Speaker 1: I don't think dogs do that. You know, I picked
Speaker 1: up this stick on the wool. Should I have picked
Speaker 1: up that other one? I don't think they do that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So we have two lives because of
Speaker 1: this ability to reflect, and the dog just has one.
Speaker 1: I think it's probably more or less inevitable that the
Speaker 1: dog's going to love its one life more than we
Speaker 1: love our two lives.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: If you know me, you know that I love dogs.
Speaker 3: In many ways, it seems that the secret to a
Speaker 3: good life might be something that our dogs already know.
Speaker 3: Today we're talking with philosopher and author Mark Rowlands, whose
Speaker 3: book The Word of Dog does something remarkable. It takes
Speaker 3: some of life's biggest, weightiest questions, like what is meaning?
Speaker 3: How should we live, and explores them through the lens
Speaker 3: of our four legged companions. For me, this conversation hit
Speaker 3: right at the heart of When You Feed sweet Spot.
Speaker 3: It's about philosophy, it's about dogs, and it's about the
Speaker 3: age old question of how to live a good life.
Speaker 3: That's a phrase I first uttered in this show's intro
Speaker 3: over a decade ago, and one I've been chasing ever since.
Speaker 3: Mark argues that reflection, the very thing that makes us
Speaker 3: human is both our greatest strength and our biggest trap.
Speaker 3: We talked about why meaning in life matters more than
Speaker 3: the meaning of life, and how dogs, those blissfully unaware,
Speaker 3: joy chasing creatures, might just be the natural philosophers we
Speaker 3: all need. By the end of this episode, you might
Speaker 3: just see your dog as more than a best friend,
Speaker 3: but as a mentor him. Eric Zimmer and this is
Speaker 3: the one you feed. Hi, Mark, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks Eric, I'm delighted to be Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to talk to you. And I saw the
Speaker 3: title of your latest book, which is called The Word
Speaker 3: of Dog, What our canine companions can teach us about
Speaker 3: living a good life. I knew I wanted to talk
Speaker 3: to you right away because A we love dogs. B.
Speaker 3: The book has some philosophy which we like. And when
Speaker 3: I recorded the intro to this show got eleven and
Speaker 3: a half years ago at this point, I actually used
Speaker 3: that phrase in it, how to live a good life?
Speaker 3: So you sort of just hit the absolute ven diagram
Speaker 3: for one you feed guests. And I really enjoyed the book,
Speaker 3: which we're going to get to in a second. But
Speaker 3: before we start, we'll start like we always do with
Speaker 3: the parable. In the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking
Speaker 3: with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are
Speaker 3: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 3: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 3: and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second.
Speaker 3: They look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandparent says the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that param means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: What's really interesting about that parable is, and this is
Speaker 1: the philosophy me now coming out, So I apologize for that.
Speaker 1: Who is the feeder? So the feeder is the one
Speaker 1: who chooses which wolf to feed. But then the question is, well,
Speaker 1: why would he or she choose one wolf rather than
Speaker 1: the other. If they choose the bad wolf, then it
Speaker 1: seems they're already in some way aligned with that wolf.
Speaker 1: If they choose the good wolf, then they're already in
Speaker 1: some way aligned with that wolf. So in that sense,
Speaker 1: the feeder collapses into the wolf because the feeder is
Speaker 1: already aligned with one of the wolves, and so there
Speaker 1: is no feeder independently of the wolves.
Speaker 3: It's a very interesting idea. I think we can jump
Speaker 3: off and sort of talk from there. Most of us, though,
Speaker 3: we'll have the experience of we're at a decision point
Speaker 3: or a choice point of some sort, and we recognize
Speaker 3: these two things. Right. It could be the old classic
Speaker 3: Devil and Angel on your shoulder or whatever it is,
Speaker 3: but this feeling of being divided seems very common to
Speaker 3: being human. So talk to me about alignment in that sense, the.
Speaker 1: Feeling of being divided. I mean, I think the crucial
Speaker 1: question is how much significance do you a lot to
Speaker 1: that feeling? Does it show that your choice is a
Speaker 1: free one? You exist independently of the choices. You can
Speaker 1: choose the good wolf, you can choose the bad wolf,
Speaker 1: or your choice is already made by who and what
Speaker 1: you are.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. In another of your books, it might have
Speaker 3: been The Philosopher and the Wolf, you talk about memory,
Speaker 3: and you say that there's a common way of thinking
Speaker 3: of memory, as in what we actually remember, and you
Speaker 3: say that these are not really the key. There's a
Speaker 3: deeper and more I'm just going to read what you said,
Speaker 3: a deeper and more important way of remembering a form
Speaker 3: of memory that no one ever thought to dignify with
Speaker 3: the name. This is a memory of a past that
Speaker 3: has written itself on you, in your character and in
Speaker 3: the life which you bring this character to bear. So
Speaker 3: that's what you're talking about here. Right to what degree
Speaker 3: in the moment we think we're making a choice, How
Speaker 3: free is that choice? Because it is certainly influenced by
Speaker 3: and conditioned by everything that's come before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, I mean a memory. I mean, don't
Speaker 1: get me started on memory. Actually, my next book is
Speaker 1: on memory book. So memory is fascinating a much, much
Speaker 1: stranger than we have a thought. In the context of
Speaker 1: this parable though, I think the question is to what
Speaker 1: extent are we define by choices versus do we exist
Speaker 1: independently of our choices? So the power will suppose is
Speaker 1: that there's a person who can choose one or the
Speaker 1: other wolf. If that's right, then it seems we would
Speaker 1: have to exist prior to and independently of our choices.
Speaker 1: We exist, and then we make the choices. Now, the
Speaker 1: alternate view is, well, we're made up, we are constituted
Speaker 1: by our choices. There's no real choice in that second sense.
Speaker 3: I suspect is there a middle ground though, at least
Speaker 3: it seems to me. And I don't want to turn
Speaker 3: this into a discussion of free will, right, but a
Speaker 3: middle ground seems to me to be absolutely I am
Speaker 3: deeply influenced by my past, by my memories, by my conditioning.
Speaker 3: They actually very much constrain the choices that are available
Speaker 3: to me actually in the physical world, based on what's
Speaker 3: happened before, but also inside of me to a certain degree.
Speaker 3: I talk about this a lot, or I think about
Speaker 3: this a lot. Becustomer recovering drug add and the discussion
Speaker 3: about this seems to bifiur kate into a couple of camps.
Speaker 1: Also.
Speaker 3: One is the addict has no choice, they are completely
Speaker 3: in the grips of this thing. The other is this
Speaker 3: is all just a choice. The addict should just stop
Speaker 3: doing this. Right And for me, I found that a
Speaker 3: middle ground is what allows me to function, right that
Speaker 3: I can say, well, yes I am you know, at
Speaker 3: the moment, many many years away from it. So now
Speaker 3: my level of choice is completely different to what I
Speaker 3: had then. So I seem to have had less choice,
Speaker 3: but there was still some choice.
Speaker 1: It certainly seems that way. It's a very strange view.
Speaker 1: You know that the in fact choice is an illusion.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing. I don't know. I really don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a tricky question, and it depends on what we
Speaker 1: mean by choices. The underlying idea, maybe is that there's
Speaker 1: a difference between you know, your past fixing what you do,
Speaker 1: when your past influencing what you do. Yes, yes, distinction.
Speaker 1: So then the question is well, how do we understand
Speaker 1: the fluencing and is there a way of understanding it?
Speaker 1: Because the worry you write is always, well, okay, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, you've got your past fixes what you do,
Speaker 1: It determines what you do, is you have no choice.
Speaker 1: The other view is, oh no, the past just influences
Speaker 1: what you do. But what does influence mean? Because what
Speaker 1: we don't want right is fully influenced simply to mean random? Okay.
Speaker 1: Some people think, for example, that we're free to the
Speaker 1: extent that our actions are not caused by anything. Now
Speaker 1: I think that's a very strange and troubling view because
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine what it would be like, Okay, for
Speaker 1: your actions not to be caused by anything. You just
Speaker 1: simply find yourself doing something, right, So the actions have
Speaker 1: to come from you to be free in some sense.
Speaker 1: Then the worry is, well, if that's right, how do
Speaker 1: we understand what it means for an action to come
Speaker 1: from you without you determining that action? Because if the
Speaker 1: actions simply emanate from you in the sense that what
Speaker 1: you are who you are makes those actions inevitable, then
Speaker 1: there's no freedom there either. Yeah, So we need some
Speaker 1: kind of middle ground between what you are who you are,
Speaker 1: making you act, determining your actions. That's the idea, But
Speaker 1: we need to understand what influence means without appealing to randomness.
Speaker 1: That isn't going to work, right. It's one of the
Speaker 1: hardest problems of philosophy.
Speaker 3: I think it is. I mean, this is how I
Speaker 3: think about it. And again, I'm a dabbler in philosophy,
Speaker 3: and I also recognize that my arguments, ultimately for me,
Speaker 3: end up trying to be what's useful in living a life,
Speaker 3: not what's technically theoretically true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't.
Speaker 3: Think it's random. But I also don't think you can
Speaker 3: unwind it enough to really be clear. So for example,
Speaker 3: I could say, when I'm around men of you know,
Speaker 3: my father's age, and they look a little bit angry,
Speaker 3: I get really afraid, right, And I can make a
Speaker 3: story that says that's because my dad was angry when
Speaker 3: I was a kid, And there's probably some truth in that,
Speaker 3: but there's probably a whole lot el going on in
Speaker 3: there that I just like, to your point, memories that
Speaker 3: I can't even recall. I don't know what things shaped
Speaker 3: me in what way, because I think everything is doing
Speaker 3: a very subtle shaping. So I don't think it's exactly random,
Speaker 3: But I also don't think you can solve the equation
Speaker 3: backwards and actually sort out all the variables completely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean with memory. I mean, since I
Speaker 1: wrote that passage that you quoted, I discovered that i'd
Speaker 1: been anticipated by the German speaking poet Rilka Rainer Maria Rilka,
Speaker 1: who had this fantastic passage in a book called The
Speaker 1: Notebooks of Malde Laureate's brig It was his only excursion
Speaker 1: into the art form of a novel. He was a poet, right,
Speaker 1: and he talks about the most important memories are the
Speaker 1: ones you have to have the patience to forget them.
Speaker 1: Once you have the patients to forget them, then eventually
Speaker 1: they'll return, but their return in a different form. They
Speaker 1: won't return as memories, they'll return as something else. So
Speaker 1: he talked about memories being glance and gesture of blood,
Speaker 1: not to be distinguished from who we are. I think
Speaker 1: there's something deeply right about that. Memories of the standard sort,
Speaker 1: so called their pisodic memories. So I remember this, I
Speaker 1: remember doing this, I remember doing that. They're just the
Speaker 1: sort of tip of an iceberg and a far more
Speaker 1: significant way we'll link to our past is by way
Speaker 1: of things that used to be memories but have now
Speaker 1: come back in the different in a different form. So moods,
Speaker 1: for example, emotions you're not quite sure where they're coming from.
Speaker 1: They're coming from somewhere. They're coming from memories that you
Speaker 1: once had, but they become something else. I call them
Speaker 1: rilken memories, but it's not clear that they're really memories.
Speaker 1: We could think of them as post memories, if you like.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. It's the most significant link to the past. Now,
Speaker 1: where that leaves us with a question of free will
Speaker 1: is again just another very tricky question. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm going to pivot us towards your book, and we've
Speaker 3: been doing some philosophizing here to start this episode off.
Speaker 3: And one of the core ideas in the book is
Speaker 3: that dogs are natural philosophers. Talk to me about what
Speaker 3: you mean by that.
Speaker 1: Well, the claim that dogs and natural phosphus. It was
Speaker 1: originally made by Socrates, the ancient Greek phiosph but he
Speaker 1: was joking. He didn't take it seriously. Basically, it was
Speaker 1: a bad pun on his part. But dogs liking what
Speaker 1: they know and not liking what they don't know. He
Speaker 1: wasn't really being serious, but I think there's actually something
Speaker 1: to it. It's not entirely clear why that is, but
Speaker 1: I expect that the philosophical worries and anxieties are sometimes
Speaker 1: a bit like diseases, diseases that we suffer from, and dogs,
Speaker 1: being dogs are not human, they don't suffer from the
Speaker 1: same diseases as us. The disease model of philosophy is
Speaker 1: associated with Ludwig Wiggenstein. So you know, dogs get PAVO.
Speaker 1: We don't. We have philosophical worries dogs don't. And so
Speaker 1: that was one of the kind of intuitions that drove
Speaker 1: the writing of the book. I suppose I was struck
Speaker 1: by this initially when everyday Shadow, who's a German, sheper
Speaker 1: Shadow and I go for a walk on the canal
Speaker 1: that runs behind the house, and in the mornings, lined
Speaker 1: up along the bank of the canal will be scores
Speaker 1: of iguanas lined up a fairly regular intervals, and only Shadow,
Speaker 1: he takes off hundreds of yards north of the iguanas,
Speaker 1: just peel off into the water, swim to the other side,
Speaker 1: and climb up the other bank and stay there for
Speaker 1: the rest of the day. Okay, So the very next morning, right,
Speaker 1: they're back again and shadows start begins this process of
Speaker 1: exiling the iguanas all over again. And it struck me eventually.
Speaker 1: I mean it took me a long time, but you know,
Speaker 1: wheels turned slowly sometimes, and it struck me eventually. This
Speaker 1: was a bit like the myth of Sisyphus, where Sisyphus
Speaker 1: was immortal who offended the gods. The gods punished him
Speaker 1: by making him roll a large rock up a hill
Speaker 1: for all eternity. When he gets to the top, the
Speaker 1: rock slips from his grasp, rolls back down to the bottom,
Speaker 1: and he has to start all over again. So the
Speaker 1: idea is, if you replace the rock with the igua,
Speaker 1: then you've got pretty much the same sort of situation
Speaker 1: here now Sisyphus when when Phostop's talk about this myth,
Speaker 1: he figures in two ways. The first is as the
Speaker 1: epitome of a meaningless existence. So all we god is
Speaker 1: just repetitive activity. It aims only at its own repetition.
Speaker 1: There's nothing that we're can as success or failure, so
Speaker 1: a meaningless existence. But secondly, Sisyphus is also taken as
Speaker 1: an allegory for human life. We fight our way to
Speaker 1: work in the morning, maybe, and then we spend eight
Speaker 1: hours or so in this place where we do various
Speaker 1: things with mixed results, probably quite modest results, and results
Speaker 1: that will soon be wiped away by times passage. Then
Speaker 1: we fight our way home again in the evening, perhaps
Speaker 1: at home waiting for us at children perhaps not, you know,
Speaker 1: but if there are, then in a few years time
Speaker 1: they will have grown up and will probably doing the
Speaker 1: same kinds of things that we did. And so every
Speaker 1: day in our lives seems like one of Sisyphus's steps
Speaker 1: up the hill. We leave it eventually to our children,
Speaker 1: but it's the same overall idea stuff cheeriou stuff, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is the challenge of Sisvas' life is meaningless,
Speaker 1: and our lives are recognizably Sissyphian. But it struck me
Speaker 1: that actually, this again was I think probably the most
Speaker 1: significant inituation which guided me writing this book at all,
Speaker 1: was that Shadow was immune to this problem. This is
Speaker 1: probably the most meaningful part of his day. And so
Speaker 1: I said, well, I suppose that's right, because this was
Speaker 1: just an intuition on my but this is the most
Speaker 1: part of his day. How would things have to be
Speaker 1: in order for that to be true? And this basically
Speaker 1: started the various themes I talked about in the book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fascinating way of looking at things. And
Speaker 3: I do think this is a deep philosophical question for
Speaker 3: all of us, or a spiritual question some people would
Speaker 3: frame it as. But it is in the face of
Speaker 3: the fact that pretty much everything we do will be
Speaker 3: erased by the sands of time. And you know, how
Speaker 3: does anything actually matter within that? And you talk about
Speaker 3: Socrates in a second way, and you say, you know,
Speaker 3: Socrates supposedly said the unexamined life is not worth living,
Speaker 3: and then you sort of challenge that idea by saying, well,
Speaker 3: as a dog's life not worth living, and you come
Speaker 3: to a very different conclusion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I suspect that there are certain aspects
Speaker 1: of a dog's life that make it just as meaningful
Speaker 1: and perhaps more meaningful than our lives. But by meaning,
Speaker 1: I mean there's two ways. I think what we're going
Speaker 1: to get clear is what this talk of meaning is.
Speaker 1: So I mean when people told the meaning in life,
Speaker 1: they used to think of some kind of external purpose.
Speaker 1: Let's suppose it was supplied by God. God says, right,
Speaker 1: you know, this is why I'm creating you humans. This
Speaker 1: is what you're here for. That's your purpose. It's not
Speaker 1: meaning in that sense right that the book is talking about.
Speaker 1: It's what some people call meaning in life rather than
Speaker 1: meaning of life. The idea is what's required for you
Speaker 1: to experience your life as meaningful? And this is the problems.
Speaker 1: When you look at our lives from a suitable advantage point,
Speaker 1: then it seems our lives are going to be meaningless.
Speaker 1: Why would you think this repetitive activity that in the
Speaker 1: end e shee is very little or nothing is going
Speaker 1: to be the basis of a meaningful life. That, then
Speaker 1: is the basic question, what's required for them to be
Speaker 1: meaning in life? And dogs differ from us in certain ways,
Speaker 1: and I think the fundamental difference is that dogs have
Speaker 1: one life and we have two. This results from our
Speaker 1: developing a capacity or ability that is present in dogs,
Speaker 1: I think only minimally or not at all perhaps, And
Speaker 1: this ability is reflection, understood as the ability to think
Speaker 1: about yourself, about what you're doing, about why you're doing it,
Speaker 1: and your life as sort of a whole. And once
Speaker 1: you have this ability and it's I think it's a
Speaker 1: characteristically human ability. It's not present in other animals, or
Speaker 1: in this way, it's much more present in us than
Speaker 1: other animals. With the World Heavyweight Champions of reflect. Once
Speaker 1: you have this ability, then your life kind of splits
Speaker 1: into two. Right. There's the life that you live in
Speaker 1: the standard way, and there is the life that you
Speaker 1: think about, that you scrutinize, that you evaluate, that you judge,
Speaker 1: that you agonize over and so on. The road less traveled,
Speaker 1: for example, is a standard human anxiety. Or I made
Speaker 1: this choice? But should I have made this other one?
Speaker 1: I don't think dogs do that. You know, I picked
Speaker 1: up this stick on the walk? Should I have picked
Speaker 1: up that other one? I don't think they do that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So we have two lives because of
Speaker 1: this ability to reflect, and the dog just has one.
Speaker 1: I think it's probably more or less inevitable that the
Speaker 1: dog's going to love its one life more than we
Speaker 1: love our two lives.
Speaker 3: So I want to spend a minute on reflection here,
Speaker 3: and then I think we should go back to meaning
Speaker 3: this ability for reflection. We have Socrates saying, supposedly saying
Speaker 3: or coming out of that school of thought. That the
Speaker 3: examined life is the only life that's worth living. But
Speaker 3: we have another pillar of Western thought that actually argues
Speaker 3: kind of the opposite, which is the biblical story of
Speaker 3: Adam and Eve and the Fall. And you say in
Speaker 3: the book that you find yourself, strangely enough, citing more
Speaker 3: with the Adam and Eve view of our ability to
Speaker 3: have reflection versus the socrate in view.
Speaker 1: Yes, it did strike me as ironic. You know, someone
Speaker 1: who's spent his life doing philosophy, and here I am saying,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. I mean one thing we can take
Speaker 1: away from the story of the Fall. You know, when
Speaker 1: I start the book with Milton's, Milton's a kind of
Speaker 1: Adam and Eve. They become self aware and consequently very
Speaker 1: quickly become ashamed. Right, if they were a god, then
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear what his view of reflection would be, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the whole banishment from the Garden
Speaker 1: of Eden, the angel with a flaming sword to make
Speaker 1: sure you don't get back in that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So it's clear what his view of reflection would be.
Speaker 1: I tend to think of stories like this as attempts
Speaker 1: to say something, not describe something. That's literally true, but
Speaker 1: to say something that's nevertheless important, Yes, And I think
Speaker 1: what's important is that existence is always a game of
Speaker 1: swings and roundabouts. What you gain from some things, you
Speaker 1: also inevitably lose. So reflection has been great for us,
Speaker 1: you know, it's allowed us to do all the things
Speaker 1: we've done, you know, dominate the planet, all these sorts
Speaker 1: of things, in large part because we are reflective creatures.
Speaker 1: But they're also drawbacks, and there are certain things that
Speaker 1: we've lost because of this ability to reflect, And that's
Speaker 1: what the book is about, I suppose. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could see this just from looking at any dog having
Speaker 1: a remotely good day. Is they take a sort of joy,
Speaker 1: a delight in the marginally positive that seems to be
Speaker 1: beyond us. So, for example, I mean every day, at
Speaker 1: a certain point in the afternoon, I will go and
Speaker 1: pick up my younger son from school and I'll say
Speaker 1: the shadow he's not around, so I can say it
Speaker 1: now without any repercussion, do you want to come with? Right?
Speaker 1: And then he will explode into a sort of paroxysm
Speaker 1: of delight, running, jumping on sofas, grabbing his leash and
Speaker 1: trying to insert his head through the slipnot and he knows.
Speaker 1: He's a smart dog, been doing this for years and years.
Speaker 1: He knows nothing much is going to happen. We're going
Speaker 1: to get in the car. We're going to drive to
Speaker 1: the school. We're going to pick up my son, drive back,
Speaker 1: come back in the house. There's no dog parks, there's
Speaker 1: no chasing iguanas or any kind of At best, it's
Speaker 1: marginally positive getting out of the house and seeing things
Speaker 1: as he drives past. This is slightly better, marginally better
Speaker 1: than being in the house. But he takes such a
Speaker 1: sort of delight in the marginally positive. This is something
Speaker 1: that we humans just.
Speaker 3: Can't do, no, not very well. As I read your book,
Speaker 3: I was thinking a lot about I've done a lot
Speaker 3: of training in Zen Buddhism, and if I were to
Speaker 3: summarize what Zen is trying to get at, I think,
Speaker 3: and certainly what my teacher emphasized was a line that
Speaker 3: you said, which is basically not being divided like that
Speaker 3: your whole being is pointed in a direction, and more
Speaker 3: so that that emerges somewhat naturally, and the Zen ideas
Speaker 3: if you achieve enough. I don't know what word we
Speaker 3: want to use, insight wisdom that you're now not in
Speaker 3: this constant self doubt game, the constant reflecting, weighing everything right,
Speaker 3: and your actions emerge out of a place of wholeness
Speaker 3: and you engage in them in a wholehearted way, which
Speaker 3: ideally points you closer to where a dog is than
Speaker 3: where maybe the average anxiety ridden human is. Right.
Speaker 1: No, that's very interesting. I wish I knew more about
Speaker 1: tem Buddhism. It does sound like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to do aug in the book. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 3: Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask
Speaker 3: you something. What's one thing that has been holding you
Speaker 3: back lately? You know that it's there, You've tried to
Speaker 3: push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way.
Speaker 3: You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major
Speaker 3: saboteurs of self control, things like autopilot behavior, self doubt,
Speaker 3: emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's
Speaker 3: the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put
Speaker 3: together a free guide to help you spot these hidden
Speaker 3: obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can
Speaker 3: use to regain control. Download the free guide now at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash ebook and take the first step
Speaker 3: towards getting back on track. I said that we would
Speaker 3: hop back to meaning. And here's where I kind of
Speaker 3: want to hop back because this is the phrase that
Speaker 3: you used in the book and it was one of
Speaker 3: the ones that rang my internal zenal arm, which is
Speaker 3: that meaning in life arises when what you are and
Speaker 3: what you do coincide. Which is a slightly different way
Speaker 3: of saying what I just said. Do you see dogs
Speaker 3: pointing a direction for us in how we actually begin
Speaker 3: to have who we are and what we do become
Speaker 3: wor together or for us to be less divided.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's the optimistic me and the pessimistic me, and
Speaker 1: usually the pessimistic me wins. So the pessimistic me says, no,
Speaker 1: we can't be dogs, right, There's nothing, there's no possibility.
Speaker 1: We're irredeemably banished from the garden right because of our
Speaker 1: capacity to reflect. And so the very best we can do,
Speaker 1: right is just what's important to you is depending on
Speaker 1: what's necessary, and this is kind of dependent on our
Speaker 1: index to certain things happening in your life, depending on
Speaker 1: where you are are India life, you know, but there
Speaker 1: are certain sorts of moments where you can just incorporate
Speaker 1: a little bit of dog India life. Here's one example.
Speaker 1: Again it's part of the marginal positivity theme, but it's
Speaker 1: it's slightly more grim than the other one. So back
Speaker 1: in April last year, Shadow and I were out for
Speaker 1: a run a few miles from home and he gave
Speaker 1: out a loud shriek and dropped of the ground. His
Speaker 1: back legs were completely paralyzed. The vet thinks it was
Speaker 1: a spinal embolism and a stroke that where a bit
Speaker 1: of cartilage from his spine that somehow worked its way
Speaker 1: into his blood. The blood supply was cut off to
Speaker 1: the spine and as a result, he was completely paralyzed
Speaker 1: his back legs and this lasted five to ten minutes.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure of the exact time because I was,
Speaker 1: you know, panicking. But there's one thing he did when
Speaker 1: he was in that state, which I suspect it will
Speaker 1: always stick with me, precisely because it's the sort of
Speaker 1: thing I need now, and it's when he fell. He
Speaker 1: was lying in the sun, right and for a dog
Speaker 1: in Miami, you know, you don't want to be lying really,
Speaker 1: So what he did he wouldn't let me help at
Speaker 1: all because he was very frightened, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: but he used his front legs to drag himself into
Speaker 1: the shade, about twenty feet into the shade. He did that.
Speaker 1: I thought, this is a fantastic lesson, right, because what's
Speaker 1: the operating idea. Well, the idea is this is awful, right,
Speaker 1: this is absolutely awful what's happened. But at least now,
Speaker 1: in this moment, I'm slightly better off than I was
Speaker 1: in the moment before, sort of. I was talking about,
Speaker 1: you know what people need at different parts of the life.
Speaker 1: When you go to a certain age and I'm there
Speaker 1: pretty much, you kind of understand your strengths and weaknesses,
Speaker 1: and so the overall possible end games start to appear. Right, Oh,
Speaker 1: perhaps this will get me, you know, this is more
Speaker 1: likely to get me than that. Probably something else might
Speaker 1: get me, you know, but it's something. You know, you
Speaker 1: start to see the general outline of the end, and
Speaker 1: that can be overwhelming. It's a difficult realization. But one
Speaker 1: kind of antidote to it is this, well, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: try and make each moment just a little bit better
Speaker 1: than the one before, and then let the end sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, take care of itself eventually. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've often said, if there was a God and I
Speaker 3: got a moment with God after I got through some
Speaker 3: of the biggest questions, or if I had a wish,
Speaker 3: I would say, can I just be a dog for
Speaker 3: like an hour? I just want to know what is
Speaker 3: it like to be a dog? Because they do operate,
Speaker 3: it seems in such a very different place than we do,
Speaker 3: and yet they completely coexist with us. Every once in
Speaker 3: a while, I'm struck by the strangeness of it. I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is this is a completely different species? Who is
Speaker 3: my best companion? Yeah, it's an unusual thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it certainly is. And I don't know how we
Speaker 1: manage it, and I don't know how they manage it. Really,
Speaker 1: it all depends on similarity and difference and what's driving everything.
Speaker 1: Is it because there's so similar to us that we
Speaker 1: can be best friends with them, or is it precisely
Speaker 1: because they're different from us that they supply something that's
Speaker 1: missing that we can be best friends. So maybe it's
Speaker 1: a bit of both. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it probably is a bit of both.
Speaker 3: But I do think, you know, pointing to their being
Speaker 3: natural philosophers and not being reflective. It's one thing I
Speaker 3: can say is that my relationships with my dogs feel
Speaker 3: very straightforward. Yeah, you know, I lost my baby about
Speaker 3: a year and a half, two years, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think it's actually been just about two years a
Speaker 3: little over. And it's interesting, like grieving a dog for
Speaker 3: me has been a different experience because it's very straightforward.
Speaker 3: It's very sad. There's a lot of grief, but there's
Speaker 3: not a lot of complicated feelings around, like did we
Speaker 3: say the right things to each other? Should we have
Speaker 3: done more of this? You know, it's just simple. But
Speaker 3: our human relationships are not that way, even really good
Speaker 3: ones are not simple in that way. And so so
Speaker 3: I think that's one of the things about dogs that
Speaker 3: I love, is that the relationship with them seems very simple.
Speaker 3: But you say something in the book early on, and
Speaker 3: then you come back to it much later, and I
Speaker 3: think it's sort of the core argument ultimately, and you say,
Speaker 3: the more love there is in a life, whether through relationships, passions,
Speaker 3: or experience, is the more meaning that life contains, And
Speaker 3: that that's the language dogs are speaking say more about that.
Speaker 1: Yes, So the book was on one level at least.
Speaker 1: It was a sort of extended exploration of the idea
Speaker 1: of meaning in life. And the conclusion I arrived at,
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, was what meaning is is when happiness irrupts
Speaker 1: or is it a direct expression of what you are?
Speaker 1: I imagine the case of Sissifus, who was happy because
Speaker 1: the gods decided to be a little bit more merciful. Right,
Speaker 1: So the rock, the hill all non negotiable. They kept that,
Speaker 1: But what they did they made with his head to
Speaker 1: make him like doing this. So you love nothing more
Speaker 1: than rolling rocks up hills. I don't think that's a
Speaker 1: good way of thinking about meaning. And if that's right,
Speaker 1: it shows the meaning. It's not simply the same thing
Speaker 1: as happiness. So happy sis of Us is also a
Speaker 1: deluded dupe or stooge of the gods. And the reason
Speaker 1: this is not meaningful is that his happiness is not
Speaker 1: an expression of who he is. The gods have messed
Speaker 1: around with him, and that's where the happiness is coming from.
Speaker 1: It's not an expression of who he is. I argue
Speaker 1: in the book that meaning in life exists wherever happiness
Speaker 1: is an expression of an individual. So when shadow is
Speaker 1: chasing the iguanas along the canal. This is an expression
Speaker 1: of what he is. I mean because of his nature,
Speaker 1: the generations, the history that have gone into making him.
Speaker 1: This happiness he seems to exude when he's doing this
Speaker 1: is an expression of who he is. Where who he
Speaker 1: is has been determined or shaped or influenced backwards bias history.
Speaker 1: Wherever you have this eruption of happiness that stems from
Speaker 1: your nature. I think that's what meaning in life is.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, you're positing that meaning comes together when both happiness
Speaker 3: and that happiness emerging naturally from your nature. Yeah, is together.
Speaker 3: To tweeze this apart, you gave the example of happiness
Speaker 3: that you think is meaningless, which is the equivalent of
Speaker 3: somebody messes with your brain to make you happy. You know,
Speaker 3: someone comes into my brain, puts an electrode in that
Speaker 3: just keeps hitting the happiness button. And that's not particularly meaningful.
Speaker 3: I will be happy. And whether I would choose to
Speaker 3: do that or not, I might. I'm not sure on
Speaker 3: this question, depending on the day. But it's not meaningful.
Speaker 3: But we also see people who appear to be acting
Speaker 3: out of their nature, like when I was an addict,
Speaker 3: I was on some level acting out of what my
Speaker 3: nature was at that moment right now. Again, this would
Speaker 3: get into the question of what's my true nature, what's
Speaker 3: my condition nature, what's my wounded nature? But I wouldn't
Speaker 3: argue in any way, shape or form that that was
Speaker 3: a meaningful life. I really think your definition is really interesting.
Speaker 3: I often think about meaning in this way. It is
Speaker 3: a non intellectual way of doing it, which is that
Speaker 3: if you and I were to engage in a debate
Speaker 3: right now about whether one dog getting run over by
Speaker 3: a car is an important thing, I mean some part
Speaker 3: maybe like oh yeah, But then you'd go, but look,
Speaker 3: there's billions of dogs on the planet. There's always been
Speaker 3: billions of dogs. We've got more dogs than we need. Like,
Speaker 3: this is trivial. This is not a big deal in
Speaker 3: the grand scheme of things intellectually, and I can't best
Speaker 3: that argument. Ultimately, I kind of have to be like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess really it doesn't. But if I walked outside
Speaker 3: right now and I saw a dog that had been
Speaker 3: hit by a car laying in front of me, you
Speaker 3: couldn't talk me out of believing that me taking care
Speaker 3: of that dog was the most important thing. And so
Speaker 3: I think that's pointing at what you're talking about, where
Speaker 3: the meaning is emerging from who I am, not from
Speaker 3: my intellect.
Speaker 1: Right. I think the problem for we humans, right, is
Speaker 1: that there is such a thing as who I am,
Speaker 1: as who you are. But it's a lot more slippery,
Speaker 1: it's a lot more attenuated than it is in the
Speaker 1: case of animals, because we're always these two different things.
Speaker 1: And I think you articulated what these are very very nicely. Actually,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, where creatures who can take the
Speaker 1: big picture, right, you know, and from this perspective the
Speaker 1: medieval philosophers used to call it perspective of eternity, subspectia eternatarists.
Speaker 1: From this perspective, you know, you and I were just
Speaker 1: insignificant extras in this whole cosmic play. You and I
Speaker 1: were both sort of unremarkable people, living unremarkable lives, just
Speaker 1: like everybody else. And so when we die, well that's
Speaker 1: just one death amongst sort of billions, you know, what
Speaker 1: does it matter. So that's the view from the outside,
Speaker 1: if you like. But the view from the inside was, no,
Speaker 1: you know, life matters. We're hubs of meaningfulness, significance, all
Speaker 1: these sorts of things, and the case of the dog
Speaker 1: that you described, is the difference between taking an outside
Speaker 1: view of this is just one more dog. You can
Speaker 1: take exactly the same sort.
Speaker 3: Of view of your being.
Speaker 1: It's just one more totally. But there's a view from
Speaker 1: the inside, and then from the inside things matter in
Speaker 1: a way they can't matter from the outside. So the
Speaker 1: reason we're so confused, I think, is because this was
Speaker 1: a point made by the philosopher Thomas and Ahor time ago,
Speaker 1: fifty years ago. Now we know both of these views
Speaker 1: can't be true, right, either with significant or in not.
Speaker 1: We can't be both. So these views can't both be true.
Speaker 1: But it seems to us strongly that both of them
Speaker 1: are true, and therefore we can't find a way respectable
Speaker 1: way of abandoning either one.
Speaker 3: This is another area where Zen is interesting, because Zen
Speaker 3: talks a lot about this idea of the relative and
Speaker 3: the absolute. The absolute would be sort of that that
Speaker 3: big view of everything, right, it's just all dust in
Speaker 3: the wind, to quote another thing, right, Yeah, but Zen
Speaker 3: would posit there's actually a beauty and a freedom to
Speaker 3: be found in that. It also talks about the relative,
Speaker 3: which is our day to day lives as we experience
Speaker 3: them and live them. And Zen makes the point of
Speaker 3: they actually believe they are both true, and they are
Speaker 3: both actually different sides of the same coin, and that
Speaker 3: to be able to move back and forth be between
Speaker 3: them fluidly is an attribute. Yeah, to be able to
Speaker 3: take both those perspectives, the big perspective, which is like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, we're all going to die and the Earth's
Speaker 3: going to get engulfed by the sun at some point.
Speaker 3: So literally, how this interview with Mark is going is
Speaker 3: completely unimportant, and at the exact same moment, it's important
Speaker 3: to me, it's important to you. Hopefully somebody listening it's
Speaker 3: important too, And it feels that way. So it seems
Speaker 3: like maybe philosophers don't like that kind of answer because
Speaker 3: it feels like a cheat.
Speaker 1: I think they would like that kind of answer. It's
Speaker 1: finding a way to live. The answer is it's always
Speaker 1: difficult to explain, like two sides of the same coin.
Speaker 1: But what exactly does that mean? Yet?
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally totally.
Speaker 1: So I can see the value of the attempt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what the human condition is because we're effective creatures.
Speaker 1: Because with such creatures we have these two different views.
Speaker 1: They're very difficult to reconcile. But the key to living
Speaker 1: is is to try and find reconciling them. Right. Dogs
Speaker 1: don't have the problems, They just have one view.
Speaker 3: Do you think that reflection has become more ingrained in
Speaker 3: us as time has gone on, because certainly we can
Speaker 3: look back to you were referencing the medieval period and
Speaker 3: we could say that, from what we know, most people
Speaker 3: believed a certain set of things and didn't spend a
Speaker 3: whole lot of time debating whether those things were true.
Speaker 3: They went about trying to live them. But today we
Speaker 3: live in a very different world where I would say
Speaker 3: that the average person, I'm not gonna say average person.
Speaker 3: There are a whole lot of people who don't know
Speaker 3: what to believe or what they believe, which opens up
Speaker 3: an existential crisis of meaning because I can't say that
Speaker 3: life means this because God said it means this, right?
Speaker 3: And so have we become more reflective? Have we just
Speaker 3: had more ideas dropped into our space? Like how do
Speaker 3: you think about that?
Speaker 1: I'm one of those people that I don't really know
Speaker 1: what I'm thinking until I write it down. That's why
Speaker 1: I became a writer. Basically, I wanted to know what
Speaker 1: it is I was thinking, I think the ability to
Speaker 1: put things in a stable external form, writing is a
Speaker 1: sort of obvious example, expands our capacities to reflect on
Speaker 1: ourselves because most obviously we can remember what we were
Speaker 1: thinking about ourselves yesterday, and then we can add things
Speaker 1: to it, and so on and so on. So I
Speaker 1: think probably external systems of information storage, where the information
Speaker 1: can be about ourselves as well as other things, enhances
Speaker 1: our ability to reflect. So that would be a difference
Speaker 1: between us and the Middle Ages, where were people's grasp
Speaker 1: of writing was a lot.
Speaker 3: Less yeap, So ultimately, I think that you arrived in
Speaker 3: a place where you felt that the meaning of life
Speaker 3: that dogs arrive at is that love is really the thing.
Speaker 3: So share with me a little bit more about coming
Speaker 3: to that and how you think about and how you
Speaker 3: try and bring that into your own life.
Speaker 1: When I see Shadow chasing the iguanas up and down
Speaker 1: the canal, he loves what he's doing in a way
Speaker 1: that's very very difficult for me to replicate, to generate
Speaker 1: that level of delight. You know, it's something he does
Speaker 1: every day routine.
Speaker 3: Me.
Speaker 1: That's love. It's a love of what you do when
Speaker 1: they abide the love of life. So whenever this kind
Speaker 1: of love erupts from you is an expression of what
Speaker 1: you are. That I think is where we find meaning
Speaker 1: in life, and that's ultimately the connection between meaning and love.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily mean love of others. That's silly part
Speaker 1: of it, but it's the love of life. With life
Speaker 1: is a series of things you do.
Speaker 3: Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.
Speaker 3: Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices
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Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen
Speaker 3: starting today one you feed dot net slash ebook. Having
Speaker 3: that realization and seeing that in shadow, how have you
Speaker 3: found ways to bring that into your life? I mean again,
Speaker 3: knowing you're not going to be shadow right, what sort
Speaker 3: of one thing you do that helps you get closer
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 1: I try to find periods of time in any any week, say,
Speaker 1: where I will find things that I love doing and
Speaker 1: do just because I love doing them. Because the guiding
Speaker 1: thought is that if you think of work right as
Speaker 1: an activity that you do for something else, you work
Speaker 1: because you get you want to get paid, So that's
Speaker 1: an activity that has an external reward. I think what
Speaker 1: dogs are really really good at is picking up on
Speaker 1: the things that have internal rewards, where the reward is
Speaker 1: the activity itself, and the way we live many of us,
Speaker 1: our lives are kind of outposts of our work. Our
Speaker 1: lives are dominated by activity where we're doing something in
Speaker 1: order to get something else. So I think that probably
Speaker 1: one of the keys to a happy life, and this
Speaker 1: is something I've learned from dogs over the years, is
Speaker 1: to try and find ways. What we're talking about is
Speaker 1: playing way right, where plays is activity whose reward is
Speaker 1: internal to the activity itself. The more you can bring
Speaker 1: little bits of this into your life, the less your
Speaker 1: life becomes dominated by work, I think probably the happier
Speaker 1: and more meaningful your life will be.
Speaker 3: Or to the extent that you can internalize what you're
Speaker 3: doing for work and do it out of a different place.
Speaker 3: That's kind of the ultimate, right, And again, a lot
Speaker 3: of people don't have that luxury. I think it is
Speaker 3: a luxury. I think there are always ways to imbue
Speaker 3: what we do with a slightly different spirit. Back to Zen, right.
Speaker 3: One of the things we do in Zen is called
Speaker 3: work practice, where you do something like washing the dishes
Speaker 3: or sweeping the floor, but you try and do it
Speaker 3: with single pointed attention. And those things actually can go
Speaker 3: from being rote and tedious to kind of enjoyable when
Speaker 3: you orient that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and put it in the terms I sort of
Speaker 1: defined then that what you're doing is converting what ordinarily
Speaker 1: would be work into play. Yes, that's I think what
Speaker 1: we should try and do.
Speaker 3: Mark, that's a beautiful place to wrap up. I really
Speaker 3: enjoyed your book, and we'll have links in the show
Speaker 3: notes to where listeners can get it. And thank you
Speaker 3: for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you, it's a great pleasure. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for inviting me.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
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