Where dreams come from is a podcast featuring successful people from around the world who have pursued their dreams to arrive at a station in life. I'm your host, Sanjeev Chatterjee. I'm a professor of cinema and journalism. And in my creative life, I make documentary phones. I started this podcast to explore what it takes for people to follow their dreams, even while being true to who they are, at least who they believe they are. My guest Jeremy Sherman set out fairly early in life to be a hippie in our asserts that science is a spiritual path. possessing a naturally questioning mind, Jeremy abandon the quest for undefined enlightenment, to seek out answers to higher truths by applying scientific methods. Working closely with Harvard and Berkeley, neuroscientist and biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon, he seeks to explain the basis on which biological organisms Aspire or try. He told me that this aspect of life drying or aspiring or dreaming, so to speak, distinguishes living organisms from machines. It has names, but little in the way of explanation. Jeremy Sherman, welcome to where dreams come from a pleasure to be here. Tell me a little bit in the way of your upbringing and where you were born, the family circumstances,

I grew up in a in an upper middle class Jewish family in the 1960s. I'm 65. Now living on the south side of Chicago at a time when things were flourishing, both for my family and also it seemed for the world. That is I had high expectations that I would say over the course of my life have been sobered up some. I sometimes say jokingly that, that the overall arch of my arc of my life has been to recognize that the idea that we become adults mature rational beings. It's something of a fantasy. That is we were all in diapers not that long ago, and it shows we still act like that around the edges. I am. I am amazed by what people can do. I'm also horrified by what people can do. But I grew up in a very hopeful family. My father and grandfather together had founded a large company that was doing extremely well. It's still around Midas mufflers, and my father was a man full of dreams he was he was exotic for someone in the business world in mainstream America. He had been a bagpipe player, an oboe player, a concert pianist, we had three Steinway pianos in the home, he wanted us all to become great musicians. He was in a way, getting it exercising. his frustration about having been in some ways held back from his creativity by his own parents, who were much more mainstream. They were of a different generation. They were a members of the Jewish community that in a way was trying to become as mainstream as possible, especially after World War Two. So when he got interested in bagpipes at the age of 13. They and made his own set of bagpipes at 13. They hid them from him he so when I was growing up, he wanted us to have lessons and everything that he wished he had started earlier. So I was living out his dreams. For a long time. Growing up, I went to a orthodox Hebrew school, which was not a place where dreams were encouraged. It was a surprisingly dark place. And yet you can understand it I was mostly being taught by people who had been traumatized by World War Two. It did not make me enthusiastic about religion, certainly not about the Jewish religion. And in about age 13 I broke away from the family in in with with the the the permission and acceptance of my parents, I went off to a school, a boarding school to be independent of my highly competitive families. indulge me for a second. So

earlier you said that the traditional Jewish school was a dark place. I take that to mean that probably that was a place where life was seen as a step by step process. not to get too far ahead of yourself?

Yes, yes, I would say so in this respect, and it's something I would say is true of a lot of schools, a lot of young children are curious. They're inquiring about the world. And they enter school. And they're basically told, you can't really adds ask those questions until you have been tooled up in all of these facts. And I see the value of that, but one of the effects of it is that many people leave high school saying, sorry, I asked, that is I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know I was gonna have to do all of these prerequisites before I could cultivate my enquiring mind. So when away my schooling was really a good antidote for me that way, because it freed me up to follow my nose. I had whole days free. This after 13 years, when I had four hours a day of Hebrew, four hours a day of English came home had to had to do an hour's worth of practice on piano hour worth of practice on violin, one of my brothers still has the Steinway piano that we had from the home. And on the lid of the piano, there are teeth marks that I left there at the age of about eight or nine, when in frustration about having to practice music I didn't care about at all I had bit down on the keyboard.

As a follow up to that question, do you think that there are some children that may benefit from the step by step and others who just it doesn't work for them?

Oh, completely? Yes, no. So this is one of the challenges. I do not think there's a formula for child rearing. I have three children of my own ages 4031 to 41. They are radically different. Each one of them has a completely different personality, which does make challenging the notion that you are a product of your parenting. That is I assumed that my children came to the world with different temperaments. There are some who are who who end up mastering skills, because they were taken through the step by step process before they could really question or rebel against it. And they ended up very tooled up by a certain age, there are other kids like me, who were not going to respond well to that, as a result, it was a good thing, when when I was I was freed from that kind of discipline,

the discovery of who you were, if I am reading this correctly, came at about 40.

That's right, that's right at about 37 or 40. Buckminster Fuller, the philosopher and inventor, had a line that I thought was resonant with that he says, what were you about to do before they told you, you'd have to go out and make a living? Now the paradox is that I was not told I had to go out and make a living. And yet I still felt that burden. And it took me till about 37 we I think of it is that I was like a fish played out on high on what do you call it a high test fishing line, that is I had tugged against my own nature, for a long time, trying to be something I wasn't. And by about 37, my parents had both died. And I think this was one of the reasons why it happened is that there was no longer a sense that the money I had inherited, was belonged to someone else I could I could also begin to occupy some of the pursuits that my father had followed out in his life. He was such a polymath. He had so many different interests, I didn't begin to list the interest. He, he had, for example, we had 500, finches and hummingbirds flying around in large rooms in our home. He was a total character. He was also a radical activist who had worked with Ralph Nader and Saul Alinsky in the Chicago seven while being the president of Midas muffler. So when he died, I could start to occupy some of those places without fearing you could say Oedipal competition with him. But there was also a way in which I just realized I finally relaxed enough to see what I was good for, which is a key factor in coming up with dreams.

From what you're telling me. I take it to mean that at 37 or so you had an evolution of your dream.

Yes, but but it's interesting how it came about. And this is, this has things in common with dreaming itself, literal dreaming. So what happened for me around 37 was I had a midlife crisis. One of One consequence, I had been pouring countless hours and dollars into this nonprofit organization that I had founded, national nonprofit environmental and peace organization. And we were a darling of the funders. They loved what we were doing because we were one of the few groups that was having grassroots effectiveness, it seemed we had 75 chapters, but I was unimpressed by the progress because I didn't want to do it was not just a gesture. I wanted to actually see leverage change. So I had moved on from that. Other things and in the meantime, I would say that we were the the the progressive movements, the liberal movements, we're entering a stage much like fibrillated fibrillation that is you couldn't find the pulse for the movement. Before that there were a few clear causes. Suddenly, the problems were mounting in such a way that it made for a disparate and diffuse movement, and I couldn't find the pulse. So that was one thing. My marriage was falling apart. And my firstborn son and he was a very sobering effect on me, was proving to be what we would now say is mentally ill he was he had he had real problems, and no quantity of me teaching him the right and righteous way seem to be helping. So all of that made it so I could no longer hold on to the dreams that had stabilized me before I became what I'd call conviction impaired. That is my convictions became impaired. Well, what what do we know about dreams? What do we know about hallucinogenic drugs, we know that what happens is that there's a breakdown in the normal boundaries or distinctions. Just as in dreams, you have these these things that you wouldn't think of in life, because they are, they're incoherent. And yet, there's a special there's a fundamental coherence. Now these days, I work with a neuroscientist, who describes dreaming as a lot like if you had a sandcastle that you made near the shore, and the waves lap up on it, and all of the details get lost, but the core gets reinforced. So it's a kind of purging of details. And there was something about that, for like that, about my own process of coming apart at about 37 in this midlife crisis, that enabled me to reconstruct myself in a way that turned out to be way better than any of my dreams.

But tell me a little bit more about what you discovered at 37 through this a personal crisis.

So one core principle was this thing that people are not as easily changed as we'd like to think when we think in, you could say in the mindset of woke movements, woke is an idealization. And it's a funny one too, because it's called woke. I wake up every morning, but I'm drowsy The next night. Now the idea behind woke and I would include the Trump movement as a woke movement, I would say the left has its versions, I'd say Protestantism, all the great religions were woke movements. Buddhism has its own version of woke movement in the concept of the sudden school that you wake up to something and you then know it and act on it from there on out. So it's a happily ever after instantaneous realization. There's even a little bit of it in Plato's cave story where you overcome delusion I once was lost. And now I'm found, and what I was discovering was no what I once was lost, and now I'm blind is at least as likely. And that a better move is I once was lost. Apparently, I'm someone who can get lost. That is, I became skeptical in a way that drew me to science drew me to evolutionary biology, all of my old belief systems, which included a lot of Buddhism and some Hinduism too, as translated through a guy like ROM das. These were guys were doing American version versions of, of, of Eastern philosophy. They stopped working for me, I realized they weren't life size, they weren't going to get me through life. At least the American versions they, I said that they were Smar ma smarmy dharma. They were wishful thinking they were sugar coated, they were not real enough. And I realized also that, that anxiety is a huge driver for that kind of behavior that is you. The more the dirtier you feel, the more you'll fall for idealizations of people living pure, clean lives. And that wasn't going to work for me, I decided to roll up my sleeves get really interested, I got really interested in evolutionary biology and our imperfections. And part of this happened through reading some fiction that just that just depicted what conflicted, complicated monkeys we humans are the work?

Is it categorized as spiritual or scientific?

Well, that's an interesting question. It is, it is a scientific approach to what have been traditionally philosophical, spiritual, or philosophical questions. And so I end up working with a bunch of people who work in theology or spirituality and philosophy. And yet our methods are radically different because I actually think there's, there's a parallel problem in the sciences and in spiritual Right now that is I could describe my, the part of me that is the source of my trying, I could describe that in spiritual terms, I could call it my vital force, I could call it my soul, or I could use more academic terms for it. I could name it, my agency, my interiority. There are fat, there are more technical sounding names, or even just motivation, appetite, they sound a little drier than soul and spirit. But naming is not explaining. That is basically what both the spiritual and the scientific people these days we'll tend to do is they'll say, Well, I see you trying, therefore, I'm going to posit something inside of you, that is the source of trying, and I'll give it a name. And we're saying no naming is not explained, we have to explain with no smoke and mirrors how this how trying starts, and I do, but here's the way it does connect to spirituality, is that unlike a lot of academics and scientists, I live and breathe this stuff. I mean, it is my spiritual path.

Since your youth, the dream was to change the world, perhaps through being a good person. And, you know, somehow transmitting that goodness into the world, to a finding in a scientific approach, after kind of, let's say, blocking the road, where, as you said, things fell apart, and then you reconstructed it. And the new dream then, was to chase defining motivation, defining trying,

that, that that's a small part of the dream, here's, here's what it turned out to be up for me. I have what my dad referred to as the courage of my insignificance by now I look around and notice how many people are trying to change the world. I also noticed what tends to get popular. And I would suggest that what tends to get popular is what I call cliche, Guevara. That is, it sounds revolutionary, but it's actually just a reaffirmation of the comforting thoughts that people already have. So given my limited ability to affect things in this world, you know, the world changed radically. And we're this what we're doing right now, as part of this, that is now we all have the enticing prospect of changing the world, because we all can produce podcasts that go out and get and could conceivably be seen by millions of people. That's the good news. The bad news is so Can everybody else. So what's happened for me is my my ground state is I am here taking notes on the whole ball of wax and us in it. And I'm that is the universe and us in it. My favorite thing to do is to have good conversations, thoughtful conversations with someone, as we're doing here, as though we're sitting on the front porch of the universe, observing it and us in it. I said that thing about packing slips before about how we don't know who we are individually, when we're born, I would say the same things true about humankind as well. So where have I gone for my grounding for an exploration taking notes on what we are? I could go to many different sources. There are many, for example, sacred texts. My bet is on science, which is I consider a peculiarly stubborn attempt to think clearly, I'd say it's an attempt to find natural explanations for all natural phenomenon. That's where I go. And I have, I have questions that go from cradle to grave from our origins of the cradle of life, to our grave situation today. And the questions are multiple, but one of them is what is trying because we're the first things to try organisms are the first things to try. How does language change how humans try? What's the behavior that is most dangerous from people? That's the psycho proctology piece? Another one you could say is how do we deal with life's fundamental tough judgment calls? There are so there are just tough judgment calls we that we are strapped with lifelong. An example would be the Serenity Prayer. I would say that that one actually has been with us since the origins of life. That is organisms have to do work to transform their environment for their benefit, but they also have to know what they can transform and need to adapt to by accommodating them. So the courage, the serenity to change, to accept things, the courage to change things. That's almost a definition of adaptation.

Do you think that people who don't have the material means are restricted in dreaming?

They're not restricted in dreaming This is a function of language language. affords us the ability to dream up anything that's part of the danger of it is that people can dream, all sorts of things whereby they become legends in their own mind, instead of doing productive work in the world. But if you're talking in practical terms, I have colleagues who, who get by in the day, these are, these are generally colleagues who work so that they can engage in serious play in their spare time. So there are people who have, let's say, an example would be a computer programmer, because it's often useful to be able to make enough money, that in a short amount of time that you don't come home exhausted, and spent, so you have some free time for other things. But I have research colleagues who have day jobs like that, I have research colleagues who are academics. Here's an example I have a friend who works in Singapore, he's he teaches ESL English as a second language in Singapore. And at night, he works in bio semiotics, which is one of the areas I work in. So I know him as a colleague from that work, and we we don't end up talking about ESL. So there's that version of it. But I, I am very interested in expectation management, and also in escapism as a human necessity. So I believe that there are limitations on what we can do, I believe that that if you don't have much means, it's going to be much more unlikely that you will achieve the status the status of Jeff Bezos, at some do. He was born in he was his father wasn't around when he grew up, he was, you know, us. But but it's very rare. So I'm also interested in what I call optimal illusion, how to kid yourself in ways that help more than hurt. So even though I'm, I have a very lucky life, I'm still living the anxiousness of a human life, I think language makes human life extremely anxious

in this conversation, when we are talking about dreams. in your estimation, are we talking about escapism? Or are we talking about aspirations? Are we talking about planning? Are we talking about about, let's say, anxieties that drive us?

My answer would be yes. And it's important to distinguish between them. So all of that was what I was assuming we're talking about. And we're really in a way we're talking about what psychologists, social psychologists would call the aspirational gap, the gap between what we have and what we aspire to have. And it would be very different for different people, they would though there would be commonalities, of course, about what people would want and, and they'd also be context dependent. That is, for some people the dream would be going to have an after they die as if this was a test for some people would be having enough money that they could breathe for a second because they're holding down three jobs. It's it's different for different people. And, and how you manage them is interesting. And one of the so what I meant by escapism, so escapism, sounds negative. And there and yet in some realms, escape isms are treated as the holiest of holy, that is, there are religious versions of escapism, that that that people hold as sanctified. And what I'm trying to do is demote those sanctified versions of escapism, to an elevated status for all escapism,

in what ways have you been able to apply it to yourself?

So I happen to be an atheist. That kind of goes along with the being a scientist that is, if you're, if you're working in science, and it's not just your career, but it's actually what you live and breathe. It's in this paradoxical sense sciences, my spiritual path. If you could pause it supernatural, magical forces to explain something. What Couldn't you explain that way? I'm gonna say the ball rolls down the hill, because a magical hand and invisible hand pushes it down there. So you just that's why I say the scientists a campaign. It's not the only campaign in the world but it's a campaign to find natural explanations for all natural phenomena. So though I'm an atheist, don't get me wrong. I'm as delusional as the next guy. I've got my biases, my appetites, my anxieties, and I noticed that the where we do optimal illusion best is in fiction.

Jeremy Sherman, thank you very much for taking time with me. Jeremy Sherman was born with the means as well as some of the freedoms and tools that allowed him to delve into the meaning of life. He is indeed made a mission of as far as I can see, Jeremy's dream is grand. He seeks to bridge the great divide between scientific The reason and the elusive spirit. After our conversation, Jeremy emailed me a poem he had written back in 2005 under the title to whom it may concern. The following is an excerpt. Well, I can't completely but have made a game of it that tilts my yearning towards perennial truths. Not in my time to get my truths across, but in yours, if in yours now, after better and worse times, my blunt and heavy fruits proved in escape more than commonplace and with your still greater means of searching, one among you should find that these relics of ancient speculation and note in passing that I was prescient I will not be there to glow. My yearning deferred than satisfied. But I will have won my game of choice. Today's episode was edited by Scott album for media for change. I'm Sanjeev Chatterjee