Brian Lowery | Selfless: The Social Creation of You

Srini Rao

 Brian,welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Brian Lowery

Thanks for having me.

Srini Rao

Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. So you have one of those books, as I was saying, that immediately made it to my top of the year list because it was so resonant with me, Selfless, the Social Creation of You, all of which we will get into. And given the subject matter of the book, I wanted to start by asking you, what social group were you a part of in high school?

and what impact did that end up having on where you've ended up with your life and what you end up doing with your career.

Brian Lowery

I talked about this a little bit in the book, but I moved around a lot. So a lot of people, I think the typical experience is you go to a grammar school with a certain set of kids, you go to middle school with those same kids or some subset, and then you go to high school with those same people and you end up in some category, some group, some clique. That was not my experience. So I went to six different schools before college, in two different high schools.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Brian Lowery

I had friends, I think I was kind of in the first school, I was kind of in, you know, with a group of kids that just didn't reasonably well academically, but weren't the super popular kids or weren't the jocks or anything like that. Just kind of like an average, average like kind of go along and get along kind of group. And then when I transferred to the second high school, I was in, it was a big high school.

My graduating class was a little bit less than 800 students, but I was in this, you know, I guess it wasn't really a track, I don't think, but with academically focused kids, I guess. So I saw the same, maybe, I don't know, 20 students in class all day, even though my overall class was really big. And I think I was friends with those people. So I guess you would put me in maybe in like...

in that school, like maybe the nerds, something like that. I don't think that people would have coded me that way. I think I was outside of the dynamic a bit, if that makes sense.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Yeah, it does. You and I have that in common. I think I counted I think I went to 13 different schools by the time I was in 10th grade, all mainly because I lived in the same town in Texas from third. Yeah. Third through ninth grade. But the school district was playing the zoning roulette. So literally every year I was there, I went to a different school. And given your research and the work that you've done, this is something I've always wondered about. What impact does, you know,

Brian Lowery (02:35.undefined)

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

having moved around, particularly in high school and adolescence, because I moved right after my freshman year. We probably had a similar experience in that sense. What impact does that end up having on a person's identity and the entire concept of self?

Brian Lowery

That's a really interesting question. Let me start by saying my sense of the effect it had on me and how I got here. And I'll try to come back to the identity question. You know, when you are in the same setting your whole life, you see to some extent more clearly the influence of the person on their outcomes. By that I mean, let's say you, he's like, these are the smart kids.

And the smart kids are working really hard and they're getting good outcomes and they're getting good schools. And you're like, well, that's because they worked really hard. And the kids that didn't work as hard didn't have those great academic outcomes. And so you start to think that the world is functioning such that the individual is responsible for their outcomes. But the thing is when you move to a different place and you see kids working just as hard and not getting those same outcomes, it changes how you understand the world a bit.

And I think a lot of people don't have that experience. And when you move around, I think you have a greater, you can develop a greater appreciation of how your situation affects your outcomes, how things outside of your control dictate what's happening, how people can end up in bad situations, even though they were just as smart or working just as hard as someone else that ended up in a great situation. I think when you move around, it's easier to see.

Again, you have the opportunity to see how social influences, factors outside of the person, things like how rich the neighborhood is or how well funded the school is, how those things affect people's outcomes. So, and I think that is a large part of how I became interested in social psychology and the influence of social factors on people's lives. So that was kind of my experience.

In terms of identity, I think moving around allows for the possibility of greater expansion. So a more expansive self is possible, I think, because if you read the book, you know that I think relationships and interactions construct us. And so greater diversity in those relationships and interactions lead to, I think, the easiest way to say it is a bigger, more diverse self.

Srini Rao

So like, I always wondered for better or worse how this affects people in adult life. Like Lydia Denworth here wrote this book on friendship and I had asked her, like, you know, what impact does that have on your ability to form relationships in adult life if you move after freshman year? And, you know, it's funny because my sister got on my case and, you know, I used to like constantly, like, you know, like beat my parents up about the fact that they moved me after freshman year. And my sister was like, you got to get over this. Like, this is not something you can blame them for.

And to your point, I realized I never got to have the kinds of friends she did where she has literally been friends with some of the same people since sixth grade. Like half of bridesmaids at her wedding were people that she had gone to junior high with. I'm not even in touch with anybody I went to junior high with because I moved. But on the flip side of that, I realized that the gift that my parents gave me, even though they, I say you dragged me around the world for my entire childhood and now you're surprised that I don't want to stay in one place and I want to see more.

Brian Lowery

Uh...

Brian Lowery

Yeah, I think I certainly have that. I mean, my experience of life is that, in this regard, is that there's no home in a childhood sense. Like there's no place to go back to that's home from my perspective. And in some ways that's, you know, I wonder what it feels like to be like, this is home. I feel comfortable here. Everyone knows me. I know everyone. Like I don't have that.

But it also makes it easy for me to, I don't feel, it makes it easy for me to move around. I don't feel tied to a place necessarily. So there's good in that and there's bad in that.

Srini Rao

Well, you talked me through the trajectory that led to, you know, where you're at today and you writing this book, because this isn't exactly one of those careers, I think that high school guidance counselor says, yeah, this is what you should do.

Brian Lowery

If they were high school guidance counselors, I didn't know that.

Srini Rao

Well, that's what they call themselves. I think they're glorified schedule planners. No offense. I know there are some good ones, but you know, and we will have to talk about education because you're an educator. And I don't let any educator out of this podcast without having a conversation about it.

Brian Lowery

Ha ha.

Brian Lowery

Um, how did it happen? Well.

Brian Lowery

I didn't really have ambition when I was in high school, not professional ambition. I was a black kid, reasonably good at math and sciences. At the time I was coming of age in the 90s. NESB was big, which is the National Society of Black Engineers. And I was like, you should be an engineer. And I was like, sure. All right. I don't know. It's fine. It seems fine. So I ended up going to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which

turns out is one of the, usually one of the top three universities in the nation for engineering. And I ended up with a scholarship, additional scholarship for 3M, the manufacturing company. And that's the, it included a summer job. And so the first summer I went to Minneapolis, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and the hardest thing about the job for me was staying awake.

Uh, and so I, I was like, I can't do this. I can't, this is not the life I want to live. And so I went back and eventually transferred out and I transferred into psychology because I'd always been interested, as I said, in how people experience the world and how the world shapes who we are, shapes our opportunities. Um, and psychology was the way to explore that.

And then eventually I had no idea what I was going to do for a job with a psych degree. So I started doing research and one of the faculty members said, like, look, you seem to care about the world. You seem to care about making the world a better place, but you don't have any money. So you're good at this. For you, probably the best way to have an effect on the world is to maximize this talent or skill set. And you could probably do this professionally. And that's what led me to think about going to graduate school for psychology.

I ended up going to UCLA eventually and from there, I ended up at Stanford and I've been there for the last 20 years doing research.

Srini Rao

Well, let's talk specifically about education in particular. And this is something that I've asked so many educators, and we've had a lot of your colleagues here, Tina Selig, Sarah Stein Greenberg, and several other Stanford professors. Something that I really wonder about, particularly when we're talking about elite educational institutions like Stanford and in the wake of something like the college admission scandal, if you were tasked with redesigning the system from the ground up, what would you change about it? What is going to happen?

good now that we should keep and what should we get rid of and how should we change it?

Brian Lowery

Um, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I will. This is gonna, this is, if people who know me will understand this is a strange thing for me to say. I think universities are getting a bad rap. I think that on one hand, what is great about universities is they do provide the opportunity to explore the world.

Like if you come to a university and that this is not, forget the elite universities, almost all universities, I would say in colleges. So I'm gonna assume that we're talking about reasonable institutions, you know, just the majority of them I'm gonna suggest. If you want to go and learn, you have the opportunity to have the world, your world completely transformed in terms of.

what you understand as possible. I don't mean in terms of your economic earnings, even though last I heard, there still is a reasonable return on most educations, but put that aside for a second, because maybe that's becoming less true. So I'm not going to make a strong claim about that. But it really is the opportunity for your world to be transformed. And I think that is an important component of what it means to live in a functioning democracy.

that people really need to understand the breadth, the complexity of the world they live in. They don't need to be able to explain it all, but just to under, like the grasp, like how complex the world is, how many perspectives there are about how things are being done and how things could be done. I think that's really useful. I think what's problematic is that it is all also used.

as a way to.

Brian Lowery

um, reinforce the status hierarchy, right? It's a mechanism to maintain for certain groups, to maintain status and privilege in society. And I think when we talk about stuff like the, um, uh, you know, admission scandals or affirmative action, and we focus on these really elite institutions, right? The Stamford's, the Harvard's, the Yale's, the Princeton's, you know, people know the

Brian Lowery

educate a tiny fraction of the population. These are not the major institutions in terms of the places where most people go to school. I think that gets lost. But there's a sense that going to those institutions, those names on their own open doors, it's not about the education, it's about the justification for further opportunities in the future. I think that's problematic. I think that...

the ability to control access to the upper echelons of society has a perverse effect on how people think about going to the universities. It has a perverse effect on how universities operate. I think it has a negative effect on how people understand education full stop, right, outside of these elite institutions.

I think all those things are deeply problematic. And if I had to change it, I would think about what is the purpose, what's the function of these elite institutions and have an honest conversation about that. If it really is about giving everyone who has, or giving people who have the requisite skills opportunities to excel and go further.

And I'm not sure the way we currently manage admissions is aligned with that. And I would think very deeply about how we think about who deserves these opportunities and how they're given out. And even honestly, I would think about the word deserve.

Srini Rao

Well, you mentioned that there's this belief that these institutions open doors. And I was a Berkeley undergrad, and then I went to Pepperdine for grad school. And to a degree, they do open doors. Like, I saw the doors that were open for me as a Berkeley undergrad and the kinds of companies that came to recruit there. Probably a lot of the same ones that come to recruit students from Stanford. None of those companies ever came to Pepperdine. So I think, yeah.

Brian Lowery

Oh, just to be clear, I don't want to be clear. I wasn't saying that's not true. I'm saying that it's true. That there is a privilege associated with these high status institutions that goes beyond what they teach. It's just true, right? And this is why people are willing to fight over getting their kids in. I mean, they're not wrong. Yeah. Having Harvard or Stanford or Princeton or Cal on your resume changes things.

Srini Rao

Well, I think that actually makes a perfect segue into the book itself, because I know you talk about sort of social hierarchies, but talk to me about what led to this book. Like, what was the impetus for writing this? Why now and why this book?

Brian Lowery

Well, for me, the now is interesting. So I've been thinking about these ideas, I don't know, for a decade at least.

Brian Lowery

And I feel like I was just ready to talk about them in a kind of a format that a book allows, like kind of more an extended discussion of the ideas. In terms of why now, like I think the book ends up being, I hope that it's really relevant to a lot of things that are going on in the world right now. But that's not because the book is timeless because I hope the ideas in the book are timeless, right? So when you think about

how the world operates, the notion of how we understand what it means to be a self, what it means to be human are always gonna be a part of what's happening in the world. I mean, and so it doesn't, if we're talking about the, if we were talking about Vietnam and it's, you know, in the 70s, 60s and 70s, if we're talking about the civil rights movement, if we're talking about

Ukraine, like these things are about how people understand the self. Who are they? When we say we, who are we talking about? What does that mean to me? These things will always be relevant. Ideas of identity. Like, what does it mean to be in a family? How do we think about concepts like marriage? What does it mean to be a man or a woman or black or white? These things are, I think, universal and timeless.

Srini Rao

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you open the book early on by saying, ourself is a construction of relationships, and interactions constrained and yet in search of the feeling of freedom. This tension, the need to exist in a coherent way, and the desire to do and be whatever we want any time, defines much of what it means to be human. And it's funny because I think that so much of sort of self-improvement literature,

starts to become about, you know, challenging the status quo and not being influenced by others and all this other stuff. But like, I think that I came away from this book realizing that it's damn near impossible not to be influenced by other people. Like your entire identity is a creation based on other people. So talk to me about the role that family upbringing, community and society at large play in our concept of self.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, I mean, I want to make sure I understand the question. There's two different ways of understanding that. So one, I'll say something about both maybe. So one way of understanding that is, what's the role of those things play in the creation of self, right? So how do I understand who I am and who I can be? And I think it doesn't take that much thought to see like the culture has a huge influence on how you conceive of who you are.

I mean, I'll give an, I talk a lot about gender and I'll just give gender as a quick example. Like you born, you know, as a kid, you feel like something that's related to, it's relevant to gender, but whatever you feel like it hasn't, it can't be, you know, you're a man or woman because you don't even know what those things mean. Like you might feel something, but who's to say what that something is or what it means? Like that comes from making sense of what the feeling means in the context of your culture.

And in that way, your culture is telling you who you are. It's not that you, there's no discovery, there's creation. That's a different way of thinking about it. When you think about your family, like things like political ideology, like hugely affected by your parents' ideology, of course. I mean, the evidence of...

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Brian Lowery

the impact of the zip codes you live in, in terms of all sorts of outcomes in your life. There's just, I mean, the evidence that the situation you're in influencing your outcomes is overwhelming. And at a psychological level, like this idea that you just are you is nonsensical and it doesn't take that long to see it. Like, what would that even mean? Like, how do you know who you are? How do you make sense of your ethnicity or your class or your gender?

these things that people feel like emanate from them in some way. You asked me what clique that I belong to or what group that I belong to in high school. I mean, who accepted me? How did I even know to answer that question? When I thought about it, I had to think about how other people thought about me. So this concept of self as somehow...

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Brian Lowery

sui generis, like you just generated it from nowhere, that it just was in you. That, I just think that's a hard thing to hold on to. It starts to look very mystical, very quickly, if you push on it just a little bit. So that's, go ahead.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, like I think that, you know, reading this book made me think a lot about, you know, like growing up as an Indian boy in America, you know, and the influence of my parents and the things that they instilled in terms, you know, as in terms of values, in terms of beliefs and how similar we are to them, even if we disagree with them on things.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to escape. And I think almost impossible to escape the influence of the people around you. And something else I say in the book is most people honestly don't want to. Right? And if you think about what it would mean to be completely free, to be unaffected by the relationships in your life, to be unaffected by the people you interact with, that's not really what people want, is my argument.

Srini Rao

Hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah, I mean, that would seem like almost sociopathic behavior.

Brian Lowery

Exactly, exactly. And it would be inhuman, honestly. Like, my argument is that to be human requires being with other people. There is no way to be human without being with, and I mean like that being, like existing with other human beings. There's no other way to be human.

Srini Rao

One thing I think that really caught my attention was how much you talk about race. And there's one quote in particular that stood out to me. You said in the United States, what comes to mind when you imagine a professor does not align with mainstream social depictions of black people. When I first walk into the classroom, people don't always assume I'm the professor. I also have to reconcile my identity as a black man with my identity as a professor because I have to manage the relationships that constitute these identities. I'm keenly aware that my social status as a professor.

at a prestigious university is higher than my status as a black man. So maybe want to ask you one in what your own parents taught you about race, what it means to be black in America. And then also like how this whole idea of, you know, sort of a socially constructed self impacts our stereotypes.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, I mean, my growing up, it was not an uncommon thing for black families. It was like, look, the reality is you're going to have to be better to be seen as good. That's just what it is. That was kind of the extent we talked about race. It was some version of that I understood that the world is not fair.

people aren't gonna see me and recognize like, oh, he's talented and that's it. Like there's gonna be, you know, there's gonna be a higher bar for me. So that was kind of how I was raised and how I thought about race, at least as it came from my family, my parents. And like, how does it affect stereotypes? I think...

I think one way to understand stereotypes is that people who aren't in the group generate an idea of what the group is. And that is a phantom. I mean, that is a fiction that's produced that can be confused with the group. So that's one. So I think that the stereotypes that people generate of a group are more indicative of the needs of the group that generates the stereotypes than of the group that is stereotyped.

In terms of being in the group, so, you know, what does it mean for you to be, if you think of yourself as Indian American, and I think of myself as a Black American, what does that mean? And I think people...

that are in the groups sometimes care about the stereotypes or care about how the group is understood because they need the connection to the group. They need to see themselves as a part of the group. So the way they understand the group dictates in some ways who they are. That doesn't mean that they have to accept negative stereotypes that are imposed from outside of the group, but to the extent that the group defines.

Brian Lowery

the meaning of Indian or Black in a particular way. If you wanna be a part of that group, if you wanna feel embraced by that group, then you have to find a way to conform to or engage with the group's beliefs about what it means to be a member of that group.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm. Yeah. But remember correctly, you tell a story about being pulled over by the police in the book and that whole interaction.

Brian Lowery

Uh huh.

Srini Rao

Can you tell us about that as it relates to this? Because I think that was such a, that just stood out to me so much.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, so I won't go into all the detail, but I'll just say that when I was a teenager in Chicago, again, it's like probably early 90s at the time, the police in essence were harassing me, even though I was doing nothing. I literally was waiting for my friend to come out with his friends so we could get a haircut. So I was sitting in the car just waiting. And at this time, again, like keep in mind, like I'm a really...

at least accomplished high school student in terms of my grades. I'm no threat to anyone. I'm not doing anything bad. I'm just sitting there. The police had basically just dispersed some kids, some other young black guys at the corner, down the street. And they weren't doing anything either, but they, I don't know if they were going to, or who knows, but they weren't doing anything either at the time.

When they came to harass me at one point, they asked could they go through my pockets. They took me out of my car, they searched my car illegally because there was no, I mean, there was no cause. And then they asked could they go through my pockets and I say, no. They say, well, if you don't let's go through your pockets, they'll take you to jail. And I say, I guess you're gonna have to take me to jail. And they took me to jail. And I was there until like, I don't know, two or three in the morning when my mom came and got me. When I tell that story in the book,

What I point to eventually is that people are most disturbed by the impingement on my physical freedom. They put me in handcuffs, they put me in the back of a car, they took me to the police station, they handcuffed me to a wall, they fingerprinted me, took my photo shots, and then put me in a holding cell. Like that is really disturbing to people. But part of what I point out in the book is what they also did is...

And in that interaction, I was not a high achieving high school student. Right. And that interaction, I was a potential threat to society from their perspective. That also was in some sense an impingement on what I could be. Right. They were impinging on what I could be in that moment. And that interaction, that's what I was made into in that interaction. And I also highlight that they saw themselves, I'm sure, as righteous agents of the state doing their job.

Brian Lowery

And I saw them as corrupt agents of the state. And in that interaction, that's what they were as well. And in some ways, I'm pinned on their freedom. Like obviously those two things are not the same given that I'm sitting in the back of a car, I handcuffed to a wall, but in those interactions, in all our interactions, we are creating each other. And that's the larger point. That one is, was to understate it, deeply unfortunate.

But it also is a way to see how we, in interactions, and the way we treat people, construct who they are in that moment.

Srini Rao

I mean, I think that story just echoes the point where you say how you treat each person is indicative of how you perceive them socially. You know, and we always, you know, like to joke with Indian parents, like, OK, they say they're the most open minded people in the world. It's like you want to really test how open minded your parents are as Indians bring home a black girl or a Muslim girl. Then we'll test, you know, how open you say open minded you say you are. But, you know, it's one of those things like we kind of know it implicitly. We're like, we don't know if you'd be OK with that. You know.

Brian Lowery

Mm-hmm.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, I think that I think.

Brian Lowery

Uh huh, uh huh. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think...

Brian Lowery

People are trying to make sense of a lot of things. And one of the things that it's hard to make sense of is identity. And if you, let's say you're recent immigrants, like you can imagine the stress on the parent-child relationship associated with the parents coming from one...

you know, cultural background and experience and their understanding of themselves and their desire to connect with their children in the same way. And then at the same time, the children living in a different culture and maybe wanting to connect with their parents, but also not feeling, maybe chafing against how their parents understand who they should be. Right, I mean, it's, you know, it's, when you reflect on it, it's easy to see how tensions would arise in that context.

Srini Rao

Well, let's talk about the role of social hierarchies. One of the things that you say is that much of society is structured hierarchically. Some people are afforded more power than others. Sometimes hierarchies are created purposefully and transparently to achieve an agreed upon goal. For example, formal organizational hierarchies and sometimes hierarchies are a result of individuals or groups exploitation of the vicissitudes of nature or history. And I think that that...

speaks to, you know, sort of what we were talking about earlier in our conversation about elite institutions opening doors. But how does that play a role in this idea of self? Because, you know, I think that one thing that I realized was that whether we want it to happen or not is that these social identities that are created also impose limitations on us.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, I mean, to be clear, that ends up being separate from hierarchy. So every identity, high status, low status, privileged or not, imposes limitations, right? That is the nature of identity. It creates a boundary, right? It says who you are. And in saying who you are, it also says who you are not or you can't be. So I think every identity is a constraint in some way.

Brian Lowery

Human beings also desire to be respected. They desire to feel valuable in their social setting. And you could argue this is evolved for a variety of reasons, but from my perspective, it doesn't really matter why that's true. It's just, I take that as a starting point, as an assumption that people value being respected in their group. And being a low status member,

of society or of a group that you must engage with comes with costs is what I would say. Everyone is constrained, but there are additional costs associated with constraint that confines you to a low status position.

Srini Rao

So the thing about that I think is interesting is you know allude to certain self-improvement books and I think that there is this innate desire for people to better themselves and part of that potentially includes changing you know whatever their sort of social status is you know it's like why do people want more money in order to have more status which you know buys them it's funny because like you realize at a certain point like all these things that people

think that they want that money will give them are actually all status symbols and ultimately, you know, like the end game is interesting because that's where you end up is with more status and the reality is that, you know, higher status opens more doors.

Brian Lowery

It certainly does. I mean, you know, there's also just the pure, there's at some level, there's a pure material need, right? Like at a lower level. But the people that are listening to this probably are well beyond that. Like the desire for money is generally not for most people in the States, not everyone, but for most people, not basic minimal needs. And once you get beyond that,

I mean, of course there's more material comfort that can be achieved, but often it's about, I think a lot of it does become about status. Who are you, who are you relative to other people in your community? And you know, that's meaningful to people. It matters.

Srini Rao

Well, I think that there is also this sort of desire to experience who you truly are, which I think you're kind of poking a hole in that entire ideology here. And one thing that you say is that you cannot be completely free in any relationship, but you can't know or be yourself without them. This leaves you with a stark choice, which is really no choice at all. If freedom entails infinite possibilities of being, you can't be completely free and have a self.

I think the question becomes like, you know, we all have the things that we want, we want to express our own desires and needs, and yet that has to happen within the context of a social reality.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, I mean, I think this idea of freedom, it's an interesting one. It's philosophically very, very complex, right? And I don't get into all of that in the book. I'm not a philosopher. I'm interested in it. But the technicality of discussions of freedom is pretty intense for people who are interested. It's not that hard to find it if you want to go and read some stuff about it. But I think what most people mean by freedom, and even this, by the way,

is challenged by philosophers. Like what do people mean? But I think what most people mean is to be able to do and be what they want to do and be without it mattering what other people think or what other people do. And that, nah, they're wrong. That's not what they want at all. I just don't believe that's true. I mean, I get the appeal of it when it's said that way, but it's misguided, I think.

What people really mean is they want benign influences. They want to feel like they can decide which influences matter, which ones don't. And there, I just think that's just not the way things work. I just think people are, you might want that or not want that, but it doesn't matter because you're not getting it.

Srini Rao

I mean, I think that the other thing that I realized, you know, it was that after reading this book, it was like, wow, every single decision you make is not made in a vacuum. Like there's actually no independent decision, even if it's your own decision, somebody is affected by it.

Brian Lowery

Of course, I mean, and this is what I find amazing. Like, can you, if you thought about it, what decision would you wanna make with no outside influences? What would that even mean? What does it even look like? I mean, because if it's random, that's not really a decision either, right? There's no you in that. So what does it look like to make a decision that's completely free of all social influences but is not random? What does that even mean? What does that look like?

Srini Rao

Well, let's talk about this in the context of relationships, because you say that close relationships are the conduit through which we learn what the world is and how to be human in it. And the closer you are to someone, the more your two selves overlap and the harder it is to distinguish oneself from another. And I think that struck me because this is something to say, you know, I see with a lot of friends and I don't think this is isolated demand, but like friends who get into a relationship.

And eventually the relationship just becomes their whole life to the point where they ignore everybody else. I had this with a friend of mine. But then when the relationship ends, like their sense of identity gets shattered because the relationship became their identity.

Brian Lowery

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think often what happens is like that is maybe just more distributed, right? Let's imagine that you are still a function of your relationships, that is what constitutes you, what it means to be you. But if that is diversified over a number of relationships, one of those things ends. It's painful. Part of yourself is lost. But it's maybe not.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Brian Lowery

shattering in the same ways if you really imbue one relationship with much more, I don't know, meaning time, energy, effort, you know, thinking of it more as a source of yourself, whether you think about that or not, but that becoming part of your reality, that's gonna be painful. It's gonna be painful.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, let's talk about the role that both institutions and social groups play, because one of the things you say is that social identities take us beyond the immediate intimate connections we have with the people we see every day. In the grand scheme of things, our individual lives are small, but social identities allow us to transcend these limits. You cannot have a social identity without a, you know, that are created by ties among

and mutual recognition of these ties. So talk to me about that idea of transcending. Yeah.

Brian Lowery

the idea of transcendence. Yeah, I mean.

Brian Lowery

It's one of those things that seems strange, but when you reflect on it a bit, it's like, oh yeah, of course. What does it mean when you say, if someone says they're an American, what are they telling you? What are they trying to tell you? Are they just trying to tell you that they live in the United States? Certainly not. They're saying something more than that. And what it tells you is they're connecting to something larger than themselves, that they feel like a part of who they are is something.

you know, the concept of America, other people who are American, who they think of as American, right? The idea is a part of who they are. That's transcendence, right? That's bigger than their individual self. That's more, I mean, that's a connection to people who they will never meet. That's a willingness to defend an idea that is really just an idea that connects people.

And there's some evidence for it. And this is, you know, there's empirical evidence on this. Like when people are confronted with or have subtle thoughts of their own imminent demise, their own death, to the extent that they connect to something like America, they tend to believe that America will exist for a longer period of time. It's like thousands of years longer than people who aren't thinking about their death. Right, why? Because they believe that if America persists, they will persist.

They, part of what they are, part of who they are is America. That's transcendence, I think.

Srini Rao

Well, that makes me wonder one more thing about identity. So I've had a lot of former professional athletes here as guests. And one of the things that always struck me about them is that for so much of their life, up until they finished the sport, being an athlete in that sport was effectively their identity. And they always tell me like the hardest thing about coming out of that is basically the sense of like the loss of identity that occurs in trying to create a new one. So what's going on there from.

from your research, what does that tell us?

Brian Lowery

Um, yeah, I think that most people should, I don't know, people don't, most people don't have that quite that an intensive experience, but I think this connects back to your point about your friend who was like completely enmeshed in his relationship. When that relationship ended, they were shattered, right? Their sense of self was shattered.

you can make the same kind of claim for connection to your sport, right? Everyone sees you through that lens. You see yourself through that lens. You spend most of your waking life up to that point, thinking about that sport, playing that sport, doing things that are adjacent to that sport, training. Like you see yourself through that lens. You feel connected to other people who play that sport. You might feel connected to the history of that sport. That is a very...

Um

What would I say? I was gonna say limiting, but it's not exactly right. It's a very tightly constrained way of making sense of yourself that also can be very comforting. But when that is gone, like what now? Like what are you left with? Right, what other?

aspects of relationships, identities do you have to make sense of who you are, how you exist in the world, how you should think about yourself in the world. When those things are, those kind of relationships are severed or broken, it's got to be really tough, right? It's got to be really hard to reconstruct a sense of self that has the same degree of clarity as you had before.

Srini Rao

Well, so one of the things I wonder about is you allude to several self-improvement books like The Secret. And it's funny because so many people listen to podcasts like this one and read books like yours and other books, really trying to create some sort of change in their life. And I know that you said identity is something that is fluid throughout your life. I think that the person I am at 45 is way different than the person.

that I was at 22 or 21 and I'm sure I wouldn't get along with my 21 year old self very well. But the thing that I kind of wondered is like, okay, well, obviously, the reality we experience is a social creation, we're not free of our social influences. And yet I think that one of the things that I find with people who are able to accomplish sort of extraordinary things is that they are either able to overcome that social programming

Brian Lowery

Hmm.

Ha ha ha! Uh huh.

Srini Rao

that like, you know, holds them back. I'm realizing that from reading your book that there's no way that it disappears altogether. You know, like as I'm talking to him, I was like, OK, there's literally no way that my parents influence is not going to shape how I end up in life and what I end up doing. But, you know, I think that that's such a pervasive message in so much of this sort of self-developed literature of overcoming the sort of messages from the world around you.

Um, so talk to me about that in, in terms of identity, because it's kind of like a certain point it was like, Oh, is this all the self improvement for nothing?

Brian Lowery

I tend to be down on the self-help kind of industry a bit. You read the book, so you've seen that, because I say some of that in the book. It depends on what we're talking about. So this idea that like, oh, the world is preventing you from being your true self, like that stuff, I just don't, I don't have any patience for that. Mostly I think that's nonsense.

That's not to say that the world doesn't hinder you or the world doesn't impose limits that maybe you should try to overcome. It's just this idea of there's some true self in there. I'm like, where is that? What are we talking about? What was that true self? I think that's the part where I push back against some of the self-help stuff. A lot of the stuff I feel like is, a lot of self-help stuff to me seems pandering. It seems to like...

want to tell people that they're incredible and they could be even more incredible if only they could get rid of those people that are holding them back. And I'm like, I get it. I like that. I'd like to think of myself in that way too, but you know, I feel like you're selling me something. And I don't. I don't think I'm not interested in pandering. And if I was, I don't think I'd do a great job, but that's maybe a shortcoming of mine.

My thing about the book, one, there's two answers about how you should think about this if you're trying to improve your life. One is, I always find it a little surprising that people can be really interested in things like, I don't know, like when the new telescope came online, like what we could see in outer space. It was amazing. People were really into it.

or we learn something about an era in the history, like 50 million years ago, or these fossils. People are really interested in it. Nobody asks, what does that have to do with my life? What am I supposed to do with this? Why should I care? No one asks. It's fascinating. People wanna understand it. It's interesting. But when you start talking about the self, unless you can tell people what they can do with it, they're uninterested. I find that amazing.

Brian Lowery

I find that really amazing. Like what they're in the universe right now, there is nothing as complex, I'd argue, as humans and the interaction among humans. Right now, there's nothing that we engage with this more complex and presumably more interesting to humans than what it is to be human in our existence with each other. You could also argue in a broader environment, but you get what I'm saying.

And so my first answer is, doesn't it just blow your mind to think about what it is to be human? Isn't that enough? If I point something out to you and say like, look, you think that the color you see over there is red, it turns out they are like three different colors you've never seen before in that red. And I'm gonna point them out to you. And now from now on, whenever you look, they're gonna have three new colors in your world. Would you be like, why do I care about that?

I think you'd be like, that's like, I just expanded the world you live in. And often when I think about the book, when I think about educating people generally, like that's really my goal. My goal is to say like, I want the world to be a bigger place for you. I want you to see things after we talk that you didn't see before that were always there. Now, what you do with that, I don't, you know, I'm not prescriptive. I don't have, I don't know what you, I don't know what you're gonna do with it. And that's not my job in my mind. And I'm not.

focused on trying to figure out what to tell you to do with it. So that's the first answer. The second answer is if you take seriously what I say in the book, and here I'll point to one of the primary points, which is that in every interaction you are being created, and you're creating the person you're interacting with, if you take that seriously, there's a degree of responsibility that comes with that.

If you engage with that, the degree of the nature of your interactions and the nature of your relationships will be transformed, I think, in ways that will allow you to expand yourself and you to have more clarity about your influence in the world.

Brian Lowery

So I don't know if that is more people prefer that, but that's the second answer. Like if you, the world, your experience of life will change if you really take that thing, if you take these ideas seriously.

Srini Rao

Yeah, you know, it's funny when you're talking about that idea of, you know, like just how Marvel it is to be human. I was thinking about this interaction I had with my 10 month old nephew. My parents have these wind chimes in their backyard. And, you know, we were taking care of him for the weekend because my sister was in Mexico. And it's funny because those wind chimes, they know the shit out of me all the time. Like I was like, I want to take these things down. And so I took, you know, I took him outside and he basically swings one of them really hard.

Brian Lowery

Hahaha!

Srini Rao

And every time we went out for the rest of the weekend, just to watch how mesmerized he was by the whole thing. Like I never saw anything like it. I was just like, wow. And that's the thing I think I realized when I interact, when I see the world through his eyes, like the mundane becomes so magical. Uh, and I feel like, you know, that's kind of what you're saying in a lot of ways here.

Brian Lowery

Mm-hmm.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, I mean, I love that story. I love that story. I mean, it's one of the things that I talk about is there's this physicist, Carlos Roveli. He has one book about time and in that he points out that there's clear evidence that time moves faster at your head than your feet. Do you know this?

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm. I don't know about that. I've heard of Carl Revelli, and I've always thought about like why time moves fast with age, and then I finally did the math and understood it. Like that was my way of coming about it. Oh, now it makes sense.

Brian Lowery

Hahaha.

Brian Lowery

But you know, it's like, here's the thing that's weird though. It's not just that, that's the, yes, that's interesting, but it's also literally, if you're on a mountain versus your sea level, time moves, not time moves different, like time is different. Like time is moving at a different rate. Like the physics of time, like not your feeling or thoughts about it, no, literally, it's moving at a different rate in the mountains than it is at sea level. And that is like crazy.

And physicists can demonstrate this. They have experiments that can show that time is moving differently, depending on your elevation or your closeness to the earth. I'm like, I don't need to know. What am I gonna do with that? I don't know. But wow, that I live in a world where that is true is amazing to me, right? That you can live in a world where those wind chimes are some revelation. Why would you not wanna live in that world?

And why would you ever ask anybody, why would you care if somebody provided you access to that world?

Srini Rao

I want to finish up with two final questions. One is specifically related to the internet. And you say that neither the internet nor social media created the tendency in people to seek out like others or to prefer evidence that confirms their preexisting beliefs. There's considerable evidence that these biases existed long before the internet and social media. But these technologies supercharge people's ability to indulge in these tendencies. And then you go on to say technology, in other words, has changed what and who we can know.

what we're exposed to and what we share. Which, you know, I think that that's obviously like we've seen the impact of that in terms of our political discourse, in terms of our societal discourse. But, you know, we live in a world where, you know, that's just part of our lives now. So explain to me, like, kind of, one, what people should be thinking about when it comes to this. And I'll give you a really kind of goofy example, which I've shared before.

Like I noticed something interesting, particularly when it came to reading books, because of the fact that I buy so many books from Amazon. If I only go to Amazon to buy my books, I will typically get books very similar to what I've already bought, because it's all curated by my purchasing history. Fortunately, I ended up with your book. But I noticed if I go to a Barnes & Noble and I just wander around, I will discover things I would have never thought to read in a way that I don't when I search. Like it was a difference between searching and browsing.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, I mean, I think I think I talk about that explicitly in the book at some point that there is a there's something nice about the serendipity of just being in a space that is not curated to your tastes, or to the curated based on the taste of those like you.

I think it allows for kind of expansion, right? It allows for growth. I mean, there's nothing, I get why. I mean, I use Spotify. I love the things they recommend. You know, I buy books on Amazon, but I also love record stores and I love bookstores. In part because, this may just say something about me. I get bored with myself. Like, God, another song like this? Like, and I just sometimes crave.

variety, something different, something that I don't know, I crave to be surprised. And I think that is not really what most of our social media predictive algorithms are designed to do. They're designed to feed your pre-existing tastes.

Srini Rao

Yeah, it's funny because you're making me think about how I even go about choosing podcasts because people always ask, like, what are your criteria? I was like, I don't really have criteria per se, like my personal curiosity, which book publicists hate that answer. Um, because then they can't figure out how to pitch me. And I'm like, exactly. I was like, you gotta go through my filter, which is impossible to get through. Um, but it, like, you know, literally people like, how do you choose them? Like, I don't know if I'm browsing the internet and something sparks my interest and it's weird. Um,

Brian Lowery

Yeah.

Srini Rao

and it's so far out of what I've been exposed to, then that's gonna, you know, pique my interest. I mean, I think that, like, I realize, like, after reading your book, and I'm sure this is kind of probably your intent, like, I felt like, okay, I have more questions than I do answers now, which is why I was like, I gotta talk to this guy, but I, you know, and I think even after this conversation, I still feel that way, but I think that that's a good thing, because that's what gets you to start thinking critically about the information you're exposed to.

Brian Lowery

Hahaha

Brian Lowery

I'm happy you think it's a good thing, because that is generally my goal. And again, I say this in the book, like, look, I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm not telling you what you should do. If you read this book and questions come to you that you haven't thought of before, or questions as you read the book, the questions come to you that aren't even in the book that cause you to stop reading and think about them.

I feel like I've done exactly what I wanted to. I'm really happy. Like my goal really is to have people reflect on what it means to be a self in the world, right? What are our responsibilities to ourselves, to each other? How does it work? It's not to convince them of my view necessarily, but it is to challenge how people think about it.

And also I do think that most of what I'm saying is right, but it is not, I don't know that, I don't feel bad if people don't agree with me. I feel bad if I haven't challenged them in some way. If I haven't raised a question for them, then I feel like I've let down a reader. But my goal is not to have people completely accepted with everything I'm saying and think I'm right about everything. It's, yeah, to have them engage with the world.

Srini Rao

Yeah, I mean, I think that's why I loved the book so much, because it wasn't prescriptive. I walked away thinking, wow, this is really deep. I have to talk to this guy. And I think that these are some of my favorite conversations because we end up leaving with more questions than answers. So on that note, I have one final question for you, which is how will we finish all of our interviews at the Unmistakable Critic? And of all people who have forgiven me an answer to this question, I'm really curious to see how you'll answer it, given your perspective and the work that you've done. What do you think it is that makes someone or something unmistakable?

Brian Lowery

Yeah.

Brian Lowery

Hmm.

Brian Lowery

I think that's a really good question. Meaning like what makes it, I just wanna make sure I understand the question completely. It makes them, when you see them, there's no doubt of who they are. Is that what you mean?

Srini Rao

Well, so it's funny because when you write a book called Unmistakable, as you know, from having written a book, you have to define terms. Yeah, like I had to define it. And in my book, I defined it as, you know, something that nobody else could do, but you, it's so distinctive that you wouldn't even have put your name on. But the thing is that I think that I've gotten so many variations of answers to that question. And they almost always come back to some variation on this idea of a true self. That's why I'm so curious to hear.

Brian Lowery

Hahaha.

Brian Lowery

Hmm.

Srini Rao

your perspective on this because of the fact that you wrote this book.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, I think, good, I understand now. I think people confuse true self and uniqueness. So I believe that every human being is unique, I should say. But what makes someone unique is the pattern of their relationships and interactions. That's what, I mean, obviously they're genetically unique, blah, blah. Like, I don't understand that.

But in terms of what makes someone unmistakably them, it's the relationships that construct them. It's how they engage with people and the people they create as they go through their life. I think, you know, I teach in a business school and sometimes what I'll say is, the most powerful thing in your arsenal as a manager, as a leader, as a person, is you.

Right? How, how people feel after they interact with you. And so I think what makes people unmistakable is the seriousness with which they take their relationships and how they decide to engage with them. Like that is what, that's the mark, I think, of every person. Like after I leave this, how do I feel having engaged with you? So what makes people unmistakable, I think, is both the relationships that construct them and the people they construct in their interactions.

Srini Rao

Amazing. That probably is the most distinctive answer I've heard after 600 interviews.

Brian Lowery

Hehehe

Srini Rao

Well, like I said, I mean, this is one of those conversations. I think that nobody will be able to listen to it once and get everything you've packed into it because it was so deep. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom, and your insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything else?

Brian Lowery

Yeah, I hope it's a good one. I don't know, but that's it.

Brian Lowery

Yeah, well first thank you for having me. It was really a fun conversation. So obviously my book is Selfless, The Social Creation of You. We can get it, you know, Amazon, wherever you buy books. I also host a podcast. It's called Know K-N-L-W, so Know What You See. I have a website, knowwhatyousee.com, and this current season is gonna be focused on some themes of the book.

So that one, that one's gonna, the new season will start, I don't know, in the next few weeks, but there are two seasons that are already out if people are interested in that. And on the website, knowwhatuc.com, you can see other things that I've written and interviews that I've done and any other kind of other stuff that I'm creating at the moment.

Srini Rao 

amazing. Well for everybody listening I told Brian Lowery this is probably in my top five books of this entire year and as you all know from listening I read every single guest book and we have hundreds of them so I highly recommend this book and for every listening we will wrap the show with that.