'd love to come to your city and you can learn about how to get me in your town there's multiple ways to do this you can either book me to come give a talk or if it's a good market we can do science mike live and you don't have to front any kind of speaking fee or anything like that if you go to ask sciencemic.com and click on bookmike i would love to come to your conference to your church or to your college i do it all the time it's a lot of fun and that's how i come a lot of people tweet me hey come to this city i'd love to but someone has to help me get to that city so anyway events tons of events so lost and found this week go to the liturgists gathering website this week and check out the one wild life tour and see if we're coming by oh i finished my book and it's available for pre-order you're going to hear a lot more about that if you're one of those people that have already pre-ordered the book thank you that's awesome it's really early we're not starting the book marketing campaign yet but i would like to say if you've pre-ordered the book save your receipt because i'm planning some really cool pre-order bonuses and if you ordered the book this early i don't want you to miss out on those pre-order bonuses when they get announced later on so make sure you save your receipt save your receipt if you pre-order the book i do want to thank andrew gallucki for his pre-production work on the show he's got a podcast called the middle class musician i'll have a link this week on the show as well it's a good show you ought to check that out greg nordin produces the show holy cow you guys greg is awesome he also works with us on the liturgist podcast and the amount of just excellence greg brings to the table is profound so if you need like sound production work i don't know greg might be hard to get but uh you should at least try he's amazing he's professional he's fast he's responsive and then jeb bodaford wrote the theme song my boy my dog he's doing a lot of that work now thanks all of you who have asked jeb to make music for your work he's great at it he's ridiculously talented so that's all i've got this week thanks for listening and i can't wait to see you next monday