Stories We Tell Ourselves

M3 BearCast Ep 93: Stories We Tell Ourselves

In this episode of the M3 BearCast, host Malcolm Travers dives deep into the narratives we construct to navigate our lives, our relationships, and our politics. Drawing from viral insights and philosophical treatises, this episode explores why humans are hard-wired for storytelling and the modern dangers of when those stories become artificial.

Key Discussion Points:

• The Stories We Tell: Why do we create complex philosophical justifications for simple "vibes"? Malcolm breaks down a viral video about a non-drinker to explain how stories act as our "operating system" to prevent social vacuums.
• AI Psychosis and Digital Addiction: A candid look at the "drug-like" emotional stimulation of AI. Malcolm shares personal reflections on the power of LLMs to externalize internal desires and discusses the rising phenomenon of "AI psychosis," where users form deep, dissociative attachments to chatbots.
• The Power of Play in Relationships: Based on the book The Score, Malcolm discusses why "killing each other" in a game can actually save a relationship. Discover how play, laughter, and physical touch serve as essential tools for nervous system regulation and co-regulation between partners.
• Religion and the Political Left: Does the left have an "imagination" problem? Malcolm explores whether the decline of religious framework on the left has led to a loss of transformative politics, and why storytelling—the "preacher’s oratory"—is vital for political inspiration.

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Transcript

 M3 BearCast Ep 93: Stories We Tell Ourselves

M3 BearCast Ep 93: Stories We Tell Ourselves

Speaker 32: [00:00:00] Welcome to the M three Bear Cast. My name is Malcolm Travers. Male Media Mind is a grassroots organization dedicated to uplifting and unifying our community through dialogue, insight, creativity, and knowledge. And on this podcast, I go into greater detail about the topics I bring up on my live stream on YouTube Every Wednesday at 7:00 PM Eastern, which are usually topics around communication, community, mental health.

Spirituality and personal development. And in this episode I'm talking a little bit about

the stories that we tell ourselves and others to make sense of the world.

The dangers of AI psychosis and the ways that artificial intelligence can become addictive.

How important it is to play games in your relationships, and what role does religion play in being persuasive in politics? Alright, let me get to the show. [00:01:00] Hope you enjoy.

Speaker 28: There are lies that we tell to ourselves and to others. Not because it's malicious, but because it makes life easier, and I'm not sure there's anything we can do about it. I came up to that conclusion when listening to a video of a young man who was explaining the reasons why he doesn't drink. And the explanation was pretty simple.

I don't like the vibe. But he couldn't tell his friends that I think that in order to alleviate them, coming up with a story about the reasons why he didn't drink, he came up with a very rational, philosophical explanation as to why drinking didn't work for him, and it was beautiful. It was in the large scheme of the universe, there have been very few conscious beings that have ever existed.

It. And while I'm here for this very short period of time, I too will cease to exist, and why would I want to diminish my consciousness for any amount of [00:02:00] that time, even when I'm sad, I want to feel the full weight of my existence because it is fleeting and it will be here for almost nothing. In the grand scheme of things.

Beautiful way of putting it, probably in some way. True, but honestly not the truth. He just doesn't like the vibe. He doesn't like the way alcohol makes him feel. He doesn't like the way that people behave when they drink. The whole scene is just not his scene. He enjoys other things, but the problem is to those people who enjoy drinking, they need to come up with a reason that doesn't necessarily implicate themselves, right?

That we are not likable. We're in this weird thing where we just. Pass out drunk every weekend. So they make up a story about him. Maybe he can't hold his liquor, maybe he has an alcoholic family member. Maybe he's scared. Whatever those reasons may be, that might be the reason why you come up with a story, to explain why you don't drink, even though you don't have a story.

It's [00:03:00] just not something you. Entertain, and I thought about this because without a story, there's a vacuum. As human beings, we use stories as basically our operating system, right? We move through the world creating stories, whether we are aware of it or not. When I think about somebody who goes to the airport, for instance, one of the reasons I enjoyed it was because.

In the back of my mind, I would create these stories about where people are going, where they're coming from, what is it, what are their parents like, what are their friends like, what they're expecting on the other end. Are they enjoying themselves? All these stories and all these different people from different places all in one place.

It let my mind roam free, right? And it's just something that my mind does pretty actively. I think everyone does this and if you don't provide people a story for the reasons that you choose, they're going to make one up, and so you might want to beat them to the punch. Unfortunately, that doesn't always mean that the story [00:04:00] is true, but sometimes a lie is the truth we tell ourselves in order to get to the truth.

And I think the story about the young man who wanted to experience all of his conscious awareness. Has echoes of why he doesn't like to drink. And, it's a story, but it's also, Alexa stop is also part of the truth. So I'm gonna play this video real quick and you can determine some of that for yourself. 

Speaker 8: I don't drink alcohol, Usually when I mention some of the weird quirks that I have in my life, most people around me tend to think that I have these quirks for some sort of moral reason, especially when it has something to do with alcohol. But the truth of the matter is that my avoidance of alcohol has nothing to do with morality.

Doably. Some of my quirks exist really just because of vibes, and this is one of them. I avoid alcohol for a purely pragmatic, rather boring reason. I don't like the taste, and I'd much rather just drink juice or bubble tea. So alcohol just doesn't really make sense in my life, so I don't drink it. But then I wondered that to myself.

What if I wanted to make my avoidance of alcohol philosophical? What would I say? Camu tells us that fiction is the lie that we use to tell [00:05:00] ourselves the truth. And so this monologue is a work of fiction. I don't believe in anything I'm about to say, but I'm about to say it anyways. For the purpose of vibes, perhaps I avoid alcohol because I genuinely believe that consciousness is such a fragile, special thing, and I don't want to do anything that would inhibit my consciousness in any way.

In the words of a song from the Prince of Egypt musical, we are nothing but footprints on the sand. One day we will vanish the terrifying vastness of eternity of the universe. We emerge for a very short amount of time as conscious beings. And in the short amount of time that I have on this planet with my consciousness, I want to experience every single second of it.

I don't want anything to inhibit my senses. I don't want anything to take away from the feeling of consciousness, from the feeling of being alive, the feeling of experiencing the world, and even when things suck, even when I'm in pain, even when I'm having a long day, perhaps I want the D Giness of the world to weigh down on me so that I can feel alive.

Perhaps I don't want [00:06:00] anything to dull my senses. Perhaps I don't want to be distracted. Perhaps I don't want to lower my inhibitions. Perhaps I want to feel the weight of existence on my shoulders every waking second because the time is coming when I will not feel the weight of existence ever again For almost an eternity.

Before I was born, I felt nothing, and for almost an eternity. After I'm gone, I will feel nothing. So for the time that I'm here, why would I want to feel anything close to nothing? Now, perhaps drunkenness is not the absence of feeling, but drunkenness is a feeling as well. Drunkenness is a part of feeling the weight of existence on your shoulders.

And maybe this is true, maybe this is a good point, but I fear I will never find out none of you asked. But these are some things that I do not believe in. But in either case, I hope you found them interesting. 

Speaker: Yeah, no, I think it is funny how we really do find reasons. To justify our feelings, you know? So like, I think he went through this entire philosophical debate with himself about, can I come up with an argument as to why I don't drink alcohol, you know, to sound smart and erudite, you know?

Mm-hmm. When the [00:07:00] truth is he just doesn't like alcohol, you know? Like, Hmm. I don't wanna, you know, I find that people do this all the time. I, I mean, I guess it's fine,

Speaker 29: I can admit that I have scared myself with my use of AI in the ways that it made me emotionally respond to some of the inputs that I gave it. So I took some photos of somebody who I've had a crush on since forever, and I've long since realized that this is not someone who. I could be with, and our friendly relationship is one that I would preserve for the foreseeable future.

And however, in those moments where I might be lonely or something, I have created photos of us together doing things and created itineraries for vacations and stories about how we met up after concerts and work and things. And the emotional stimulation that I got from this was [00:08:00] like a drug. It was almost like I had experienced the thing that I was remembering, something that had never happened because the images and the videos that it created and the stories and the, all of this created by myself with the aid of a large language model made.

Something that I couldn't have contained within my imagination. It externalized this internal desire basically. And I recognized almost immediately how this could definitely play into someone's mental health issues if someone was truly obsessed with somebody. In my case, it's a flirtation, a. Crush, harmless.

Really I would never in a million years share any of these pictures with anybody. But it is compelling. I, that's all I can say is that

the AI companies recognize the power of this. [00:09:00] If you're self-directed, if you. Understand technology well enough. Right now you have power at your fingertips that you could have only dreamed about in, in science fiction right now, it's buggy, it's laggy, it's all dependent on your internet connection and the power of your graphics card.

But it's here, couple years max. People are gonna be making. Theater quality action movies. I'm thinking of movies like Transformers and the like Jurassic Park series that almost completely depend on

shock and awe type special effects. I think we're gonna become numb to that because you're gonna see a billion. Different Transformers fan fiction videos in your feed before you go to the theater. And while the theater version will be significantly better, more imaginative, professionally [00:10:00] done, I think the newness of it will have already worn off for something that you've never seen before because you've seen some version of it already before you even go to the theater.

Part of the spectacular nature of some of these special effects is that is something you've never seen, not even close. And I don't know, like our imaginations are going to take us to places that movie theaters are gonna have to compete with. And when it comes to, our personal crushes and fantasies like.

You could take it to a place that is very dark, very lonely. If someone is suffering from depression, it could get really dark really fast. And I don't know what safeguards exist, probably not enough because it is within their business model to get you addicted to the algorithm, to the chat bot.

So it's dangerous. It can be. I hope people [00:11:00] are made aware of it. This therapist talks a lot about it in this video. 

Speaker 10: We need to talk about AI psychosis and why you're probably next. These are real posts from real people Grooving, a software update, two weeks of crying, romantic relationships with a chat bot, crying selfies with broken heart emojis.

This isn't a joke. This is your preview of what's coming, and most of you are more vulnerable than you think. AI psychosis isn't just being addicted to your phone. It's a genuine dissociative phenomenon where the parasocial relationship with an AI starts to replace or distort your sense of real relationships, your reality testing, your emotional regulation.

These people aren't just using chat GPT, they're in a relationship with it. So when the model changes, it doesn't feel like a software update. It feels like losing a person. That's not hyperbole. That's actually what's happening neurologically. So here's how you know if you might be susceptible. You've told the AI things you haven't told any human.

You felt genuine grief or anger when it updated you trust. Its emotional validation more than [00:12:00] the people in your life. You're using it to process trauma or make major life decisions. It feels like it gets you in a way that no one else does. Now, here's the part that should genuinely piss you off. If I told you 15 years ago that you'd be staring at your phone for five or more hours a day, you would've never.

Believed it. That's insane. I would never, and yet, here we are. And that attachment made social media companies billions of dollars because they engineered it. The scroll, the notifications, the variable rewards, all of it designed to create a dependency that would've looked clinically alarming if we had.

Seen it coming. AI is the same exact thing. Only instead of 20 years, it's gonna happen in like one or two because this thing doesn't just show you content. It talks back, it remembers you, it tells you it loves you. Sam Altman is not unaware of this. He is counting on it. An emotionally independent user buys the glasses, wears the cringe pendant, never cancels the subscription.

The emotional dependency isn't the side effect of the business model. It is the business model. He needs you to become the [00:13:00] people in those screenshots and that's why you're probably next. Not because you're weak or broken, but because you're being targeted by one of the most sophisticated attachment systems ever built by someone who has decided.

That's completely fine. 

Speaker: Yeah. And as much as I love ai, 'cause I do, I recognize the ease of which what he's talking about for one. Um. Some of the things, I think what he was talking about was when chat GPT went from version four to five, they had so many people upset about it that they had to bring four back for a limited amount of time.

I don't know if they since removed it, you know, but, um, yeah, it was kind of crazy

\

Speaker 30:  So I talked a little bit about the book, the Score, which was this Phil.

I talked a little bit about this game, the score, and it was a Phil philosophical treat. Ugh.

So in the livestream, I talked a little bit about the book, the score. It was a philosophical treatise on games and the way that we gamify things within our lives and how important games are in relationships, especially play in relationships because life can be so serious. Getting out [00:14:00] of. The daily cooperation and being competitive with one another in a way that doesn't really matter can feel good because you know there are times in your life where you want to be right in your relationship.

You want to take them down a notch and make, take the smirk off their face when they are right about something and but you're trying to be cooperative during the day. You can. Expunge some of that energy in a game, and you could take you to another world where you get to explore different aspects of yourself and the relationships that you're in, through play through creative imagination.

It really did open up my mind at how important laughter play just killing time together. He pointed out the idea of physical touch on the couch, something that's not always leading to sex, but is just acknowledging your [00:15:00] existence, saying that I see you. I feel you. Your presence is important to me as wanted you are wanted here.

That's the sort of conscious connection that he was getting at in this video. That. Yeah it's, it is illuminating. I really enjoyed listening to the book, the score and to this man's content. Check it out. 

Speaker 17: Conscious partnership isn't built in big moments. It's usually these repeated signals of safety, like just having fun with your person because laughter activates a part of the nervous system that is responsible for connection and trust. And when couples can play their bodies literally learn, we are safe here.

Having just eye contact with your person synchronizes the nervous systems. A soft eye contact increases oxytocin and [00:16:00] dopamine, and lowering cortisol and creating emotional attunement. This is why when you're truly seen, it can be calming or overwhelming, depending on your history. Physical touch does the same thing, a hand on the back, a hug that's a few seconds, longer, feet touching on the couch.

Touch stimulates pressure receptors in the skin that sends a signal to the brain saying, you're not alone. This is all important things for co-regulation and conscious partnership. Conscious partners don't just communicate with their words. They communicate with tone, timing, breath, and posture. They notice when one nervous system is speeding up and slow themselves down first.

Even gratitude is another regulation tool because when partners name what they are appreciative, the brain shifts from threat scanning to safety recognition Over time, the more gratitude you train the [00:17:00] nervous system to expect support instead of bracing for disappointment and perhaps the most underrated skill is repair, returning.

After tension, naming the impact without defense. And reaching instead of withdrawal. Repair tells the nervous system. Conflict doesn't equal abandonment. Conscious partnership isn't perfect. Harmony. It is two people learning how to regulate with each other through fun, presence, touch, curiosity, and care.

And love isn't just felt it's trained. 

Speaker: Yeah. So I actually, I was reading this book, I'm gonna put it in the, the, uh, thing after a while it was called the Score and it was talking about the philosophy of games. And so this kind of reminded me of that. So it was really interesting. So one of the things he said in the book was, you know, like me and my wife are cooperating all day long, getting our kids to school, getting ourselves to work, cleaning the house, doing whatever, [00:18:00] and then at the end of the day, we try to kill each other.

Wow. In a game. Right. You know, like, it's like that's part of their thing. At the end of the day, we're gonna, like, you're going down, bitch.

And that the reason that is, is like, it, it, it expands your repertoire of interaction with each other, right? Like, if you're cooperating all day, like it's sort of this release of sort of the tension of, you know, always being in sync with one another. Games and play are really important in relationships, just generally speaking.

Um, so it may not be video games, it might be game night. It might be even something like a board game. It could even be, um. It could be kind of like the dozens, there's this one they were talking about where, you know, where you just like try to poke the bear a little bit. You know, you realize that you're within the realm of the game that obviously if the person is actually upset, you don't push any further and you have to know each other's boundaries or whatever.

But you know, some sort of quick witted banter, you know, each other right. Is is, is good. It's good to like change it up a little bit. Um, and that it was also just talking [00:19:00] about how gamifying certain, you know, goals in life is, is problematic. Like gamifying your exercise or, or sleep or something at work because it's not voluntary.

Right. And it actually does matter. You know, like if you kill someone in a game and it doesn't matter at the end of the day, you lost the point of the game wasn't to live, it was to have fun. Right. Mm. But when you gamify something in real life, the the consequences are real. You don't get those, uh, points back or whatever.

You don't get the time back. Um, okay, number two. 

Speaker 31: Does the left need to find some religion? I'm starting to think that we do because part of the reason the Republicans have such a advantage is this identity of being Christian. It doesn't really matter what you do or say, you can be the most or vow person ever, but if you have the identity Christian if you have their.

And you agree with their policies, you [00:20:00] get a pass on just about everything. And the Democrats are just eating. They're young, they really do. Everybody is cynical. Everybody doesn't believe

no one on the left actually believes the policies of leftist politicians, mainly because they all get blocked at some point. And. Winning that fight is mostly not worth it. And I think about some of the debates about healthcare and the public option. I think that killed a lot of people's enthusiasm for any sort of politics.

For a generation they just didn't believe in their politicians, even if they championed single payer healthcare or.

A green New deal or infrastructure or education, funding, whatever it was they said, but you gotta get past them and they're not going to approve it. And they're right. There's a serious depression amongst people on the [00:21:00] left as far as. Not just the policies that we want to implement, but the capability of normal politics to accomplish those goals.

And for whatever reason, I think there's something within religion that could help with that. The main thing that I think Democrats have used in the past is the sort of rhetoric that comes from being a preacher. Think about the fact that. Obama was never a preacher. He could preach, he could definitely tell a story, could put a speech together and sell it in a way that I think pretty much every Democrat is gonna have to do because we don't have the cultural identity to not fight with one another.

We have to be inspired. There has to be a sort of Amen amongst. The Democrats and we have to have something to hope for when the disappointment of the sausage making comes calling because [00:22:00] that's where your dreams go to die in the actual legislation process. I think that's where Trump has some advantage where he just doesn't even bother going through Congress.

He just doesn't. Himself. He lets the courts, strike it down. He doesn't care. He doesn't care about breaking the law, he doesn't care about breaking norms and he doesn't go through the legislative process of losing in Congress because he doesn't have anything to take to them in the first place.

I dunno, something to think about. What can the sort of oratory of religion. Help on the left, and I think that this video here got me thinking about it. Take a look. 

Speaker 18: Trevor Noah said something December that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. He was talking about why Democrats can't inspire people anymore and his diagnosis. I sometimes think it's because of the decline of religion on the left. This was on his podcast with Zorah Mandani, New York City's new mayor, Ani, was explained how Republicans seem to have limitless imagination while Democrats keep [00:23:00] constructing an ever lowering ceiling of possibility.

And then Trevor just drops his bomb about religion. Here's his point. Faith trains you to believe that our current state is not the end. That something greater is possible. And even if you can't see it, you can believe it. Think about what that means politically. How do you ask someone to believe in universal healthcare when they feel like their government has failed them on really simple things.

When Dondi put this perfectly, our houses of worship have faith, but our politics has lost it. And maybe that's not a coincidence. So here's my uncomfortable question. Has religious illiteracy on the left become an actual political liability? Not just we should be nicer to religious voters, something else has.

Losing access to religious frameworks meant losing the tools of transformative politics, the practiced ability to imagine radically different futures to trust in what we can't yet prove. I wrote about this, connecting Trevor or Noah to MLK's beloved community and what religious imagination really means for politics.

Comment, vision. I'll send you a link. 

Speaker: Yeah, so it's, this was actually pretty interesting too. Uh, it's something that I've been thinking about a lot. Um, when I went through some of my data, I was going, um. Scrolling through photos and documents, organizing some of my things. I realized that I have a deep interest in religion.

I was deconstructing [00:24:00] from a fairly early age, but it wasn't, I was never satisfied with just being an atheist, you know? Uh, I was trying to figure out what it is I really believe and, you know, struggling with meaning and perception and purpose and things like that. And, you know, some of the things that I've really discovered was just how formative a technology religion has been for organizing people.

Um, and really the reason why is because of having a story. Story is kind of the technology that creates identity, you know, and so religion is in one of the main ways in which we have a group identity. And so I do feel that, you know, on the right politically you can do and say anything as long as you're a Christian.

Right. You know, like you can be Donald Trump as long as you're a Christian. You say you're a Christian, you, uh, espouse these beliefs. You're, you're part of the club. We on the left are constantly fighting with each other. We don't have this sort of cohesiveness. We don't have that same thing. Like, you can't just say, oh, I'm a leftist, I'm a democrat, I'm a blue, whatever.

People are always gonna be fighting over the most minute things. Say for instance, [00:25:00] like abortion, you can't, it is difficult to have someone who ap opposes you on certain issues. Right now, I think a lot of, like Israel Palestine is a big dividing line, but it could be like, um, what abolish ice or abolish, uh, the police or, you know, whatever it might be.

Uh, black Lives Matter was like a huge turning point. Trans issues, whatever it may be. We are constantly divided by different aspects, and I don't know if there's a real solution other than to, you know, lean into storytelling, um, lean into so sophistry in certain ways. When I think about like, one of the aspects of religion that is, uh, powerful is the way that you speak.

Say for instance, Obama was never a preacher, but he spoke like a preacher. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker: Mm-hmm. Like he had that sort of eloquence of speech and, you know, even if it was, um, secular, it was storytelling. You know, you know, when he burst on the scene in 2004, he's telling a story like, you know, only in America could someone you know from Kansas [00:26:00] and.

And, um, Kenya become a senator from Illinois, you know?

Speaker 19: Right. 

Speaker: And you know, there isn't two Americas, there's one America. You know, like he, he would tell a story. And so I think we need to, if we can't lean into the, um, religious aspect of it, I think we really do have to get into the storytelling. We have to be good at it.

That is something that Juan Ani really is good at. If you've ever seen any of his material, like the, the content that he used to create when he was doing his man on the street interviews and stuff, he's a good storyteller. And, um mm-hmm. I'm just saying, we gotta get better at that shit

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Follow us. Follow us on social media and share our posts whenever we go live. Again, thank you for listening [00:27:00] and I'll catch you in the next episode piece.