Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Dr. Samuel Wilkinson on Why Life Is a Test of Good and Evil | EP 581
Thu, 6 Mar 2025
In this episode of Passion Struck, host John R. Miles sits down with Dr. Sam Wilkinson to explore the profound impact of human connection on our sense of meaning and purpose. Dr. Wilkinson discusses the detrimental effects of our society's increasing disconnection from real human interaction and the overemphasis on individualism that has paradoxically led to more suffering. This conversation delves into Dr. Wilkinson's personal background, particularly the pivotal role his religious upbringing and mission work have played in shaping his career and approach to his work at Yale. Tune in to uncover valuable insights on how intentionality and in-person interactions can help you become the best version of yourself.Link to the full show notes: https://passionstruck.com/samuel-wilkinson-life-is-a-test-of-good-and-evil/Key takeaways:Evidence suggests that evolution is not purely random; patterns in nature indicate guiding principles that shape development.The crisis of meaning is exacerbated by technology, which has led to atomization and disconnection from face-to-face interactions.Affective forecasting shows that people often misjudge what will bring them happiness; strong relationships are key to lasting fulfillment.Family relationships are emphasized as a source of meaning and purpose in life.Micro choices and daily decisions significantly impact long-term happiness and character development.The role of marriage is highlighted as a cultural mechanism to strengthen bonds between fathers and their biological children.Connect with Dr. Sam Wilkinson: https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/samuel-wilkinson/Sponsors:Factor Meals: http://factormeals.com/factormeals50off and use code “FACTOR MEALS 50 OFFRosetta Stone: Unlock 25 languages for life at “ROSETTASTONE.com/passionstruck.”Prolon: Reset your health with 15% off at “ProlonLife.com/passionstruck.”Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at “MINT MOBILE dot com slash PASSION.”Hims: Start your journey to regrowing hair with Hims. Visit hims.com/PASSIONSTRUCK for your free online visit.Quince: Discover luxury at affordable prices with Quince. Enjoy free shipping and 365-day returns at quince.com/PASSIONNext on Passion Struck:In the next episode of Passion Struck, John sits down with Dr. Laurie Santos, Yale, professor and host of the happiness lab, to the show. They'll be diving into the science of happiness, what really makes us happy, why we often chase the wrong things, and how to rewire our brains for long-term fulfillment. If you've ever struggled with stress, comparison, or finding lasting joy, this is an episode you won't want to miss.For more information on advertisers and promo codes, visit Passion Struck Deals.Join the Passion Struck Community! Sign up for the Live Intentionally newsletter, where I share exclusive content, actionable advice, and insights to help you ignite your purpose and live your most intentional life. Get access to practical exercises, inspiring stories, and tools designed to help you grow. Learn more and sign up here.Speaking Engagements & Workshops Are you looking to inspire your team, organization, or audience to take intentional action in their lives and careers? I’m available for keynote speaking, workshops, and leadership training on topics such as intentional living, resilience, leadership, and personal growth. Let’s work together to create transformational change. Learn more at johnrmiles.com/speaking.Episode Starter Packs With over 500 episodes, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. We’ve curated Episode Starter Packs based on key themes like leadership, mental health, and personal growth, making it easier for you to dive into the topics you care about. Check them out at passionstruck.com/starterpacks.Catch More of Passion Struck:My solo episode on The Science of Healthy HabitsMy episode with Jason O’Mara on Finding Strength in the Face of SetbacksCan't miss my episode with Stefanie Wilder-Taylor on Loving and Leaving AlcoholCatch my interview with Dr. Elisa Hallerman on How You Reconnect With Your SoulListen to my solo episode on 7 Reasons Why Acts of Kindness Are More than Meets the EyeIf you liked the show, please leave us a review—it only takes a moment and helps us reach more people! Don’t forget to include your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally.How to Connect with John:Connect with John on Twitter at @John_RMiles and on Instagram at @John_R_Miles. Subscribe to our main YouTube Channel here and to our YouTube Clips Channel here. For more insights and resources, visit John’s website.Want to explore where you stand on the path to becoming Passion Struck? Take our 20-question quiz on Passionstruck.com and find out today!
Chapter 1: Why is human connection crucial for meaning and purpose?
Welcome to passion struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hey, PassionStruck fam. Welcome to episode 581 of PassionStruck.
Let me ask you, what if everything we know about evolution, purpose, and human existence was only part of the story? Today, I'm joined by Dr. Sam Wilkinson, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University and author of the new book, Purpose. what evolution and human nature imply about the meaning of our existence.
Dr. Wilkinson challenges the idea that life is a random accident, offering a fresh perspective on how evolution itself may point to a deeper purpose. But before we dive in, earlier this week, I had an incredible conversation on Tuesday with Natalie Namaste about intuitive healing, overcoming limiting patterns, and aligning with your soul's purpose.
If you missed it, I highly recommend checking it out after this episode. And if you're new here, welcome to the Passion Struck Podcast. We are so glad to have you as part of this community. Passion Struck is all about unlocking human potential through intentional living.
And we've got over 500 episodes covering leadership, mindset, mental health, physical health, relationships, and personal mastery. You can explore them all in our episode starter packs on either Spotify or at passionstruck.com slash starter packs. Want even more insights on living a high-impact life?
Each week, I share exclusive content, challenges, actionable tools, and behind-the-scenes lessons in my Live Intentionally newsletter. It's designed to help you apply what you learn on the show into your everyday life. Sign up at passionstruck.com and start making intentionality a habit. Now back to today's episode.
In this conversation with Dr. Wilkinson, we explore why our existence isn't a random accident and how science may actually point toward meaning. We go into the dual nature of humanity, our capacity for both selfishness and altruism, and how understanding this helps us make better choices. Dr. Wilkinson explains why relationships are the key to happiness and how they anchor our sense of mattering.
We discuss how life is a test, an opportunity to choose between good and bad and what that means for living with intention. And then lastly, we go into practical strategies to align your daily actions with a deeper sense of purpose. If you've ever questioned why you're here or struggled to find meaning in your life, this episode will give you a new lens to look through.
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Chapter 2: How does Dr. Sam Wilkinson's background shape his work?
I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Dr. Sam Wilkinson to PassionStruck. Welcome, Sam.
John, thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here.
Sam, I love to start these interviews out by going into a bit of my guest background before we explore the core topics so people get to know you before we really get into the nuts and bolts. And I understand for you that your religious background has played a really foundational role in your life, even including going on a mission for a couple of years.
Can you talk about why that has become so pivotal for you and how it's influenced the work that you do today at Yale and your entire education?
No, I'd be happy to. So as you mentioned, I grew up with a religious background that was an important part of my family's life. And I served a two-year mission for my faith when I was 19 or so, 18 or 19. And that really opened my eyes to the way that some people live. I served mostly among Spanish speaking people. It was here in the United States, but mostly working with immigrants and such.
And I think one of the ways that it really impacted me was actually during my medical training. So I finished my undergraduate education and then I started medical school and within the year of starting medical school.
I really went through this period where I was struggling almost in a religious sense where it seemed like what I was learning in school was at odds with the sense that I had that most people have that life has purpose and value and meaning.
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Chapter 3: What challenges exist in reconciling faith and evolution?
And I went through this internal struggle, this wrestle where I had to draw on different sources, both religious, but also scientific and figure out how, if I could, first of all, and then how I could try to fit these together in my mind and say, yes, I think there is a purpose to our existence, a purpose to our lives. And it fits in with science in this way.
And that really was a very pivotal moment and changed the way that I think see people and also see life. And it has laid the way for a lot of the topics that I tried to study and research in my career.
And as I understand it, as you were in medical school at Johns Hopkins, there was a pivotal moment in your first year that impacted both your spiritual life and your intellectual curiosity. And that was, you were wrestling with the compatibility of your faith and the theory of evolution. If you think back upon that time, what questions
were weighing on your mind and how did they challenge your beliefs at that time?
So one of the aspects of the theory of evolution that I didn't was this sense that The way that life came about was totally random and haphazard. What some scientists have called the doctrine of randomness, right? That would seem to be at odds, at least to me, with the notion that we have a purpose and a meaning to our existence if things just randomly and haphazardly came about.
That was one of the issues that I didn't like. Another aspect was what I thought The theory of evolution implied about human nature. And that is that we are ultimately selfish and aggressive and self-serving and so forth. And that was a bitter pill to swallow. And it turns out that my understanding of those two issues were just naive from a scientific view.
And I studied, I reflected, I did a lot of reading and recognized that my assumptions were not quite right, were not complete. And that the way that evolution has unfolded has definitely been not random. And also the way that nature has shaped us, even through evolutionary mechanisms, Yes, there is a part to us that is selfish and self-serving and aggressive and so forth.
But there's another part to us that is altruistic and can be quite cooperative and peaceful and so forth. And those are the two issues that I really struggled with. And as I pulled things together, really had this kind of aha moment where it just changed the way that I viewed the world and the way that I viewed other human beings.
thank you for sharing that. And that's actually how you open up the book is talking about this experience. And the book I'm referring to is titled purpose, what evolution and human nature imply about the meaning of our existence and congratulations on the book. And it also being featured as a member of the next big idea club.
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Chapter 4: What evidence suggests evolution is not purely random?
And let me, I'll just highlight the problem here. So this issue, there's a well-known physician scientist who put it well. I think when he said he was at one point, the Dean of the Yale school of medicine, where I now work, he said, I cannot make my peace with the randomness doctrine. I cannot abide the notion of purposelessness and blind chance in nature. And yet I do not know what to put.
and its place for the quieting of my mind. We talk about the absurdity of the human situation. We do this because we do not know how we fit in or what we are for. It's a man named Lewis Thomas.
That was again at the crux of one of the things I was struggling with because it would seem to be that if life came about through totally random means, then it's hard to see how there is a purpose to our existence or any sort of deep meaning And it turns out that this is not quite the way that evolution has worked.
And a lot of this work has been discovered by a well-known and well-regarded scientist named Simon Conway Morris. And he has noticed there are these patterns that have emerged where you have different features and functions that have developed independently over and over and over again so that you see that there are these
Maybe higher order principles that have constrained or guided the process to go in certain directions and not others. So I'll give an example, birds and bats and butterflies. They all have wings and they're all slightly different, but They all independently developed the wings.
And this has happened about a half dozen times, maybe a little more, a little less, that organisms have independently developed the capacity for flight. There's another famous example is eyes. So eyes have developed independently about 50 different times. Humans have pretty much the same exact type of eyes as an octopus.
or squid, but our eyes, they independently develop these remarkably identical structures, despite the fact that they were not that closely related. A dolphin and a shark look very similar, but they're really not that closely related. They each develop this similar body form independently. So over and over again, this notion that there are
There's something that is guiding evolution to go in certain ways and not others. Now, a big part of this is what is helpful for survival or this principle of natural selection. But there's something in addition to that seems to lead the process to go in one direction and not a host of others.
So there may be some randomness going on, but it's a much, much smaller piece of the puzzle than I think we originally understood.
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Chapter 5: How is the crisis of meaning related to technology and disconnection?
essentially become atomized as a society we have become disconnected from real human interaction which is for most people the source of the deepest sense of meaning and purpose as we essentially live on the internet or on our phones they're part of we are small cogs in large bureaucracies through our jobs or other very vast organizations some of which are essentially all virtual
And that has, I think, taken us in a way and disconnected us from the way that we interact with each other in a face-to-face way. That is essentially how we were created. We were created for in-person interaction. And a lot of the ways we spend our time now are not in that setting. And there's been a...
I think an overemphasis on the individual for the last 50 years in Western society that has, I think, paradoxically led us to more suffering.
And do you think that the suffering is tied ultimately to how we feel about how we hold significance to ourself and then how that evolves with how others feel that we hold significance towards them? Is that the root of what the issue is?
Well, there's a lot of issues and it's not a simple thing, as you probably know. One of the problems as I see it is that there's a principle in psychology that's called affective forecasting. And this is the ability to predict how we're going to feel in a given situation. And it turns out that we're surprisingly poor judges at this.
And we're not necessarily poor judges at what's going to make us happy versus not happy, but the intensity and the duration of those emotions. We're not great judges at. And there's a very influential psychology study from the 1970s that really drove this point home. It had the provocative title, Lottery Winners and Accident Victims. And as the title suggests, the researchers
They assessed two different groups, those who had suffered terrible accidents and were now quadriplegic and those who had won the lottery. And they compared them along things like satisfaction and wellbeing and so forth. And surprising to many people is that there weren't a whole lot of differences.
In some ways, actually the accident victims had a better ability to enjoy everyday pleasures and feel reward. But of course, if I asked you, which group would you rather be in? Everyone hands down would say, well, I'd rather win the lottery than suffer a terrible accident. And this is because we think, oh, this is going to solve all my problems. I'll have enough money.
I won't be worried about X, Y, Z financial concerns. But with so many things that we hope for, we desire a bigger house, a new car, a promotion. These things, they do bring pleasure and reward and so forth. But it is fairly temporary. And after a couple of weeks or so, our happiness set point goes back to where it was. The exception to this is long term and. uplifting relationships.
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Chapter 6: Why are relationships key to lasting happiness?
Okay. So here's where I want to go with this. I've heard you talk about Simon Conway Morris. For those on the podcast who aren't familiar with him, British paleontologist and evolutionary biologist best known for his work on convergent evolution and his studies on Cambrian explosion.
And he describes, just as biological systems independently develop similar traits, these are like wings on birds, bats, butterflies, or eyes in different species, I contend that a theory that I often cite, social cycle theory, suggests that societies and civilizations often experience recurring patterns of behavior structures and dynamics over time. These cycles, convergent evolution,
And the social cycle theory might point to higher order principles or constraints guiding the development of human systems. What are your thoughts on that?
Well, there's certainly a lot of variability in the ways that cultures can develop and unfold and so forth, but there do seem, and human nature is quite malleable, but there do seem to be some constraints and some kind of deep principles that seem to push human cultures in one way or the other. So it's this, I see it as a bit of a tension between a high amount of variability and then
a lot of recurring themes. You know, if I can go this way, trying to backtrack or piggyback on our last comment about the importance of relationships, one of the things that I try to bring together, and I'm definitely not the first in any sense as to proclaim that relationships are fundamental to our happiness and well-being.
One of the things that I'm trying to do is link that to biology and link that to evolution and ask the question, well, why is this the case? Why is it that relationships are so rewarding? And this, I think, goes back to something called attachment theory, which is, which was. developed by one of my professional heroes, a psychiatrist named, see where I'm going. This was John. Okay.
So John Bowlby, he came of age professionally in the early 1900s. And at that time, many of the now outdated theories of psychoanalysis and psychology still held great sway. Among them was this sense that relationships weren't really all that important. And Bowlby, this didn't really make sense to him.
Even among animals, he saw that some of the behaviors, they didn't really have any purpose other than to strengthen relationships. So he pushed back against this very quid pro quo approach to relationships that many of the psychoanalysts had at that time. And as he searched for a kind of a way to understand this, he studied, in fact, he babies of animals and babies of humans.
And what he noticed is that human babies are incredibly immature at their birth, really more than any other creature. A baby giraffe, the first thing it experiences upon being born is actually a six foot drop to the ground because female giraffes give birth standing up, actually. But within an hour, that baby giraffe can be up and walking and nursing on its own and standing.
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Chapter 7: What does attachment theory reveal about human development?
Yeah, I do. Look, the most biologically relevant relationships are those that nature has shaped among the family, right? I think the most primal, the fundamental relationship is between
mother and her child that's where you get this the strongest forms of love and affection and so forth you mentioned this is what you think evolution wants us to do is have these relationships certainly there's a drive to to reproduce and that's an important part of evolution again we are left with what i call competing natures or dual potential of human nature there's a part of this that leads us to family life
But there's another part of us that would direct us away from family life. And I think it's not necessarily popular among the academy, but I think we miss an opportunity if we talk about family without talking about the importance of marriage. And let me try to tie this back to biology a little bit. I mentioned this strong attachment between parents and their children.
And there's a bit of a difference. And I say a bit, that's an understatement. There's quite a bit of a difference between the biological ties between men and their children and women and their children. And in a lot of ways, this is very self-evident, right? A woman carries the unborn child for nine months.
And for most of human history, a woman has been compelled to breastfeed the infant sometimes for several years. This creates a very strong bond between women, mothers and their children. Now, men, on the other hand, have a fairly comparatively tenuous link right to their children.
And there's quite an imbalance that nature has left us with between the strength of biological and emotional ties between men and women and their children. And I think there needs to be some strong kind of cultural mechanism that tries to level the playing field a little bit and link men to the biological children.
And what I would propose is that this is a really important but under-recognized purpose of marriage. One of the purposes of marriage is to link men to their biological children. And researchers, sociologists, especially as the sexual revolution unfolded of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, they recognized that marriage and fatherhood were actually fairly linked.
And they would sometimes refer to them as a package deal because when a man was married to the mother of his biological children, his relationship with his children were generally better. Now, of course, there are exceptions to this. And certainly at the high end of the income ladder, men can be not necessarily married to the mother of their children and still be fairly present. But as you go down
different kind of rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, it becomes harder for men to be engaged with their children if they're not married to the mother of those children. This is a sensitive issue and I understand why, but I think it is important if we're talking about family, we're talking about the importance of marriage as well in linking men to those biological children.
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