Arthur Brooks

Right?

Although it's pretty interesting when you hear about people who are living, who are much, much, much happier than they were in the limelight.

You know, when people are living ordinary lives and they used to be really famous and people go, oh, I remember he was so-and-so in the Partridge family or something.

Now he's got a happy marriage and four kids and he works for a cardboard box company or something.

Yeah.

There are three big why questions that constitute meaning.

This actually comes from the work of Michael Steger, who's a really good social psychologist in Colorado.

And he has the three parts, the three elements of meaning, which are called coherence, purpose, and significance.

And there are three why questions.

Number one is you have to have an answer to the question, you know, why are things happening the way they are in my life?

You know, things are happening all around me all the time.

Why?

Part of meaning is having an answer to that.

Maybe that's your religious answer, like because of the mind of God.

Maybe that's your scientific answer because these are the laws of the universe.

Maybe you're a conspiracy theorist and say because powerful people are doing these things.

Conspiracy theories are nothing more

than crying out for an answer to the coherence question, which is a meaning problem.

So if you have a relative who's going down the rabbit hole on the craziest conspiracy theories, don't throw data in their face and say, you moron.

That's the wrong way to approach it.