Why We Shouldn't Aim For A New Normal - Dr Zach Bush MD - #286

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Dr. Zach Bush MD. He's a physician and educator specializing in internal medicine, endocrinology and hospice care. The last 12 months have been a challenge. Everyone has come up against difficulties and can't wait to get back to some sense of normality. But by aiming for normal, are we missing out on an opportunity to become something better? So today, expect to learn how to deal with the loss of meaning and identity during a global crisis. Why unity and conformity are not the same thing. How losing diversity in the global microbiome is related to our immune system. And much more. Zach is definitely not the sort of doctor you will be used to seeing if you take a trip to your local GP. The guy is very deep and also has this mad global perspective, this civilization wide view of how we should be operating. I really enjoy speaking to people who understand the personal and the individual, but then can map it on to the global and the civilizational. And Zach definitely does that today. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Dr. Zach Bush.
Dr. Zach Bush, welcome to the show.

**Dr. Zach Bush** (1:33)
So glad to be with you, Chris. Thanks for having me on.

**Chris Williamson** (1:36)
Pleasure for you to be here, man. What is the biggest lesson that you took from 2020?

**Dr. Zach Bush** (1:42)
Well, you know, I think it's hard to dissect them all out, but I think if I were to, you know, take a reductionist approach to that, I'm I'm ultimately just glad to be alive at this moment. What a privilege to have witnessed 2020 It's it's difficult to overstate the tipping point situations that are so multifaceted, tipping point of human health, tipping point of socioeconomics, tipping point of sociology and psychology of populations, and just this extraordinary space to be in. So I am walking away with a new sense of gratitude to the moment that I showed up in. And so that's, I think, a way of looking positively at a year in which so many people lost so much, and so many people gained so much. And in that dichotomy, what a privilege to be alive, what a privilege to be witness to it all.

**Chris Williamson** (2:40)
That's a really interesting take on it, and one that I actually quite appreciate.
I wonder whether there is an advantage to living through history. You know, like it was uncomfortable. I preferred 2019 in terms of an experiential, adventurous world than 2020 But, you know, if you look at between sort of the 60s, there'll have been people that have born and died and had a good amount of life without actually living through a massive amount of history, you know? I wonder whether that's part of something that can add meaning to life, going through something which is a global trauma, species-wide, civilizational threat. I wonder whether that's something that can add meaning and is actually worthwhile living through, whether it is, as you say, a blessing almost to have endured it.

**Dr. Zach Bush** (3:35)
I think it is a blessing. I think if we look at the generations that have not witnessed war or not had to be a part of war, there's a lethargy that sets in in that generation, and there's a laziness, there's a tendency to take things for granted in that group. And I think that my grandfather's generation really struggled with the younger generations who had not seen global conflict on that scale before, with the flippancy that we would talk about politics, or we would talk about civil liberties.
People who lived through the initial civil rights movement and watching how flippantly we've given away those civil liberties and civil rights in recent months and years. I think there's a real discouragement there. And so when we find ourselves as a new generation that's in the mix of massive catastrophic events or conflict, whether it be socioeconomic or military or otherwise, we do have to be cognizant that we are brushing against the very thing that it means to be aware. And so to be aware is to be threatened in some ways. Unfortunately, the neural network of the human brain is easily distracted and is easily tempted into the softness of comfort when we're not in a fight or flight state. And in that comfort state, we tend to dull our senses. We can see this in the way that we celebrate, right? Or in the way which we deal with bad things. You get fired from your job, you go to the bar, you drink with your friends to dull the pain. You get the big promotion, you go to the same bar, you drink with your friends to dull the experience. It's just like, what the hell are we doing as humans? Like every opportunity we have to dull the experience of being alive, we do. And so, there's something that happens in a year like we just had where life can become raw. And if you found yourself this year in one of those experiences where you just were stripped of everything you thought you had, lost your job, lost your home, now life has turned into a prickly pair of experience and you're just, it's painful to take a step sideways, it's important for you to realize that at that moment you are the most conscious you have ever been. You are, in some ways, having the most real experience you've ever had. And if for a moment you can, instead of trying to dull that down with the alcohol or the Netflix or whatever you're distracting yourself with, come into that moment and say, man, this pain is really profound and it's real. And I'm real. And I must be real for the sensory experience of feeling all of this. Then you can start to work from that space. If I can feel this much, what would I like to do to transmute that pain into an opportunity? What would I like to do to transition my perspective of there's so many barriers to there's an open door behind me? And I could turn around and go that direction. And so those are the things that I think, if we started that into the public narrative, instead of saying, ah man, so sorry you lost your job. Dude, you lost your job, you've hated that thing. You told me last year you hated your job, it was killing you. Congratulations, you lost your freaking job. What's the next opportunity? What do you want to transmute? What do you want to do next? If that was the attitude to loss, that we immediately saw a gain, a gain of function, if you will, in this whole Viromix talk, the gain of function comes from loss and transition comes from challenge or friction. So there's a real excitement that you're spot on, that we should celebrate years like 2020 Not only is it history, maybe it's human.