Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Welcome to but why Real Talk on Messy Minds and Messier Systems, the podcast where two psychologists overanalyze everything so you don't have to. We're here to unpack the weird, the worrying, and the wildly unjust with just enough existential dread to keep it interesting. I'm Dr. Kristen.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: And I'm Dr. Laura. Let's dive into the mess.
Let's do it. Let's do it.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Oh, I like your top. What do you call it? A jumper? We would say sweater.
It is a jumper with a frog on it.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: It has got a frog on it, it's knitted, and it's got holes. Sometimes I, like, wear this to work meetings. And then, you know, when you, like, you've dressed yourself, but then you go on a video call and you're like, oh, no, that's not appropriate because it's got, like, holes in it. And I'm like, I shouldn't have worn this.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Oh, no. They can see part of your shoulder. What will they think?
[00:01:06] Speaker A: They're probably going to be like, well, anyway, you know. So now I'm very conscious of, like, wearing this top to a work meeting for some reason. So there you go. But it is very soft and comfy, so that's nice. Enjoy the neckline. Right. So. Yes. What's your top say? I feel like you've got a. Well, yeah.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: It says, I am no man.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: This is accurate.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: I am no man. Factually accurate. And also, obviously, Lord of the Rings. Obviously, obviously.
We like when things are accurate and related to Lord of the Rings.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: That makes them the best.
The best thing we like. Yeah. Last episode I was in Lord of the Rings, and now this episode, you're in Lord of the Rings.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: To even put two and two together.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Perfect.
Well, talking about last time, I suppose. Yes. Last time we time traveled, if you remember, it was so much fun.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Is this going to be as good as your awkward introduction last time?
[00:02:04] Speaker A: I didn't know what's going to happen. We might start strong, but it might. Yeah. Who knows where we'll end up?
But, yeah. So we time traveled. Right. So we look. So Kristen kind of took us through the history of, like, witches and werewolves, vampires, Frankenstein, mummies, zombies.
So we learn a lot about. Yeah. Their histories. But how. I suppose they start to act as, like a bit of a mirror to ourselves and some of the things that we fear. So we ended with the thought, last time around, how history is telling us when monsters appeared. Right. But we still need to bring the psychology, of course. So we need psychology to tell us why we still need these monsters. So today, this is the last kind of episode for this three part monster series.
Well, monsters, but what we. So what we're gonna, what we're gonna talk about, you've probably heard us like, probably heard us like talk about some of these bits and pieces throughout the other episodes, but what we're gonna try and do is just really bring it all together into kind of a bit of a neater manual, so to speak, to make sense of the monsters that we've spoken to you about. So let's, let's have a bit of a chat then about how our brain was built to see monsters.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: I think that's the fun thing is last time we went into like socially what was happening to create the monsters, I suppose. And we kind of talked a little bit about the psych mechanisms underneath. But psychologically though, why, but why? The last episode is always a but why?
So I don't have as melodic of a voice as Laura, but I'm going to try and put you, put you into the context. Okay, Picture this. Yeah. This is why I don't do like guided meditation, because my voice is not conducive to this kind of.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: It is.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: I'll try. I will try. So picture this. You're at a campfire 40,000 years ago. It's quiet, some would say too quiet. You hear a rustle behind you, and if you run and it's only the wind, you're wasting some energy, a few calories that like meal that you worked really hard to get. But if you don't run and it's a predator, you die.
And so natural selection always picks the jumpy ones. It picks the nervous ones. And that jumpiness is the starting point of everything to do with monsters.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: That's why we're alive.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: It's. It is why we're alive. It's literally from that simple choice is how the human mind is shaped. Right. So our answers survived on over detection. So you assume every rustle, every shadow or flicker or something had a bad intent behind it. And this is something that cognitive scientists call the hyperactive agency detective device or detective detection. Not detective. That sounds so fun. Detective.
And it's essentially a neural bias that prefers like a false alarm to a missed threat because obviously the consequences are less extreme. Right.
So this is a really interesting one to me as well because it's kind of formed this human need for context and to know why and to explain things. But I'll get to that in a little bit.
Because fear came first and understanding comes after that. Right? So. And that's what we talk about with a lot, with the monsters, but also what's happening right now in society. We talk about fear mongering and there's a purpose to that because fear circuitry in your brain always goes first, it fires before your analysis is the first thing to happen. And this is because it's like an amygdala response. And so if you guys know anything about our brains, that's like the back. That's the first evolved part of our brains. That's the kind of primary thing that drives our fight or fight, flight, freeze, FOD, etc. And that alarm system, it is, it is our alarm system. And that reacts before your prefrontal cortex, which is what you would say where our logic and nuance and et cetera, et cetera, to put it very basically. So your amygdala reacts way before your prefrontal cortex even receives that data.
Right? So this react first, think later architecture, I suppose, kept us alive, but then like we say all the time, it never got the off switch. So we are living in a world that we are not evolved to live in in our brains. So modern life has changed so much faster than any brain could evolve. And so we still kind of startle at the shadows and try to personify what we don't understand.
And so literally our brains are built to see monsters and we don't have an evolutionary off switch.
And once we had the capacity as a species to tell stories and build society and culture, those kind of false alarm systems started to become folklore and monsters and myths and legends. And so that's why I find it so fascinating.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that is interesting. Like, yeah, that's the starting point for us building them, imagining them, writing about them sort of thing. And of course as well, I think it's kind of, I think it's important to note that this like, I guess early alarm system or detecting system is really useful.
Like, I think we can often give it a bit of a bad, bad rap in a sense because we can be so, like, yeah, having so many false alarms, especially like say in modern day. But sometimes that can be helpful and I think what it is as well. It's like us being able to recognise whenever we had, say, like one of these false alarms and kind of is that something we need to act on? Is that something we don't need to act on sort of thing. But yeah, that's the reason, I suppose though, behind why we then see, see.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Monsters or see monsters, that's that like rational thought Isn't it? It's like, okay, once the fear happened, a very uniquely human thing to do is reflect on that.
But that's like a heavy assumption that most people do that they don't. You know what I mean? So it's. But it can be super useful, as in, like, why have I reacted to this in this way? Because everyone reacts to fear or has different thresholds for fear and other amygdala responses. So it is something super useful to reflect on.
The other, like, part that I find super fascinating as a psychologist, and I always, like, have been since I was, like, a kid, is how our brain fills in gaps. And I first learned about, like, I took evolutionary psychology, which is riddled with issues, right? It's. It's bias and patriarchy and stuff like that. But the basis of it, like, of our actual brain is super interesting. The human brain and how we build patterns and fill in gaps. Maybe I've always been interested in this because being autistic, I experience that's different than a lot of people. But you guys should know, like, perception isn't like a passive thing. It's not like a camera lens that just takes a shot. Actually, a camera lens is actually a really good one because you can adjust it. You know what I mean? The same. Same camera can take very different photos depending on the lens you apply to it. But your perception is predictive. It's not necessarily just a objective snapshot of the world. It doesn't record reality. A lot of it guesses reality based on small fragments and constantly, like, filling in these blanks with prior experience.
That's how we learn, right? That's literally why we learn off of modeling our parents and other things. It's literally the core human thing, right? And that's why people see faces and clouds and voices and, like, static stuff or, like, I don't know, faces and fire and stuff like that, right? It's just like pattern completion, not necessarily pattern recognition. And this pattern completion reduces uncertainty and the nervous system. So, like, this ability to fill in that gap with something that even if it's scary, might be more comforting just, like, calms you a little bit, right?
[00:10:45] Speaker A: This made me think of something that happened.
Was it a few months ago? It didn't happen to me, but we were. We were at, like, it was my partner's dad's birthday, and we were. One evening we, like, sat down around the table, like, telling ghost stories. I hate ghost stories because they make me feel really, really uncomfortable. Like, I really don't enjoy it. But so one of the ones that his sister was telling was about. It was actually about one of her friends. And they were. I think they were like, in the process of, like, moving out of their house. And they have, like, you know, one of those cameras or whatever for in the house. But you can hear sounds and see the video and stuff. And they just kind of put it face up on one of their tables and just left it there. And I forgot that it was on. But they, like, went back to. They. Well, they didn't go back to it. You know, it kind of gives you a little alert when there's, like, movement or something. So they had the alert, and then when they went to watch it, like, if you turn the volume up, it was really horrible. Like, you can basically, like, it sounds like someone, like, running, like, really heavily, like, up the stairs. Like, like. And when you're trying to make sense of it again, come back to this idea of pattern and experiences and so on. You just think, well, that must be what it. Like, it just sounds like somebody running up the stairs. Like, what else could it be? And then there's this really loud static as well.
So, again, it's like how we actually use, I guess, like ghost stories and. Yeah, kind of. What's the word? I don't know. But, yeah, how we use, like, ghost stories to help us make sense of what's going on that we can't explain.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Well, that's exactly it. It's like using this as a way to explain what can't be explained.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: And there's huge theories and evidence. You know, I'm not religious, so I see it as evidence. Right. That this is where God came from or any religions God or gods came from is this sense of this general need. We can link it back to the existential bit as well, which we will discuss at the end. This need to explain a lack of understanding of what's going on. Right. I felt a shiver. That's a ghost. But, like, I also feel this sudden sense of, like, wonder or awe or I can't explain, you know, X, Y, Z, or I saw a face in the shadows. And evolutionary psychology, some psychology says that. Okay, well, it actually made more sense in some ways to fill it with, like.
Like a benevolent being. Like a God.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Instead of a scary monster.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: That's what I was thinking. I was just thinking, like, surely you don't want to fill, like. Because that's what I'm like. I'm like, I don't want it to be a ghost. So I'm just gonna, like, Say it's not. That doesn't. That's not real.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: It's just the Fae. It's the Fae coming to collect us.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. That's much nicer.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: And not the scary ones. It's the nice ones who are rich and definitely live in mansions. Yeah, but like, and this is what makes humans so like this is part of our creativity as well, is like evolution favors imagination over accuracy. With these kinds of things, it's better to over interpret like or interpret wrongly, I guess, than under react.
But that same system that helped us live is now fueling conspiracy theories, which is not great. Urban legends, fine, but enough. And horror films. Right. So anywhere from like media through to legit conspiracy theories that are killing people. So.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: Oh gosh, essentially it's like coping mechanisms gone mad. Do you know what I mean? Yes.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Literally, it's like, well, we don't have a need for this anymore and we have too much stuff we don't understand in this modern age.
So let's put that energy, let's displace it like we talked about in the first episode. And so essentially these monsters, because we're talking about monsters. I guess we gotta stay focused, Kristen. Stay focused. Monsters, they are byproducts of this kind of like ancient safety feature that's still trying to run in the modern world. It's like an old school computer trying to keep up with like way more input. Yeah, but. And the thing that I do want to mention quickly is that not all brains are designed the same. And so what I just, just described is people with like hierarchical top to bottom thinking. So your brain works in hierarchies and you fill in the gaps underneath the overarching thing. But there are people who have bottom up processing, like autistic people. So I just want to touch on that very quickly. I won't dig into it too much, but just as a really interesting thing, because autistic people will experience monsters differently because of this bottom up thinking. So where most brains predict first and fill in the blanks automatically, autistic brains kind of tend to wait for evidence and then processing the raw sensory input before forming that narrative. And neuroscientists love to describe this as a weaker predictive coding because, you know, obviously we suck at autistic people because the brain relies less on assumption and more on data. So obviously that makes us a problem.
It can be described as more precise, but also more intense because that means that every sound, every light.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Every texture arrives unfiltered. There's nothing telling us that we don't need to know that information.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: So we've spoken then a bit about I guess, how our brains are kind of processing information, how this might be different for I guess like different neurotypes, different brains and I guess how we see patterns. But there's also like, I guess another piece to this which we have spoken about as we've been going through the episodes, which is this idea of projection or like the mind's mirror, if you like. So once we could imagine agency, we could also imagine, imagine guilt.
So what couldn't be explained externally, we would end up blaming internally. So Freud called it the uncanny. So fear of the almost familiar. So this mirror image, if you like, that just won't behave. We also spoke about the idea of abjection, which was kind of named by Julia Kristeva. So this is that psychic process of kind of spitting out what threatens identity. So we basically end up displacing this fear, this guilt that we have onto something else. So we're displacing our own guilt, our own whatever it might be, onto one of these monsters. And that's kind of, I suppose, like helping people to live with some of these really uncomfortable and like difficult feelings that we might have about ourselves or about society at this point in time, which we kind of spoke a little bit about in, in the previous episode.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: Projection is something that we always have to be super aware of as psychologists because it's such a natural thing. Because like we said, most brains fill in the gaps and then when something makes them uncomfortable, they wrap especially in like something that's really, I don't know, like meaningful or deep or big. I guess, like a big emotion. They want to displace it or project it somewhere else that it doesn't have to be dealt with. Intern long term, that can cause some pretty difficult like psychological issues. But also it happens in sessions with clients where they might display displace fear or anger or rejection on us. And so it's something that we have to be super, super, super aware of. But it also happens on a day to day base. We all do it like in our monsters. We're projecting our feelings onto, I don't know, I'm gonna eat this giant block of cheese that way. And it's. So it's just like a coping mechanism.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. And I think a common one that you often hear people talk about is like, you know, you've been out, had like a rough day at work or something, and you come home and you kind of take that out like on your partner. So you're kind of projecting those emotions or blaming, if you like, on something else to try and help deal with. Yeah, the discomfort of it. So that can kind of be the role of the monster in this scenario. And one of the things, one of my favorite metaphors that we use in act so like in acceptance and commitment therapy is about actually trying to befriend that monster. So talking metaphorically about our own monsters that we might have. And actually the really, I guess this natural human part of us says, push that monster away. Do not want that monster. Monster is scary, monster is horrible. Like shut the door on it. But instead we try and use this metaphor. Of course, if the person is, I suppose, psychologically safe enough in a sense to allow that monster in, we would be kind of encouraging them to be with and accept and see the monster. Do you know what I mean?
We talk about instead of shutting it out, letting it in and making it a cup of tea and actually realizing kind of like in the Frankenstein scenario, right, that actually that monster just needs a little bit of love and a little bit of care and it's not going to end up being as scary as like we think it is.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: And for you, Mon, the monsters are like an anxiety or some other emotion that might be projected out.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. It could be that anxiety, it could be fear of something. It could be even just like understanding who we really are. Like underneath everything, we could be fearful of that. So again, yeah, any of, I guess kind of internal events that we want to push away and not face up to.
[00:20:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. And a hot tip, guys, projection does not work for your well being.
So speak to your monster. Give it some tea or coffee. Yeah, give you a monster name.
Yes. Well, individual psychology is super important with this. We have to look at social, social psychology and sociology because we are social animals and we. You see what fear is like on a group scale, right. There's a reason, there's a lot of research into what like fear does to people on large scales, from, you know, fascism through to crowd control. You know, like what happens when a whole crowd of people is scared and people end up caught under people's feet and dying. Like crowds are crazy if they're afraid.
And in anthropology, somebody called Mary Douglas, she observed that societies treat boundary breakers as kind of like a pollutant of that culture, right? So like it's kind of just like out of place, it's dirt. It's kind of like monsters are the social equivalent of this, right. They help define what's clean, what's Sacred, what's moral, what's. What's lawful. And you can also look at this as like from a moral perspective, right? So punishing any deviance that reinforces belonging. And we have talked about extensively in other episodes, so I will not like go into it, but like we have an evolutionary need to be part of these groups. So when there is like some kind of fear of punishment for not belonging, that triggers that fear response in our brain towards the dominant group instead of doing our own thing and maybe even recognizing the real patterns that are existing. Right. And so it's essentially a scapegoat mechanism. So as this tension builds and so like say the witch trials, right, Women gaining more and more freedom, blame has to condense somewhere. And usually because we lived in, live in these systems of power, these hierarchies, this blame isn't going to be on the actual issue, patriarchy, the church, white supremacy, colonialism. It's going to go somewhere else. And kind of expelling this tension is what restores the order.
So if we're looking at like the witch hunts, all the more moral panics, the digital shaming that's happening, like monstering is essentially group therapy for fear through violence. And we see that happening and like modern neuroscience sees this happening as well. So a shared fear, so not an individual fear. When you can release your fear as a group, it releases oxy.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Ox.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Oh God, I can never say this word. Oxytocin. Oxytocin.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Oxytocin, yeah.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: So when you release fear as a group, so not an individual, but as a group, your brain releases oxytocin and this strengthens your in group bonds, which is just an insane finding. And so we literally feel closer to one another when we fear together. I mean, this can get into like trauma bonding and all this other stuff. And it's not necessarily true authentic relationships, but it is a in group bond. And that's literally why outrage online and in person spreads so much faster than anything like empathy.
Because it like it's a performance of group cohesion.
[00:24:14] Speaker A: It's like my brain is like, this is great, but also this is terrible. Do you know what I mean? Because it's like how fantastic that put a group of people together who are fearing something or like you say, who have been through trauma and yeah, talking through that together and feeling closer and getting the benefit from it. But then actually how society is using fear, like as a, like to manipulate us and to then make us feel like we are closest together, to make us release oxytocin, to make Us feel good through this fear that they have basically just created for nothing. Do you know what I mean?
[00:25:01] Speaker B: And that's why you see in the political literature, which we're going to have a really cool guest on next series, guys talking about this, is these more, I guess, political leanings that are more based in fear. So oftentimes, like, more conservatives are more based in fear. They're more hierarchical and they're more reactive, and they. There's less emotional intelligence and things like that. And that's because so much of it is relying on that amygdala rather than, like, thinking through things and patterns. And so, like, the monstering is quick. It's like, you know, you snap, there's the monster, whereas other people are less likely to do that, and they do a bit more thinking first. And so I just think that's so fascinating when we're talking about, like, the monstering of groups today. So we've got the individual and the social psychology, but that inevitably evolves into culture. And so, you know, especially as our. As our social bonds and groups grow, culture and cognition kind of feed each other, right?
Our brain's predictive system feeds our culture, and then our culture trains the brain. And that's why you can never take psychology and sociology as completely separate things. You must integrate them. And in terms of monsters, once a society invents a monster, that framework, that schema, becomes a mental shortcut for future anxieties. So that's kind of what I was talking about with the witches last time when you asked, like, I wonder what would happen if, like, this demonizing of women and persecution of women as witches, when they gained some autonomy, what if that never happened? And I was like, well, I doubt that we would be where we are. That wouldn't have produced the model for oppressing women that we still have today in the backlash. And this witch template reappears in the hysterical women of the 19th century. It appears in this backlash against women with feminism that we talk about a lot, you know, like the feminazi, the, you know, comparing women to witches, like Hillary Clinton and other stuff that we talked about last year. And it just reappears over and over and over. And that's our template for dealing for women who step out of the bounds. And I wonder if it's just like the most extreme and early example of hostile sexism.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: You know, it's interesting, isn't it? How.
And tell me if I'm wrong here, but, like, from the monsters we spoke about in the last episode, the witch is like, the own.
It feels like it's the only one that is still kind of used against women, you know, in like modern day. Like I wouldn't say like you're not really calling anyone. Are you calling people a vampire? Are you calling people werewolves? Are you? I mean, maybe there's something I'm missing, but it feels like that's just picturing.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Like a big like you're a werewolf.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe we need to bring that back, but do you know what I mean? Like, it's interesting how that the witch has like lived on to be used against us.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: What we haven't really touched on is how a lot of these images, especially the ones applied to women like witches, have been reclaimed by groups.
So like me personally having a witch tattoo on my arm and just like liking witchy vibes and just like as a more of like a rebellious or like what like the idea of like acknowledging what happened and where we are and just like a symbol almost of like women's autonomy. I think it's being used. I mean it's also being co opted. You know, we've talked about it in our alt right pipeline that like witchy vibes have been co opted a little bit by that like little wellness atmosphere. But some of this stuff like even like vampires are being like reclaimed as cool and like, you know, Twilight and all that kind of stuff.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: And. But I think you're right. Like, I think it would be really weird to go around calling somebody like even in. Sorry, something just popped into my head. Nobody's going and being like you're a vampire and that's like a bad thing. Maybe like a Frankenstein is thrown around. I feel like that could be probably used as like an ableist slur.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: But even just like the crazy lonely cat lady is essentially like a witch like attack because that's. It's harking back to the same stuff.
So you're right. I wonder why that's so like it just lasts. Maybe it is just so powerful and given that template, like we were saying, that's crazy.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: Well, I wonder if, I wonder if like any of the other ones and yeah, you guys will have to let us know if there are any we're kind of missing, but I wonder if there's any like you say if the witch is now like reimagined as like crazy cat lady. Have any of the other ones been reimagined that we can almost think back to like more modern, you know, like uses of the monster. That would be interesting.
[00:30:03] Speaker B: I think zombie is probably the closest one. I mean, I know that it was co opted and stolen from Haitian culture, but I think there's a reason that it resonates with people so much with late stage capitalism and you know, just destroying your body and being a soulless monster and having no control over your body in the day and age that we live in. So I see like reiterations of that constantly. I feel like that's a really resonant one. I can't think of anything else though.
But essentially this kind of cultural evolution that provides us these blueprints almost mirrors our genetic and psychological evolution. So these ideas mutate over time, they compete and they survive by emotional impact. So I wonder if that's why certain ones have so much more permanence in our society. Like it's literally like a virus. Fear has the highest transmission rate, like of all of our emotions. It's like so easy to transmission, to transmit between people.
[00:31:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Because if we look at it from like a neurological point of view, fear engages both your amygdala and your dopamine reward system.
So the relief that you get after a threat becomes pleasurable, especially in like group settings. And that's why people literally pay money to go to like, like a horror house, like one of those haunted houses, or go see a scary movie and like all this stuff.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: I do like scary films.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: I don't. I hate. I'm like, why am I doing this to myself?
[00:31:38] Speaker A: I do like a scary film.
Sometimes I regret it later when I'm like walking upstairs to go to bed and there's like shadows everywhere and I'm.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Like, you're like spreading up the stairs.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: I'm gonna die.
But it's almost this. I don't know if this is the right word, but I keep thinking how like fear almost can almost be something that's like, like self indulgent. Like in a way. Do you know what I mean? Exactly. Yeah.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: That almost makes me think of like, so there's the two sides, right? There's like, okay, people like the oppressed using monsters to define their reality, like zombies. But then I also think there's a certain level of privilege to wanting to be scared to for fun. Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah, like, well, I. And I don't know if I. That's right, because also because it is releasing dopamine when you're safe again. But like, it just reminds me of like people who make fun of people for camping. Like, that's the whitest thing you can Do. Why would you, like, go build your. Go sleep outside in a tent in the cold and not have hot food when you literally have a house? Do you know what I mean? It's just giving me that kind of.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Vibe as you were talking. It made me think of actually through. Well, I guess this is kind of what we've been talking about throughout a lot of this episode really. But it is like, if you're the one who is afraid, if you're the one that. Yet you're not the monster, you're the one who is fearful, then we make ourselves the victim. And I think there can be something in.
We don't want to be the ones that are responsible. It's kind of almost self indulgent sometimes to be like, well, actually I'm the victim in this situation. You know, definitely. That kind of has a. Like, has a function in itself.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: Definitely. I mean, we have to find different ways to have experience positive emotions, to release those positive chemicals in our brains. And in a society that constantly is depressed, depleting ways to do that.
Like, we're just going to start seeking other ways. Like watching scary movies at Halloween or like doing like, I don't know, like, like kind of adrenaline stuffing. Adrenaline rush is a different thing as well. It's probably very similar to this and that something that's related to this, I think is. Is predictive processing theory, which is super interesting. It reframes this kind of pleasure that we're seeking in like a very scientific way where, right. The brain is constantly predicting the sensory input, but when the prediction fails, but it's a safe failure. So you're in the safety of your own home, so you still have this level of safety.
It triggers learning and reward. So like, like, it's just like rehearsals for chaos. It's almost like, you know how kids will play hide and seek and try to scare each other. It's the same thing. It's like safe violations of like an expectation that you have that's aggressive. That's aggressive language.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: I always hated hide and seek. Absolutely hated it because I was like, either like, you know, I don't. Nobody's gonna find me, right? Or they're like, I don't know, like there was a fear of also being found. Like then I don't know, you've like lost or whatever. So I just wouldn't want to engage with it at all in the first place. I would hate to hide. Like, ha. Hate it.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: Oh, I was the opposite. I always wanted to hide because I was a really good hider. And then no one would find me and I would just get to sit there alone.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: No.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: And I was playing with my friends.
Yeah.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: Well that's. That's a better way of looking at it. Yeah. Just going in. Yeah. But no, hated that Hide and seek. Also sardines.
Yeah.
[00:35:28] Speaker B: Didn't enjoy like literally I didn't picture a game. I pictured like. Oh, she's talking about how she doesn't like these fish. Like very random, but I agree. Yeah. Also afraid of eating fish, but will not be practicing that.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: And like basically it's how we learn any behavior and like how it's a practice being uncertain. How we practice like engaging in fear. It's like literally just like a self imposed by our species Exposer posture therapy.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And I guess it does speak to this idea then of like what we're saying around these like the monsters that get depicted in society and like kind of, I think like we were saying in the first episode, it's like not turning away from that and just accepting it as, you know, what we're being told it is, but like turning towards it and looking a little bit more deeply and getting to know it like a little bit, you know, so that exposure, if you like to that thing and not just assuming that because it's, I don't know, scaly, spiky, whatever, like on the outside that actually that's something that we need to be afraid of.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: Definitely. And I think that links it really well in the sense that like there's a reason we have evolved this practice to engage with fear. It's because we're meant to be confronting this stuff head on rather than projecting it onto something else. But we also decide to project it onto other stuff. So like. So I feel like the more modern monsters, where we have it in like a like entertainment function serves both. So it serves the purpose of displacement projection, but also this kind of like exposure therapy at the same time. And it feels very entangled and like one of them's like kind of like a healthy coping mechanism and the other is just like, is like an irresponsible projection.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: Yes. It makes me think of Sully, you know, like Sully from Monsters Inc. How like I guess in the. Well, in the monster world he's Sully and he's nice and he's, you know, he's Sully. But then you go into the human world and he's terrifying and people fear him and you know what I mean? So it's again just this. It's a shift in context and a shift in also just under what do we think is scary or fearful in the first place? So, again, this kind of very cultural, like, lens on it as well, that.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Made me, like, further contextualize this, your. Your example. Because I feel like the stuff we're able to sensationalize as a. As entertainment is all historical monsters for the most part. It's not like we're currently, like, entertaining. Unless you're the shittiest person in the world using entertainment out of monstering immigrants or trans people or women right now. Right. Because it's. But. But like, it's so safe for us to watch a scary movie about something that isn't real about monsters, like about vampires, about Frankenstein. So I guess it's not as much displacement for the old school monsters. It's like that was. It started as a displacement, but now it's entertainment and practice. Whereas, like the modern monsters in heavy quotes, that. That society has monstered is where the displacement is going.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: Yeah, interesting.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: My brain hurts now.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: I know we're doing some deep thinking here.
I think this also brings kind of. Well, makes me kind of link this into the existential bit. And it kind of made me think about it a bit because, again. Well, let's talk about, I suppose, existentialism. So I suppose what we're thinking about, really, it's like. Like death, right. Fear of death. So it's not just the literal sense of, you know, dying and, like, being dead, but it is. The existential psychology is arguing that we as humans are cursed, in a sense, in, like, knowing that we will die. And I think that this is interesting as well when we think from that, like, cultural perspective, because obviously some cultures are much more accepting and almost just championing in a sense of death, whereas some, like us, are very much like, no death, like, be afraid of it. Right. And so this kind of, I guess, yeah, knowing that at some point we are gonna die, this kind of allows us to, in a sense, like, in our mind, like, plan, create and imagine and anticipate, like, our own death. Right. Which can be really overwhelming. It can be a lot.
And this awareness, it sparks fear, but it also creates this kind of tension, I suppose, between our animal vulnerability and our need for symbolic permanence.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I just feel like there's this need to be. Well, we are vulnerable to death no matter what.
[00:40:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: We're not alone in the animal kingdom of being able to engage in symbolism. We've seen crows and elephants and other arguably really intelligent creatures doing this. But I think we are very unique in how symbolic we are. And because we are aware that we can die, but we're also very much aware of our lives, and we don't want them to end. We want to make some way to be permanent. That's like, where zombies come. Or for, like, it's like the mummy thing. It's like vampires. Like, we just want this idea that, you know, it could be forever. I mean, I totally would love to be a vampire like that, but you kind of say dead.
[00:41:12] Speaker A: No.
Gosh.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: So we apply a lot of meaning to that kind of, like, permanence. Right. And so, like, a lot of us look for the symbolic permanence through. Some of us might be trying to make symbolic change through our writing, through our connections with people, through parenting, you know, through continuing. Continuing your lineage and things like that. This idea that you just want the world to kind of still know that you're here. Do you know what I mean?
[00:41:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And then I guess we kind of live this out in, like, you say, almost trying to find, like, a legacy or something. Like, you hear people talking about that quite a lot, I suppose. Like, what are you leaving behind? Kind of what is the legacy? To try and kind of keep building that meaning that's out living us. But what I think is, like, interesting and I guess kind of paradoxical is that we were talking before around how, you know, there is a fear of, like, uncertainty. Right.
And, like, death is probably one of the only things that is, like, certain in everybody's life at some point.
Yet it's also something that we, like, deeply, deeply fear. Like, it's. I think it's interesting how we, at least as a culture, don't view death as just like a natural part of life. It's like we struggle to accept that that is something that is.
That that is okay.
Yeah.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: But that's, like, so deeply ingrained into our evolution. That's why we have fear, so that we don't die. I feel like a lot of the anxieties we have around lack of control can be tied to a fear of death, because that is the like. Or not a fear of control out of a fear of uncertainty is tied to that fear of death is because if it's uncertain, it could kill us. And that's what our brains tell us. So some cultures have been able to deal with this quite well and offer meaning and death, or at least acceptance of it, where we like to project or displace that to somewhere else. Yeah.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: So we're putting it on the, I don't know, Grim Reaper onto the like. Yeah. The mummy.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: The zombie and so on.
And so I guess it's making us feel.
Yeah. Able to navigate, I guess, that idea of, like, mortality, in a sense, by having these figures that we can, like, displace it onto. And it's again, this idea, it's like externalizing. So we're externalizing a piece of our own existential anxiety.
So whether that is around us. Yeah. Losing control, losing ourselves, or, like, losing a significance, we're able to. Yeah. Put that onto something else rather than struggle with it inside.
[00:44:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think we do that a lot through meaning.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: I think that's always an interesting one, isn't it? Because it's like, how much is there really meaning? Or how much are we. Again, just trying to create that as something to help us feel better? Something to kind of externalize, like a purpose.
Yeah.
Ah, existentialism.
[00:44:26] Speaker B: It's literally making me question everything right now. Exciting.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: So we're thinking about death, but I guess our relationship with these monsters is never just about death. Like Kristin says, it's about meaning as well. It's about this kind of meaning maintenance. And it's our attempt to try and prove that we are something more than.
Yeah. Just a body. Just something that is, like, biological. Something that is, like, waiting to decay, in a sense.
[00:44:56] Speaker B: Spooky, Laura. Very spooky.
[00:44:59] Speaker A: We are all just waiting to decay. I mean, depends what you get to decide to do when you die.
[00:45:09] Speaker B: I love how, like, we are literally ending this episode, this series, with existential dread. Like, literally, like, harking back to our intro. Yeah, but you know what?
[00:45:21] Speaker A: That's. Yeah, maybe. I mean, maybe that's why. Maybe that's why more people nowadays get cremated than they do buried. Because of the decay anyway.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: The decay. Laura's, like, doing, like, a really dramatic hand movement. Yeah, I can see that.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:39] Speaker B: Because then we can sit on a shelf in, like, a fun little jar.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: That's also dreadful, though, isn't it?
[00:45:44] Speaker B: Oh, well, I have a family friend who carried her partner around all around the world and spread his ashes all around the world. And one time he tipped over in the airport security and she spilled some. Or like the airport security guy spilled it and he was like, oh, sorry. She's like, that's my husband.
Yeah. No, like, she, like, was laughing because he would have found that hilarious. Like, there's a reason it, like, it was. It's a funny story. Because the guy was more to fight.
Yeah. Like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. She's like, nope. Well, he's staying at this airport now. I love them. Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: And what a nice thing to do, I think.
[00:46:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That was lovely. Sorry, guys. To, like, end on cremation, but let's briefly, like, reorientate. Reorient towards. What are we talking about?
[00:46:41] Speaker A: Right.
[00:46:43] Speaker B: So, like, I guess to kind of summarize the last three episodes also, I'm just, like, dying on where Laura took us at the end.
[00:46:56] Speaker A: Apologies.
[00:47:00] Speaker B: So all of this. So, like, our reactive wiring, our need for stories to give us meaning or explain what's happening, our moral panics and myths, all of it began as survival to avoid death, which apparently we're just going to keep coming back to in the episode.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: Oh, we need to do a full series on death. I'm feeling this now.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: We need to really. Well, because we're both displacing our uncomfortability, which is like laughing hysterically. Yeah.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:34] Speaker B: And. But like, this fear has taught us, like, a ton of vigilance. It's taught us storytelling. And that storytelling kind of gave that fear a shape that we could conceptualize easier. And then culture then turned it into meaning that we can use.
So every era that we've talked about, monsters tell the same story, but just, like, slightly differently. Right. So what we fear most is what's happening to us. It's what's happening in our society. So when we looked at witches, we saw how fear tries to police women's knowledge and autonomy. When we looked at werewolves, we looked at, like, the fear of kind of just like the fear of.
Are we, like, delirious now? Is this what's happening?
[00:48:26] Speaker A: Yes, I think it's happened.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: If we ever do, like, shows, instead of doing pre shows, we should do post show, like, Patreon stuff, because apparently this is when we start to, like, really devolve.
So for. For werewolf.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: I don't even know it's funny anymore.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: We're devolving so quick, I guess, you know, talking about death just really gets us going.
[00:49:06] Speaker A: It's like my defense mechanism or something.
Just laugh.
Okay. Oh, God. Okay. What the fuck?
[00:49:17] Speaker B: When it's just.
[00:49:23] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: What did. What did werewolves teach us?
Because it's.
Might skip werewolves.
Yeah.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: I guess.
[00:49:37] Speaker B: Start this over.
Okay.
[00:49:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: We are normal people.
[00:49:48] Speaker A: Face hurts. Okay.
[00:49:54] Speaker B: When we looked.
When we looked at.
[00:50:00] Speaker A: Your. Quiet. I know.
Quiet.
[00:50:03] Speaker B: I'm gonna hide your face so I can just say this.
[00:50:06] Speaker A: Fine, go for it.
[00:50:09] Speaker B: When don't make any noises.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: Said, I'm screwed.
[00:50:12] Speaker B: When we looked at witches, we saw how fear can police women's knowledge and their bodies. When we looked At Frankenstein, we saw how kind of curio curiosity turns into fear and guilt. With zombies and mummies, it was like exploitation and empire and how this kind of, right, how they write their shame onto other people's bodies. And now looking at all these psychology underneath it, we see how it's really just about trying to manage being human, which is a super fun thing that we get to do. And so your brain was built to see these monsters. And that's what's so interesting, right, Is like, we were built to see this, but we've not evolved to unsee it. Which would be super useful telling stories. And this is, like, also superhuman. Telling the stories that once kept us, like, all huddled around and alert around the fire together as a small social group also gave us a way to look at these monsters safely to, like, Laura was saying, name what hurts, what we see in ourselves, that we might not like to see ourselves in the dark and maybe stay curious about it instead of terrified.
So I think that's a more healthy way of looking at it. They've always been warnings and mirrors, and they're showing us what we're repressing as a society. What do we punish? Like, what difference do we punish? What are we idealizing? What are we worshiping and what are we displacing? What are we refusing to feel?
And maybe that's why we just keep making them, because they're the cultural technology that kind of lets us look directly at what we fear and call it story. Right? Well, if we do it the right way, monsters can let us practice courage and negotiate meaning. But that's when we do it the right way. Right societies can do it the wrong way.
So they're not. They're.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: I think that the monsters are just such an. I think, for me, like, I think it's helpful to always have a visual for these sorts of, I guess, fears or uncertainties or whatever it might be. And I think that because a lot of these, like, monster figures that we've seen in society, like, we get so used to seeing them that we just don't think about the background to them. We don't think about why they're there. So I think it's been like. Because I love a good monster, right? But I think it's been really interesting throughout the series just to unpack them a bit more, look at the history, and then think about what, I guess, is, like, the function of these monsters. And while sometimes they might have a function that is useful in some senses, a lot of the time it is hiding something. That we would prefer not to be looking at. So I think again, it's coming back to again what you said right near the beginning. Let's use them to, like, trying to look behind them, right. Try and see where are they coming from to help us make sense of the world a bit more and maybe also in, like, a personal sense, thinking more about our monsters and what they might be and what we are hiding.
Yeah. In them.
[00:53:25] Speaker B: Love that you always managed to, like, build such a nice little reflection out of it. It's awesome. I love it.
[00:53:30] Speaker A: Oh, good. I didn't know if that made any.
[00:53:32] Speaker B: Sense, but I thought it made sense. But I'm also delirious right now.
[00:53:37] Speaker A: We are both delirious.
[00:53:39] Speaker B: Yes. Well, we recovered from our laughing fit quite well, I think.
[00:53:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:53:43] Speaker B: You guys should be proud of us. We got a little unhinged for a solid few minutes. But thank you guys so much for listening as always. We. We probably.
Here we go again. Thank you guys so much for listening as always. We probably left you with more questions than answers, but that's kind of the point. We love digging into the messy undercurrents of why we keep making monsters and just this whole monster series as a whole. Do you guys have any thoughts or questions? We really want to hear about it, so drop us a comment or a message us. And if there's a topic you want us to dig into next, please get in touch because we're always up for a new rabbit hole. If you like the episode, please, like, follow rate. You know, whatever your platform allows. And definitely tell your friends. I always feel really funny saying that. Tell your friends about us.
[00:54:28] Speaker A: Us.
If you have any friends. If you.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: I know. I always want to say that. I'm like, that sounds really aggressive, but no stress.
[00:54:35] Speaker A: If you don't have friends, that's okay. Tell your monsters. That's cool.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: I thought you were going to say, tell your mom.
Okay. You can find all of our links on the but why Instagram page. Just head into the bio for everything.
And remember, the first step to understanding is asking, but why?
Yay, we did it.
