Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. Right now, I'm excited to
Speaker 1: introduce my guest for today, Robert Wright. Robert is the
Speaker 1: New York Times bestselling author of The Evolution of God,
Speaker 1: Non Zero, The Moral Animal, Three Scientists and Their Gods,
Speaker 1: and most recently, Why Buddhism Is True. He's the co
Speaker 1: founder and editor in chief of the widely respected bloggingheads
Speaker 1: dot tv, and has written for The New Yorker, Atlantic,
Speaker 1: The New York Times, Time Slate, and The New Republic.
Speaker 1: He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and at
Speaker 1: Princeton University, where he also created the popular online course
Speaker 1: Buddhism and Modern Psychology. Thanks for chatting with me today, Robert, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for taking the time to chat with me. Scott, No,
Speaker 1: I'm really delighted to chat with you. I've read your
Speaker 1: book now twice in its entirety, at one when you
Speaker 1: sent me the galley, and again in preparation for the interview.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, and maybe this is you
Speaker 1: could connect this somehow to the principles of Buddhism or
Speaker 1: something or non attachment or distance or whatever. But the
Speaker 1: second time I read it, I saw things. I had
Speaker 1: a different perspective on it. I still liked it my
Speaker 1: a different perspective in that some of the criticisms I
Speaker 1: had the first time I read it are much quieter now. Good.
Speaker 1: I like that. That's a good direction to head in.
Speaker 1: Maybe you should read it a third time. And before
Speaker 1: you're going to say that, And I don't just say
Speaker 1: that to appease you. I find that an interesting exercise
Speaker 1: for myself in the sense, you know, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I see what I really see what he's saying there.
Speaker 1: So even if you know, I still have some like
Speaker 1: things that I like, I think we can add to
Speaker 1: the picture. I really like see what you're saying. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about a bunch of this stuff. So you
Speaker 1: start off with this idea of taking the red pill,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously liaking it to the movie The Matrix,
Speaker 1: and the idea that the only way to see the
Speaker 1: whole picture of reality is to see it for yourself. Now,
Speaker 1: how do you like in that to the process of meditation. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea in The Matrix is that people discover that
Speaker 1: actually they've been living in a world of illusion. They're
Speaker 1: actually in these little pods, and everything they thought they
Speaker 1: were living is really an hallucination. Now, I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: that Buddhism makes quite that claim, although there are some
Speaker 1: strands of Buddhist thought that take things about that far,
Speaker 1: but those are not really mainstream strands. What is central
Speaker 1: to Buddhism broadly is the idea that we don't find
Speaker 1: nature see world clearly, and that that's what makes us suffer,
Speaker 1: and that's what makes us make other people suffer. So
Speaker 1: a lot of reason to try to see the world
Speaker 1: more clearly, whether through meditation or whatever, in this view.
Speaker 1: And I basically defend the view in the book that
Speaker 1: indeed we don't naturally see the world clearly. Indeed, that
Speaker 1: leads us to sometimes suffer, and it also leads us
Speaker 1: to behave badly sometimes and make other people suffer. And
Speaker 1: I trace this to the way natural selection designed the
Speaker 1: human brain. You know, our happiness was not high on
Speaker 1: natural selections agenda, and neither was our always seeing the
Speaker 1: world clearly. I mean the bottom line was, traits that
Speaker 1: will get genes into the next generation are the traits
Speaker 1: that natural selection favors. And in those cases where suffering
Speaker 1: or delusion will help you get genes into the next generation,
Speaker 1: natural selection will favor those things. So that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have this quote here, our brains are
Speaker 1: designed to, among other things, dilute us. And you earlier right,
Speaker 1: evolution blessed us with a basically accurate view of reality.
Speaker 1: So I was confused what you meant by with a
Speaker 1: basically accurate view, But you're saying it distorts us at
Speaker 1: the same time. How are those two things true at
Speaker 1: the same time. Well, I think for certain things, clear
Speaker 1: perception has coincided with genetic proliferation, like a wall is here,
Speaker 1: or you know, some boulder that I might trip over.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's in my interest to see that clearly. Now,
Speaker 1: even in the realm of everyday perception, there are distortions
Speaker 1: that seem to be natural. So, for example, when a
Speaker 1: big object is hurtling toward us in the modern environment,
Speaker 1: it might be a car. We tend to overestimate how
Speaker 1: fast it is traveling. And that makes sense as something
Speaker 1: like if a wild animal is chasing you, you want
Speaker 1: to err on the side of caution, right, You want
Speaker 1: to think you know that if you're going to make
Speaker 1: a mistake, make it in the direction and a direction
Speaker 1: that leads you to be safe, not in a direction
Speaker 1: that leads you to be eaten. Right. So, even in
Speaker 1: the realm of raightforward perception, it doesn't always make sense
Speaker 1: for the brain designed by natural selection to give us
Speaker 1: perfect clarity. And I would say that these departures from
Speaker 1: clarity get more pronounced in certain realms, such as thinking
Speaker 1: about ourselves and our own motivation and what the self is.
Speaker 1: And of course in Buddhism, this is a big claim
Speaker 1: about a whole area of illusion Buddhists. I mean, in
Speaker 1: the strictest form, the claim is that the self doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: But certainly the idea is that we exaggerate the extent
Speaker 1: to which there's a kind of a CEO conscious self
Speaker 1: making all the decisions. So in that realm, I think
Speaker 1: I make the case that you know according to not
Speaker 1: just evolutionary psychology, but a lot of findings from just
Speaker 1: you know, garden variety psychology, there's reason to think that
Speaker 1: our conception of the self is confused in various ways,
Speaker 1: and so too with our judgments we make about other people.
Speaker 1: I would say that's a big area where it makes
Speaker 1: sense that natural selection would get us to judge people
Speaker 1: in ways that were expedient in a sense for our
Speaker 1: ancestors in terms of getting genes in the next generation.
Speaker 1: And so that's another area where a lot of skepticism
Speaker 1: of your kind of intuitive perception might be warranted. So
Speaker 1: I think, you know, you go through the world and
Speaker 1: you know there's something there where the tree is for sure,
Speaker 1: and that is a paved road I'm seeing and so on.
Speaker 1: That's what I meant by basically accurate. I gotcha. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: you know, in visual cognition they distinguish between top down
Speaker 1: processing and bottom up processing. It seems like you're saying
Speaker 1: a lot of meditation is to get us more in
Speaker 1: touch with that bottom up before the top town storts
Speaker 1: it in a way. Yeah, I think that's a good
Speaker 1: way to put it. Actually, I mean, it seems to
Speaker 1: be the case that you know, rawy input kind of
Speaker 1: gets processed from the get go. I mean, even to
Speaker 1: create a three dimensional view of the world, you have
Speaker 1: to impose certain assumptions on the data. Because, after all,
Speaker 1: your eyes, the surfaces of your eyes are just two dimensions.
Speaker 1: So to build a three dimensional model out of that,
Speaker 1: you've got to start processing the data right away. And
Speaker 1: then in some realms, especially judging other people or thinking
Speaker 1: about things we've done, you know, the processing gets a
Speaker 1: lot more elaborate. I mean, we tell these elaborate stories
Speaker 1: about ourselves and about other people, and this is, you know,
Speaker 1: a bad person, and this is a good person. And
Speaker 1: we now know that which category you put these people
Speaker 1: into will shape all kinds of things that you think
Speaker 1: about them. It can trigger certain cognitive biases and so on.
Speaker 1: But you're right that bottom up you mean starting with
Speaker 1: the raw sensory information. Yes, And by top down you
Speaker 1: mean kind of the imposition of assumptions and constraints on
Speaker 1: the information that lead to coherent in some cases narratives. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I see. The goal of a goal of Mindphon's meditation
Speaker 1: is to move a little closer to the raw sensory input.
Speaker 1: I mean, I tell a story in the book about
Speaker 1: when I was a meditation retreat and there was construction
Speaker 1: going on. They were building a dorm at the retreat center.
Speaker 1: And this is considered kind of unfortunate because it meant
Speaker 1: there were these loud construction noises when you're trying to meditate.
Speaker 1: But through meditation, you can just reconceptualize the sound. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you start thinking about it in a different way,
Speaker 1: it becomes beautiful. You know, you don't have to think
Speaker 1: of it as this unwelcome interruption. That's the way we
Speaker 1: tend to think of construction noise, especially if we're trying
Speaker 1: to meditate. But you can do the exact opposite and
Speaker 1: think of it as beautiful. And that's what I did.
Speaker 1: And that kind of thing is possible through meditation to
Speaker 1: in a certain sense, bring a different story to the perception. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's really kind of seeing things as they are,
Speaker 1: not as you want them to be or as your
Speaker 1: prior expectations lead them to be. But isn't there some
Speaker 1: instances where it's like really a good thing to be
Speaker 1: oriented or biased in a certain way with the people
Speaker 1: in general. Like I'm just thinking, like, you know, I've
Speaker 1: done some research late that shows that people who tend
Speaker 1: to see the best in people. That's correlated with a
Speaker 1: lot of really positive outcomes in life. Is that really
Speaker 1: such a bad thing to have that bias that you
Speaker 1: actually like lead with. There's going to be a strength
Speaker 1: in this person. No, I mean, I'd say a couple
Speaker 1: of things. First. There are all kinds of illusions that
Speaker 1: I'm fine with. I think, within certain limits, it's fine
Speaker 1: for me to think that my daughters are more important
Speaker 1: than other kids. You know, not that that's morally true,
Speaker 1: but just that, you know, it's a reasonable way to
Speaker 1: structure society. That you have these houses, they have these
Speaker 1: families in them. There's a certain efficiency. Everyone takes care
Speaker 1: of it. It works, The system works. I'm not like
Speaker 1: trying to you know, even though the idea that your
Speaker 1: children are special is in a certain sense an illusion
Speaker 1: that natural selection imparted to us. I'm not here to
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not quite that big a revolutionary now.
Speaker 1: I will say, you can go too, and you should.
Speaker 1: When you're judging other people's kids because of the way
Speaker 1: they've interacted with yours, you should strive to, you know,
Speaker 1: to attain something approaching objectivity that can be helpful, and
Speaker 1: you certainly should try to avoid building up intense ill
Speaker 1: will because somebody else's kid got some cheerleader slot. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this famous case in Texas where the woman plotted
Speaker 1: I think the murder of her daughter's cheerleader rivals mothers. Anyways,
Speaker 1: who's going too far by any reckoning? There's that. Now,
Speaker 1: to get back to what you're saying, I would say,
Speaker 1: thinking the best of people, I would say, first of all,
Speaker 1: if that's an illusion in certain kinds of contacts, it
Speaker 1: could be a healthy one. But secondly, given the kinds
Speaker 1: of judgments we naturally make in some cases that may
Speaker 1: be moving you toward a more objective view, it may
Speaker 1: be that your bias would have been unduly negative, right,
Speaker 1: Because there's all kinds of things people can do that
Speaker 1: just set off negative judgment, right. I mean, they can
Speaker 1: just be taking too long to order their coffee. It's Starbucks, right,
Speaker 1: and you start thinking, you know, if you're not careful,
Speaker 1: like what a jerk? You know? And when you think
Speaker 1: about it, that's pretty slim evidentiary grounds for concluding that
Speaker 1: someone's a jerk. And or they can say things because
Speaker 1: they're just not very diplomatic, or they're just not thinking
Speaker 1: about the way about your perspective whatever. There's all kinds
Speaker 1: of ways people can set off an undoly negative judgment,
Speaker 1: So it could be that, you know, the bias you're
Speaker 1: talking about is actually not a bias on balance, it's
Speaker 1: moving us closer to it just kind of objective, non
Speaker 1: judgmental view. I really like that. I really like that.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about, like you kind of talk about,
Speaker 1: what would it be like to not judge anyone is
Speaker 1: good or bad or you know, and just take all
Speaker 1: it to be one hundred percent category free. I mean
Speaker 1: that I don't know if we really should aim for that,
Speaker 1: And it sounds like you're saying that, You're not saying
Speaker 1: that's what we should necessarily aim for. But there are
Speaker 1: these filters we have on the world. You know, when
Speaker 1: you mentioned a lot of this, I tend to think
Speaker 1: of have you read a lot of Abraham Maslow? No?
Speaker 1: I mean, I know about the hierarchy, but I haven't
Speaker 1: really read much written by him. I've read a lot
Speaker 1: of his personal writings, and he really believed that self
Speaker 1: actualization as he was calling it, which I think is
Speaker 1: just very similar to what you're talking about or what
Speaker 1: the Buddhists are talking about with nirvana, that the self
Speaker 1: actualizers no longer these categories break down and you actually
Speaker 1: get to a point, and I think that it can
Speaker 1: be taken too far. But you know, sometimes like can
Speaker 1: evil be beautiful? Like he's like if you look in
Speaker 1: a microscope. He has this article where he says, if
Speaker 1: you look in a microscope and you look at a
Speaker 1: cancer growing without any notion that it's cancer, it's actually
Speaker 1: quite beautiful. And you know, that's a very controversial thing
Speaker 1: to say. I realized that for most of my listeners.
Speaker 1: But I think that there's a lot of wisdom there,
Speaker 1: you know, with things are just as they are, and
Speaker 1: then we as humans, you know, in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases rightly, so if someone's running with you with an
Speaker 1: ax trying to kill you, it's not to your survival
Speaker 1: benefit to stand there and say, wow, there's something really
Speaker 1: beautiful about the situation right now. But nevertheless, I think
Speaker 1: there's some wisdom to when Maslow was saying that, I
Speaker 1: think it dovetails with what you're saying, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I would say two things. First of all, a
Speaker 1: criticism of Buddhism is that carried too far, it could
Speaker 1: become a kind of a nihilism where you make no
Speaker 1: judgments at all, and right, there's evil as beautiful. And
Speaker 1: so I kind of have a super long footnote in
Speaker 1: the book about that where I say that, you know,
Speaker 1: for practical purposes, that's just not a problem. I mean,
Speaker 1: almost nobody gets anywhere near the territory where that would
Speaker 1: be a serious question, and the people who do get
Speaker 1: so far beyond judgment that it becomes a serious question.
Speaker 1: I think it tends to be the case that they
Speaker 1: have so let go of their own selfish needs and
Speaker 1: the selfish nature of their judgments, that it's not like
Speaker 1: they're going to go do a bunch of evil stuff
Speaker 1: just because they no longer judge, you know, eventually judged
Speaker 1: bad things as bad. So anyway, I think that's not
Speaker 1: a big problem. And I do think it's true that.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you take the extreme case, when I'm
Speaker 1: on a meditation retreat, you know, I have a daily
Speaker 1: meditation practice, which is helpful, But when I go to
Speaker 1: like a one week silent meditation retreat, you know, there's
Speaker 1: an intensified version of like what meditation can do for you.
Speaker 1: In principle, it's an interesting way to find out, like
Speaker 1: what would it be like to be some monk who
Speaker 1: meditates for four hours a day or whatever every day.
Speaker 1: I mean, you actually meditate even more than that on
Speaker 1: a meditation retreat, and you certainly One of the first
Speaker 1: things I noticed is, Wow, everything is beautiful. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was like I recount in the book when I
Speaker 1: on my first retreat, I came across I was in
Speaker 1: the woods, and I came across a weed. It's called
Speaker 1: a plantain weed. And when I had seen them in
Speaker 1: my yard, I thought they were horrific and tried to
Speaker 1: kill them. And I just realized, you know, it looked beautiful.
Speaker 1: And I realized there's no objective basis for saying this
Speaker 1: is ugly, and the other stuff is by it is beautiful.
Speaker 1: That is like a judgment that we have convinced ourselves of.
Speaker 1: It's not like a god's eye view, you know. And
Speaker 1: as a practical matter, you don't want people to go
Speaker 1: so far that they see so much beauty in a
Speaker 1: mass murder or something that they don't punish them, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it can be liberating to see beauty in a
Speaker 1: lot of things where you hadn't seen beauty, and to
Speaker 1: see more intense beauty and things where you had seen beauty. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that tells very nicely with that point, and you know,
Speaker 1: of course we need to be careful with taking that
Speaker 1: to the extreme. But there's just something really I feel like,
Speaker 1: really profound about this point though, that when we pull back,
Speaker 1: you know, as we'll believe that when we pull back
Speaker 1: all of our evolutionary heritage. I mean, in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, this is very consistent with what you arguing
Speaker 1: in your book that underneath all that is actually fundamental goodness,
Speaker 1: that goodness is actually probably our default, and that it's
Speaker 1: all these you know, evolved judgments and biases and all
Speaker 1: the kind of the internal drama that we go through
Speaker 1: all as it kind of take us away from being
Speaker 1: able to fully see that. And you say that, and
Speaker 1: you know you talk about that a lot. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I would say I would qualify it. I would say,
Speaker 1: if by default state you mean the way the organisms
Speaker 1: were designed in quotes, of course, designed by natural selection.
Speaker 1: I mean I put it in quotes because natural selection
Speaker 1: is not a conscious process. But if by default you
Speaker 1: mean the way we were designed by natural selection to operate,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say the default state is good. What I
Speaker 1: would say is that through meditation, it is possible in
Speaker 1: a certain sense of financial selections, agenda and reach almost
Speaker 1: a deeper default state. I mean, you might, if you
Speaker 1: wanted to get metaphysical, you might say, well, maybe this
Speaker 1: is the default state of consciousness. You know, maybe through
Speaker 1: evolution consciousness I mean, presumably consciousness gets created by evolution,
Speaker 1: but maybe because of the rules of evolution, consciousness in
Speaker 1: the course of getting created gets kind of warped. And
Speaker 1: maybe there's a version of it which you could think
Speaker 1: of as a default state, a very just calm, observant
Speaker 1: version of it that's not so attached to a self
Speaker 1: and the self you know, immediate agenda, a version of
Speaker 1: it that is much more benign. And when that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't want to sound too weirdly metaphysical here, okay,
Speaker 1: because I my consciousness isn't I mean, I'm, I'm it's
Speaker 1: a whole other topic. But I do want to say
Speaker 1: I don't think our default state, as organisms created by
Speaker 1: natural selection, is to be always good by any means.
Speaker 1: But in fact, you know, I'm trying to point in
Speaker 1: the book to some kinds of pernicious natural warpings of
Speaker 1: our perception. But it is possible to move yourself to
Speaker 1: a deeper state through meditation that is less afflicted by
Speaker 1: those unfortunate distortions. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I would say, you know, you look at people
Speaker 1: who are set to be enlightened. I mean, if there
Speaker 1: is such a thing as true full on Buddhist enlightenment
Speaker 1: and people argue about this, you know, they are in
Speaker 1: a whole different realm in this regard, and you would
Speaker 1: expect that it's an extremely benign form of consciousness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean default. I actually I would like to
Speaker 1: take that back. You know, our default state may just
Speaker 1: be kind of neutrality. I mean, we have all of
Speaker 1: these you know, if we talk let's talk about Robert
Speaker 1: Cursbin's model of the mind for a second. We have
Speaker 1: all these modules, these different selves, and some of them
Speaker 1: evolved to have different goals than other goals others of
Speaker 1: the self. So we actually have within all of us
Speaker 1: multiple personality disorder right in a way, because we have
Speaker 1: these competing drives and motives within us. And it seems
Speaker 1: like meditation is a good way of helping us become
Speaker 1: more harmonious and unified in that sense of self. Even
Speaker 1: though there isn't a single sense of self. But I
Speaker 1: would kind of make the argument that your book is
Speaker 1: not just validating the Cursbin model, it's actually going beyond it.
Speaker 1: And I think this is what I've wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you about for a while. In a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: I think your book could have been told why evolutionary
Speaker 1: psychology is not complete, and that could have been an
Speaker 1: interesting framing of the book, an additional framing of it.
Speaker 1: It does suggest there is a perceiving self that is
Speaker 1: not the simply the sum of the parts. In a way,
Speaker 1: it's not simply like we are more than our evolutionary
Speaker 1: We can be more than our evolutionary drives. We can
Speaker 1: have goals that I think truly transcend our biological imperatives.
Speaker 1: And I think your book actually makes that argument convincingly,
Speaker 1: even though that wasn't the stated argument of your book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think, I mean that part of my
Speaker 1: point in the book is that Buddhist meditation, mindfulness meditation
Speaker 1: in particular, is a means of transcending biological heritage. It is.
Speaker 1: Now that doesn't mean, you know, as you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a big believer in evolutionary psychology as a model for
Speaker 1: understanding human behavior. But this is a dis a plan
Speaker 1: of in some sense transcendence. I mean that word can
Speaker 1: mean a lot of things, but I certainly mean that
Speaker 1: you can define natural selections agenda in a certain sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you cannot behave as selfishly as natural selection might quote
Speaker 1: want you to, and that involves liberating yourself to at
Speaker 1: least some extent from the kind of emotional levers that
Speaker 1: natural selection uses to steer people towards serving its agenda.
Speaker 1: There are all kinds of feelings, ranging from lust to
Speaker 1: rage too much subtler feelings that you know are with us,
Speaker 1: I think because in the past they help you know,
Speaker 1: people get changed in the next generation their legacies of
Speaker 1: natural selection, and the process of liberating yourself from natural
Speaker 1: selections agenda involves liberating yourself from the control of these feelings.
Speaker 1: Those are the levers that get you to serve natural
Speaker 1: selections agenda. That doesn't mean you've become a person without feelings,
Speaker 1: but the idea in Mindful's meditation is that you at
Speaker 1: least give more aware of feelings, take kind of a
Speaker 1: critical look at them, and decide at least whether there
Speaker 1: are certain feelings you just shouldn't buy into totally and
Speaker 1: shouldn't be governed by Yeah. I keep thinking of Keith
Speaker 1: Stanovich's book the title The Robots Rebellion. You know, in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, mindfulness allows us to be more
Speaker 1: aware of how much we're being controlled by forces that
Speaker 1: are deep within us, and we can in a sense,
Speaker 1: rebel against them. Yeah, you've just brought feelings and illusions.
Speaker 1: I would love to talk a little about something you
Speaker 1: talk about the book about You say, sometimes feelings are illusions. Now,
Speaker 1: how do we know when our feeling is an illusion
Speaker 1: to when it's not? Well, it's hard. I think evolutionary
Speaker 1: psychology helps us think about it. So you take something
Speaker 1: like fear or anxiety, and when you're in a fearful state,
Speaker 1: like say you're taking a hike, you know that the
Speaker 1: area is rattlesnake rattlesnake infested. You know, anything you hear
Speaker 1: down by your feet, you're going to think, for a moment, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe that's a snake. You might even look down if
Speaker 1: it's a lizard, you'll actually see the lizard as a
Speaker 1: snake for a second. Literally think you see a snake.
Speaker 1: Now it's plausible, but that kind of error of perception
Speaker 1: is an adaptation, that's a designed in feature of natural selection,
Speaker 1: because you know, better safe than sorry. So false positives
Speaker 1: in life threatening situations are better than a lot of
Speaker 1: false negatives where you fail to get out of the
Speaker 1: way of something that is, in fact a snake. Is
Speaker 1: better to err on the side of caution. So that's
Speaker 1: a case where you might say natural selection designed a
Speaker 1: certain kind of delusion into us because it was pragmatically valuable.
Speaker 1: It helped get jeenes, it helped organisms and get genes
Speaker 1: into the next generation. Now it may further be that
Speaker 1: in a natural environment the problem gets exacerbated, And of
Speaker 1: course you might say, well, that's that's not a problem
Speaker 1: false positives, because in fact it did keep people safe.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you were decided, you know you yourself
Speaker 1: would rather err on the side of caution. Unfortunately, it
Speaker 1: means a lot of unpleasant fear, but that just seems
Speaker 1: to be the way we're built. So given the fact
Speaker 1: that caution is associated with fear, you know you would
Speaker 1: choose to live with the excessive fear rather than risk
Speaker 1: being killed by a snake. But then you move to
Speaker 1: the modern environment, you take a feeling like anxiety, which
Speaker 1: according to evolutionary psychologists is natural in itself. You know,
Speaker 1: were worrying that maybe your child who's wandered off may
Speaker 1: get you know, killed, or something leads you to go look,
Speaker 1: find the child and secure them. That part's natural. But
Speaker 1: then in a modern environment, various social anxieties get exacerbated
Speaker 1: and become less productive. Right, So, like, yes, it's natural
Speaker 1: to care what people think of us and to be
Speaker 1: anxious about it because what people thought of us was
Speaker 1: correlated with genetic proliferation. But what wasn't natural in the
Speaker 1: environment that we were designed for by natural selection is
Speaker 1: this suddenly find yourself giving it speaking to like one
Speaker 1: hundred people you've never met, and you know that just
Speaker 1: doesn't happen in a hundred gathered village. So that's a
Speaker 1: case where social anxiety, that is that it's core natural,
Speaker 1: gets exacerbated and becomes unproductive. I mean again, to certain
Speaker 1: points productive you should be worried enough about your talk
Speaker 1: that you get to talk done. But then once you're
Speaker 1: ready and you're having trouble sleeping the night before and
Speaker 1: you're you know, in some cases, you know, people have
Speaker 1: illusions of visions of themselves projectile, vomiting something they've never
Speaker 1: done while speaking, you know, people at phobia isn't that's
Speaker 1: completely unproductive, And so I think that's a case where
Speaker 1: the feeling, you know, it's just the Darwegian paradigm is
Speaker 1: useful in distinguishing between these feelings that are in some
Speaker 1: sense natural, arguably useful, and the cases in which the
Speaker 1: feelings are you know, in a sense turns of misbehaving
Speaker 1: by virtue of the fact that we live in a
Speaker 1: new kind of environment and are not productive in any
Speaker 1: sense of the word so interesting. You know, look, I
Speaker 1: think there's a really important distinction here to be made
Speaker 1: between and I try to make a distinction in my
Speaker 1: own writings between evolutionary adaptive and personally constructive. They can
Speaker 1: be two different things. A lot of evolution psychologists talk
Speaker 1: about adaptiveness in the sense of what was adaptive amongst
Speaker 1: our ancestors. But you know, I'll give you one domain
Speaker 1: which evolution psychologist talk about, so and them. You know,
Speaker 1: evolution psychologists love talking about meeting. They love meeting, and
Speaker 1: they're the only one I think. I think they talk
Speaker 1: about it a little too much. Frankly, Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I agree. Yeah, And this is someone who
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Meeting Intelligence Unleashed. But we're just
Speaker 1: going to ignore that that book, that book for a second.
Speaker 1: So evolu psychologists just well meaning a lot they talk
Speaker 1: about how it's a good thing having a bias that
Speaker 1: your made value is higher than your actual meat value is.
Speaker 1: So there's a whole literature in evolutionology on why it's
Speaker 1: adaptive and I'm putting adaptive there on quotes to have
Speaker 1: to not see reality clearly if you're a schlub, you
Speaker 1: know whatever that you know, a schlub means you know
Speaker 1: what I mean by shlub, and you think you're an Adonis,
Speaker 1: there's actually that confidence will give you a little bit
Speaker 1: of an upper edge then, you know, if you really
Speaker 1: saw you who you are for what it's worth. Now,
Speaker 1: that's not the same thing as over in the long
Speaker 1: run constructive, right, because ultimately that's going to eventually catch
Speaker 1: up with you, right Like eventually, you know, like it'll
Speaker 1: be better in the long run to actually genuinely become
Speaker 1: maybe not an Adonis, but to genuinely become a better
Speaker 1: person than you currently are in the long run. But
Speaker 1: you know, you do see in the literature a lot
Speaker 1: that they use the word adoptive in a lot of
Speaker 1: these senses that they even show correlations between I published
Speaker 1: this main intelligent scale showing that kind of over confidence
Speaker 1: is correlated with meeting outcomes. Yeah, well I remember. It
Speaker 1: kind of reminds me. I remember somebody once in the
Speaker 1: early days of evolutionary psychology arguing that premature ejaculation is
Speaker 1: not a problem because as long, you know, as long
Speaker 1: as you've gotten into the you know, initiated the process,
Speaker 1: insemination will happen, right, even if the woman's not gratified.
Speaker 1: But wait a second, I mean, you know, you're building
Speaker 1: a relationship. There's reason to care whether the woman is gratified, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's just not enough to say
Speaker 1: I agree. You know, the job has been done, that
Speaker 1: we got our genes in there, and now we're hoping
Speaker 1: for the best. You know. It's like that is a
Speaker 1: conflation between adaptive and personally useful, and the two do
Speaker 1: get conflated sometimes, you know, not by everyone, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a distinction. I mean, am I if anything, if
Speaker 1: I air irobably air in the opposite direction. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm out to define nancial selections agenda, you know, because yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's the spirit of the book, not unequivocally. I
Speaker 1: mean again, you know, love of offspring and so on.
Speaker 1: You know, when kept in perspective, is just a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: But that said, I think we should be a little
Speaker 1: skeptical about the agenda of our designer, because so often
Speaker 1: it executes its agenda in subtle ways. I mean, it
Speaker 1: doesn't by subtly warping perception. In ways it can be
Speaker 1: very consequential and can start wars and huge feuds with
Speaker 1: friends and so on that are unnecessary. And I do
Speaker 1: think mindfulness meditation, I mean, I think the stereotype of
Speaker 1: meditation is in some ways misleading. People think, oh, you
Speaker 1: think meditation can save the world, It'll suffuse us with
Speaker 1: love and so on. Is that that so much? There
Speaker 1: are kinds of meditation devoted to that, actually, but mindfulness
Speaker 1: meditation isn't one of them. It's just more that you
Speaker 1: become more aware of how your feelings are pushing and
Speaker 1: pulling you, and when you decide that a feeling is
Speaker 1: not constructive, you can get a little distance from it
Speaker 1: and be less obedient to it. I really like that.
Speaker 1: I really like that. I want to return this thing,
Speaker 1: said you said to you you kind of want to
Speaker 1: defy evolution? Are you equal opportunity with that? Though, because,
Speaker 1: like you know, we have there are so many positive
Speaker 1: aspects of humanity that also are evolved. I think evolution
Speaker 1: psychologists focus too much on the muck. But there are
Speaker 1: positive psychologists like doctor Keltner who have put an evolutionary
Speaker 1: framework things like all things like love, things like you know,
Speaker 1: there are so many positive aspects that also there's still
Speaker 1: technically evolution's agenda. So do you only want to rebel
Speaker 1: against evolution's agenda when it's the muck or do you
Speaker 1: want to full stop rebel against every No, I only
Speaker 1: want to rebel when it's the mock. Okay, Now I
Speaker 1: may focus on the muck, because that's the part that
Speaker 1: needs focus, right. I do think meditation can actually accentuate
Speaker 1: positive feelings like the apprehension of beauty and compassion, even
Speaker 1: when you're not like doing one like meta like loving
Speaker 1: kindness meditation. I just think garden variety of mindfulness meditation
Speaker 1: can make you more compassionate toward people. And I'm all
Speaker 1: for that. I'm for I guess I would say I'm
Speaker 1: for not just yes, accepting the positive legacies that natural
Speaker 1: selections left us with, and there are many. I'm for
Speaker 1: accentuating them if you can. And you know, I know Dhaker,
Speaker 1: I think himself is a meditator. I know he's very
Speaker 1: you know, plugged into the meditation community there in northern California.
Speaker 1: He's at Berkeley, but I'm a big fan of his work.
Speaker 1: I actually heard him on the radio last night, as
Speaker 1: it Happens, Yeah, oh cool. What was that? We'll put
Speaker 1: a link on the podcast for that. Do you know
Speaker 1: what station? I think it was actually a local Philadelphian
Speaker 1: PR show. He was called Radio Time's Cool with Marty.
Speaker 1: I think he was on that and they were rebroadcasting
Speaker 1: at night. It was about political stuff and his book
Speaker 1: on I think it's called The Power Paradox, but it's
Speaker 1: about how having power changes people, sometimes not for the better, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and how most people who get changed by
Speaker 1: power were necessarily power hungry before. You know how it's
Speaker 1: kind of part of human nature to kind of change us.
Speaker 1: Somebody hands it to you, you you take it, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It hasn't happened to me yet, but if they do,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm available. If somebody must say hand me,
Speaker 1: I love your sense of hearer, I love it. So
Speaker 1: there's a very profound point in your book about how
Speaker 1: the more that we strengthen, the more that we engage
Speaker 1: or in a sense don't rebel against the module, the
Speaker 1: stronger it's power becomes. Like in terms of self help development,
Speaker 1: like it is a more powerful concept as far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned as reading. I'm not going to call out anyone,
Speaker 1: but it's a very important way. And to me, it
Speaker 1: love tails with the expression, you know, feeding the wolf, Right,
Speaker 1: the more we feed the wolf, the stronger the wolf becomes.
Speaker 1: So it seems like, and I will say, as someone
Speaker 1: who's trying to practice meditation myself, the best description I
Speaker 1: can give of how I feel when I've consistently meditated
Speaker 1: is I feel like I'm not possessed anymore by anything,
Speaker 1: Like nothing is possessing me. Right, I think that's the
Speaker 1: best way I can describe it. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that dovetails with your experiences at all, but it feels
Speaker 1: good because I feel greater freedom to I don't know, to,
Speaker 1: just I guess, choose whatever I want to do. So
Speaker 1: is it that meditation linking that to this idea of
Speaker 1: the wolf is it because what I'm doing is and
Speaker 1: I'm meditating on some of these modules that I don't
Speaker 1: want to indulge in, but I'm not inhibiting it. I'm
Speaker 1: actually facing it head on in a way, right, and
Speaker 1: then therefore by facing it head on, it's quieting. Is that?
Speaker 1: What is it? Is that what's going on? I think
Speaker 1: basically yes. So I think, first of all, what you
Speaker 1: said is true. That you know, if you think of
Speaker 1: the mind as having these little specialized modules, like one
Speaker 1: of them wants you to eat and if you see
Speaker 1: junk food, it you know, gets you all excited, and
Speaker 1: another one I want you to impress someone, or another
Speaker 1: one wants you to do something else. And there's these
Speaker 1: specialized functions and some of them are yeah, can get
Speaker 1: out of control light hunger. First of all, it's true.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a pretty conventionally observed fact that appetites
Speaker 1: that are indulged grow stronger. That's what addiction is. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're addicted to a chemical that of course is
Speaker 1: not something natural selection anticipated, but it's a feature of
Speaker 1: the modern environment that short circuits the reward system. You know,
Speaker 1: a gratifying chemical like nicotine or something it's well known
Speaker 1: that if you feed the appetite, the appetite gets stronger.
Speaker 1: I think i'd say two things. One, you're right that
Speaker 1: in the book I kind of explain why I think
Speaker 1: natural selection would have designed things that that way, such
Speaker 1: that modules that win in the competition to dominate your
Speaker 1: consciousness over other modules get more power. But the other
Speaker 1: thing I'd say is so yes, in a sense, defying
Speaker 1: them makes them less strong. But as you did suggest
Speaker 1: there towards the end, defying can be a slightly misleading.
Speaker 1: You're not really worrying it because you're not pushing them away.
Speaker 1: And in fact, to look at this mindfulness therapy that
Speaker 1: has been effective with nicotine addiction, it's not that they
Speaker 1: ask you to push the urge to have a cigarette
Speaker 1: out of your mind. On the contrary, they say, imagine
Speaker 1: having a cigarette. Think about that, close your eyes, examine
Speaker 1: the feeling. Don't try to get rid of the urge.
Speaker 1: Look at the urge. Feel the urge, and the fact
Speaker 1: that you entertain the urge so long without the urge
Speaker 1: succeeding and getting you to actually a cigarette slowly gives
Speaker 1: you some distance from it, and it doesn't give the
Speaker 1: module the positive reinforcement. Right, So the module is like,
Speaker 1: didn't win that time, and that seems to kind of
Speaker 1: disempower the module. So it isn't defiance in a sense
Speaker 1: of pushing away. Yes, it is ultimately defiance, but it
Speaker 1: is a subtle kind of thwarting. Yeah. So you just
Speaker 1: reminded me of a beautiful passage in one of Overall
Speaker 1: a Maze books. You're familiar with the humanistic psychologist's role,
Speaker 1: may I'm familiar with the name, but that's about it.
Speaker 1: He has this fignette. He talks about a clinical patient
Speaker 1: who just had this fear, a rational fear there every
Speaker 1: time he's near a window that he's just gonna just
Speaker 1: compulsively jump out of it and kill himself. And it
Speaker 1: really has taken over his life and it has really
Speaker 1: possessed him. And the psychotherapist one day, you know, they're
Speaker 1: walking past a window and he's panicking and the psychotherapist
Speaker 1: opens the window and says, go just jump. When the
Speaker 1: guy says, in that moment, he was cured. Huh, he
Speaker 1: no longer had that fear. Ever, again, that's funny because
Speaker 1: it had the opportunity to get what it wanted it
Speaker 1: and he really he realized you know what, I actually
Speaker 1: don't want to. Yeah. Yeah, dangerous thing to do that
Speaker 1: for a psychotherapist. But I know right now you can
Speaker 1: imagine a lawsuit from the family. But I'm glad things
Speaker 1: worked out. Yeah, I'm really glad things worked out to
Speaker 1: And I'm also going to link it to something Carl
Speaker 1: Rogers says most of his patients have a fear of
Speaker 1: unleashing the beast within. There's this kind of this fear
Speaker 1: with a lot of these patients that they'll that somehow,
Speaker 1: if they are their real selves, it'll be out of
Speaker 1: control and they'll do horrible, horrible things. But he writes
Speaker 1: about in his books that, like, you know, the reality
Speaker 1: of the matter is that whenever any of his patients
Speaker 1: do the most horrible thing they think they would do,
Speaker 1: or they get that opportunity or whatever, that actually they're
Speaker 1: not really a beast. Their nature is not really what
Speaker 1: they most fear. I'm leaking all these things together on
Speaker 1: the spot in improvisational format, but yeah, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking a couple of things. One is that the modern
Speaker 1: environment makes it easy to be a beast. I mean
Speaker 1: in the sense of indulging your appetite. So there's like
Speaker 1: pornography online. There are drugs that will gratify your reward
Speaker 1: system without you, like doing any work. I mean, we
Speaker 1: were designed to have to work, you know, to get
Speaker 1: like a boost and self esteem. We were designed to
Speaker 1: have to impress people, you know, by that was the
Speaker 1: idea behind the way natural selection created the brain. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what I'm thinking exactly. I
Speaker 1: guess my view of human nature is that people can
Speaker 1: behave like beasts. I guess I'm a little less sunny
Speaker 1: than Carl Rogers. A lot of people were that criticize
Speaker 1: that's one of the Chris says the Carl Rogers he
Speaker 1: was too optimistic about human nature. Yeah, I'm probably in
Speaker 1: that camp. But I think, what when I use the
Speaker 1: word beasts, I don't you know something truly truly horrible,
Speaker 1: like you're gonna kill lots, you know, like you're gonna
Speaker 1: lose your mind and go insane. I'm saying, like our
Speaker 1: greatest deepest fears is what I'm saying. Yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, just decency and friendliness and generosity are very
Speaker 1: deeply embedded things, and they manifest themselves in all kinds
Speaker 1: of situations. And there is nothing that gives me more
Speaker 1: pleasure than giving directions to somebody who asked for directions.
Speaker 1: And that's an interesting and I think there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people like that, and that's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: because there's no payoff for you. Now, if you ask, well,
Speaker 1: why would natural selection design us to do something there's
Speaker 1: no payoff for? Well, maybe because you know, in the
Speaker 1: environment of revolution, there are basically no such thing as strangers.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's like, you help people and it
Speaker 1: may well come back to benefit you that they will
Speaker 1: help you later, who knows, But it doesn't matter, you know,
Speaker 1: for practical purposes. There's a very robust positive side of
Speaker 1: human nature for us to build on. And if I
Speaker 1: focus in the book on distortions of perception and their
Speaker 1: attendant moral concept quins, it's just because I do want
Speaker 1: to build on the positive stuff we have to build
Speaker 1: on and avoid the most calamitous outcomes you can imagine
Speaker 1: for the species. Wow, you sound like a positive psychologist. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm a fan of a lot of
Speaker 1: the work in positive psychology, as you know. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: of course, so I know I want to be mindful
Speaker 1: of your time. I have just a couple more questions.
Speaker 1: I really interest I'm really really fascinated with this notion
Speaker 1: of non self and what the Buddha really meant. Do
Speaker 1: you have the section like hearsay? Tell me what your
Speaker 1: interpretation is, and can you link that to this idea
Speaker 1: of specialness because I've been thinking a lot lately about
Speaker 1: like you still have an identity? Like identity seems to
Speaker 1: be such a strong part of self. Are you saying
Speaker 1: we should get rid of an identity entirely? So? Can
Speaker 1: you kind of tie all that together in a way? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I ask for what the Buddha meant
Speaker 1: by not self. I think the answers we don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, you didn't write anything down. Nothing was written
Speaker 1: down for quite a while. I think Buddhist thought probably
Speaker 1: developed for some time before much was written down, so
Speaker 1: there was a lot of oral transmission. I will say,
Speaker 1: if you look at you know, there is this famous
Speaker 1: Buddhist doctrine this self doesn't exist. Well, what does that mean? Well,
Speaker 1: if you look at the Buddha's earliest what is said
Speaker 1: to be the Buddhist's earliest discourse on the not self,
Speaker 1: it's not clear, oddly that he's actually denying the existence
Speaker 1: of his of the self. I mean, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: plausible reading, but there are people who point out I
Speaker 1: never quite says that. What he does do is he
Speaker 1: goes through the various parts of like the mind and
Speaker 1: the elements of human experience, you know, Buddhist psychology kind
Speaker 1: of divides human experience into five categories, like, you know, perceptions, feelings,
Speaker 1: so called mental formations, consciousness, the physical being. And he
Speaker 1: goes through them all and says, does it make sense
Speaker 1: to call this self? Like he says, you know, isn't
Speaker 1: it the case that your feelings you don't really control them,
Speaker 1: and they can cause you affliction? Right, they can be
Speaker 1: unpleasant and you don't control them, So is that something
Speaker 1: we should call the self? And the monks who were
Speaker 1: listening say, no, you're right, we shouldn't. And he goes
Speaker 1: through the whole gamut of every element of human experience
Speaker 1: and argues that you know, you're not controlling them, they
Speaker 1: don't various reasons not to consider themselves. You could read
Speaker 1: it as just therapeutic advice. In other words, if you
Speaker 1: can't control these things and they're causing you suffering, disown them.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, mindfulness meditation helps you do that. So, like
Speaker 1: you look at anxiety or something some feeling that's giving
Speaker 1: you trouble, you get a little distance from it. It
Speaker 1: actually loosens its script on you. It's less a part
Speaker 1: of yourself, and so you could just view that discourse
Speaker 1: on the not self as pragmatic therapeutic device. Now, most
Speaker 1: interpreters don't think that it's no, it's the assertion that
Speaker 1: it's a metaphysical doctrine. The self, whatever he meant by that,
Speaker 1: does not exist. That's a majority of you, and I
Speaker 1: think it's certainly the case that as Buddhist doctrine developed,
Speaker 1: that became a Buddhist doctrine. There's no doubt about that.
Speaker 1: It became a Buddhist doctrine fairly early on. At the
Speaker 1: same time, one reason I wanted to spend some time
Speaker 1: looking at that discourse in my book is I want
Speaker 1: to emphasize that people look leave aside whether you think
Speaker 1: the self exists. I mean, there certainly are lots of
Speaker 1: reasons for modern psychology to think we over state the
Speaker 1: extent to which there is some kind of solid, powerful,
Speaker 1: CEO type self in our conscious mind. Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 1: But you can also just think of it as like
Speaker 1: a meditative guidance. Like parts of your experience that are
Speaker 1: giving you trouble, you don't have to think of them
Speaker 1: as pardon yourself. Those are the beginning steps on the
Speaker 1: path of mindfulness meditation. Now if they do lead you
Speaker 1: all the way, if you become a super committed meditator
Speaker 1: and say, well, I have had the fall on not
Speaker 1: self experience, as some meditators do, and that can be
Speaker 1: a profound experience. I haven't had the full on version
Speaker 1: of it, but in retreats, I've gotten a little taste
Speaker 1: of elements of it. You might say that's all fine,
Speaker 1: But even if you don't go that far, I think
Speaker 1: the not self doctrine can be useful just in reframing.
Speaker 1: You know, the relationship you can choose to have with
Speaker 1: problematic feelings. I like that, But what about the relationship
Speaker 1: you have to your identity. I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: scariest things that dementia patients report is that their sense
Speaker 1: of identity is evaporating. I mean, it's a scary thing
Speaker 1: for them, and I'm not convinced that we all strive
Speaker 1: for that level of complete non attachment. We want to
Speaker 1: feel like we exist in this world as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I will say, you know, I've talked to
Speaker 1: some people who are very adept meditators, and I talk
Speaker 1: about them in the book, and they seem to me
Speaker 1: like they can make plausible claims of having realized not self,
Speaker 1: of having experientially apprehended and even in an going away,
Speaker 1: and also to have the experience of so called emptiness,
Speaker 1: which isn't actually what it sounds like. Well, emptiness actually
Speaker 1: refers largely to how you perceive the world. It means
Speaker 1: not attributing essence to the things you see, not having
Speaker 1: the feeling of essence, essence of tree, essence of like
Speaker 1: bad person, essence of weed, essence of flower so much
Speaker 1: you know, it's and by the way people have that perception.
Speaker 1: The reason emptiness is a mis leading term is they're like,
Speaker 1: it's all beautiful, you know. They're not like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: all hollow and meaningless. They're all, oh, it's luminous. It
Speaker 1: exudes this positive energy. These people who have that feeling. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if they also report having the not self experience, the
Speaker 1: people I've talked to, they are not freaked out. These
Speaker 1: are happy camp and you know they have trouble articulating
Speaker 1: to me exactly what it's like. But you know, there
Speaker 1: are some unifying themes in the things that they say.
Speaker 1: I'm convinced that there are these thresholds that meditation can
Speaker 1: move you beyond that are extremely interesting and they well
Speaker 1: move you closer to the truth. Yes, that's my sense,
Speaker 1: and may well liberate you in a really thorough going
Speaker 1: way from the kinds of kind of perceptual constraints and
Speaker 1: motivational constraints and interpretive constraints that natural selection has led
Speaker 1: the mind to kind of realize under normal conditions. I
Speaker 1: think that's a good point, and this is what I think.
Speaker 1: I think that it may seem incredibly paradoxical, but at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, the more that we reach
Speaker 1: that state that the Buddhists are talking about, the stronger
Speaker 1: our self becomes actually not the weaker, so actually the
Speaker 1: stronger our unity and sense of self, because all these
Speaker 1: other things that are possessing us and pulling us are
Speaker 1: not really you know, there are things that are that
Speaker 1: have biological imperatives. But the more that we can kind
Speaker 1: of get rid of I think we actually end up
Speaker 1: with the strongest sense of self well, and the more
Speaker 1: sense of continuity there is between yourself and the world
Speaker 1: out there, including other people. Unity, yes, integration. And I've
Speaker 1: had on retreat, I've had the experience of like whoa
Speaker 1: like you know, five days into retreat, I feel a
Speaker 1: tingling in my foot. I hear bird singing. It seems
Speaker 1: like the bird is no less a part of me.
Speaker 1: The song is emanating from a place, it's no less
Speaker 1: a part of me than the tingling of the foot.
Speaker 1: In the book, I kind of defend, I kind of say,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a perspective from which you could make
Speaker 1: the case and argue that our very tightly bounded self
Speaker 1: is naturally that's the conception of self. Natural selection would impart,
Speaker 1: of course, because it's the container of our genes, so
Speaker 1: naturally you want natural selection would build us to think that, yeah,
Speaker 1: the confines of our body are very special. Everything outside
Speaker 1: of it is much less important because that's how you
Speaker 1: get genes into the next generation is by thinking that way.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that that's like the metaphysical truth,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it's kind of hard to defend it
Speaker 1: is the moral truth. So you know, I think some
Speaker 1: of these deep apprehensions that I've had fleeting glimpses of
Speaker 1: that other meditator's experience on a more ongoing basis, maybe
Speaker 1: closer to moral truth and even in some sense to
Speaker 1: metaphysical truth. Although I want to be careful with that word,
Speaker 1: because I don't mean it in a super new aging way.
Speaker 1: I just mean it in the philosophical I think there's
Speaker 1: reason to take these claims seriously, and I agree with
Speaker 1: you that it certainly leads to a more productive well,
Speaker 1: a more productive in the grand scheme of things self. Right. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's just so interesting. You know, you kind of once
Speaker 1: you really practice this and you really get closer and
Speaker 1: close in the state, you find that truth, beauty, and
Speaker 1: goodness seem to be more integrated within the person and
Speaker 1: more available to the person. Yeah, that's really interesting, and
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, remember, the Buddhist claim is seeing
Speaker 1: things more clearly leads to more happiness and leads you
Speaker 1: closer to moral truth as well lead you to be
Speaker 1: a better person. I think on top of that, I
Speaker 1: think that is largely the case. But I think on
Speaker 1: top of that, in my experience, the apprehension of beauty
Speaker 1: deepens as you go down the meditative path, especially if
Speaker 1: you're like on retreat and you're really getting in the zone,
Speaker 1: and I think it's something to be grateful for it.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of unfortunate things about
Speaker 1: the human condition, but if the universe, the nature of
Speaker 1: reality is such that pursuing truth also leads you toward
Speaker 1: moral truth, happiness, and a deep appreciation of beauty, well,
Speaker 1: you know things could be worse than that, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a certain efficiency to the pursuit. It's nice, It's
Speaker 1: very nice. I'd like to end on that point because
Speaker 1: I think that'd be enough motivation for people to get
Speaker 1: their butt on the cushion. Yeah, yeah, quick fooling around.
Speaker 1: You're busy. Well, all the best to you in your
Speaker 1: new book. Thank you so much for chatting with me today. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Scott. It's been a great conversation. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate the trouble you've taken to understand the argument I'm making. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think it's a really worthy argument. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as
Speaker 1: thought provoking as I did. It's something you heard today
Speaker 1: stimulated you in some way. I encourage you to join
Speaker 1: in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's
Speaker 1: the Psychology podcast dot com.