Having previously addressed the biological and psychological links to our struggles and dissatisfactions, Jonathan reveals how our cultural environment — the “water” we’re all swimming in — has become toxic, and how it actually exploits our humanity, both multiplying and magnifying our personal challenges and our societal ills.
Episode 3 dives into the contaminated cultural waters our Mind swims in from birth. Providing a sobering inventory of our collective symptoms — skyrocketing mental health issues, physical disease, addiction, isolation, and societal breakdown — Jonathan connects the dots, revealing that these interlaced maladies stem from the same sources: fundamentally, how we are parented, socialized, and educated.
He then relates how these early messages are exploited by an economically motivated, performance and comparison-driven culture designed to keep us always dissatisfied, always wanting “more” (something he then insightfully points out isn’t possible to have!).
Drawing first upon a love story and later on his experience with a development project in Ethiopia, and reminding us throughout of our adaptable nature, Jonathan underscores that the solution to our personal and societal woes is not to change ourselves — as we are so often (and profitably) encouraged to do — but, rather, to change our environment — the water we swim in. He asserts that doing so begins with awareness of: our human nature and cultural environment and of an alternative to the way we have been programmed to live — all of which he delivers through the All We Need to Know podcast. That alternative is the focus of Episode 4.