It feels great to have finished book 9 of The History by Herodotus, almost like catching up on a multi-season TV series, and you feel like you need to go back and read some of your favorite parts. Herodotus started with the reasons for the east-west conflict and went on to give accounts of great empires and rulers, taking occasional detours to talk about geography, history and other contexts. The last book circles back to Cyrus, who was mentioned in the first book, and it ends with a quote from Cyrus. The quote itself made me think - “soft countries gave birth to soft men—there was no region which produced very delightful fruits, and at the same time men of a warlike spirit”. A version of this is circulated on social media even now, and every time I see it, it feels wrong and anachronistic. The resurgence of show of strength by focusing on physical attributes, by being rude to people, calling for war and killing, seems so irrational especially when we need more people to use their brains more effectively - have better reading and writing comprehension, understand the laws of physics, have the ability to focus to spends long stretches of time to solve complex problems, think out of the box and innovate, etc. The toughness has to be mental and not merely physical. This reminds me of an experiment Nir Eyal talks about in his latest book (Beyond Belief), where a scientist named Richter conducts experiments on rats to see whether they would drown. He observed that domesticated rats were better at surviving than wild rats.

We often assume that “tougher” individuals, the ones with more strength or grit, naturally persist longer. Yet Richter’s experiment suggested otherwise. The wild rats went under within minutes. The domesticated ones kept on fighting.

~ Eyal, Nir. Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results (p. 3). Kindle Edition.

So, rather than thinking we should deny people things to make them stronger, you can actually provide them with the things they need to strengthen the attributes we need for modern society. In many places, people are falling behind because they don’t have access to basic necessities. Often, a small group in power keeps these resources from others.

Anyway, the main topic I wanted to write about was “belief” and how believing in something can make us do extraordinary things. This is what went through my mind when I read the part about the Greeks’ victory at Mycale. The above quote is from that section - “But when the voice fell on them, their fear vanished, and they charged more vigorously and at a quicker pace.” Here, the Greeks are scared and almost about to lose the battle. But they hear a rumor that the Greek land forces have defeated the large army of Mardonius at Platea. Herodotus says that this was probably a lie because both battles happened on the same day. The moment they hear the rumor, they are filled with courage, and they fight and win the battle. I recently started listening to “Beyond Belief” during my commute, and I read this section (in The History) around the same time I listened to a story (in Beyond Belief) about how someone was able to go through a surgery without anesthesia, just by focusing their attention on something else through hypnosis. Nir Eyal says that our conscious mind can handle around 50 bits of data per second, but our senses collect 11 million bits of raw data. I’ve heard that even Einstein used only 5% of his brain, but to think of the information input in bits per second was simply astounding. I’m still amazed by this when I think about it.

“Consider those two numbers: fifty bits versus eleven million bits. The gap between those two numbers is why we’re aware of only a tiny fraction of what our brains can actually perceive. In short, we live life through a keyhole.”

Eyal, Nir. Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results (pp. 20). Kindle Edition.

So our beliefs are intensely subjective. Two people can look at or even experience the same thing and yet believe different things. Nir Eyal says, “Your brain isn’t seeing reality—it’s seeing your beliefs about reality.” This is so important to remember when there is so much hatred and xenophobia in the world. When someone thinks that another group is “evil” and needs to be obliterated or “blasted off with bombs to stone age,” they need to examine why they believe those things. Rather than seeing people and families on the other side, they are seeing their beliefs about an abstracted group. One cannot think logically when there is intense hatred. Our beliefs can make us do extraordinary things - both harmful and positive. But anger is probably the worst. It is the fire that could consume the world and burn everything down. From small interpersonal conflicts to global ones, anger pulls humanity back, not forward. There is a common cultural myth that “venting” anger is a healthy, cathartic release, but the science says otherwise. Eyal writes -

Expressing anger doesn’t reduce it; it amplifies it. Venting our negative beliefs about others only reinforces them, locking us into poisonous relationship dynamics that make us feel worse instead of better.

~ Nir Eyal. Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Breakthrough Results (p. 39). Kindle Edition.

When you’re intensely angry against someone or have strong beliefs about something, that is the time to check the assumptions. But having the wisdom to stop and check itself needs some level of self-awareness that the average person does not possess. It was always assumed that education could help elevate people into thinking better, but it is not always the case. People have to consciously develop the skill. While comparing GMs vs amateurs in Chess, Nabeel Qureshi says - “there’s a direct correlation between how skilled you are as a chess player, and how much time you spend falsifying your ideas.” He says the falsifying ratio for GMs is 4:1. 1 minute finding the right move, and another 4 minutes trying to falsify it. For amateurs, the ratio is 0.5:1. 1 minute finding the move, 30 seconds to casually try to falsify it(source: Nabeel Qureshi - Notes on Puzzles).

It feels surreal to be reading history about the burning of cities and killing people 2500 years ago, and the same thing is happening in the world right now in the same region, and people are still talking about the East-West conflict. Everyone is praying that the situation doesn’t get worse, but that’s what everyone thought at the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war. The world is in a worse place than then. Amidst all this, the Artemis launch was such hopeful, positive news. Hope more such events happen in the future.

Other instances of belief in the book

• The Greeks believe so strongly in their view of freedom that they don’t want to surrender to the Persians even if it means total annihilation. When Alexander suggests (Mardonius’ first offer), they say no. When a councilman (Lycidas) suggests surrender (Mardonius’ second offer), they stone Lycidas to death.

• Mardonius believes so strongly in the strength of his army that he refuses counsel regarding staying at fortified Thebes (Artabazus’ advice). When the army has a feast, one of the soldiers remarks about the futility of having knowledge that they will get defeated, but still having to fight because their leader believes that they should.

• The Spartans believe that having Tisamenus in their army will help them win because the Oracle tells Tisamenus that he will win 5 contests. They grant him and his brother citizenship (something unheard of as per Herodotus) to get him on board.

• The Greeks decide to retreat to an island, the Athenians have already left, and there is a group of Spartans led by Amompharetus who refuse to leave because of his strong belief that they should stand and fight. He doesn’t heed the words of Pausanias, the Spartan Commander. When the Persian faction reaches and attacks them, Pausanias and the rest of the Spartans are left to fight without support from others.

• After the victory, Pausanias asks the Persian cooks to prepare a banquet like the one they served for Mardonius. The lavish feast is set on tables of gold and silver. He also asks Spartan cooks to prepare a Spartan supper. Then he compares the two and tells his army that it makes no sense for the Medes, who are so rich, to attack Sparta, which is so poor! So, in many cases, a rich nation attacks a poor one by having inflated beliefs about its enemy. The enormity of the enemy’s power is sometimes a fiction of imagination.

Useful References

• Book 9 Slides (by NotebookLM)

• Book 9 - Interactive HTML (by Gemini)

• My Notes & Quotes

The book ending soon after the Greeks declare, “So long as the sun keeps his present course, we will never join alliance with Xerxes”, as a response to the looming threat of another Persian invasion, was a perfect cliffhanger that makes a person want to continue to the next book. To Alexander of Macedon (the great-great-great-great-grandfather of Alexander the Great), who comes to the Athenians with the offer of alliance, this doesn’t make rational sense. Everyone knew that the Persians had already burnt Athens to the ground in the last invasion and could wreak havoc again. Alexander likely felt he was acting in good faith, trying to save a stubborn people from total annihilation. At the end of the book, one is left thinking - what will happen? Will Mardonius come charging with his large army and crush the Greeks? Will the Greek alliance be able to hold off the attack?

(I do agree that Herodotus had the whole volume of histories as one book, and later it was split into nine books. But each book was kind of self-contained, I thought. The first ended with Cyrus the Great’s rise and death, the second about the Egyptians, the third about Cambyses’ awful reign and the rise of Darius, the fourth about Darius’s conquests and so on. Book five sets up the Ionian revolt, and one does get a foreboding that things are going to take a bad turn after that.)

It was great to read about the battle of Salamis after hearing about it in many other places in the other books I read in the Great Books series (Aeschylus’ play The Persians, Aristophanes mentions it a few times) and in some contemporary references. I was reminded again to rewatch the movie 300 and its sequel. Artemisia in the book seemed to align with one in the movie played by Eva Green, as a strong naval commander, though I need to watch the movie again to jog my memory. But I think Xerxes’ depiction in the movies (as I remember) was totally off the mark.

Anyway, the main theme that I had in mind when I started writing was about Themistocles, without whom the Greeks would not have won the war. He was not the overall commander of the Greek fleet either at Artemisium, where the Greeks lost, nor at Salamis, where they won. The leader was Eurybiades, and Themistocles was one of the commanders under him, though the Athenian fleet that Themistocles was leading was the largest. Throughout the war, Themistocles’ quick thinking and cunning helped the Greeks get out of tough situations. He was the Odysseus of the Greek army.

War is incredibly unpredictable. Many times, you should not only think of how to outsmart your enemies but also how to manipulate your own army or allies, which is what Themistocles does at different stages of the war. At the start of the war, when the Greeks see the large Persian fleet and want to retreat to safety, Themistocles bribes a few commanders with the money the Euboeans gave him, and they stay and fight, though he pockets most of it. In the battle, after the Greeks suffer heavy losses, he sends messages to the Ionians and Carians to either defect or withdraw from the fight, saying that their ancestors were Greeks. His strategy: if Xerxes doesn’t discover the message, the Ionians might defect; if he does, he might distrust them and not include them in later battles. Later, before the battle at Salamis, the Peloponnesian allies wanted to retreat to the isthmus to be with their countrymen who were building a wall and to protect Sparta. Themistocles tries to convince them that Salamis has more advantages for the Greeks than the open sea. When they don’t listen, he threatens to go away with all the Athenian ships. They relent but then change their mind again. This time, Themistocles secretly sends a message to the Persian king saying that the Greeks are planning to flee. The Persians take immediate action and surround the Greeks in the night. The Greeks are left with no choice but to fight. After the Persians were defeated at Salamis, Xerxes decides to return to Persia. Themistocles initially wants the Greeks to pursue the King or go faster than him to the Hellespont and block him from crossing over to Asia, but when he sees that the majority are against it, he supports the view of letting the King go. He even sends a note to Xerxes saying that he has stopped the Greeks from blocking Xerxes’s passage back to Persia, thus ensuring some favor in case things went badly for him at Athens. Themistocles was constantly thinking strategically throughout the battle. He kept multiple options open, looked out for himself as well as the Greeks.

I wonder if every CEO needs a strategist like Themistocles to win corporate wars. In this case, Eurybiades was the overall commander (CEO) of the fleet and was engaged with the operational aspects of ‘alignment and governance’, of managing the diverse nations that had come under one umbrella to fight a common enemy, while Themistocles was the strategist who used unorthodox tactics to win the war. The Spartans rightly honor both Eurybiades and Themistocles with crowns after the war.

The book/chapter was fascinating. It was much longer than I expected though. It included the battle of Thermopylae, which I first learned about from the movie “300”, years ago. When I started reading Herodotus, I was very much looking forward to reading this part. The anticipation of reaching this part itself made the chapter feel special. The movie experience was unforgettable, and the reading experience was even more awesome - truly epic. A million people army (Persians) against 300 (Greeks/Spartans). Legendary stuff! (Yes, I agree that the movie had many historical inaccuracies.) Herodotus says Xerxes’ total army strength was over 5 million (which was also supposedly an exaggeration).

Anyway, one thing that really stood out to me since the start of this chapter was Xerxes’ dream. If he hadn’t had that dream, the whole march and the loss of so many lives might not have happened. After listening to his uncle’s advice, he didn’t want to go to war. But in his dream, someone threatened him with dire consequences if he didn’t go to war, and this happened more than once. A recurring dream in which someone urges you to do something is not something you can cast aside.

Dreams have been a recurring theme in classics. All the books in the series that I’ve read so far - The Iliad, The Odyssey, The plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides - they all mention dreams in so many places. Dreams were pivotal to many protagonists making key decisions. I searched for ‘dream’ and found the following references in my past newsletters. It also made me wonder whether Substack should integrate an AI chatbot onto the site. ‘Search’ing feels so old-fashioned after using AI mode and AI chatbots for finding information.

Dream References in Past Posts:

Great Books Ep 2: Dissuade to Persuade: Saying One Thing with the Hope of Getting Another Thing Done

“Jove sends a Lying dream to Agamemnon, saying he could take Troy if he attacks now. Agamemnon wakes up from the dream, happy that he can finally conquer Troy.”

Great Books Ep 27: Beyond Competition: The Transformative Power of Games

Patroclus appears to Achilles in a dream and asks him not to hold off on the funeral any longer.

Great Books Ep 34. The Odyssey Book 6. Washing to Pollute: The Environmental Impact of Our Clothing Habits

Minerva (Athena) appears in a dream to Nausicaa, the king’s daughter and inspires her to get up.

Great Books Ep 56. Aeschylus - The Persians. Part 1. Sleeping Minds, Waking Truths: Can Dreams Offer Glimpses into the Future?

Atossa, Xerxes’s mother, enters and says that she had a bad dream in which her son was trying to control two beautiful women, one dressed as Persian and another as Greek, and falls down in the process. She says she woke up from the dream and went to the altar to make offerings to ward off evil but saw an eagle being attacked by a falcon.

Great Books Ep 92. Euripides - Iphigenia Among the Tauri. Statue from the Sky and Dreams of the Future

In revenge for her being replaced, Themis’s mother Gaia caused ordinary people to see visions while in sleep about ‘what has been and yet shall be’. But Zeus takes it away from people and gives it to Apollo.

Great Books Ep 107. Herodotus - The History - Book 1 (Clio), Part 2. How Trying to Prevent Fate Creates It

Astyages has a dream about his daughter Mandané in which water flowing from her floods the whole of Asia.

Great Books Ep 115. Herodotus - The History - Book 6 (Erato). Even the Best Leadership Fails Without a Committed Team

Hippias dreamt of lying in his mother’s arms like a baby and thought he will be able to take control of the country that he betrayed (Athens)

This is what I had written while reading Aeschylus’ “The Persians”:

Like the ghost that Murph sees in Interstellar turns out to be Cooper from the future, I feel that dreams are more than what we think, and we might get to know more in the future as we advance our studies. In a recent interview with Bill Gates, Sam Altman mentioned that it is tough to analyze our brains to clearly find the source of our thoughts, but it is possible to do a ‘brain surgery’ of an LLM and clearly locate the source of the words that an LLM produces.

So, should we believe in dreams and live life according to what our dreams tell us? Maybe not, because we don’t fully have the capacity to interpret our dreams, and mostly, we interpret based on our current events and fears. The right approach could be to not dismiss dreams entirely. A visceral dream that stays in one’s mind throughout the morning or a recurring dream might be a signal for us to do some self-introspection and realign things and people in our lives. Dreams offer insights into lessons that we can learn from our past; they offer seeds that, if planted properly, can make our future better.

This is what I’d written while reading Euripides’ Iphigenia Among the Tauri

I think everyone dreams, and the mind is somehow able to predict things that could happen in the future. If the LLMs, based on transformer architecture, are able to create an amazing amount of text based on just predicting the next token, can the human brain, which is much more powerful, not do better? It requires time and self-awareness to understand our dreams. I also think that other people cannot fully interpret your dreams since your dream exists in the context of your life. But still, why do people throng to fortune tellers, astrologers and other people who might not be able to know their future better than them?

The accelerating pace of AI development is quite scary and fascinating. All the smart people seem to be predicting a radical change where AI is able to do most of the white-collar jobs. I feel that we’re at a stage where it has been proven that humans can build highly intelligent systems that exceed our capacity. But I doubt if we have resources on Earth to support billions of AI agents. There are so many other things that humans can do that are way more than our normal capability - cloning, gene editing, etc. Humans have the capability to play god even now, but we don’t because collectively, most societies and governments have decided that it is not right. Or may be it is the fear of the unknown.

Anyway, if we reach a point where energy becomes too expensive for people, since most of the power being produced is being used by AI, and we’re not able to produce power or build electrical grids to meet the demand, people could protest (Similar to the looming resource crisis during Xerxes’ campaign. Herodotus notes that Xerxes’ army was so vast that it drank rivers dry and required “110,340 medimni of corn” every single day just to survive). When the demand for “compute” begins to infringe on the basic needs of a household, when electricity becomes too expensive to heat a home because the nearby data center requires the same wattage, a revolution becomes imminent (reminded of the French Revolution and the Guillotine).

In that desperate state, if a powerful and charismatic person sees a nightmare and is convinced that wiping out AI is the solution to save humanity, it might lead to destructive wars. They could see AI not as a tool, but as a technological parasite draining the lifeblood of the planet. The unpredictability of human dreams and the force they have on people is something that AI will have to deal with in the future.

One could also argue that, many times, dreams have misled people into doing things they would normally not do. Especially when it comes to judging other people’s intentions wrongly. Dreams probably do exploit people’s existing biases. When we are in a state of high stress or resource scarcity, our dreams tend to project our deepest fears onto people or things we demonize. We might dream that a business partner is plotting against us, or that a foreign power’s AI development is a direct prelude to an unprovoked strike.

It is also scary to think about what would happen if AI agents became more powerful, misunderstood each other, and started fighting on a much larger scale. They do hallucinate. They do produce different results depending on the ‘context’. If we end up building agents that can think in long time-horizons, one set of agents could predict the future in one way and another in a totally different way and if they both need the same resources, what happens?

I started reading this chapter (Book 6) in December and only completed it in Jan. So many things (personal) happened in between that the chapter felt so long. If I think back on the events in the chapter, there are so many things to think about - not only about wars and their aftermath, but also about dreams (Hippias), double-crossing (Histiaeus), sharpness (Artaphernes), marathon run (Pheidippides), leadership failure (Dionysius), leadership success (Miltiades), hubris (Miltiades), losing a fortune by dancing (Hippoclides), etc.

The quote above is from Dionysius of Phocaea, who was the commander of the Greeks at Lade, an island near the famous city of Miletus. The fall of Miletus was a significant milestone and was really felt by the Greeks even later. The trauma was so deep that years later, when a poet staged a play titled The Capture of Miletus in Athens, the entire audience burst into tears. The playwright was fined 1,000 drachmas for this!

Since defending Miletus was so important (it was the epicenter of Ionian revolt), a large fleet of Greek sailors was at Lade, hoping to stop the Persians. Dionysius looked at his forces and saw the brutal facts: they were outnumbered, and worse, undisciplined. He gave a passionate speech about their lives being at stake and that they need to work hard to prepare to fight the formidable Persians; otherwise, they would be slaves. Everyone agreed, and Dionysius put them on a grueling training schedule. But people got tired (or burnt out) after seven days, and they refused to train further, saying that slavery was better than the hardship of training -

“even the slavery with which we are threatened, however harsh, can be no worse than our present thraldom”.

They went back to their ‘slothfulness and disorder’. Key groups in the fleet, like people from Samos and Lesbos, abandoned them and left. So when the Persians reached Lade, they easily defeated the Greek fleet. The sack of Miletus happened soon after this. The Persians breached the walls, sacked the city, and burned the Great Temple of Apollo to the ground.

If you think of it, Dionysius did everything right by the book, but failed. He correctly identified the critical issues, had the vision of how to set things right and also rallied his people behind him, yet he still did not succeed. If I compare this to the battle at Marathon, where the Greeks (Athenians) won, the big difference could be that, though Miltiades was the leader, he had other strong generals with him. Though history gives a lot of credit to charismatic leaders, in most cases, leadership succeeds because there is a set of strong leaders on whom the main leader depends. Effective leadership needs more than just inspiration; it requires sustainable processes and a leadership structure. There are many examples of a new CEO or a VP coming in, firing everyone on the executive team, and then finding that there isn’t enough grassroots-level support to carry out their initiatives. The executive team and middle management are more crucial to executing a vision than most people give credit for.

The other thing that came to mind while reading this incident was that people defect the moment they sense that they may not be on the winning side. The moment the sailors stopped training, Samians and Lesbians defected, and that caused the morale to drop even further. So, when the going gets tough and a company or team is in an existential crisis, there is no other option but to grind through it, even if failure is the most likely outcome. Otherwise, you lose people, and you fail even more miserably.

The key takeaways for me would be

1. Don’t rely too much on ‘the myth of the charismatic leader who is the sole savior’.

2. When a team says slavery is better than the “hardship” of the job, there is an ‘alignment issue’; the leader has failed in one of two ways: they either pushed beyond the breaking point, or they failed to convince the people of the existential threat.

3. There is a danger in ‘executive purge’ when you newly take up something. First, seek to understand and then make drastic changes.

4. Pay attention when people start leaving your team or org. Understand why it is happening before it gets too late and goes into a ‘defection spiral’.

Other Thoughts

• People in leadership roles are generally super smart and see through things. Histiaeus orchestrated the whole Ionian revolt behind the scenes but thought no one knew. Artaphernes tells Histiaeus that he knows ‘who the stitcher of the shoe was and who the wearer was’.

• The Pincer Attack - thin center, strong flanks. The Greeks won the battle of Marathon by employing a novel strategy. They had a weak center that rushed towards the Persian army and got attacked. While the Persians were winning against this center, other parts of the Greek army attacked from the sides. I was reminded of the fictional battle of the Redgrass field (Blackfyre rebellion) in The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, where Maekar is the anvil who holds the line, and Baelor is the Hammer who crushes them from behind.

• The Marathon Run. Pheidippides runs all the way to Sparta to ask for their help. But the Spartans say they want to help, but a religious custom forbids them to march, and they can do it only after the full moon.

• Dream misinterpretation. Hippias dreamt of lying in his mother’s arms like a baby and thought he will be able to take control of the country that he betrayed (Athens) but when he sneezes and looses a teeth he reinterprets his dream to mean that country is not his to take.

• The Mad King Cleomenes. People have different theories on why he went mad. Most of them attributed it to the gods and the punishment for the atrocities he committed. But the logical Spartans conclude that it was because of alcoholism.

• Bad Choices.

  • “‘Timo was not in fault; ’twas decreed that Miltiades should come to an unhappy end; and she was sent to lure him to his destruction.” Miltiades, the Hero of Marathon, died in disgrace and debt due to bad choices.

  • “What does Hippoclides care.” Hippoclides throws away marriage to a wealthy family because he loved to dance and be merry.

• Inherited jobs. “Their heralds and flute-players, and likewise their cooks, take their trades by succession from their fathers.” The text goes on to mention that even if someone else had better talent, they could not get the roles because the jobs were reserved for certain families.

This quote appears on the very first page of this book (chapter) when Herodotus talks about the Trausi tribe among the Thracians. It has stayed with me for the past few weeks even after I finished reading the book. I started writing some thoughts about this a few times, but it just kept going down the rabbit hole of more thoughts.

The world during Herodotus’ time was pretty violent. Wars, sieges, diseases and whatnot. Herodotus talks a lot about customs and cultures, geographies, etc., but the overarching theme is relentless war, tyranny, and death. That too, it was a time when an average person didn’t even know about all the fightings in different parts of the world. But now we clearly see and hear much more about conflicts in different parts of the world. It is so sad. I feel for the victims of all the places that find themselves displaced with no shelter or food. No place to live on Earth since every inch has been taken over by people with power. No place to run to. And when some people succeed in running and reaching a place that they think would give them refuge, people there treat them as sub-humans. There is a huge anti-immigration sentiment in many parts of the world. The propaganda to equate immigrants or some section of society to cockroaches, rats or other animal caricatures, gives license to people to inflict harm that they would normally never think of doing to another human being. If you’re part of a refugee population, what do you do? Do you commit suicide or find a way to live? When you encounter someone who hates you for what you are, and no matter what you do, they just want you to be gone, what do you do? A part of you wants to give in and end the misery. In a war-torn country or a place with famine, how can you rejoice when a baby is born? You’ve now brought a baby into the same hopeless situation that you are in. When you are in a hopeless situation, death means a definitive end to pain, end of agony, end of fear, exploitation, humiliation and utter sadness.

That makes one wonder what the knowledge level of the average person on Earth is. Do all the people who have so much hatred and want to see large groups of people harmed, even understand how valuable life is, how magical it is to have life in the vast emptiness of space, how many millions of years of evolution gave rise to a thinking human from single-celled organisms? I was thinking of all these things in the past few weeks when I listened to the latest two episodes of David Eagleman’s podcast on “What do brains tell us about politics?” where he talks about polarization. It was the answer to the puzzling question of why people are so cruel to others. Eagleman shows multiple examples of how people are intensely loyal and empathetic to members of their group and have strong hatred towards non-members. And surprisingly, who is in-group vs who is out is very fluid. He says that brain imaging studies show that empathy circuits respond strongly when in-group members suffer and weakly when out-group members suffer. In fact, sometimes, out-group pain even activates reward pathways! He says that the only way to defend against the tricks of polarization is education and perspective-taking.

“Because if disgust and fear and anger can make us see our neighbors as contaminants, just remember that recognizing propaganda and taking a different perspective and surfacing what we have in common can make us see our neighbors again as fellow travelers. Improvising their way through the same noisy world.”

Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman - Ep 131 - “What do brains tell us about politics? Part 2: Rehumanization”

A couple of other quotes from the episode -

“The brain is not a machine of fixed circuits. It’s more like a living city. It’s always building and demolishing pathways in response to its experience, which means the grooves of polarization are not permanent.”

“Every time we practice perspective taking, even if we don’t agree, we are nudging our own circuitry. Towards rehumanization.”

I also feel that religion has played a huge role in keeping humanity alive till now. Most major religions don’t differentiate between race or nationality and treat all humans with dignity. Religion has given people hope of living on in spite of overwhelming odds through the promise of the afterlife, fate/karma, rebirth, or some other concepts.

So, it means people need something to hope for, just to survive, when they are faced with unending trauma and hopelessness. While hope can keep people going forward, I guess the real solution to ending suffering and conflict comes from more people getting educated, thinking broadly and being rational.

Book 5 (Terpsichore) Summary - Slides by Notebook LM

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