Speaker 1: There really is a tension between being and becoming. On
Speaker 1: some level, being isn't enough because you know that life
Speaker 1: is also an unending series of problems to be solved,
Speaker 1: and we're all going to die, right, so we have
Speaker 1: to find some mode of being at peace within permanence.
Speaker 1: The best selling author and post.
Speaker 2: The number one health and wellness podcast On Purpose with
Speaker 2: Jay Shetty. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the
Speaker 2: number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each
Speaker 2: and every one of you that come back every week
Speaker 2: to become happier, healthier, and more healed. I'm so grateful
Speaker 2: for our incredible community and all the love and support
Speaker 2: and energy that I've been seeing already at the beginning
Speaker 2: of this year, and I'm so excited to be talking
Speaker 2: to you today. I can't believe it. My new book,
Speaker 2: Eight Rules of Love is out and I cannot wait
Speaker 2: to share it with you. I am so so excited
Speaker 2: for you to read this book, for you to listen
Speaker 2: to this book. I read the audiobook. If you haven't
Speaker 2: got it already, make sure you go to eight Rules
Speaker 2: of Love dot com. It's dedicated to anyone who's trying
Speaker 2: to find, keep, or let go of love. So if
Speaker 2: you've got friends that are dating, broken up, or struggling
Speaker 2: with love, make sure you grab this book. And I'd
Speaker 2: love to invite you to come and see me for
Speaker 2: my global tour Love Rules. Go to jshellytour dot com
Speaker 2: to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences, and more.
Speaker 2: I can't wait to see you this year. And today's
Speaker 2: guest is someone that I've been reading his books for
Speaker 2: quite a while. We were just discussing beforehand. Probably started
Speaker 2: reading his work around thirteen years ago or thereabouts, and
Speaker 2: I just read his latest book, which I'm going to
Speaker 2: tell you about today, and we'll be discussing some of
Speaker 2: that work today. And it's amazing to see how someone's deepened, expanded,
Speaker 2: continued their thought, especially when they write in a very
Speaker 2: logical but also documentari way. And so I'm talking about
Speaker 2: Sam Harris and neuroscientist, philosopher, and author of five New
Speaker 2: York Times best sellers. Sam's work covers a wide range
Speaker 2: of topics neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation, practice, rationality, and
Speaker 2: Sam focuses on how a growing understanding of ourselves and
Speaker 2: the world is changing our sense of how we should live.
Speaker 2: Some of The books include the End of Faith, The
Speaker 2: Moral Landscape, which is the first book I read, Free Will, Lying,
Speaker 2: and Waking Up. Sam hosts the popular Making Sense podcast
Speaker 2: and is the creator of the Waking Up app. Please
Speaker 2: welcome to the show, Sam Harris. Sam, thank you for
Speaker 2: doing this.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, pleasure. Great to meet you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great to meet you. This is the first
Speaker 2: time we've never interacted before. This no messages, no text.
Speaker 1: First time in the same rooms. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, But it's always I love diving in with an
Speaker 2: author that I've read before. And so, as you said
Speaker 2: a few brief moments ago, even though we've not met,
Speaker 2: I hope that I have somewhat of an understanding and
Speaker 2: insight into your mind. But I always look to extend
Speaker 2: and expand that. Today I want to dive straight in,
Speaker 2: and I want to pick out a quote here from you.
Speaker 2: You said, most of us spend our time seeking happiness
Speaker 2: and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search.
Speaker 2: Each of us is looking for a path back to
Speaker 2: the present. We're trying to find good enough reasons to
Speaker 2: be satisfied. Now, my question is what's worth pursuing or
Speaker 2: what is worthy of pursuit in life, because I guess
Speaker 2: that's probably a good place to start.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, there really is a tension between being and becoming, right,
Speaker 1: I think we live with this tension every moment of
Speaker 1: our lives, and I think the domain of our spiritual
Speaker 1: concerns really focuses on the being part.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Just spirituality, for lack of a better word, is whatever
Speaker 1: you put in the space, provided it is an answer
Speaker 1: to the question of how is it possible to be
Speaker 1: fulfilled in the present moment, in the midst of whatever's happening,
Speaker 1: Knowing that experience is always changing, Knowing that you can't
Speaker 1: possibly create an experience that doesn't change, how is it
Speaker 1: possible to be at peace with the flux? Right? So
Speaker 1: that's and really finding a mode of being that wherein
Speaker 1: you you can recognize a type of fulfillment that isn't
Speaker 1: predicated on the next good thing happening. Right, the story
Speaker 1: you're telling yourself about the future that may in fact
Speaker 1: never arrive. On some level, being isn't enough because they
Speaker 1: are all the ways in the ways the world might be, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's the possibility space of what we can create,
Speaker 1: and what we want to create takes effort, and so
Speaker 1: there's all these things that are not actualized now, even
Speaker 1: if we're content now. And I think the domain of
Speaker 1: our becoming, I mean, there's all kinds of healthy ways
Speaker 1: of unhealthy ways of becoming, but the healthy mode of becoming,
Speaker 1: at least one part of it is it really subsumes
Speaker 1: our ethical lives. Right, It's like, just what is it?
Speaker 1: What would be good to do? What is positive? What
Speaker 1: is pro social? How can we make the world a
Speaker 1: better place? How can we raise our kids to be
Speaker 1: wise and honest and content? And I mean all of
Speaker 1: these are projects that take work, and so it's not
Speaker 1: just a matter of just chilling out perfectly and watching
Speaker 1: what happens. We do have to do things. So the
Speaker 1: tension really is in being at peace in the meditative
Speaker 1: sense and the contemplative sense and the spiritual sense, even
Speaker 1: while you make great effort to accomplish things. And I
Speaker 1: think the piece part comes when you recognize that your
Speaker 1: happiness is not actually predicated on getting any of those
Speaker 1: things done. I mean that you have to learn to
Speaker 1: love the process. You have to learn to recognize that
Speaker 1: goals themselves, as valid as they might be to achieve
Speaker 1: the experience of achieving them is very brief, and it
Speaker 1: has this mirage like quality where it just it recedes.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been thinking about this thing for a
Speaker 1: year and you finally get to that landmark, and what
Speaker 1: is it. Well, it's just another moment of being alive.
Speaker 1: And now you've got your thoughts about the past and
Speaker 1: the future still, and the question is can you actually
Speaker 1: make full contact with the present moment? And so in
Speaker 1: the quote you read, my main point was most people,
Speaker 1: if you don't know how to meditate, you're basically trying
Speaker 1: to arrange the world to give you a good enough
Speaker 1: reason to recognize that the present moment is enough. Right,
Speaker 1: And once you actually know how to meditate, you can
Speaker 1: sink into the present moment regardless of what else you're
Speaker 1: struggling to accomplish. And so you can be you can
Speaker 1: sort of take the goals as the path, right, I
Speaker 1: mean kind of emotionally and cognitively, you sort of you've
Speaker 1: already arrived in terms of your own concerns about your
Speaker 1: own well being. And yet you know that life is
Speaker 1: also an unending series of problems to be solved. Right,
Speaker 1: But you're I mean, we're all going to die, right,
Speaker 1: It's not there's there's no solution to the the the
Speaker 1: massive problem of impermanence, right, so we have to find
Speaker 1: some mode of being at peace with impermanence. And and
Speaker 1: that's really that's where the contemplate of life comes in.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about pursuing peace. We're talking about pursuing
Speaker 2: this ability to navigate between, as you were saying, being
Speaker 2: at peace with where you are now, but at the
Speaker 2: same time growing and progressing and loving the process as well.
Speaker 2: How do you define, just for everyone who's listening, because
Speaker 2: I know you do this a lot in the book
Speaker 2: and in your work as well, how do you define
Speaker 2: spirituality and how do you define religion so that people
Speaker 2: can just make sense of those terms as we use
Speaker 2: them throughout this yeah conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, so I tend you, as you probably know,
Speaker 1: I tend to be a critic of organized religion because
Speaker 1: it just forget about the tribalism that religion so often
Speaker 1: in genders, and the conflict born of that tribal as.
Speaker 1: I just think we need a twenty first century conversation
Speaker 1: about human wisdom and human happiness. And you know, spirituality
Speaker 1: is a word I use, although I use it somewhat
Speaker 1: in scare quotes because people have associations with it that
Speaker 1: I think are just not helpful. So my argument is, really,
Speaker 1: you can have a twenty first century conversation about reality
Speaker 1: and how to live within it, or you can have
Speaker 1: a seventh century conversation or a fifth century BC conversation.
Speaker 1: You can you can locate yourself at any point in
Speaker 1: human history, or you can at this moment decide to
Speaker 1: avail yourself of all of the best ideas and just
Speaker 1: recognize that we have really a common inheritance of wisdom
Speaker 1: and insight and can we can use whatever works right,
Speaker 1: And ultimately we have to be the best judges of
Speaker 1: what works given the needs of the moment, given technological
Speaker 1: changes that could never have been foreseen by our ancestors. Right, So,
Speaker 1: whether we do this with the US Constitution, or we
Speaker 1: do it with the Bible, or we do it with
Speaker 1: with the Polycanon, you know, the Buddhist scripture, it's just
Speaker 1: you can There's no question that our ancestors have created
Speaker 1: documents and ways of thinking and methodologies, you know, science
Speaker 1: being one, the contemplative practice being another, that are incredibly
Speaker 1: valuable to us. But we have to recognize that, you know,
Speaker 1: in this moment in time, all we have is human
Speaker 1: conversation and human intuition and human insight by which to navigate.
Speaker 1: And so I just for the religion piece to be
Speaker 1: dogmatically attached to a specific religion, as though it were
Speaker 1: the one true way of seeing everything, that just doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense to me at this moment. It's analogous
Speaker 1: to wanting to say that the physics is a Christian phenomenon,
Speaker 1: because the Christians, for the most part, were the first
Speaker 1: people to actually make real breakthroughs in physics. Well, it's
Speaker 1: just there's no reason to speak of Christian physics or
Speaker 1: Muslim algebra. And ultimately I think that there will be
Speaker 1: no reason to speak of Christian or Buddhist or Hindu spirituality.
Speaker 1: I think we have a common human project, and whatever
Speaker 1: is true of the human mind and its possibilities, there
Speaker 1: has to be a way of talking about that that
Speaker 1: truly transcends culture. And certainly it isn't sectarian in any
Speaker 1: usual sense, in the same way that science, when it's
Speaker 1: working transcends culture and isn't sectarian. I mean, there's no
Speaker 1: Japanese science versus American science versus you know, there's just
Speaker 1: there's just science spirituality for better or worse, is a
Speaker 1: word that I think we still need to use because
Speaker 1: I tend to. I also talk about the contemplative life
Speaker 1: or wisdom traditions and specific practices like meditation, but it
Speaker 1: names an approach to well being that isn't predicated on
Speaker 1: all of the usual seeking to become happy. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's not about getting wealthier, it's not a it's not
Speaker 1: about getting healthier and fitter. And those are all worthwhile
Speaker 1: projects and they're not in conflict with spirituality. But the
Speaker 1: spiritual piece in spirituality is how is it possible to
Speaker 1: pay attention in this moment so as to not suffer unnecessarily? Right?
Speaker 1: And what are the actual mechanics of our psychological suffering
Speaker 1: such that we do suffer unnecessarily so much of the time,
Speaker 1: And when you look closely at all that it really
Speaker 1: is a matter of being lost in thought almost all
Speaker 1: of the time, and there's kind of this living, this
Speaker 1: waking dreamscape of thought where we're talking to ourselves moment
Speaker 1: to moment, we're not aware of it, and so much
Speaker 1: of that conversation is an unhappy one. And meditation is
Speaker 1: really a way of breaking that spell and waking up
Speaker 1: from the dream of discressivity and identification with thought such
Speaker 1: you can recognize that consciousness that by which everything is
Speaker 1: seen and known and experienced and felt right, just the
Speaker 1: qualitative character of your own being in this moment. Consciousness
Speaker 1: has certain qualities that are intrinsically peaceful and gratifying and
Speaker 1: not and free of problems, right. And it's really the
Speaker 1: layer of thought that we fail to recognize all that
Speaker 1: and feel that our you know, every waking moment is
Speaker 1: some form of emergency that has to be responded to
Speaker 1: or reacted to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the way you define spirituality, in
Speaker 2: the way you talk about it, I feel like it's
Speaker 2: definitely more and more appealing today. I think it's definitely
Speaker 2: something that, as you said, we need a twenty first
Speaker 2: century version of what we're pursuing and how we think
Speaker 2: about reality. And I think those conversations are happening more
Speaker 2: often and more strongly and in more important circles. I
Speaker 2: have this question because I've often thought about this. You've
Speaker 2: well documented the pitfalls of organized religion and the challenges
Speaker 2: that come with that. What do you think of the
Speaker 2: pitfalls or challenges of spirituality in the fact that we
Speaker 2: move away from something, as you said earlier, was like,
Speaker 2: you know, this very defined, structured way of living that
Speaker 2: we've now come to look at it and gone, okay,
Speaker 2: that doesn't make sense all the time. And at the
Speaker 2: other end, we have a complete kind of open paradigm
Speaker 2: of spirituality, which can often be confusing, lacking structure, lacking
Speaker 2: somewhat of a map, Like do you see certain pitfalls
Speaker 2: as to how we practice and become contemplative about spirituality?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, so I should say that much that goes
Speaker 1: by the name of spirituality is also something that is
Speaker 1: worth being skeptical of.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: There many beliefs that people form, and many of these
Speaker 1: are imported from religion. They just can't be squared with
Speaker 1: a sophisticated scientific view of just what reality is. Like.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not to say we've figured everything out.
Speaker 1: I mean we we certainly haven't, But we just know
Speaker 1: that that certain superstitious, magical, other worldly beliefs are just
Speaker 1: not likely to be true. And and yet the most
Speaker 1: important spiritual claims traditionally, like the fact that the unconditional
Speaker 1: love is a possible state of mind, right, or that
Speaker 1: the self as it's normally felt and conceived is actually
Speaker 1: illusory right that we're taken in by a powerful illusion
Speaker 1: of separateness, and that's that feeling of separateness can be
Speaker 1: inspected and ultimately penetrated and felt through and felt beyond.
Speaker 1: Those are really those are the babies in the bathwater
Speaker 1: of religion and spirituality that I think everyone, if they
Speaker 1: think about it long enough, wants to conserve. And yet
Speaker 1: and and those are fully supported by a modern discussion
Speaker 1: of the human mind, and even a neuroanatomical discussion of
Speaker 1: the human mind. And there's no in my as you know,
Speaker 1: my phgs and neuroscience that I can tell you there's
Speaker 1: no place in the brain for a a an unchanging
Speaker 1: ego to be hiding, right, And the sense that we
Speaker 1: have a self that is unchanging, that's carried through from
Speaker 1: moment to moment, that is the place from which we
Speaker 1: appropriate experience that is separate from experience that is just granted,
Speaker 1: it's a powerful illusion for many people, but it's a
Speaker 1: it's an illusion that that can be dispelled, and once dispelled,
Speaker 1: it actually brings your your experience into closer register with
Speaker 1: what we have every reason to believe neuroscientifically about just
Speaker 1: the way the mind should be based on on the
Speaker 1: way the brain is. If you wander into the spiritual
Speaker 1: side of a bookstore, if you can even find a
Speaker 1: physical bookstore these days, it's been it's been a while,
Speaker 1: so I've been in one, but they're few and far
Speaker 1: between at the moments, definitely. But if you so in
Speaker 1: that section of the bookstore, there's a lot on the
Speaker 1: shelves that is bogus or semi bogus, or you know,
Speaker 1: filled with wishful thinking and not so interesting intellectually or ethically, frankly,
Speaker 1: but there's there's a lot that is truly valid. And
Speaker 1: I think we just have to become wiser curators of
Speaker 1: the totality of human conversation in the world's literature to
Speaker 1: find what is worthy of our credence at this point.
Speaker 1: And this is what we do this naturally, and I
Speaker 1: think we just need to be honest that we are
Speaker 1: the ones like when you go to an ancient text,
Speaker 1: when you go to the you take your your favorite
Speaker 1: spiritual or religious book. In almost all of them, there
Speaker 1: are passages that are obviously anachronistic and just not suited
Speaker 1: to a twenty first century view of just how we
Speaker 1: should live. Right, So there's a lot about how to
Speaker 1: sacrifice goats, you know, in the in the Old Testament,
Speaker 1: and it's just if it was ever useful, it's not
Speaker 1: not especially useful. Now people effortlessly ignore those passages and
Speaker 1: that's fine. So you're you're performing editing on the fly,
Speaker 1: and then you then you find, you know, a passage
Speaker 1: in an Ecclesiastes or Jesus you're giving the Sermon on
Speaker 1: the Mount and you know the Golden Rule, and you say, okay,
Speaker 1: this is this really encapsulates a lot of wisdom, and
Speaker 1: it's very hard to improve on the Golden rule. The
Speaker 1: Golden rules are fantastic heuristic for just living ethically with
Speaker 1: people so great there's nothing we need to believe on
Speaker 1: insufficient evidence to use the Golden rule as a as
Speaker 1: a a great kind of navigation tool ethically. And when
Speaker 1: you think about ethics and morality, it really is a
Speaker 1: question of what to do next. And we're always faced
Speaker 1: with this this navigation problem essentially, because there's this total
Speaker 1: space of possible experience individually and collectively, and we're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to navigate in this space given
Speaker 1: the possible expert is on offer. And the truth is
Speaker 1: there are horizons here which we can't see beyond. I mean,
Speaker 1: we don't know how good life could get for us
Speaker 1: individually and collectively. And there's so many things that are
Speaker 1: in play now. I mean, we are living at a
Speaker 1: time where it's possible for us to change our own
Speaker 1: genomes ultimately, right, I mean, there's not not many people
Speaker 1: doing that at the moment, but that is just a
Speaker 1: few short years away where we're going to be confronted
Speaker 1: with the question of I mean, do you actually want
Speaker 1: to modify the genes that are expressed in your body
Speaker 1: and brain and even in the germ line. So we're
Speaker 1: talking about the inheritance of future children, So we can
Speaker 1: do in a few short moments what evolution has been
Speaker 1: doing for hundreds of thousands of years in our case,
Speaker 1: and millions of millions and millions of years before that.
Speaker 1: So these are choices that we have always had to make,
Speaker 1: but now we're making them in the presence of increasingly
Speaker 1: powerful technology, our engagement with the internet and information. I mean,
Speaker 1: we we have we're finding it hard to even have
Speaker 1: a conversation about the most basic facts now at scale
Speaker 1: because there's so much misinformation, and we much of our
Speaker 1: conversation is being piped through the social media platforms, which
Speaker 1: are essentially outrage machines. Right, They're a preferentially amplifying the
Speaker 1: most agitating and divisive content because that's what spreads faster.
Speaker 1: And they're ampling, amplfying misinformation more than the debunking of misinformation. Right.
Speaker 1: So there's a kind of an asymmetric war of information here.
Speaker 1: And so we're we're suddenly we've got these functionally, we
Speaker 1: we have the genes we had you know, with a
Speaker 1: few tweaks we had that. We have the genes we
Speaker 1: have maybe seventy five thousand years ago. Right, So we're
Speaker 1: we are these ancient primates now armed with nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: and an internet and increasing and AI technology now and
Speaker 1: we're faced with continually faced with the conundrum of what
Speaker 1: to do with all of this, and how do we
Speaker 1: solve these massive coordination problems where we get now eight
Speaker 1: billion strangers essentially to cooperate peacefully. The landscape of possibility
Speaker 1: here is always shifting, and so again we have human
Speaker 1: conversation as a means by which to navigate this. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean to come back this a very
Speaker 1: long way of getting back to your original question, which
Speaker 1: is once you recognize that our legacy thought structures are
Speaker 1: not well suited to this right. So to be a
Speaker 1: fundamentalist Christian, or a fundamentalist Buddhist or a fundamentalist Hindu
Speaker 1: in the face of these new opportunities and new challenges
Speaker 1: is not the best operating system for your mind. And
Speaker 1: you're forced to be far more eclectic and non sectarian
Speaker 1: and not dogmatic, and just open to the best evidence
Speaker 1: and the best arguments, really perpetually open to the best,
Speaker 1: to new evidence and better arguments. Where the guardrails right,
Speaker 1: there's no longer it's no longer simple, right, I can't.
Speaker 1: I can no longer just consult a single book or
Speaker 1: a single list of dos and don'ts to guide to
Speaker 1: guide me. Ultimately, it's a far more flexible and intelligent
Speaker 1: way to proceed, because we want me to ask yourself,
Speaker 1: do you want your next decision or your your decision
Speaker 1: ten years from now to be Do you want to
Speaker 1: be available to the best evidence and the best arguments
Speaker 1: at that moment when making that decision or not? Do
Speaker 1: you want some belief system that guarantees your unavailability right?
Speaker 1: Do you want some kind of cognitive and emotional closure
Speaker 1: that walls you off from better arguments and better information.
Speaker 1: I think I think almost no one would sign up
Speaker 1: for that kind of you know, that's that's ignorance by
Speaker 1: another name. Right, So I think we want to be persuadable.
Speaker 1: We want to be open to better arguments and new evidence.
Speaker 1: We also want to be skeptical and and conservative in
Speaker 1: in how we revise our map of the world, because
Speaker 1: we know that most new you know, published studies have
Speaker 1: sent a very good chance of not being true or
Speaker 1: you know, or not not being replicatable. Even in science,
Speaker 1: we have a legacy, We have an inheritance of institutions
Speaker 1: that have proved themselves over generations, and so we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be eager to tear everything down to the studs and
Speaker 1: and build again, right, I think we I think there's
Speaker 1: a there's a reason to be conservative with respect to
Speaker 1: the institutions and norms. And I mean things that have
Speaker 1: worked for centuries there tend to be a reason why
Speaker 1: they've worked for centuries. And so it's it's there's a
Speaker 1: sort of a tinkering and and an iterative process here
Speaker 1: that I think makes sense. But ultimately, yeah, we want
Speaker 1: a modern wisdom. Wisdom tradition to be the common property
Speaker 1: of a non sectarian, non parochial, non provincial humanity at
Speaker 1: this point.
Speaker 2: That but that nicely comes back to the waking up
Speaker 2: part of your work, right the idea that we can't
Speaker 2: create something or use something fully aligned with human values
Speaker 2: because we as humans aren't fully aligned with human values
Speaker 2: in the in the collective sense. And the idea that
Speaker 2: I've always felt that the reason why we should be
Speaker 2: scared of technology is because I guess we're scared of
Speaker 2: some humans. So if humans have the ability to create something,
Speaker 2: it will have all the imperfections that we have internally
Speaker 2: in the creator of it, and so it will inherit
Speaker 2: all the same manipulative tendencies, exploitative tendencies, the you know,
Speaker 2: it's hard to free something of that if you inherently
Speaker 2: build something with that. And you see that with any
Speaker 2: sort of media social media technology today, that even if
Speaker 2: it was built with the best intentions of trying to
Speaker 2: create good in the world, either it amplifies negative or
Speaker 2: inherently has some questionable morals and ethics to it as well.
Speaker 2: And so it comes back to the waking up part
Speaker 2: of your work, which is this self reflective contemplative idea
Speaker 2: of you know, who am I becoming? Who do I
Speaker 2: want to be? Who am I? I mean at the
Speaker 2: very deepest level, As you said, one word that I've
Speaker 2: always loved from my studies was this idea of the
Speaker 2: word purifying, Like there was all this there was a needing,
Speaker 2: there was a need for purification of some of these elements.
Speaker 2: And you talk about this in the beginning of your
Speaker 2: book when you I believe it's one of the first
Speaker 2: times you did M D M A and then you
Speaker 2: had this feeling of like complete love for your friend,
Speaker 2: free of envy. And when when I was reading that,
Speaker 2: I was thinking about how much this word purification is
Speaker 2: often not talked about, but it's probably my favorite word
Speaker 2: that I've I've learned through my study of wisdom traditions,
Speaker 2: because to me, I was thinking, Yeah, what's what's really required,
Speaker 2: as you said, is that love's already there. It's already there.
Speaker 2: It's not like you're finding or discovering something, but there's
Speaker 2: almost like a detox and a cleansing and letting go
Speaker 2: of these other things that cloud our ability to be there.
Speaker 2: Is that part of what you doing, what you feel
Speaker 2: meditation achieves or no, that's that's a completely different thing
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: The thing you want to accomplish is already accomplished, right,
Speaker 1: So that they're dualistic and non dual ways of conceiving
Speaker 1: this whole, the whole path of practice, and that the
Speaker 1: dualistic way is very much a purification model, which is,
Speaker 1: there's something that's like currently currently dirty, right, and you
Speaker 1: can clean it, and you can it's going to take
Speaker 1: effort to clean it, right, And so this is and
Speaker 1: I would argue that most spiritual traditions are framed in
Speaker 1: that way, and there's definitely a place for that, But
Speaker 1: the mature approach to meditation practice is and the one
Speaker 1: frankly that is just free of the of the stress
Speaker 1: of seeking, is to recognize that that consciousness as it
Speaker 1: is to ordinary consciousness, regardless of what its current contents are,
Speaker 1: regardless of what you're currently experiencing. You could be feeling
Speaker 1: a classically negative emotion and you could have just gotten angry, right,
Speaker 1: and then you remember, oh wait a minute, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be meditating, Okay, what's true now, right, And
Speaker 1: the physiology of anger hasn't even had time to dissipate yet, right,
Speaker 1: So that that that'll happen over you know, tens of seconds, right,
Speaker 1: but still in the in this if if you know
Speaker 1: how to recognize you know what what I call over
Speaker 1: and waking up consciousness without without a center, in that
Speaker 1: first moment of just just recognizing that you are the
Speaker 1: condition in which anger and everything else is appearing, there's
Speaker 1: already no center to that condition. There's already no ego
Speaker 1: in the middle of it. And it doesn't actually get
Speaker 1: emptier of self than that ever, And it's and even
Speaker 1: if you have a very different experience, I mean you
Speaker 1: take M D M A and you feel unconditional love,
Speaker 1: or you go on a long meditation retreat and you
Speaker 1: get really concentrated and you're having just regularly having experiences
Speaker 1: of bliss. Say so, it can be very you know,
Speaker 1: drug like all of the those changes in the contents
Speaker 1: of consciousness are transitory. I mean, you take a drug
Speaker 1: and it's going to wear off. You get very concentrated
Speaker 1: and you feel bliss. But when you're you know, watching
Speaker 1: Netflix two weeks later, you're not You're not concentrated in
Speaker 1: that way, and you're doing you're doing something else with
Speaker 1: your attention, and presumably you're not going to be bliss
Speaker 1: out in the same way. So all of those changes
Speaker 1: in the contents are temporary. What's not temporary is the
Speaker 1: availability of this recognition that there's just this open condition
Speaker 1: which everything is spontaneously appearing thoughts and sights and sounds
Speaker 1: and sensations and emotions and moods and the energetics of
Speaker 1: experience is always occurring in a condition that is fundamentally mysterious, really,
Speaker 1: And it's not because if you engage it prior to concepts,
Speaker 1: I mean you couldire's a layer at which you can
Speaker 1: just think about it and describe it. In psychological terms,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to understand, you correlating changes in our
Speaker 1: minds with changes in the brain. Right, So there's a
Speaker 1: possible neuroscience of contemplative experience, and people are doing that work.
Speaker 1: But as a matter of your own experience, there's this
Speaker 1: ever present mystery that anything is any way at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't know what you're going to think
Speaker 1: next until the thought itself arises, right, It's just because
Speaker 1: you'd have to think it before you thought it in
Speaker 1: order to know what it is. Right, So it's just
Speaker 1: on some level you are a witness to everything that's appearing.
Speaker 1: And in the beginning it feels like the witness has
Speaker 1: the structure of a self, of a subject. But as
Speaker 1: you look into that more and more, that structure goes away,
Speaker 1: and there's just this condition in which everything is appearing
Speaker 1: and it doesn't and that doesn't feel like I. It
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like me. And whatever feels like I or
Speaker 1: me as yet more appearance. You know, it can be
Speaker 1: just a pattern of energy on your face or a
Speaker 1: contraction in the body. So as you keep dropping back
Speaker 1: and witnessing that it has, you know, the purification model
Speaker 1: makes less and less sense, because what is there to purify? Right,
Speaker 1: There's not like even even even anger is no longer anger.
Speaker 1: Right in the moment of recognition, it's just this. It's
Speaker 1: just a feeling of heat on your face, right, It's
Speaker 1: just a feeling. It's just it's a feeling of tension
Speaker 1: in your chest. And there's no one to whom those
Speaker 1: feelings refer, right, And and so the moment you recognize
Speaker 1: that you have by definition broken the connection to whatever
Speaker 1: thoughts were telling you why you were angry and why
Speaker 1: you should be angry, and why you have every right
Speaker 1: to be angry, and what you're going to say to
Speaker 1: that person next time you see them, you've broken that
Speaker 1: spell of thinking, and so the emotion is dissipating, and
Speaker 1: so it's anger is no longer anger, but it's in
Speaker 1: purification mode. It is still possible to do that dualistically,
Speaker 1: I mean, in the beginning, when you're practicing what I
Speaker 1: tend to teach in over waking up is a technique
Speaker 1: called mindfulness, which most people engage dualistically in the beginning,
Speaker 1: where they're strategically being aware of sights and sounds and
Speaker 1: sensations and the breath and thoughts, emotions, and so even
Speaker 1: even dualistically, you can learn the difference between being lost
Speaker 1: in thought and identified with an emotion like anger and
Speaker 1: just witnessing it from the point that seems to be
Speaker 1: outside of that thought and that that emotion, And even
Speaker 1: if it feels like a subject that's paying attention strategically
Speaker 1: to to the physiology of anger or or the arising
Speaker 1: and cessation of thought, that's fine. I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a starting point, that's and a necessary one for
Speaker 1: virtually everyone, and that does accomplish this deidentification from the
Speaker 1: whole process that's given you this negative emotion. So there
Speaker 1: is a freedom even in the dualistic awareness of of
Speaker 1: you know, the flow of thought and emotion. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: and and that very much has this character of purifying
Speaker 1: the mind. It's like you're like, this is a this
Speaker 1: is a anger is a classically negative thing to be
Speaker 1: stuck in and identified with and acting out of. And
Speaker 1: it's divisive. It's you're going to say the thing you regret,
Speaker 1: and that for what you have to apologize for. And
Speaker 1: it's just you know, you're and the normal person who
Speaker 1: doesn't know how to be mindful and doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 1: know the difference between being lost and thought and not
Speaker 1: is really the mere hostage of that process. They're going
Speaker 1: to stay as angry as they're going to stay for
Speaker 1: as long as they're going to stay that way, and
Speaker 1: they're going to do all of the things that are
Speaker 1: life deranging and and reputation harming they might do on
Speaker 1: the basis of that emotion for as long as they're
Speaker 1: going to do those things, and then they're gonna have
Speaker 1: all the reaction to what they did and said. And
Speaker 1: it's that's the you know, the complication of life born
Speaker 1: of that. You know, one moment where you got angry.
Speaker 1: Even dualistic mindfulness gives you a degree of freedom that
Speaker 1: most people don't have, and it is a kind of
Speaker 1: superpower to be able to say, oh, well, I just
Speaker 1: got angry. How long do I want to stay angry for?
Speaker 1: For me, an emotion like anger or fear is useful
Speaker 1: and so far ours it is. It is a salience cue.
Speaker 1: It's telling you that something just happened that's worth paying
Speaker 1: attention to. Right, So, there's somebody just walked into the
Speaker 1: room who you know doesn't have your your well being
Speaker 1: at heart, you know at heart, right, I mean they've
Speaker 1: got some intention that is that is in conflict with
Speaker 1: with something that you were trying to accomplish, say, or
Speaker 1: it's it's telling at minimum, is telling you something about
Speaker 1: yourself and about your own priorities, and about about what
Speaker 1: you were trying to do in the world. And you know,
Speaker 1: for better or worse. So it's worth paying attention to.
Speaker 1: But it's almost never the state of mind you want
Speaker 1: to be in. Too. Then solve the problem you that
Speaker 1: just you just noticed. So I'm not saying that we
Speaker 1: The goal is to be completely without any capacity for
Speaker 1: anger or fear or any any of these emotions. But
Speaker 1: it's I do think psychological health and just the health
Speaker 1: of one's relationships and and just the whole project of
Speaker 1: living wisely in the world is more and more the
Speaker 1: result of being able to get off to unhook from
Speaker 1: that negative emotion more and more quickly. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think you want to stay angry and fearful and even
Speaker 1: sad for much shorter periods of time, and then you can.
Speaker 1: Then there's just more to recognize about the circumstance. It
Speaker 1: gives you a degree of freedom by which to navigate.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I fully agree with that. Whenever I get
Speaker 2: asked that question, which I'm sure you get asked a lot,
Speaker 2: is like, well, don't you ever get angry or don't
Speaker 2: you ever you know, get upset or sad? And and
Speaker 2: what you just said has always been my response that
Speaker 2: I still feel angry, I still feel sadness, I still
Speaker 2: feel envy. I still always believe I always will feel
Speaker 2: all of these things, just for less and less time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And that I don't think I'll ever get to zero
Speaker 2: Just as you could never run a mile in zero seconds,
Speaker 2: I will never get to a point where I'm able
Speaker 2: to deal with it in zero seconds. It's just not
Speaker 2: going to be possible, right, because it needs to live.
Speaker 1: I think there are more impersonal and ethically necessary modes
Speaker 1: for these emotions that I don't think we want to
Speaker 1: get rid of them. I think I think outrage, moral
Speaker 1: outrage has its place, and it is the basis from
Speaker 1: which we would we would react to grave injustice in
Speaker 1: the world. But it's not it doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1: It's not a personal anger, right, but it can. It's
Speaker 1: just you see something, You see something, some unnecessary harm
Speaker 1: being created deliberately by you know, deeply unwise people in
Speaker 1: the world, and you just think, all right, this is
Speaker 1: this is an emergency, this is worth responding to, right,
Speaker 1: and and it's and that can feel that the energy
Speaker 1: of anger can be behind that, and you know, so
Speaker 1: I would tend to call that outrage rather than anger,
Speaker 1: but that I think moral outrage is useful. But it's
Speaker 1: just the question is when does a tip over into
Speaker 1: personal psychological suffering that actually diminishes your capacity to do
Speaker 1: something useful. And that's that's where that's the line I
Speaker 1: think we want to be more aware of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's use that as an example and take it
Speaker 2: through that process, because I think that's that's exactly it.
Speaker 2: Like I was going to bring that up earlier, the
Speaker 2: idea that just as the outrage or the emotional experience
Speaker 2: can stop us from being practical so to not to
Speaker 2: go down this road again, but so too can this
Speaker 2: skeptical Like if you know, you can be overly skeptical
Speaker 2: and overly analytical and never practically apply anything because you
Speaker 2: can constantly find flaws in pretty much most ideas in
Speaker 2: the world if you keep looking for them. So let's
Speaker 2: take the outrage idea, like, how do you what does
Speaker 2: someone do they feel that outrage, the moral outrage where
Speaker 2: they feel pain for the suffering of another. Where do
Speaker 2: you go from there through your process? Like what's step two, three, four?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's important to be again cautious and
Speaker 1: skeptical of one's own emotional hijacking. Right, So it's like
Speaker 1: you want to know, you want to know that this
Speaker 1: isn't a personal, petty, ecocentric reaction and it actually is
Speaker 1: born of what it purports to be, you know, a
Speaker 1: compassionate engagement with the world, like you actually want the
Speaker 1: best for other people, perhaps including yourself. But also I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like we're all on the same team. That's that's
Speaker 1: the mode that you're you're in and so it's not
Speaker 1: an expression of your own greed and narcissism and and
Speaker 1: you know, of the self focused and divisive emotion.
Speaker 2: But it probably will start at that, right.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you can have something of that character
Speaker 1: in that it's it can have the character of contraction.
Speaker 1: I mean, outrage feels like anger. It's like you, you
Speaker 1: know you, it is the same thing that would get
Speaker 1: you to raise your voice if you were angry. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like it's like you're going to raise your voice
Speaker 1: if you're going to raise your voice in defense of humanity. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: you're still raising your voice, right, And so it's just
Speaker 1: that there's energy behind it, and I think that energy
Speaker 1: at times is necessary or to take another somewhat adjacent
Speaker 1: situation but analogous. It's like, you know, if you're in
Speaker 1: a situation which you have to defend yourself from actual
Speaker 1: physical violence or defend someone close to you. You know,
Speaker 1: someone's attacked you and your child, So what should you do?
Speaker 1: They're just going to lie down and offer yourself up
Speaker 1: as a human sacrifice. And no, like I think pacifism
Speaker 1: is not actually morally the wisest position ethically. So I
Speaker 1: think the energy that would allow you to violently defend
Speaker 1: yourself against an aggressor should available, right. But the question
Speaker 1: is but, and it's you know, it's not necessarily anger,
Speaker 1: but it could look a lot like anger and feel
Speaker 1: a lot like anger. It's certainly not necessarily hatred. And
Speaker 1: and here I would I would ask you to consider
Speaker 1: how you would feel like, I mean, defending yourself against
Speaker 1: a person. You know, you think of somebody who is
Speaker 1: there some you know, malicious psychopath who's who's broken into
Speaker 1: your house and is now wanting to harm you in
Speaker 1: your family, because that's you know, what he likes to do. Right,
Speaker 1: that's like the quintessential circumstance where one you'd feel, you
Speaker 1: feel fear, you'd feel a lot of things, but you'd
Speaker 1: probably also feel hatred for this person, right, Like like
Speaker 1: what there's there are few circumstances where hatred feels more
Speaker 1: apropos than that. But I do view hatred as always
Speaker 1: been somehow extra even in extremists like that, because imagine
Speaker 1: just how you'd feel very a superficially similar situation. You know,
Speaker 1: you're still you have an attacker in your house, and
Speaker 1: you have to defend yourself violently. But that attacker now
Speaker 1: is not a person, it's a it's a wild animal.
Speaker 1: You know, a grizzly bear has broken into your house,
Speaker 1: or you know, a mountain lion. Right, how You's still
Speaker 1: it's still an absolute emergency. Right, You're still going to
Speaker 1: have to fight for your life. You're still looking for
Speaker 1: a weapon to defend yourself with. Right, You're still contemplating
Speaker 1: killing a living being to defend yourself, right in your kids.
Speaker 1: But there's an emotional shaving there. Like you as energized
Speaker 1: as you would be in the presence of a mountain
Speaker 1: lion or in the presence of a grizzly bear, there's
Speaker 1: this layer of the layer of hatred doesn't quite fit,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Because you feel they have less choice.
Speaker 1: Yes, of course, a mountain lion is going to be
Speaker 1: a mountain lion, you know. It's like like a mountain
Speaker 1: lion can't be other than a mountain lion on some level.
Speaker 1: A malicious psychopath can't be other than a malicious psychopath. Right,
Speaker 1: So I think it's I think we do have to
Speaker 1: view people on some level as equivalent to forces of nature, right,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't. We don't get angry at hurricanes.
Speaker 1: But and if we certainly don't hate hurricanes and in
Speaker 1: the same way that we could hate another human being,
Speaker 1: But if we could lock hurricanes in prison, we would, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're immensely destructive. You know, we're still trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what to do about them, but it
Speaker 1: never gets that we never take this extra step of
Speaker 1: actually hating them. And I do think we could have
Speaker 1: ethically speaking and psychologically speaking, we can. We can have
Speaker 1: a similar relationship to even the worst human beings while
Speaker 1: doing all the things we need to do to defend
Speaker 1: ourselves against them. We can put people in prison. We can,
Speaker 1: you know, we can. I'm not in favor of the
Speaker 1: death penalty for actually these reasons, but because I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone creates themselves. I think I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: is truly at bottom responsible responsible for being who they are.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you had the same genes and the
Speaker 1: same life life experience of whoever Jeffrey Dahmer, you'd be
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Dahmer, right, So like there's no there's no mystery there.
Speaker 1: But so I think so I think at bottom, when
Speaker 1: you're when you're looking at these these very stark differences
Speaker 1: in life outcomes. You're looking at differences in luck, right.
Speaker 1: I mean there's there's biological luck, there's circumstantial luck, there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of luck, and there's and there's what we
Speaker 1: do with the luck. But your capacity to do good
Speaker 1: things with even your bad luck is yet more good luck, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, something is given you. There's some genetic and
Speaker 1: environmental reason why you were set up to pick yourselves up,
Speaker 1: pick yourself up by your bootstraps, when somebody else in
Speaker 1: the similar situation wasn't right. And so on some level,
Speaker 1: there's we have an ethical imperative to acknowledge the massive
Speaker 1: role that luck plays in our lives, and I think
Speaker 1: we should want to cancel the most egregious differences in
Speaker 1: good and bad luck between people. Like so, when we
Speaker 1: look at a whole society that is suffering from immense
Speaker 1: bad luck because it didn't have the natural resources that
Speaker 1: some other society did, or it had those resources, but
Speaker 1: even those resources created perverse incentives, and so it has
Speaker 1: got some terrible political outcome based on all the level
Speaker 1: of corruption that's layered on top of the resources, and
Speaker 1: there's just terrible disparities in luck there, right, And so
Speaker 1: I think we as a as a global civilization, more
Speaker 1: and more as we grow grow wealthier and wealthier and
Speaker 1: can take advantage of good luck over here, we should
Speaker 1: want to engineer a tide that raises upon which most
Speaker 1: are all boats rise more and more. It's not to
Speaker 1: say that capitalism is wrong. It's not to say that
Speaker 1: we're ever going to completely nullify differences in luck. And
Speaker 1: I think some asymmetries may in fact be the off
Speaker 1: them a way to encourage people's creativity and innovation. Right.
Speaker 1: So it's like I'm not an agnostic as to be
Speaker 1: on some of the questions of how to organize a
Speaker 1: society and an economy there, But I do think more
Speaker 1: and more we need to recognize that so many of us,
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly anyone has got the free time to
Speaker 1: listen to this conversation right now, stands a pretty good
Speaker 1: chance of being in the top ten percent or even
Speaker 1: one percent of humanity with respect to luck. You know,
Speaker 1: all the variables, whether it's respective health and wealth and education,
Speaker 1: and just just having the free time and attention to
Speaker 1: listen to this and be interested in this and to
Speaker 1: be asking the kinds of questions we're trying to address
Speaker 1: in a conversation like this. We're immensely lucky, and with
Speaker 1: that comes a certain responsibility, but also opportunity to spread
Speaker 1: the luck around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, to create luck for others. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I loved where we were going with that. Loved where
Speaker 2: we went. But going back to the outrage piece, the
Speaker 2: understanding of you know, almost differentiating our hate from outrage,
Speaker 2: almost extracting some piece of the ego from it being
Speaker 2: petty and individualistic, but that it's for a greater cause. Then, yeah,
Speaker 2: how do you go forward with that? Like, what do
Speaker 2: you do with that thought, that idea, that feeling. So
Speaker 2: you feel pain when someone else is in pain, you
Speaker 2: feel stressed, you feel outrage. As you said, there may
Speaker 2: be a petty personal anger to it that triggered us
Speaker 2: in the first place, but we were able to carve
Speaker 2: that out and understand that that wasn't the basis of
Speaker 2: our real outrage, that there was something bigger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it just then it really just depends on
Speaker 1: what the problem is and what the situation is and
Speaker 1: whether you can influence it, right, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: can't do anything about it, well, then it's not useful
Speaker 1: to be just grinding your gears with outrage. I mean
Speaker 1: that your outrage needs some kind of outlet, you know,
Speaker 1: so if you have some kind of platform upon which
Speaker 1: to try to make sense on these important topics, we'll
Speaker 1: then do that. But yeah, it's it's it's never useful
Speaker 1: to just be privately seething with outrage that has no outlet, right,
Speaker 1: so you have to figure out one what, what pragmatically
Speaker 1: can you do to accomplish anything useful on the basis
Speaker 1: of this emotion. And if there's nothing to do, it's
Speaker 1: great to have the tools. By what you can just
Speaker 1: let go of it, right like? And that's and again
Speaker 1: that's where meditation comes in. I mean that really is
Speaker 1: a kind of superpower. You can just decide, Okay, there's
Speaker 1: there's nothing to do here with this negative emotion, so
Speaker 1: now I can just let go of it. And that's
Speaker 1: and that's true. It's true for public facing emotion like outrage,
Speaker 1: but it's true for a and inwardly facing one like
Speaker 1: just anxiety about something that is coming up in the future. Right, So,
Speaker 1: like you've got some medical condition, now you need to
Speaker 1: get an MRI to see if you've got something scary,
Speaker 1: and you can't get the MRI until next Tuesday, right,
Speaker 1: So now you've got this time to wait. So the
Speaker 1: question is, in the intervening days, how captured are you
Speaker 1: going to be by this feeling of anxiety? Is is
Speaker 1: there any utility in feeling anxious between now and Tuesday?
Speaker 1: And if there's not, wouldn't it be great to actually
Speaker 1: just let go of it? Right? And most people feel
Speaker 1: like that's that's pretty hard to do, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: most people don't have tools apart from just diverting themselves,
Speaker 1: getting distracting themselves with something else to take their mind
Speaker 1: off the thing that they're really sort of thinking about
Speaker 1: in the background that they don't want to think about,
Speaker 1: but they're helplessly, you know, perseverating on it. But as
Speaker 1: far as you know, as far as as far as
Speaker 1: acting in the world so as to make the world
Speaker 1: a better place, I think, you know, based on outrage
Speaker 1: or some other emotion, you know, I'm impressed more and
Speaker 1: more by how much that's a story of changing in
Speaker 1: saneives at the system level more than it is a
Speaker 1: story of improve getting individuals to improve themselves. I think,
Speaker 1: I think individuals should want to improve themselves. And I
Speaker 1: know I want to improve myself, and I you know,
Speaker 1: ins far as I can share wisdom about how to
Speaker 1: do that, I do that, you know more or less
Speaker 1: full time. But there's a there's another level of analysis
Speaker 1: and another level of discussion that needs to be applied
Speaker 1: to the to the systems in which we're all functioning.
Speaker 1: And we need to recognize that in so many places
Speaker 1: we have systems of incentives that are aligned. So it's
Speaker 1: to make it actually hard to be a good person, right,
Speaker 1: like you need you need to be some kind of
Speaker 1: moral hero to be truly ethical given how the system
Speaker 1: is tuned. And conversely, totally normal people can be lured
Speaker 1: into behaving more and more like psychopaths in a badly
Speaker 1: tuned system where the incentives are all wrong, right, And
Speaker 1: I think more and more we need to be alert
Speaker 1: to that, and we need to want to design systems
Speaker 1: where it just becomes easier and easier for ordinary, conflicted,
Speaker 1: mediocre people, people who are not even thinking about ethics
Speaker 1: all that much, right, don't want to, They just want
Speaker 1: what they want. It's easier for them to behave more
Speaker 1: and more like saints because the incentives are aligned. That
Speaker 1: way to take a example that's recently top of mind. So,
Speaker 1: like we have a problem with the problem of climate change,
Speaker 1: you will well intentioned people want to do something about it.
Speaker 1: We don't want to create the most profligate harms for
Speaker 1: ourselves unnecessarily, right, So it'd be great to have a
Speaker 1: system of incentives and economic opportunities and technologies that just
Speaker 1: made it easier and easier to be wise with respect
Speaker 1: to carbon or carbon footprint. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: great ideas in this space, and you know, one of
Speaker 1: them is a well, let's let's buy electric cars. Right,
Speaker 1: Let's let's transition from a fossil fuel economy of transportation
Speaker 1: to an electric one. Well, that sounds wonderful. And I've
Speaker 1: you know, I just I've had an electric car, and
Speaker 1: I've i just had to get a new car, and
Speaker 1: I was poised to buy an electric another electric car.
Speaker 1: But then I hear on Joe Rogan's podcast from this
Speaker 1: guy who's just published a book it's coming out. I've
Speaker 1: forgive me, I've forgotten his name. I think it's uh
Speaker 1: Shri Ram Krishnan, but I could have that wrong. But
Speaker 1: he's put his book coming out called Cobalt Read but
Speaker 1: it interested to our podcast with Rogan, which was just
Speaker 1: this litany of horrors that attend what the extraction of
Speaker 1: cobalt from Congo. Right, it's like two percent of the
Speaker 1: world's cobalt is in Congo. We use cobalt in all
Speaker 1: of our batteries. Basically our supply chain for cobalt is
Speaker 1: on top of just slave labor and child labor and
Speaker 1: just you know, kids getting buried alive. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just it was just as bad as you could imagine.
Speaker 1: And so how here we have a system where we
Speaker 1: all we just we all want to buy the next
Speaker 1: electric car because this is the good thing, that this
Speaker 1: was the virtuous thing to do. But now we find
Speaker 1: out that the batteries are are soaked in blood. There's
Speaker 1: no good option, right, And now we have to and
Speaker 1: we have to pretend that that we didn't hear that
Speaker 1: podcast or the the and the people you know built
Speaker 1: designing the batteries, or pretending that they don't know where
Speaker 1: the cobalt comes from. And there's like we need to
Speaker 1: figure out I mean, this is this this itself, it
Speaker 1: should be a simple problem to solve, and it would
Speaker 1: just it's probably a few percentage points of profit margin
Speaker 1: that would make the extraction of cobalt a an ethically
Speaker 1: defensible practice, right, and that's probably there's probably some cobalt
Speaker 1: free technology, uh that we could design in the few sure,
Speaker 1: but it's just to get these things right really matters.
Speaker 1: And if you don't get them right, you've got people
Speaker 1: who are deeply conflicted about what they're doing or not
Speaker 1: or just not completely unaware of what they're doing and
Speaker 1: creating these these massive negative externalities that they might not
Speaker 1: even know about, Like like like I could I literally was.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was twenty four hours from buying another
Speaker 1: EV right. So it's like it's not that it's not
Speaker 1: that my loan purchase or not are or not of
Speaker 1: a single car it's going to matter that much in
Speaker 1: the scheme of things. But it's like I would have
Speaker 1: had I not heard this particular episode of Joe's podcast,
Speaker 1: I would have bought that EV thinking I was doing
Speaker 1: an unimpeachably virtuous thing, right, And now I have a
Speaker 1: much more conflicted decision to make around, you know, what's
Speaker 1: the right car to drive in light of my climate
Speaker 1: change concerns. This is just to say that the individual
Speaker 1: can't solve the cobalt supply chain problem, right, So like
Speaker 1: we need we need these solutions to come at the
Speaker 1: system level and at the institution level. And and that's
Speaker 1: and that's where being a good person is sort of
Speaker 1: beyond the scope of anyone's individual choices, Like like you
Speaker 1: need to we need to collectively solve a massive coordination
Speaker 1: problem together where in the act of getting gratifying our desires,
Speaker 1: we are we are are creating less and less harm
Speaker 1: and doing more and more good, more or less effortlessly.
Speaker 1: And that's and that really is. You can have people
Speaker 1: who are just not thinking about purifying anything, behaving in
Speaker 1: really impeccable ways given good incentives. And that's that's more
Speaker 1: and more I'm thinking about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that you're thinking about that, and I
Speaker 2: think it's an idea to put forward though, is that
Speaker 2: it's also that the people that are setting up the
Speaker 2: institutions and the systems are all too individual, so it's
Speaker 2: like a vicious cycle. It's like the leaders at the top,
Speaker 2: the people have made all these decisions to go out
Speaker 2: and you know, take all this cobo and make sure
Speaker 2: that it was picked by child slaves or child labor
Speaker 2: or whatever it may be. I haven't listened to the podcast.
Speaker 2: I don't have the context. But someone made that decision
Speaker 2: and some system never thought to correct that because that
Speaker 2: was led by some people. So I think, I mean,
Speaker 2: I agree with you, but I think it's both. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, I think even where systems have been made tight,
Speaker 2: you still see people trying to find a loophole. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's how the human mind is set up. And so
Speaker 2: you've got the loophole mindset of like, Okay, well let
Speaker 2: me find a way to exploit this or manipulate this
Speaker 2: towards my benefit anyway, And so you've got both. I
Speaker 2: think both are important. I think like if you were
Speaker 2: the decision maker, if you were building EVS, you would
Speaker 2: be able to make that system a company and you'd
Speaker 2: set it out, but that would come back to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but it could like if we taxed carbon
Speaker 1: instead of taxing incomes. I don't know how that works
Speaker 1: out in terms of the balance sheet, but something like that,
Speaker 1: we're we're using a tax to disincentivize something. We want
Speaker 1: to disincentivize pollution, and we're not penalizing something that's intrinsically good,
Speaker 1: just you know, creating value. And being paid for that value,
Speaker 1: which is you know, what income in the best case
Speaker 1: is coming from. So there's that, and then like all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, people would all right, if if it's
Speaker 1: costing me money to be polluting, well then I'm going
Speaker 1: to figure out how to not do that. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's just going to be our interests are going to
Speaker 1: be a line there, right, And so there there's probably
Speaker 1: you know, one hundred or a thousand cases like that.
Speaker 1: But where I was going was I've been thinking a
Speaker 1: lot about what has come to be called the effect
Speaker 1: of altruism movement. I mean, just how to do good
Speaker 1: more reliably, more systematically. Many of us have been disillusioned
Speaker 1: with with how philanthropy has been done traditionally. It's like
Speaker 1: there's a there's a distinction between This actually comes back
Speaker 1: to some of what we've been talking about with the
Speaker 1: difference between being led by one's emotions and actually understanding
Speaker 1: what the outcomes are in the world that one is accomplishing.
Speaker 1: When you're trying to do good in the world, when
Speaker 1: you're giving to a you know, a children's hospital, say,
Speaker 1: I mean that just seems an intrinsically good thing to do,
Speaker 1: But so much we know that so much of our
Speaker 1: impulse to do good, our impulse toward algruism, or impulse
Speaker 1: toward effective compassion, is driven by the single compelling story,
Speaker 1: the single you know, the single identifiable protagonist, you know,
Speaker 1: the one little girl who's you know, god cancer and
Speaker 1: we can help her. Right, And that we sort of
Speaker 1: go to sleep when we're told statistics, right, So like
Speaker 1: we we don't we perversely we care more about the
Speaker 1: one little girl than we care about the tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of little girls just like her, maybe even the
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of little girls including her. Right. It's
Speaker 1: like you can run psychological experiments where you you show
Speaker 1: people one little girl and you ask them how how
Speaker 1: much they're inclined to help, and how much money they'd give.
Speaker 1: They give the maximum amount, you know, under those conditions.
Speaker 1: If you show them the same little girl and you
Speaker 1: lay her on a story of just how many of
Speaker 1: the other girls there are like her, they're the people's
Speaker 1: compassionate impulse reliably diminishes.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So it's this is clearly a moral bug of our
Speaker 1: operating system. So we know that the good feels we
Speaker 1: get from giving are separable from the from the actual
Speaker 1: effects of of our of our giving in the world.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I've thought, you know more about this, and
Speaker 1: I've brought on, you know, various moral philosophers to speak
Speaker 1: about this on but both on the app and on
Speaker 1: my podcast. And one change I made in response to
Speaker 1: one of these conversations with I was just decided that
Speaker 1: Waking Up as a company would give a minimum of
Speaker 1: ten percent of its profits to the most effective charities
Speaker 1: each year, and I personally would give a minimum of
Speaker 1: ten percent of my pre tax income to charity each year. Now,
Speaker 1: I was already giving money away to charity, and that
Speaker 1: felt good. But once I decided, all right, here's the formula.
Speaker 1: I have to give this minimum amount. This minimum amount
Speaker 1: is already allocated to these ends. And what's more, these
Speaker 1: ends have to be not just charities and causes that
Speaker 1: I feel really personally engaged by, or just things that
Speaker 1: I want to support, like you know some you know,
Speaker 1: I want to give money to a college or a symphony,
Speaker 1: or it's like something that I or I see somebody's
Speaker 1: GoFundMe page and it tugs at my heartstrings. I want
Speaker 1: to give money to that. No, that's all separate. Here's
Speaker 1: ten percent that's going to charities that I and sober
Speaker 1: rational Analysis have decided are going to do the most good,
Speaker 1: irrespective of how I feel about these things, because there
Speaker 1: are certain causes that I just don't find especially sexy,
Speaker 1: you know that just not like I just can't. I
Speaker 1: have to continually rethink my my interest in them, you know,
Speaker 1: but they are objectively if you want to want to
Speaker 1: save a life, you know, per unit, per per dollar
Speaker 1: put into the system, this is the best use of
Speaker 1: your dollars.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: One has been you know, malaria mitigation in sub Saharan
Speaker 1: Africa just just bed malarial bed nets, right Like, that's
Speaker 1: I just can't get too excited about handing out bed nets, right,
Speaker 1: but that's something that's worth supporting. So I just decided that, okay,
Speaker 1: GiveWell dot org is it has not run this analysis.
Speaker 1: They're a great source of information about effective charities. Here
Speaker 1: are their top ten charities. Whether I find these sexy
Speaker 1: or not, I know I can outsource the cognitive labor
Speaker 1: to these people because I've spoken to them enough, I've
Speaker 1: analyzed what they've done. They're doing enough. This is their
Speaker 1: full time job, all right, you know, until I hear otherwise,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take their advice. It doesn't matter how
Speaker 1: I feel about these charities, right, I'm going to get
Speaker 1: my good feels elsewhere. But what's happened is once I
Speaker 1: decided that I'm going to give this amount of money
Speaker 1: to charity each year, and it's happening by default, whether
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it or not, whether I'm gratified by
Speaker 1: it or not. A very interesting thing flipped one is
Speaker 1: when I confront all these other opportunities to give money
Speaker 1: away that are tugging on my heartstrings, they almost show
Speaker 1: up as a as a kind of guilty pleasure. Like
Speaker 1: I literally have had the feeling of giving money to
Speaker 1: a children's hospital or giving money to somebody's GoFundMe page,
Speaker 1: And it's almost leveraging the same greedy circuits in the
Speaker 1: brain as you'd get if you're like opening a catalog
Speaker 1: and you want everything on both pages. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like like it's it is a it's a very visceral
Speaker 1: experience of selfishness and selflessness totally merging. And it's like
Speaker 1: it's like why selfishness is the same thing as selflessness,
Speaker 1: But it has the energy of like I really I
Speaker 1: want to do this and because I sort of know
Speaker 1: I I've rationally allocated to this a certain amount of
Speaker 1: doing this good kind of automatically sort of even out
Speaker 1: of side and out of mind. I'm not spending a
Speaker 1: lot of time thinking about where that money is going.
Speaker 1: It's sort of changed my relationship to all these other
Speaker 1: occasions where I'm having to decide on the basis of
Speaker 1: my intuitions moment to moment whether I want to give
Speaker 1: and how much to give. And it's it's really just
Speaker 1: kind of flipped everything upside down in a way that's interesting.
Speaker 1: And again it's it's it's all based on having made
Speaker 1: a sort of system level default change that is a
Speaker 1: sort of hidden structure in which I'm now moving, right.
Speaker 1: It's because again I'm not, until you make a decision
Speaker 1: like that, you're constantly rethinking what you want to do.
Speaker 1: It's almost like going on a diet. Like if you
Speaker 1: decide like I don't need dairy anymore, right, so, once
Speaker 1: you don't need dairy anymore, I eat a lot of dairy.
Speaker 1: But if one it didn't eat dairy anymore, you just
Speaker 1: it's just a bright line. And then you you're not
Speaker 1: you're not constantly rethinking whether you're going to have ice cream?
Speaker 1: And if so, how much? And and so it's it's
Speaker 1: massively clarifying.
Speaker 2: That's that's a great example that really hit true. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the clarity of constraints right, having having borders and boundaries
Speaker 2: and constraints allowing you to not waste as much time
Speaker 2: and energy on on figuring that out moment by moment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've got I've got two more questions for you, some
Speaker 2: that I want to make sure I ask you today.
Speaker 2: How does someone like you, as a as a meditator
Speaker 2: for so many years, as someone who's so thoughtful about
Speaker 2: these topics, as somebody who wants to see change in
Speaker 2: the systems and institutions as well, how do you interact
Speaker 2: with the news Because I find that to be such
Speaker 2: a source of anxiety and stress for so many people
Speaker 2: who are probably listening to us right now, and so
Speaker 2: i'd love to hear how you've built a healthier, hopefully systematic,
Speaker 2: logical relationship with the news.
Speaker 1: Well, it changed recently for me because I deleted my
Speaker 1: Twitter account, which was where I was getting a lot
Speaker 1: of my news. I was not getting the news from
Speaker 1: Twitter per se, but I was just seeing I was
Speaker 1: following lots of smart people and seeing what articles they
Speaker 1: were recommending. As I was going through that as a
Speaker 1: it was kind of like my news feed. So I still,
Speaker 1: you know, I read the New York Times, I read
Speaker 1: The Atlantic. There's so many things I read, and so
Speaker 1: I see the news in various channels. But I was
Speaker 1: using Twitter as the first filter on that, and that,
Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons, became really toxic for me,
Speaker 1: and and toxic in a way that I was convinced misleading.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was the thing that got me to
Speaker 1: finally just kind of rip the band aid off, because
Speaker 1: I it wasn't just that I was seeing the worst
Speaker 1: of people and that was having a certain effect. I
Speaker 1: was convinced that I was seeing people at their worst
Speaker 1: who are actually not as bad as they were seeming
Speaker 1: to me on Twitter. Like what Twitter was calling out
Speaker 1: of them was just a misleading picture of who they
Speaker 1: actually are, because in some cases I knew, I knew
Speaker 1: the people in real life, and I'm seeing them behave
Speaker 1: in abominable ways on Twitter, and I just think, all right,
Speaker 1: this is this isn't all. This is just a fun
Speaker 1: house mirror that isn't psychological, psychologically healthy, to keep staring
Speaker 1: into day after day after day, and also just so
Speaker 1: many of the things that I was It was it
Speaker 1: was amplifying stories that I was, you know, as a podcaster,
Speaker 1: I was tempted to react to and I felt like
Speaker 1: I was getting a misleading signal as to just how
Speaker 1: salient or representative those stories are of the way the
Speaker 1: world is. Right, So like, it's just it was just
Speaker 1: the phenomenal and being too online ultimately, right, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: my so ins far as Twitter was news or a
Speaker 1: simula crom of news, that has really changed for me.
Speaker 1: I just I just am not seeing it and now
Speaker 1: I just yeah, I mean, I have a few sources
Speaker 1: of news that I go to, as you know, more
Speaker 1: or less reflexively. But again it's it's more and more
Speaker 1: I'm asking the question, what do I want my moment
Speaker 1: to moment life to be like, you know, and who
Speaker 1: do I want to be at the end of the
Speaker 1: day when I'm hanging out with my wife and kids, right,
Speaker 1: and what are the consequences of having spent my attentional
Speaker 1: budget over the previous hours in one way versus another?
Speaker 1: And Twitter, for me, honestly was it was a big
Speaker 1: change because it was like getting out of an unhealthy relationship.
Speaker 1: And that was just for all my talk about meditation
Speaker 1: and being able to unhook from anger and other days.
Speaker 1: I mean, I could unhook and I could let go
Speaker 1: of of negative emotion and et cetera. And it's not
Speaker 1: that the tools don't work, but I was spending a
Speaker 1: lot of time looking into this very deranging space. And
Speaker 1: it's not deranging for everybody but for me because because
Speaker 1: what's unique about my job. But my approach to my
Speaker 1: job is that, you know, I criticize the right and
Speaker 1: left politically, you know, a lot, and you know, with
Speaker 1: sort of equal ferocity, and so I get so I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not tribally aligned with anyone, and I get
Speaker 1: a lot of pain from both sides. And it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot of it's it's not honest pain. It's not
Speaker 1: like it's it's not like honest criticism of views I
Speaker 1: actually hold. It's like lots of lying about views that
Speaker 1: I don't hold. And you know, it's just it's just misrepresentations.
Speaker 1: And people take, you know, clips out of context, and
Speaker 1: I mean people people cut together clips of my podcast
Speaker 1: that where I am seeming to say the opposite of
Speaker 1: what I in fact said in context, and they release
Speaker 1: those and the people with big platforms, you know, retweet them.
Speaker 1: So it was a pervasive experience for me of seeing
Speaker 1: myself lied about and then wondering whether there's anything I
Speaker 1: should do about that, right, And so it was this
Speaker 1: very sticky invitation to getting sucked in because like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's not what I said, that's not what I meant that.
Speaker 1: Now I'm seeing the evidence of lots of people being
Speaker 1: misled by this misrepresentation, and it bothers me. And I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it should bother me because I's like, this
Speaker 1: is not the outcome I want, right, And it's not
Speaker 1: why I have a podcast, and it's not why I
Speaker 1: went on that other person's podcast, And so there's some
Speaker 1: burden on me to try to clarify the misunderstanding. And
Speaker 1: I was continually getting sucked into the illusion that clarification
Speaker 1: was possible, right, So I would try because I really
Speaker 1: wanted to use Twitter as a channel of communication. It
Speaker 1: was the only social media platform I ever used. I'd
Speaker 1: never used Facebook, or I have Facebook and Instagram accounts,
Speaker 1: but those are just marketing, you know, channels from my team.
Speaker 1: I'm never on those so I was on Twitter. It
Speaker 1: really was me, and I was, you know, as much
Speaker 1: as I could step away from it because it seemed
Speaker 1: unhealthy for a time, I kept seeing the evidence of
Speaker 1: confusion and misrepresentation. I thought, I'm just going to try
Speaker 1: again to clarify things right, And that was that was
Speaker 1: such an unrewarding experience that it was just it was
Speaker 1: it was creating a residue of despair and contempt. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just I just felt it just felt polluted by
Speaker 1: I just felt like I had met like all the
Speaker 1: psychopaths in the world on a daily basis, Like there
Speaker 1: can't be as many psychopaths in the world as I
Speaker 1: was seemed to be meeting online. As much as I
Speaker 1: could step away from it and just say and put
Speaker 1: it down, I kept picking it up again, and so
Speaker 1: I just thought, this is crazy. So I just ripped
Speaker 1: it off. And that's been an immense change. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really it's so sometimes you need to actually do
Speaker 1: the thing that is you can you can't just keep
Speaker 1: putting yourself in this dysfunctional situation and then processing your reaction.
Speaker 1: It's like you have to ask yourself, why are you
Speaker 1: doing this? Why are you spending your time and attention
Speaker 1: this way in the first place, And so for me
Speaker 1: it was Twitter. I mean I understand other people, you know,
Speaker 1: depending on what they could just be putting. If they're
Speaker 1: sharing cat videos on Twitter, they're just getting nothing but love, right,
Speaker 1: and they have no idea what I'm talking about. But
Speaker 1: trust me, it's possible to have a truly lousy experience
Speaker 1: on Twitter.
Speaker 2: What if anything would bring you back? Because I love
Speaker 2: what you're saying there that you know, if you're doing
Speaker 2: the same thing, it's giving you the same result. You've
Speaker 2: tried a new thing with it, it's giving you the
Speaker 2: same result. Sometimes you have to cut it off to
Speaker 2: create a healthier balance, to reconfigure to do the work
Speaker 2: you want to do. What if anything would allow you
Speaker 2: to go back to it, or how would you see
Speaker 2: yourself if you were to go back to it in
Speaker 2: a healthier way. I'm thinking of all the people who
Speaker 2: cut things out their lives because they need to feel
Speaker 2: that distance from it because it's taken a hold of them.
Speaker 2: But then they know that in reality they might have
Speaker 2: to go back it work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm not planning to go back. I don't
Speaker 1: really see that. I don't I don't think, I mean,
Speaker 1: for marketing, I don't need it. Yeah, it's not well,
Speaker 1: I missed it. I missed the good parts of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, because I was following a lot of smart,
Speaker 1: funny people and the just entertaining. But the truth is,
Speaker 1: even the good parts were ultimately diverting in a way
Speaker 1: that in retrospect feels like a bit of a just
Speaker 1: a waste of time. You know. It's just like I'm
Speaker 1: getting I didn't have to spend as much time even
Speaker 1: with the good parts of it. You know, It's just
Speaker 1: it was kind of like, you know, just like too
Speaker 1: many carbs in that part of my information diet. You know.
Speaker 1: That's what Twitter was. It was all carbs. I mean,
Speaker 1: if I went back, I would just yeah, I would
Speaker 1: probably use it much more like I use or don't
Speaker 1: even use my other social media channels. I would just
Speaker 1: use it as I would have someone post for me
Speaker 1: or I would post and without ever looking about what's
Speaker 1: coming back and me. And there are people, there are
Speaker 1: people who get a lot of negative stuff coming back
Speaker 1: at them and they just never see it because they
Speaker 1: just never And that's I could have been one of
Speaker 1: those people. And I was that sort of person for
Speaker 1: you know, some periods of time. But I just kept
Speaker 1: getting lured by the technology, by the promise of clarifying confusion,
Speaker 1: you know, because here the like the person just says
Speaker 1: something to me and I can say something back, and
Speaker 1: why not, you know, and for strangely it did. None
Speaker 1: of the other social media platforms have ever hooked hooked
Speaker 1: me in that way. I've never been tempted to get
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Instagram and use it in that way.
Speaker 1: And I'm not looking for a substitute for Twitter, I mean,
Speaker 1: so that that is interesting. There's many people are recommending
Speaker 1: substitutes where they're you know, building a new platform, you know,
Speaker 1: they got off Twitter for whatever reason. But it's not
Speaker 1: I'm just not tempted to fill that the Twitter shaped
Speaker 1: hole in my life with anything else. So that's good.
Speaker 2: I love that, all right. And then one last question
Speaker 2: before we dive into the final five is we spoke
Speaker 2: about this right at the beginning, and you men mentioned
Speaker 2: the you know, the problem, the impact eminent problem, like
Speaker 2: how do you see yourself thinking about or meditating on,
Speaker 2: or preparing for death or the the impermanence of life,
Speaker 2: Like how does that come into your consciousness?
Speaker 1: Well, there are really two sides to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's your own death and then there's the deaths of
Speaker 1: everyone you care about, and that's those are really different
Speaker 1: problems in a way. And it's yeah, so when I
Speaker 1: when I think of the the experience of having those
Speaker 1: close to me die, that's I mean, I know, I
Speaker 1: mean it's already happened, and I've gone through that with
Speaker 1: in the cases of certain people. And you know, if
Speaker 1: if I'm lucky enough to live a long time, well
Speaker 1: then it's going to it's going to happen. So I'm
Speaker 1: sure many times again. And I mean it's a fundamentally
Speaker 1: mysterious thing. I mean, the fact that we drop out
Speaker 1: the bottom of this place is just it's it's truly imponderable,
Speaker 1: you know. And yet I know that it's possible to
Speaker 1: be happy in the absence of everyone, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's some paradoxes here. Like you and I are
Speaker 1: having this conversation now, basically everyone we love is not here,
Speaker 1: you know, like you and I just met, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's like, so we're just we're just getting to
Speaker 1: know each other. You know. My mom's not here, my
Speaker 1: wife's not here, my kids are not here. You've got
Speaker 1: your list of people you love who are not here.
Speaker 1: It's okay to not be with the people we love,
Speaker 1: so we know that, right and to take the other side,
Speaker 1: or like what it's like to personally die, say, you know,
Speaker 1: we we go to sleep each night and we were
Speaker 1: not It's not only is it okay to completely relinquish
Speaker 1: our hold on this world. I mean we we we
Speaker 1: we we yearn for it. Like if you're if you
Speaker 1: got insomnia, if you can't fall asleep, that becomes a problem.
Speaker 1: You're desperate to lose your your seeing and hearing, smelling
Speaker 1: and tasting and touching and thinking. You just want to
Speaker 1: you want to completely get zeroed out every night. And
Speaker 1: that's you know, if if if nothing happens after death,
Speaker 1: I mean, people we can leave aside the possibility that
Speaker 1: that they're you know that death is in some sense
Speaker 1: an illusion. But if if you really just get a
Speaker 1: dial tone after you die, right, if really there's just nothing,
Speaker 1: it's somewhat analogous to sleep. I mean, it's like the
Speaker 1: lights go out right every night. We do that and
Speaker 1: we do it happily, and it's not as there's no
Speaker 1: you know, I guess some people have sleep issues where
Speaker 1: they're afraid to fall asleep, but that's certainly not the
Speaker 1: common case, right, and so to the contrary, we yearn
Speaker 1: for it. So it is somewhat paradoxical that these like
Speaker 1: the worst thing about life, that the thing that that
Speaker 1: people are terrified to experience themselves, and it's they're terrified
Speaker 1: to experience in the case of of losing the people
Speaker 1: they love. We in the most routine way, we have
Speaker 1: really analogous experiences that are fine, right, So, like you're
Speaker 1: fine alone in a room and you're fine to go
Speaker 1: to sleep, and these are there's a there's a bit
Speaker 1: of death in both of these things, because you're everyone
Speaker 1: you love really is absent, and when you fall asleep,
Speaker 1: you really forget everything about your life in this world,
Speaker 1: you know, until until you start dreaming, and then you're
Speaker 1: completely confused about your life and some other circumstance unless
Speaker 1: it's elucid dream, which is to say that it's actually
Speaker 1: it's it's possible to be okay ultimately even with the
Speaker 1: with the reality of death from both from either side.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not I'm I'm certainly expecting to to
Speaker 1: grieve with the next time someone close to me dies.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not expecting the place, but that is
Speaker 1: a I understand that that as an expression of love.
Speaker 1: First of all, ask yourself if you'd even want to
Speaker 1: be without the experience of grief. I mean, ask yourself,
Speaker 1: for instance, what you would want to do in the
Speaker 1: event that we had designed a perfect cure for grief, right, Like,
Speaker 1: let'll say a pill like like the perfect and it's
Speaker 1: not an antidepressant, but it's an anti sadness pill, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's not conceptually incoherent. I mean, we might one
Speaker 1: day have that pill. You know, it might be a
Speaker 1: pill that you would compassionately want to Like, there are
Speaker 1: people who who are suffering some just intractable, unendurable bereavement
Speaker 1: that just never lifts and they're just you know, they
Speaker 1: can't get their life back together. And there you'd want
Speaker 1: to give that pill to that person. But the question
Speaker 1: is how soon would you want to take that pill?
Speaker 1: And would you want to take that pill fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: after your closest connection in this life died? You know,
Speaker 1: it's like that's the body is still warm, and would
Speaker 1: you be popping this pill? I don't think so. I
Speaker 1: think I mean this is something like, how care free
Speaker 1: do you want to feel in the in the immediate
Speaker 1: aftermath of a person you love dying? You know you
Speaker 1: want it, You want the gravity of that to land.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to feel you want to feel
Speaker 1: that loss because that's in some sense the only appropriate
Speaker 1: register of what they meant to you, you know, and
Speaker 1: just and the life you live together, right, you know
Speaker 1: you like so if you if you pop the grief
Speaker 1: bill and then you're just saying, Okay, what's on Netflix, right,
Speaker 1: that would be a kind of a desecration of all
Speaker 1: that you would share it with this person. So, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's a very interesting question where you
Speaker 1: would because I think ultimately you would want to be
Speaker 1: able to give that pill to someone whose life had
Speaker 1: become completely derailed by grief. But just where it? Just
Speaker 1: where's the line? I mean, that's that's an interesting question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great answer. Yeah, all right. So we
Speaker 2: end every episode with a final five which have to
Speaker 2: be answered in one sentence maximum each each want it's
Speaker 2: a challenge for me, this is a challenge for you,
Speaker 2: for sure. I'm excited to hear some of your answers.
Speaker 2: The fifth question, which we've asked to every guest on
Speaker 2: the show is perfectly designed for you after today's conversation.
Speaker 2: So and I just want to say on camera. We
Speaker 2: just cut because the cameras were getting reset because we've
Speaker 2: been taping for so long. But I was just saying
Speaker 2: that the conversation I've had with Sam today has been
Speaker 2: so different from the one I thought i'd have with
Speaker 2: him after reading his book, and that to me is
Speaker 2: the sign of a good conversation because it was true
Speaker 2: curiosity and mystery and creation in the moment and presence
Speaker 2: in the moment from both of us. So nice, I
Speaker 2: love that question Number one, what is the best meditation
Speaker 2: advice you've ever heard, received or given?
Speaker 1: You are not this next thought.
Speaker 2: Second question is what is the worst meditation advice you've
Speaker 2: ever heard, received or given?
Speaker 1: Well, I practiced for a long time in a very
Speaker 1: goal oriented tradition where it was just you know, I
Speaker 1: spent months and months on retreats with Burmese meditation masters
Speaker 1: who had a very dualistic, goal oriented seeking kind of model.
Speaker 1: It's it's not to say you couldn't benefit from that,
Speaker 1: but I will get you a sentence out of this.
Speaker 1: But I set up to the sentence that the primary
Speaker 1: analogy being used was you're going to rubbing two sticks
Speaker 1: to get fired, and the moment you stop, they cool off. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's just it's so whatever the sentence is, it's
Speaker 1: just like meditation is like rubbing two sticks together to
Speaker 1: get fired. You have to continuously do it, and the
Speaker 1: moment you break, you're back to zero. Right, You've made
Speaker 1: no product.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's yeah, that's a painful. That's really painful. Yes, okay.
Speaker 2: Question number three, what's the biggest lesson you learned in
Speaker 2: the last twelve months.
Speaker 1: Honestly, it's humbling to to admit it, but it really
Speaker 1: was getting off twitter just we're just with the recognition
Speaker 1: that the whole super set of preoccupation here was not
Speaker 1: worth it and not healthy, even the good stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: just every side of this diabolical jewel was sort of
Speaker 1: ugly when I really looked at it. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: that was that was it.
Speaker 2: Great. Question numberfore, what's something you think people value highly
Speaker 2: but you don't value anymore?
Speaker 1: Identity in what sense? I mean really, in every sense.
Speaker 1: I mean just just tribal identity. You know, your religious identity,
Speaker 1: your ethnic identity, your I don't even think you need
Speaker 1: to identify with the face you see in the mirror
Speaker 1: each day, right, So I say, how much less should
Speaker 1: you have to identify with people who just superficially resemble
Speaker 1: you in any way? So, but even just the identity
Speaker 1: of feeling like like in my career or in any
Speaker 1: mode in which I'm showing up in the world, it's
Speaker 1: less like who I feel I am while doing that
Speaker 1: is less and less substanti like. I don't. I don't really,
Speaker 1: it's not really graspable, you know, And so I don't
Speaker 1: like I you know, I spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: teaching meditation in on waking Up. But because it's because
Speaker 1: of the technology, because it's an app, I don't actually
Speaker 1: feel like a meditation teacher.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I'm not showing up in the world as a meditation teacher.
Speaker 1: I don't have there's no place you can go sit
Speaker 1: with me in a in a hall, you know. So
Speaker 1: I don't have students in the ordinary meditation teacher way.
Speaker 1: But the reality is that through waking up. You know,
Speaker 1: it seems strange to say it, but I could be
Speaker 1: teaching nondual mindfulness to more people than anyone on earth
Speaker 1: at this moment. I mean, it's just it's really quite
Speaker 1: crazy how it has scaled. But yet I don't I
Speaker 1: never think of myself in that role. So like the
Speaker 1: role based identity. You know, I'm a writer, I have
Speaker 1: got a bunch of books, but I you know, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I don't really think of myself as a writer as
Speaker 1: much as I used to. I mean, there's just no
Speaker 1: I just don't feel like there's no anything that I
Speaker 1: would any way in which I would label what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: The label really does feel like it's it's it's barely
Speaker 1: adhesive to the to the project. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: it's it's it's there just for the for the the
Speaker 1: utility of just summarizing, you know, just like what do
Speaker 1: you put on this form? You know, what's what's your
Speaker 1: what's your occupation? Right, But it's like it's just doesn't
Speaker 1: get at what I'm actually doing, and it doesn't get
Speaker 1: how I see myself. So the identity is something that
Speaker 1: I mean people think, yes, I'm sure there's some stage
Speaker 1: in life where you want a healthy identity, like I've
Speaker 1: I've got two daughters. I want them to have healthy identities.
Speaker 1: I want them to have healthy egos. But Ultimately, it's
Speaker 1: not about being someone in any kind of sense. That
Speaker 1: feels it's like identity feels like a fist, you know,
Speaker 1: and I really want an open hand in life. And
Speaker 1: that's and so it's not that it's not that I
Speaker 1: never make a fist, but it's like you want to
Speaker 1: you want to relax that as soon as you notice it.
Speaker 2: It's it's really interesting from a personal practice point of
Speaker 2: view and from a human scale practice point of view,
Speaker 2: because what you just said is the perfection of the
Speaker 2: idea almost the way I see it is like with
Speaker 2: your daughters. I don't know how old they are, but
Speaker 2: you know, I'm guessing.
Speaker 1: That not nine and fourteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, And so it's like you want them to
Speaker 2: have a healthy sense of identity because at that stage
Speaker 2: of life, that's such an important thing. And it's almost
Speaker 2: like the evolution of the idea is like, well, there's
Speaker 2: a stage of life where that isn't you know, the
Speaker 2: directive thing? And I think that's what's so hard, because
Speaker 2: you find everyone who's listening, watching experiencing life. It's such
Speaker 2: different levels and it's almost like someone being able. It's
Speaker 2: the same as what I was saying earlier with the
Speaker 2: identity from a systematic point of view. It's like some
Speaker 2: people that's where they are, that that's just where they are,
Speaker 2: where their identity is what gives their life meaning, and
Speaker 2: then you see as someone So yeah, it's just it's
Speaker 2: fascinating to me how at different stages of life identity
Speaker 2: can mean different things.
Speaker 1: And it's really the emotion of pride really crystallizes it
Speaker 1: for me. It's like for my daughter is it's it's
Speaker 1: totally appropriate for them to feel pride. I want them
Speaker 1: to feel pride in the right moments, and I feel proud.
Speaker 1: It's some it's not quite the right framing, but something
Speaker 1: like pride for them. It's I want to play that
Speaker 1: that healthy pride game with them. But I don't feel
Speaker 1: pride in my life at all. Like pride just does
Speaker 1: not maple. I just have the right shape to map
Speaker 1: on to my sense of what it is to be
Speaker 1: a person. Really, you know, it's like, I'm not responsible
Speaker 1: for any of my gifts, such as they are. It's
Speaker 1: like I just again it comes back to luck in
Speaker 1: so many ways and what you do with that luck.
Speaker 1: But again, even the doing with the luck is more
Speaker 1: more good luck, you know. So I just feel immensely
Speaker 1: grateful for everything that has gone well in my life.
Speaker 1: And I just mean, it's just the gratitude is overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: my primary positive emotion now. It's just so much to
Speaker 1: be grateful for. And pride just pride just does not fit.
Speaker 1: It's a puzzle piece that you maybe once fit and
Speaker 1: maybe and you know, granted, if you're if you're a kid, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's it's again, it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a totally appropriate game at a certain stage of life,
Speaker 1: but later on it's it's a game you just really
Speaker 1: you have to outgrow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can. I can relate to that completely and fully.
Speaker 2: Fully loved that. I loved hearing that fifth and final question,
Speaker 2: If you could create one law, this is the one
Speaker 2: that I said. We've asked every guest, but I feel
Speaker 2: like it's perfectly designed for you. If you could create
Speaker 2: one law that everyone in the world had to follow,
Speaker 2: what would it be.
Speaker 1: The price we pay for for dishonesty at every level
Speaker 1: of society is so enormous, and there's so little price
Speaker 1: paid for a lying. I mean that like when when
Speaker 1: when a when a politician is found to be lying right,
Speaker 1: or you know, the person who has immense responsibility is
Speaker 1: found to be lying. You know, but for like specific
Speaker 1: cases of raw that are actionable, like like like lying
Speaker 1: is just under the purview of free speech. Really, it's
Speaker 1: like it's not illegal to lie, right, I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not so much a law. I think if we
Speaker 1: had lie detection technology that that was we could rely on,
Speaker 1: which is the various interesting reasons why we we don't
Speaker 1: have that and may never have that. But if we
Speaker 1: had that, if lie detection technology was like you know,
Speaker 1: DNA analysis in a court of law, like you just
Speaker 1: put someone on the witness stand and you could tell
Speaker 1: whether they were lying, right, I think that would be
Speaker 1: the overnight that would be the biggest ethical change we
Speaker 1: could ever imagine in society. So I think so anything
Speaker 1: that that brought the appropriate level of approbrium to lie, right,
Speaker 1: especially lying when it matters, that would be some version
Speaker 1: of that law, the the you can't lie when it
Speaker 1: matters law, whatever that is, you know. So, but I
Speaker 1: do think it would be a technological solution if we
Speaker 1: just more and more, if people knew that they were
Speaker 1: in a situation where they actually can't get away with
Speaker 1: lying right, because the technology is such or the information
Speaker 1: space is such that it's but the the the added
Speaker 1: piece is that the norm, the norm violation needs to
Speaker 1: be just more urgent, you know, because people, most people
Speaker 1: are walking around with the sense everybody lies, all politicians lie.
Speaker 1: There's like a normal lie. What do you expect? You
Speaker 1: know it's and so it's not. But the just the
Speaker 1: amount of harm and the amount of good that would
Speaker 1: be accomplished if you just knew people were being honest
Speaker 1: and you know, you're not going to be unpleasantly surprised
Speaker 1: by Yeah, so there's a lot of growth, cultural growth
Speaker 1: in that direction.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I hope you get involved in changing some
Speaker 2: systems from some of the stuff you've said today. I like,
Speaker 2: it would be great if you were influencing the influences.
Speaker 1: And well, we try with our humble podcasts. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what we do.
Speaker 2: Everyone has been listening watching. The podcast is called Making Sense.
Speaker 2: The app is called Waking Up. The book is also
Speaker 2: called by the same title. We'll put the links in
Speaker 2: the captions in the notes that you have access to
Speaker 2: all of Sam's work. Go make sure you grab a
Speaker 2: copy of the book, meditate with him on the Waking
Speaker 2: Up app and of course subscribe to the podcast Making
Speaker 2: Sense Sam. I hope this is the first of many
Speaker 2: conversations we get to have pleasure. Yeah, it's really really been.
Speaker 2: It's really been a phenomenal conversation. I hope we have
Speaker 2: many offline too, And anyone who's been listening and watching,
Speaker 2: make sure you grab your favorite segments, points, insights that
Speaker 2: really stood out to you, share them with a friends,
Speaker 2: start a conversation based on it. Tag me and Sam
Speaker 2: and let me know what really stood out to you,
Speaker 2: what resonated with you, maybe some things that are making
Speaker 2: you question or think differently. I'd love to see what
Speaker 2: came out of it for you. This has been a
Speaker 2: very different type of conversation on On Purpose, and I
Speaker 2: know you're can to appreciate it. But a big thank
Speaker 2: you to Sam again for his generous time. Big thank
Speaker 2: you to every single one of you have been listening
Speaker 2: and watching, and we'll see you again for another episode
Speaker 2: of On Purpose. Thank you guys. If you love this episode,
Speaker 2: you'll love my interview with doctor Gabor Matte on understanding
Speaker 2: your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start
Speaker 2: moving on from the past.