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Career education is a vital pipeline to high demand jobs in the workforce. Students from all walks of life benefit from the opportunity to pursue their career education goals and find new employment opportunities. Join Dr. Jason Altmire, President and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities (CECU), as he discusses the issues and innovations affecting postsecondary career education. Twice monthly, he and his guests discuss politics, business, and current events impacting education and public policy.
Jason Altmire (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to another edition of Career Education Report. I am Jason Altmire, and today we're going to go a little bit off-topic, but it's something that we talk about when we do discuss the politics of career, education, and politics of the country.
(00:19):
But I think this is going to be a really interesting discussion because we have Nate Klemp, Dr. Nate Klemp, who's a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy, and he's written a new book called OPEN: Living With an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World. And Nate has spent his career talking about the philosophical aspects of how to enjoy life, how to approach adversity, how to deal with the many distractions of technology and polarization. And I just think he's a really interesting guest. So Dr. Klemp, thank you for being with us.
Nate Klemp (00:56):
Thanks so much for having me, Jason. It's a pleasure to be here.
Jason Altmire (01:00):
You founded among many other things that you've done... You're an author of multiple bestselling books, and of course, your book OPEN just came out in February and is doing very well. But you also founded Mindful Communications, which was a merger of other entities. What was Mindful Communications about?
Nate Klemp (01:19):
Yeah, it was kind of a interesting career path for me. As you mentioned, I got a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy. I became a professor, an assistant professor of political philosophy. And then I got really interested in this kind of crazy idea of what would it be like to live philosophically versus just studying it.
(01:38):
And that led me into a very deep exploration of things like meditation and yoga. And eventually, I ended up writing books about mindfulness but also creating an organization that was really dedicated to bringing the tools of mindfulness into really high-stress corporate environments. So probably the least mindful and relaxed places on earth, and that was kind of the genesis of that particular organization.
Jason Altmire (02:08):
And that's exactly what I was hoping you would say [inaudible 00:02:11] I thought you would say because we talk a lot on this program about career paths that people choose and the value of an education, whether it be a short career education moving into a trade or a long term like you Ph.D. in Political Philosophy and you hear a lot about return on investment and there are certain degrees that you have a harder time finding something to do on the other end of it.
(02:40):
And I would say most people might look at philosophy as something that would be that, but you have turned it into something where you are working with organizations. You're working with leaders. You're working with businesses to help them work through issues in a unique way. So maybe you could a little bit about how you've applied that training that you've had in your past to help others.
Nate Klemp (03:06):
I think from a career perspective, it is really interesting to see the various journeys people have, and they're not always super linear. So if I were to even go back a step before I got interested in philosophy, I wanted to be a jazz piano player. And I vividly remember being in college and thinking to myself, "Should I be a jazz piano player or a philosopher?" And thinking philosopher, "You know, philosopher seems like the more pragmatic route to making a living, right." Which sounds crazy, of course, because that's not pragmatic at all.
(03:38):
But I think you're absolutely right that one of the things I learned through getting a liberal education and getting a Ph.D. was essentially how to think and how to answer really difficult problems. And that's a skill that I've just continued to apply throughout my career to various things. So when it then came to the question of, okay, well, we have a serious crisis in corporate America with burnout, with anxiety, with depression, with distraction, with overwhelm, the question then became, okay, well, how can I leverage that training that I received, which had nothing to do with this particular question?
(04:19):
My actual training was about Machiavelli and Hobbes and Plato and Aristotle and how you apply their thinking to a political system. But I was given the skills that allowed me to then apply just the underlying skill of critical thought to a very different question. And that's really what I've been up to for the last 10 or so years, is thinking about, "Okay, how do we bring these tools of mindfulness and philosophy into the midst of the kind of chaotic craziness that is everyday life?"
Jason Altmire (04:50):
I think part of that is the books that you have written, you've written books on topics along these lines, but you have also helped organizations and companies, as I said, but getting the message out to a broader audience is part of that mission.
(05:05):
In your book OPEN, you discuss how we as individuals and certainly as a society are just inundated with information the way that we sort things into our own point of view. We close down to alternative viewpoints, and you have a number of real-world examples of how this affects... has affected you but also affects society and individuals. Talk a little bit more about what you hoped to achieve with the book OPEN and what your premise is.
Nate Klemp (05:35):
The basic idea is that I was having this experience a couple of years ago of essentially feeling like the space in my mind kept getting smaller. What I mean by that is I would feel some sort of uncomfortable emotion, or I would hear some political idea that didn't agree with my preferred perspective and would have this almost instantaneous urge to distract myself or to reach out for my phone to get some quick hit of political outrage. And what I started to see is that I wasn't alone here, that there is this kind of momentum in modern life that's drawing us away from many of our own inner experiences, but also away from each other.
(06:22):
So I think of this as closing. That's the word I like to wrap around it. And what I mean by closing is we're having this experience, I think many of us, where internally we find it much more difficult to experience things like discomfort or challenging emotions or scary thoughts. But then there's this external version of closure, which you're the expert on, and I love your book on the topic, which I think of as political polarization that we're increasingly closed down to people who disagree with us.
(06:57):
Maybe 10 or 20 years ago, we might've thought of these people as having a different perspective, but now I think for many of us, we see someone who disagrees with us politically as insane, deluded, maybe even the enemy. So the basic idea behind this book was to both understand this condition of closure that I think is being amplified in modern life by our politics by the technologies we carry with us in our pocket, but then also to explore what are the tools and practices we can use to cultivate the opposite of closure, which is a more open mind, a more expansive mind, having more space in our mind.
Jason Altmire (07:35):
And what I like about the way you structure the book and your discussion of those issues is you use a variety of ways to talk about how to get out of that that downward spiral. And you talk about science. People like to see the data and the research, and what does it show about how to address these issues? You use personal stories, anecdotes.
(08:00):
We'll get into some of those. You even talk about the age-old practices that have been done throughout the decades and the centuries by folks trying to address the concerns within their own time. And I think when you bring all of that together, it provides a very unique perspective. And I would start with the science part. Maybe give a couple of examples of the science of having a closed mind.
Nate Klemp (08:24):
Well, one of the things I did for this book was I spent a few days binging on screens. And then, also after the fact, studying what's happening in our brain when we indulge in digital distraction. And what I learned both experientially and from the science is that the primary thing that's occurring and that's driving us toward our devices is what researchers call novelty bias. So just through the evolution of the human brain, we pay special attention to things that are different or new. And it makes sense why we would do this in ancient times, that this would be valuable information if we were living on the Savannah and trying to survive and not be eaten by a tiger.
(09:07):
But nowadays, we have these technologies that are essentially exploiting this experience of novelty. So you think about why you open up your phone at all hours when you're waiting for your doctor's appointment when you're stuck in traffic. And usually, it's this experience of moving through your lock screen and seeing something new. That new text, that new email, that fresh feed on social media, the new news articles on your favorite news site. And so what's happening, I think, for all of us, is that this experience of craving novelty can get us trapped in this dopamine feedback loop where we have the desire to experience some quick hit of distraction.
(09:51):
Our brain releases a little bit of dopamine that... the brain's neurotransmitter of pleasure, it quickly goes away. We then seek out the next hit and the next hit and the next hit. And as a result, I think for so many of us, we're having this subtle experience of missing out on the most important things in our life, our family connection, the projects that really matter. And that's I think the essence of the predicament that I was trying to explore and solve is that, at some very basic level, the freedom to choose how to direct our time and attention is slipping away. But the good news is I think there are things we can do about that.
Jason Altmire (10:30):
I think a perfect example of that is now when people go to events, whether it be a rock concert or a sporting event or your kid's graduation, whatever it might be, you're so concerned about getting the picture. You want to get the shot, and you see all the phones go up at the same time when something happens. And then people's memory of that event as the years go by is based upon the picture that was taken, not the experience of having been there. Do you think that would be a good example of exactly what you're talking about?
Nate Klemp (11:03):
Yeah, I think that's a great example, that it's the picture, and also now it's putting the picture on Instagram or TikTok so that other people see us in this situation and then seeing other people in their situations. And it's kind of just created one level of abstraction or [inaudible 00:11:23] removed from the basic experience of reality. And I think for many of us, there's this kind of confusion between actual life and what I call screen land. So screen land is what happens when you go on your phone, you go on Facebook, you go on Instagram, and the rules of gravity don't really apply in screen land because, at least for me, all I see are these pictures of people having an amazing time or outrageous commentary about the upcoming election or whatever it is.
(11:55):
And none of that is actually happening in real life, right. Like the person making the outrageous political comment, if you actually had a conversation with that person, it would look very different. The person who's telling you that they've had the trip of a lifetime and they're standing on the rail of the cruise ship with a martini in their hand, they would probably tell you that they had many moments on that trip where their kids were going crazy, they were about to lose it, right. So we're getting this kind of warped experience of reality. And I think, in some ways, what I want to open up a conversation around is this opportunity for us to come back to a different, more authentic, more grounded way of experiencing the moments that really are most important to us.
Jason Altmire (12:39):
I think one of the best quotes I ever heard on that dynamic of social media being different than real life and the way people talk was Mike Tyson, as only Mike Tyson can do, and he said, "Social media makes you brave enough to say things that you would never say without getting punched in the face."
(12:59):
And we obviously don't condone that. But I think that does say when you're in the car, and you're willing to give the hand gesture as you go by somebody, you would never do that if you were with them, but you feel like you're immune to it and social media provides that same level of immunity.
Nate Klemp (13:17):
Absolutely. And so yeah, I think a project for all of us to consider is these technologies are only going to get better at hijacking our attention and our time, especially as AI gets more and more sophisticated. But I think we all want to be thinking about what are the more intentional habits and strategies we can use to navigate this new world of technology more skillfully and to navigate this political world where there's so much polarization more skillfully.
Jason Altmire (13:48):
So the premise is to open up your mind rather than allowing these distractions of your electronics, your social media, your political affiliation and polarization close your mind. And you have in your book the three shifts of opening, and you talk about ways to break that cycle. Can you go through what those three are?
Nate Klemp (14:10):
Yeah, so the big idea here is that the goal is to shift from a more closed mind, which is the direction of our culture that's the gravitational center of gravity of our culture, to something more open. And I think the three shifts help explain what happens when we do that. So the first idea is that something changes in the focus of our mind, that when we're closed, we experience this state psychologist call unconscious mind wandering. And that's basically just the idea that we get lost in these random stories about the past and the future. And importantly, we don't even know that it's happening.
(14:51):
And researchers at Harvard found we spend about 47% of our day just lost in that state of mind wandering. So when we open, there's a shift from mind wandering to something more like what psychologists call meta awareness, where we have a little bit of space between us and our thoughts or our emotions and a little bit more awareness of what's actually happening in our inner experience. The second shift is from withdraw to approach. So when we close down, there's this turning away that happens. Internally, that's a turning away from certain emotions that are difficult. Externally, that's a turning away from people who disagree with us, people we just don't want to talk to who are challenging to us. And when we open, we begin to approach.
(15:34):
The last shift, I think is really the most fundamental, and that's this shift from a small expense of our mind. So when we close down, I think we all know this subjectively, that there's this experience of, it's almost like we're looking at life through this long and dark tunnel, and all we can see on the other end of that tunnel is that challenging problem or that challenging emotion or that stressful incident or that person that drives us crazy. When we open, what we experience is not necessarily that the problem or the stress goes away, but that there's more space around it. And I think that's an experience we all have some reference point to, where there's a little bit more perspective, we see more possibilities.
(16:24):
And you might say, "Who cares? You get a little more space in your mind. Why would we practice this? Why would we spend our time on this?" But I think that that space is crucial because that's the space that allows us to respond instead of react in a triggered way. It's the space between stimulus and response that allows us to build new and better habits. It's the space of creativity of possibility. Ultimately, I think that's the space of freedom. And to me, that is a huge deal to cultivate that kind of space in the mind.
Jason Altmire (16:55):
So the obvious question would be, how does one do that? How do you take those steps? And you have in the book the Open Toolkit to assist individuals in moving forward in this way. Can you describe what that toolkit looks like?
Nate Klemp (17:09):
Well, I think that we start by, first of all, how do we interrupt the momentum of closure? So these would be tactics around breaking our habits of screen addiction. So there's all sorts of really great tactics and habits there. A lot of them are based on the idea of environmental design, that if we can essentially create more friction between us and our craving for our screen and less friction between us and the things that matter, we're going to sort of build new and better habits. There are also tools around political polarization.
(17:44):
So one simple thing I think we can all be doing is reading news sources both sides of the aisle, staying away from really extreme bombastic political commentary on the nighttime opinion shows on things like Fox and MSNBC. Another set of tools are about, well, okay, well, how do we cultivate almost like the underlying skills for opening? And those would be things like the practice of mindfulness and meditation. I think of that as the strengthening and conditioning program for having a little bit more awareness in the mind, cultivating more space in the mind.
(18:22):
And then practices like simply learning how to relax. I think one of the key problems we face in the modern age is that this momentum of digital stimulation and distraction creates so much energy and activation in our nervous system that we've almost lost the ability to relax. And what we call relaxation is actually more stimulation, right. It's like watching Netflix or binging on podcasts or whatever it is. So there's a lot of tools out there, breathing tools, yoga, all sorts of things we can do to cultivate a more relaxed nervous system, which in turn allows us to create that openness in the mind more effectively.
Jason Altmire (19:04):
It is true, and the book is fascinating for all of these reasons. I would highly recommend it. And you referenced this in the beginning, but you kind of passed over it. But I would love for you to close by talking about the experience that you had when you forced yourself to just be inundated by all of the outside electronics and stimulation that goes along with that and how that experience played out.
Nate Klemp (19:31):
I spent three days, all day, every day, consuming what you might think of as an all-you-can-eat buffet of digital distraction and political outrage. And the reason I did that is you've probably heard this old-school parenting advice. If you catch your kids smoking, have them smoke the whole pack or two packs or three packs, and they'll never smoke again. And the idea... I'm not saying that's good parenting advice, by the way, but there's an interesting idea there, which is one way to disrupt craving is through overindulging.
(20:04):
So we can use overindulgence to basically bring us to a state of revulsion, which unwinds the momentum of craving. And it turns out this is actually an age-old practice in Tantric Buddhist tradition. They call it feast practice. But I thought it would be really interesting to use this practice on my primary craving, which was towards screens and political outrage. And so, as these three days unfolded, there were a couple of key learnings. One was that the link between screens and sleep is real. We hear about this a lot. But what I experienced was this profound disruption of my sleep.
(20:44):
So, every night, I would be up at 2:50 in the morning, no hope of going back to bed. But then I think even more importantly, what I experienced was just over and over that desire for novelty. And by overindulging, one of the things that happened that was really interesting is I actually got to this point where I felt like I had seen everything there was to see in screen land, and I had essentially annihilated the superpower of my smartphone, this experience of novelty.
(21:17):
So, at the end of the experiment, I woke up, and I had the thought the next day, this is where I usually grab my phone and go to the bathroom. And for the first time in a decade, the desire just completely disappeared. It wasn't there. And I think the big insight I had around that is that when it comes to some of these habits of craving around screens and political outrage, there are really two ways we can overcome our habits of craving.
(21:44):
One is through restriction and things like self-binding, all these techniques where we try to keep ourselves from our screens. But the second is through this method of indulgence. And in fact, we compare the two. One day of screen indulgence and screen binging, and then do another day of screen fasting, dopamine fasting. And both of those habits basically are a way to disrupt our ordinary habits of closure and get a little bit more perspective on how we might shift our ordinary habits.
Jason Altmire (22:15):
Well, this has been a fascinating discussion. The book is OPEN: Living With an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World. Our guest has been the author, Dr. Nate Klemp. And Nate, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you, learn more about you or the book, how would they do it?
Nate Klemp (22:31):
I would say the best way is my website, nateklemp.com, Klemp with a K. I'm also on Instagram and have a newsletter where I send out tips and tools for mindfulness and relationships that's available on my website.
Jason Altmire (22:48):
Dr. Nate Klemp, thank you for being with us.
Nate Klemp (22:50):
Thank you so much for having me, Jason. This was a real pleasure.
Jason Altmire (23:00):
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Career Education Report. Subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For more information, visit our website at career.org and follow us on Twitter @CECUed. That's at C-E-C-U-E-D. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Voxtopica.