Today, I sit down with Sam Harris to talk about dealing with extreme emotions and pursuing your purpose. We discuss our freedom to pursue beliefs we want to support, how to approach meditation with maturity and incorporate it into our daily life, the crippling effects of spending too much time on social media, and how to turn outrage into manageable situations.
Sam Harris is an American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, and podcast host. He is known for his writings and lectures on religion, morality, neuroscience, and free will. Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has authored several books, including "The End of Faith," "Letter to a Christian Nation," "Waking Up," and "Free Will." Harris is also the host of the podcast "Making Sense," where he discusses various topics related to science, politics, and philosophy.
You can order my new book 8 RULES OF LOVE at 8rulesoflove.com or at a retail store near you. You can also get the chance to see me live on my first ever world tour. This is a 90 minute interactive show where I will take you on a journey of finding, keeping and even letting go of love. Head to jayshettytour.com and find out if I'll be in a city near you. Thank you so much for all your support - I hope to see you soon.
Open the door to a deeper understanding of yourself—with guided meditations and insights for living a more examined life. Visit https://www.wakingup.com/jayshetty
What We Discuss:
- 00:00 Intro
- 02:34 What is worthy of pursuit in life?
- 06:47 The difference between religion and spirituality that truly transcends culture
- 12:14 Why we need to be wiser in finding what is worthy of our credence
- 24:57 Sam explains what’s the mature approach of meditation and how this can be achieved
- 36:02 There are many levels of outrage and it mostly depends on the presented situation
- 45:00 How do you handle the feeling of outrage or any other strong feeling that may be difficult to deal with
- 54:19 Sam shares the philanthropic charities he has been investing his time in
- 01:02:02 Lessening time on social media can help avoid getting exposed to toxic and unhealthy content
- 01:11:16 How will you deal with the death of a loved one and of your own?
- 01:17:04 Sam on Final Five
Episode Resources
Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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There really is a tension between being then become in some,
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An unending series of problems to be solved. Nora
I die right, so we have to find some mode of being at peace with him, the bestselling author and hosts the number one health and wellness podcast
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and today's guess there's someone that I've been reading books for quite a while. We were just discussing beforehand, probably started reading his work around thirteen.
As ago or thereabouts, and
I just read his latest book, which I'm gonna tell you about today and will be discussing some of their work today, and it's amazing
to see how someone's deepened expanded continued that door, especially
a right in a very low
you call, but also documented way, and so
I'm talking about I somehow
it's a neuroscientist philosopher and order of five new york times best sellers
Work covers a wide range of topics, neuroscience moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, rationality and san folks is
how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live
The books include the end of faith, the moral landscape which the first book I read free will.
Lying and waking up some host a popular making, sense, podcast and is the creator of the waking up at please
into the show, sam harris sam. Thank you for doing that. Oh yes, pleasure measure, yeah it's great to meet you this, the first time we've we've never interacted before this. No, no messages, no tax. The first time in the same room is absolutely, but it's always I. I love diving in with an author that I've read before, and so, as you said a few brief moments ago,.
Even though we have not met. I hope that I have some more of an understanding, an insight into your mind, but I always look to extend and expand that today
I want to dive straight in, and I want to pick out a quote
from you, use it most
spend our time seeking happiness and security
now acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search, each
was he's looking for a path back to the present. We're trying to
I'm good enough reasons to be satisfied. Now. My question is what worth pursuing or what is worthy of pursue in life, because I guess
That's probably a good place to start year whether there really is a tension between bean and becoming right. I think we will live with this tension,
every moment of our lives- and I think I think the domain-
our spiritual concerns, really focuses on the bean part. Rather, it is a legitimate spirituality for lack of a better word is what
you put in the space provided it is an answer to the question of how is it possible to be fulfilled in the present moment in the mist
whatever's happening in no knowing that experience is always changing. Knowing that you can't possibly create an experience that doesn't change, how is it possible to be at peace with the flux? Rights is at an end,
really find an emotive bein. That's what we're in you you! You can recognize a type of fulfilment
that isn't predicated on the next good thing happening right into the story telling us about the future. That may, in fact, never arrive.
Some will be in isn't enough, because
they're all the ways in the ways the world might be right, amended. It there's the possibility space if of what we can create an and what we want to create takes effort, and
So all in all these things are not actualized. Now, even if we are content now, I think that
vain of are become
and I mean there's all kinds of healthy ways of unhealthy ways of becoming, but the healthy mode of becoming at least one part of it is
I really subsumed our ethical lives rhetoric.
where what what is it would be good to do
positive, what is pro social? How can we make the world a better,
is, how can we raise our kids to be wise and honest and and content, and all these are projects that take work,
and so is not just a matter of jeff chilling out perfectly and why
what happens they we do have to do things I saw the
Tension really is in being at peace in the meditative sands and the contempt of sand,
the spiritual sense, even while you make great effort to accomplish things- and I think that the peace part comes
when you recognise that your
happiness is not actually predicated on getting any of those things done that you that you have to learn to love the process you have to learn to recognise. That
all themselves as valid as they might.
It achieve the experience of achieving them,
This very brief- and it has this mirage like quality where it just it received even thinking.
But the thing for a year- and you finally get
to that landmark and what is it?
it's just another moment of being alive, and now you ve got your thoughts about the past and the future. Still
The question is: can you actually make for contact with the present moment?
it in the quote. You read, I might
in point was most people
if you, if you dont, have to meditate ear your basically trying to arrange the world to give you
Good enough reason to recognize at the present moment is enough.
once you actually know how to meditate. You can sink into the present moment, regardless of what else your struggling to accomplish, and so you can be.
Because I take the goal as as the path
ryan, emma kind of emotionally and cognitive leaves or if you ve, already arrived in terms of your own, we'll concerns about your own wellbeing and
at you know that life is also.
an unending series of problems to be solved? Riper you,
nor are gonna die, die right now. There's does not sit solution to take the the the massive problem of impermanence right, so yet
We have to find some motive being at peace with improvements and that an that's really ass were the contempt of life comes in. So we took him up pursuing peace terminal.
Pursuing this ability to navigate
mean, as you were, saying, being a piece with where you are now, but at the same time growing in progressing in and loving the process is well. How do you
define just for our voters. Listen because I know you do this a lot in the book and in your work is well. How do you define spur
quality, and how do you define religions so that people can you
makes sense in those terms as we use them throughout this
yeah organization. Yeah. Why is identity? As you probably know, I tend to be a critic of organs,
religion, because it just forget about the the tribal ism that religion so often genders in the conflict born of that tribalism. I just think we need a twenty first century. Conversation about human wisdom
You mean happiness, end and spirituality, as it is a word I use, although you
It somewhat scarecrows, because people have associations with it that, I think, are just not helpful.
arguments. Really you can have a twenty first century conversation about reality and you and how to live within it or you can have a seven.
entering conversation or a fifth century bc. Conversation. Maybe you can you can locate yourself
at any point in human history or you can at this moment decide to avail yourself of all of the best ideas and unjust, recognised,
We have really a common inheritance of wisdom and insight and its we can. We can use whatever works.
and ultimately, we have to be the best judges and what works in the eu
the needs of the moment. Given technological changes, it could never been foreseen by our ancestors rice or whether we
it is with the u s constitution or what to do with the bible we do with with, though
polly cannon. They are the buddha scripture of is just do what you can.
Estrogen that our ancestors have created document
as a thinking and methodologies nearest
has been one contemplative practice being another that are incredibly valuable to us, but we we have to recognise that in this moment,
I am all we have is human conversation and human intuition and human insight by which to to navigate, and so I just it for the religion piece to be dogmatically attached to
specific religion as though with a one true way of seeing everything. I just doesn't make any sense to me at this moment and missus Biddle. Its analogous to
wanting to say that the physics is a christian phenomenon, because the christians for the most part where the first people actually make real breakthrough in physics. What is just there's, no reason
pickup of of of christian physics or muslim algebra and and ultimately I think that there'll be no reason to speak of christian or buddhist or hindu spirituality. I think we have a common human project and whatever
true of the human mind and its possibilities there has to be
a way of talking about that. The truly transcends culture and and certainly isn't sectarian and any usual sense in the same way that science, it won its working, transcends culture and isn't sectarian and there's no japanese science versus american scientists
in others, just there's a science spirituality for better or worse, at a word that I think we still need to use because
I tend to. I was talking about the contemplative life or in a wisdom, traditions and and specific practices, like meditation
But it names aid and approach.
The well being that isn't predicated on all the usual seeking to become happy resource? Not
getting wealthier is not of a book is back in a healthier and then fitter and those are all worthwhile projects.
And they're, not in conflict with spirituality, but the the the the the spiritual peace in spirituality is what how is it possible to pay attention in this moment? So as to not
offer on necessarily ran when one of them actual mechanics up our psychological suffering. So should we do suffer on necessarily so much of the time and when you look closely
all that it really is a matter of being lost in thought, almost all the time and there's whose come the still living. That is waking dream scape of thought where we're too
can do ourselves moment to moment were not aware of it, and so much of that conversation is not happy. One
and meditation is really were breaking that spell and and waking up from the dream of discourse, seventy and an identification with thought. So she can recognize it good consciousness that that, by wit,
Everything is seen unknown and experienced and felt registry the qualitative character of of or your own bein in this moment,
just has certain qualities that are intrinsically peaceful and and grow
fine and not an and free of problems right into an
it. It's really the layer of thought that we fail to wreck
nice all that and feel that our every waking moment some form of emergency that has to be responded to order
yeah, I think the way you define
spurs reality in the way you talk about it. I feel like it's dead
more and more appealing to read think it's definitely some
As you said, we need a twenty first century version of war
pursuing and how we think about reality, and I think those conversations
happening more often and and most
only in a more important circles. I add this
should begin I've. I've often thought about this. You ve well documented the pitfalls of organised
religion and the challenges that come with their. What do you think of the pitfalls or challenges of spirituality in
the fact that we move away from something as you
an earlier was like unit is very define, structured way of living that we have now come to look at it. Ain't gonna, get that doesn't make sense all the time
and at the other end we have a complete kind of open paradigm of
its reality, which can often be
fusing lacking structure, lappet lacking somewhat of a map like deuces hat and pitfalls.
As to how we practice and become contemplative about sport
quality yeah. Well, so I I should say that much that goes by the name of spirituality is also something that that is worth being skeptical over. I, though many beliefs that people form
and many these are are imported from religion. They just can't be squared with a sophisticated scientific view of just what
EL, it is like- and I say not to say we ve figured opening out emily was certainly haven't, but
just know that that certain superstitious
It's magical otherworldly believes her are just not likely to be true and, and yet the most important spiritual claims traditionally like the fact that that unconditional love as a possible state of mind, radio or m that the self as it is normal.
they felt and conceived, is actually illusory rather were taken in by a powerful illusion of separateness, and that's that feeling separatists can be inspected and ultimately penetrated and fell through and felt beyond
I'm knows are really idea that those are them did the babies.
Atwater of religion and spirituality, and I think everyone it re if they think about a long enough wants to concern
Annie and though, and those are fully supported
I have a modern discussion of of the human mind and even be a neuro anatomical discussion of the human mind is no
am I, as you know, my phd is in neuroscience that I can tell you, there's no place in the brain, for a a and and
and an ego to be hiding right in the sense that we have a self that is unchanging as carried through from moment to moment. That is the place from which we appropriate experience that is separate from it
variance. That is just granted as a powerful illusion for many people, but it is an illusion that that can be dispelled and one's dispelled you. It actually brings europe your experience into closer register with what we have every reason to believe no scientifically about the way the mind should be based on one on the way the brain is with you wander into the spiritual side of a bookstore
If you can even find a physical bookstore, these days has been has been whilst I, but I've been one having got the greater the oasis here, as for the few and far between the most definitely, but if you
in that section, the bookstore there's a lot on the shelves that is bogus or semi
guess are being filled with wishful thinking and and and not so interesting, intellectually or ethically. Frankly, but there's it there's a lot
is truly valid and age, and I think we just have to become wiser curators of the totality of human conversation and the world's
nurture to find what is worthy of of our credence at this point, and this is what we did. We do this naturally- and I think we just now
it to be honest, that we are the ones like when when you go to an ancient tax. When you go to ala the me we are to take your your your for your favorite, spiritual or religious book.
In almost all of them there are
I suggest that are obviously anachronistic and and just not suited to a twenty first century view of of just how we should live for, as it is a lot about how to sacrifice goats, you know in the in the old testament and- and
just if was ever useful is night, not especially useful. Now people effortless
they ignore those passages and that's fine, see if your point
you're performing editing on the fly, and then you, then you find a passage in it.
Please he ease or Jesus sabre, giving the sermon on mount and when
The golden rule is that ok, this is this is really encapsulates a lot of wisdom and is very hard him
move on the golden rule, goldenrods a fantastic heuristic for just a living ethically with people, so great
there's nothing. We need to believe on insufficient evidence, tat to you.
it's the golden rule as it as I am a great fan of any kind of navigation tool. Ethically and when
think about ethics and morality really is a question of what to do next and were always faced with this. This navigation problem essentially good. There's this total space of acts of possible experience individual
and collectively and we're trying to figure out and how to navigate in the space. Given the the the the possible experiences on offer and the truth is
their horizons here, which we can't see me
we don't know how good life could get for us individually and collectively that so many things that are
that in play now and the way we are living at a time where it is possible for us to choose
in your own genomes. Ultimately, raymond there's not not
people doing that at the moment. But that is just a few
for years away where we're gonna be confronted with the question of Emily,
who actually want to modify the genes that are big, that expressed in it
our body and brain, and even
in the germ line in so we're talking about the inheritance of your irina future children
so, we can do and in a few short moments what evolution has what has been doing for hundreds of thousands of years. In our case.
and millions of millions and millions of europe rears before that. Tunisia choices that they do. We
I have always had to make our making them in the presence of increasingly powerful technology and our engagement with with the internet and an information, and we we.
We're finding it hard to even have a conversation about the most basic facts now at scale, because there's so much misinformation and we much of our conversations being pipe through this
for media platforms, which they are essentially outrage. Machines rather ampler, preferentially amplifying the most agitating and out and divisive content, because that's what spreads faster
and other ants line and find misinformation more than then the debunking of misinformation or others in a kind of a symmetric, warm information here, and so we're
were suddenly we ve got these.
Functionally? We we have the genes we had with it with a few twigs. We had that we have the genes. We have may be seven
a thousand years ago, right we're we're these ancient primates
now armed with nuclear
Happens and an internet and increasing and a high technology now and and as and where we were faced with a continued
faced with the conundrum of what to do with all of this and how
We saw these massive coordination problems where we get now eight billion strangers essentially to cooperate peacefully.
Landscape of possibility here is always shifting, and so again we have human conversation as up as a means by which to navigate this and so yeah
Come back as a very long way of getting back to your original question, which is,
you recognize
As that our legacy thought structures are not well suited to this right, so to be a fundamentalist, christian or a fundamentalist buddhist or a fundamentalist hindu. In the face of these new opportunities and new challenges is not the best operating system for your mind and your force
to be far more eclectic and non sectarian and not non dogmatic and just open to the best evidence in the best arguments really perpetually open to the best new evidence in and better.
events where the guard rails right, there's no longer is, is no longer simple. As I can't. I can no longer just consult a single book or a single list of do's and don'ts added to guide to guide me. Ultimately, it's a far more flexible and intelligent way to proceed because
We want me to ask yourself: do you want your next decision or your bit of your decision? Ten years from now to be a, do you want to be available to the best evidence and the best arguments at that moment when making that decision or not do you or do you want some
a belief system that guarantees your unavailability read. You want some kind of cognitive, an emotional closure.
It that that was you off from better arguments and better information. I think a
almost no one would sign up for that kind of assets.
Neurons by another name right. So I think-
wanna be persuadable. We want to be open to better arguments and and new evidence. We also
be skeptical and and conservative in in how we revised
as our map of the world, because we know that most new vienna published studies have standards and a very good chance of not being
true or you area not not been replicated or even a science. We
have a legacy. We haven't inheritance of institutions that have proved themselves over generations, and so we shouldn't be
eager to tear everything down to the studs and re and build again ram. But I think we, I think, there's a there's, a reason to be conservative with respect to institutions and norms, and I mean that things that have worked for centuries.
They tend to be a reason why they work for centuries, and so it is there's a sort of a tinkering at an inn. Iterative process here that I think, makes sense, but ultimately,
Yet we want a modern wisdom, wisdom tradition to be the case,
common property of a non sectarian, nine parochial, non provincial humanity at this point
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to be deeply well as available now, and I hurt radio at apple pot cas or ever you'd. Listen apart, gas, big love, now mistakes and that their nicely comes back to the waking up. Part of your work cried the idea the way,
can't, create something or use something fully aligned with human values, because we as humans on up fully aligned with human values in the in the collective sense and idea that I've always
or that the reason why we should be scared of technologies, because I guess we're scared of some humans. So if humans have the ability to cry
it's something it will have all the imperfections that we have internally in the creator of it, and so it will inherit all the same. Manipulative tendencies, exploitative tendencies the you know it it's hard to free something of that
a few, inherently build something with that year, and you see that with any sort of media assertion mediator
knowledge you today that, even if it was built with the best intentions of trying to
very good in the world, either amplifies negative or inherently has some questionable morals and ethics to his wife near and so,
It comes back to the waking up part of your work, which is this self reflective, contemplative idea of
You know who I am becoming, who do I wanna be? Who am I I mean, did very deepest level. As you said,
one one word that I've always loved from my studies was. This idea of the word purifying like
for this there was a needing. There is a need for purification of some of these elements, and you- and you talk about this in the beginning of your book when you
Have you ever leave is when the first time you did Andy I may, and then you you had this.
Feeling of lake complete love for your friend free of envy.
When I was reading that I was thinking about how much this word purification is often not talked about that
Probably my favorite word that I've I've learned through my study of wisdom traditions, because to me I was thinking yeah. What's what's really required, as you said, is that loves already there it's already there, it's not like you're, finding or discovering something, but there's almost like a detoxing or cleansing a letting go of these other things that cloud our ability to be. That is that part of what you do and what you feel metal.
it can achieve sword? No, that's. That's have completely different things, while the thing you want to accomplish has already accomplished, he ran is there so that their dualistic, unarmed, always of conceiving this hope the whole path of practice?
the dualistic way is very much appear
vacation model, which is there's something. That's like current, currently dirty writer, and you can clean it and you can end it. It's going to take effort to clean it right and said this, and I would argue the most spirit,
we'll traditions are framed in that way and then there's only a place for that, but the mature approach to meditation practice,
and then the one frankly that is just free of of the of the stress of seeking is to recognise that the consciousness as it is really to ordinary consciousness, regardless of what its current contents arm. Regardless of what you're
currently experiencing. You could be feeling a classically, negative emotion and you could just gotten angry right and then you remember: oh wait a minute! I'm I'm supposed to be meditating! Ok, what it was. What was true now read
and the physiology of anger hasn't even had time to dissipate yet result that that that'll happen over in a tens of seconds right but
ill in the innocent. If, if you know how to recognize,
but when I call over and waken up country consciousness without without a centre in that first moment of interest,
Recognising that you are there
condition in which anger and everything else is appearing.
there is already know centre to that.
Fishing is already know, ego in the middle of it and it doesnt actually get emptier of self than that.
And to an even if you have a very different experience,
It may take 'em dna and you feel unconditional love or you going a long meditation retreat and you get really concentrate on your having beer just regularly. Having experiences of bliss say so.
you can be very drug like all of those changes in the car.
Of conscious, as our transitory may take a drug and scan aware off. You get very concentrated and you feel bliss, but one europe do you know why
In netflix two weeks later, you're- not you not concentrated in that way and you're doing you do the males, with your attention and presumably you're, not gonna, be blessed out in the same way
so all of those changes in the contents of our temporary was not temporary. Is the availability of this recognition that there is just as open condition which everything is spontaneously appearing thoughts and sites and sounds and sensations and emotions and moods and the energetic of
periods is always occurring in
edition that is is fundamentally mysterious really am, is not a cause as if you engage it prior to concept.
I believe, that this layer, which you can just think about it and describe it in psychological terms, does not understand Abou too. In a coral,
been changes in our minds with changes in the brain, rising visitors and there's a possible neuroscience of of contempt of experience and people are doing. That
but as a matter of your own experience, there's this ever present mystery that
Anything is any way at all marilla you, you don't know what you're going to think next until the thought itself arises restrictive because it you'd have to think it before you thought it did in order to
you know what it is right on some level, you are a witness,
everything is apparent and in the beginning
It was like the witness has the structure of a self of a subject, but as you,
look into that more and more that struck
her goes away and there's just this condition in which everything is apparent, and it doesn't it.
That doesn't feel like. I don't feel like me and
whatever feels like I army, as yet more appearance. You know its aid can be a ship
pattern of energy on your face or a contraction and in the body. So, as you keep dropping back,
and witness in that it has.
Purification model makes less and less sense, because
What is there to purify right? There's not like even
even a even anger is no longer anger. Right in the moment have a record of recognition. It's just this. It's just a feeling of of heat. A on your face right. It's just a feel. It's just is a feeling of tension in your
chest and there's no one to whom those feelings refer, ryan and so,
the moment. You recognise that you have, by definition, broken the connection to what
Thoughts were telling you why you were angry and why should be angry and why everywhere, every right to be angry and what you're gonna say to that person next time you see them, you ve broken that spell of thinking, and so the old. The emotion is dissipated,
So it's some anger is no longer anger at, but is in purification mode. It is still possible
to do that dualistic claim in the beginning when you're practising either, but what I tend to teach in over waken up. His is a technique called mindfulness which most people engage.
Touristic way in the beginning, where either their strategically being aware of sites and sounds sensations and the breath and and dumb and thoughts and emotion,
and so he even do even dualistic listlessly
You can learn the difference between them.
lost in thought and identified with an emotion like anger and just witnessing it from the point that seems to be outside of that thought and that that emotion, and even if it feels like a subject that is paying attention
strategically too, to the physiology of anger or
or the rise in cessation of thought. That's fine, but that's it. That's a starting point. That's
then, an unnecessary one for virtually everyone, and that does accomplish this. De identification from the whole process is good.
This negative emotions are. There is a freedom, even in the dualistic awareness of of the flow of thought and emotion, but
ultimately, and that very much has this character of purifying the mind. Insecurity like this is a. U
anger is a classically negative thing to be stuck in and identified where than an acting out of and its divisive. It's you
say the thing you regret and that for it you have to apologize for energy. It is just in earlier and the
normal person who doesn't know how to be mindful and does not does know the difference between being lost in thought and and not. His is really the mere hostage
that process that they are going to stay as angry as they're, going to stay for as long as they're going to stay. That way and they're going to do all of the things that are
after ranging and does it end and reputation harming they might do.
One the basis of that emotion for as long as they're going to do those things and then they're going to have all the reaction to what they did and said, and it's this that the other, the complication of life born of that
one moment where you got angry, even dualistic. My
gives you a degree of freedom that most people don't have, and it is a kind of superpower to be able to say up what I just got angry. How long
I want to stay angry for, for me,
an emotion like anger or fear is useful.
in so far as it is, it is a salience q is telling you that something has happened. That's worth paying attention to rest.
There's somebody just walk into the room who
doesn't have your your
wellbeing at heart at heart, at heart, rending and got some intention that is that is in conflict with
I was something that you are trying to accomplish, say or is she's turned
and at minimum is telling you something about yourself and about your own priorities and about about what you are trying to
who in the world- and we hope for better or worse so, is worth paying attention to, but
It's almost never the state of mind you wanna, be ended and solve the problem. You that just you just noticed, so I'm not saying that we, the goal, is to be completely without,
any capacity for anger, fear or any any these emotions. But it's I do
psychological health and just the health of one's relationships and and just
The whole project of living wisely in the world is
more and more the result of beef.
able to get off the hook from that, the negative emotion more and more
really I may either. I think you want to stay angry and fearful and even sad format. You too much
order periods of time, and then you can then there's. This is more to recognise about the circumstance it gives you a degree of freedom by wished. It now
yeah. No, I fully agree with
I've
Whenever I get asked a question which I am sure you got two isley, why don't you ever get angry you do you ever get
set aside in and more,
you said has always been my response that I still feel anger. I still feel sadness. I still feel envy
I still and always believe. I always will feel all of these
he's just for less and less time and that I don't
think I'll ever get to zero, just as you could never run a mile.
In the zero seconds I wouldn't ever get to a point where I'm able to deal with it in zero seconds. It's just not going to be possible, wrote because it needs to live. I think there are more.
personal and ethically necessary modes for these emotions that
I don't think we want to get rid of him. I think I think outrage.
which moral outrage has its place, and it is the basis from which we would. We would react to the grave injustice in the world, but as night doesn't have to be it's not a personal anger right, but it can interest you.
She's out, you see something. Some unnecessary harm being created, delay
lay by europeans
deeply unwise people in the world and an aegis think are right. This is
This is an emergency. This is worth responding to write an end it in tat can feel
All of the energy of anger can be behind that and, if I may, I would,
the call that outrage rather than anger but
they are more. Moral outrages is useful, but it's just that the question is: when does it?
over into personal psychological suffering that actually diminishes your capacity to do something useful and that's that
where does the line he? I think we want to be more aware of yet
it's used as an example and take you through that process. But setting that's that's exactly like. I was gonna bring.
Earlier. The idea that, just as the
rage or the emotional experience, can stop us from being practical. So to not to go to.
this road again, but so too can the skeptical like, if you know
nobody, skeptical and overly analytical, and never practically
Why anything, because you can constantly find flaws in pretty much most. I
is in your old if you keep looking for them, so
Let's take the outrage idea like how do you, what does someone do they?
The elder outrage, the moral outrage where they feel pain for this.
offering of another. Where do you go from there through your processing? What's step, two: three: four, why I think it's important too
Be again, cautious and and and skeptical of one's on,
in all my jacket rights. As I get you you want to know, you want another. This isn't a personal petty either
Georgiana wreck reaction, yes, and it actually is born of what purports to be a compassionate and
which meant with world. You actually want the best for other people, perhaps including yourself, but also amazes.
They were we're on the same team. That's that's the the mode.
You're you're in
No, it's not an expression
your own greed and narcissism and end the cell, focused and and divisive emotion, Betty. It probably will start
right! Well, I think it you get. You can have something about
character in that its it can have the character of contraction and outrage. Feels like anger is like a: u e, you
It is the same thing that would get you to raise your voice if you are angry right, it's like it's like you're, going to raise your voice ie, if you, if you can raise your voice
defence of humanity right! Well, you still raising your voice, and so
just thither, there's energy behind it and I think that energy at times it is necessary as all,
to take another somewhat adjacent situation, but analogous is like.
if you're, in a situation where you have to to defend yourself from from actual physical violence or defend someone close to you, you know someone's attacked you and your child,
So what did you do? They're just gonna lie down and anna and offer yourself up as eu
sacrifice. I know I like I think pacifism is not actually the more
lay them the wisest position and ethically I. So I think that
energy that would allow you to
violently defend yourself against an aggressor should be available right, but why is it? But it ends
you know the it's not necessarily anger, but it.
Could look a lot like anger and feel a lot like anger. It is certainly not necessarily hatred
and here I would immediately. I would ask you to consider how you would feel like me defending yourself against a person.
you know you think of somebody, you is there some minimal militias psychopath whose whose broken into your
This has now wanting to too high
you and your family, because that's what you know what he likes to do right. That's like the quintessential circumstance where you want
it feel you feel fairy to fill a lot of things, but you'd probably also feel hatred for this person rather than what it is. There are few circumstances where a hatred feels more apropos than that, but.
I do view hatred as always being somehow extra, even in extremity.
I like that, because imagine just how you'd feel there is superficially similar issues
Jewish. We know you're still here,
tat are in your house, and you have to defend yourself violently, but that attack.
I was not a person. It's.
the wild animal. You know, grizzly bears, has broken into your house or you know a mountain lion right. How is it still? It's still an absolute emergency right, you're still going to have to fight for your life.
You still looking for a weapon to defend yourself with right. You still contemplating kill
a living being to defend yourself right under kids, but there's no
while shaving there. I get you as energizes you'd, be
in the presence of a mountain line or in the presence of a grizzly, bear that there's a layer of that the layer of hatred doesn't quite
fit. You feel they have less choice. Yes, I've. I've could, of course, a mountain lion is gonna, be a mountain lion unicycle,
become outline, can the other than a mountain lyon on site,
level a malicious psychopath can't be other than a malicious psychopath resign. I think, as I think we do have to view people
on some level as equivalent to forces of nature
we don't. We don't get angry at hurricanes, but an issue. Certainly I hate her
in the same way that we could hate another human being. But if we could lock
hurricanes in prison. We would regulate their immensely destructive in. I was still trying to figure out what to do about them, but
it never gets. It would never take this extra step of actually hating them and I do think we could have we, ethically speaking and psychologically speaking
We can we can have a similar relationship to even the worst human beings.
while doing all the things we need to do to to defend ourselves against them, we can put people in prison. We can you know we can I'm not in favor of the death penalty for for actually these reasons, but because I don't think anyone creates themselves. I think I don't think anyone is truly at bottom, responsible,
the responsible for being who they are and that if in, if you had the same genes and the same life experience of-
for Jeffrey Dahmer, you'd be Jeffrey Dahmer right, so there's no there's no mystery there, but- and so I think- as I saw I think at at bottom, when you're when you're looking at these. These are just very stark differences in life outcomes, you're looking at differences in luck, rather methods. There's biological luck there is
Substantial luck, lockers all kinds of luck, and this is what we do with the luck, but your capacity to do good things,
even your bad luck is yet more good luck, raymond something is giving the sum
genetic and environmental reason
I, u or set up to take yourselves. I pick it up by your bootstraps when somebody
us in a similar situation, wasn't right and so on some level. Theirs.
we have an ethical imperative to acknowledge the the massive role that luck plays in our lives, and I think we should want to cancel the the most egregious differences in good and bad luck between
people like so when we look at a whole society that is suffering from a man's bad luck, because it didn't have the natural resources that some other society did war
it had those resources, but even those resources created perverse incentives and, as has got some terrible, terrible political outcome,
stand that all the level of corruption this layer on top of the resources. I this just terrible look the disparities in luck there right, and so I think we as a as a glow
oh civilization, more and more as we grow, grow wealth,
you're in wealthier and and and can take advantage of of good luck over here,
we should want to engineer a tide that raises that upon which most or all boats rise
more and more ass, not to say the cap,
let them is wrong- is not to say that wherever gonna completely nullified differences in luck and- and I think some asymmetries may in fact,
be the optimal way too, to encourage people's creativity and innovation writers? I a it's. I'm not I'm agnostic, esther
on some the questions of if you had organised a society and an economy there, but
To think more and more, we need to recognise that so many
so miserably any one has got free time to listen to this conversation right now stands a pretty good chance of being in the
ten percent or even one percent of humanity, with respect to look at all the variables weathers respective hell.
in wealth and education and just having the free time and attention to listen to this and be interested in this, and to be to be asking the kinds of questions we're trying to address in a conversation
we're immensely lucky and with that comes a certain responsibility, but
no opportunity to spread the the lock around near to create further yeah yeah yeah yeah. Absolutely
Welcome to mile five thousand thirty three
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The new hyundai tucson your journey
Try the new tucson you near Sunday dealer or learn
or at hyundai usa. Dotcom not long ago
in the heart of the amazon rainforest. This explore stumbled upon something that would changes life
I saw it and I saw oh wow. This is a very unusual situation. It was Cacau the tree that gives us chocolate, but this geek out with, unlike anything experts, had seen or tasted I've, never wanted us to happen. Gun fight, I mean you saw. The stacks of cash are off as chocolates through the forms
sport tax such she ran right? I can be the wing.
Of wild chocolate, raw loss of his madness. It was a game. Changer people put their jobs, they left their lies behind, so they could search for more of the stuff. I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep into the jungle.
Wasn't always pretty. Basically, this, like this fragile guy and his family, surrounded building armed with machetes, and we ve heard all sorts of things. Are you know somebody got shot over this? Sometimes, I think all all these for a damn bar of chocolate, listen to obsessions wild.
on the iheart radio, app apple pie, gas or wherever you get your bike
I loved, where we're going with and loved where we, when we're going back to the the
rage, peace, the understanding of you know, almost differ.
She eighteen hour were hate from outraged, almost extracting some piece of the ego from being petty and individualistic, but that
it's for a greater cause than a yeah. How do you go forward with that? Like? What do you do with that thought that idea that feeling? So you feel pain when someone else is in pain, you feel stress, you feel outrage. As you said, there may be a petty personal anger.
to that triggered us in the first place, but we re whatever
I've got out and understand that wasn't the bases of our real outrage that there was.
bigger year
well there, it is, then it really just depends on what the the problem is and what the situation is and whether you can influence it right away.
you can't do anything about It- will then it's not useful to be just,
grinding your gears with outrage amid that that your outrage needs some kind of outlet. You know. So if you have some kind of platform upon which to to try to make sense on these important topics, will then do that, but yeah it's it's. It's never useful to just be privately seething with a with outrage that has no outlet as a you have to figure out one. What what pragmatically can you do to accomplish anything useful on the basis of this emotion, and if there is nothing to do it
great to have the tools by which you can just let go of it right and like, and that some and again that's where meditation or it comes enemy? That really is a kind of superpower. You can just decide okay. This does nothing to do here with this negative emotion. So now I can just let go of it and that some industries
It is true for public facing emotion, like outrage, but is true for aid
and inwardly facing one like just anxiety?
eddie about something that is coming up in the future. Recycle it let you ve, got some medical condition:
Now you need to get an mri to see if you ve got something scary and he can't get that
the mri until next Tuesday rights unable at this time to wait. So the question is
in the age of the intervening days. How capture
are you gonna be by this feeling of anxiety? Is? Is there any utility in feeling anxious
between now and tuesday, and if there is not wouldn't be great to actually just like all of it
right and most people feel like that's. That's pretty hot.
to do right, Emily, but most people don't have tools, apart from just diverting themselves, getting distracting themselves with something else to take their money
The thing that there really sort of thinking about in the background that they don't want to think about, but their helplessly, reno proliferating
but as far as as far as as far as acting in the world so as to make the world a better place, I I I think you know based on
rate or an or some other emotion in. I am
pressed more and more by how much that story.
Of changing incentives at the system level.
more than it is a story of him through a getting individuals to improve themselves, but I think I think individuals should
want to improve themselves. And I you know, I want to improve myself and I you know I in so far as I can share with,
about how to do that. I I I do that in a more or less full time.
But there's that there's another level of analysis and another level of of discussion that needs to be applied to the to the systems in which were all functioning and we need direct
neither in so many places we have systems of incentives that
are aligned so as to make it actually hard to be a good purse,
right: are you need? You need to be some kind of moral hero to be truly ethical, given how the system is tuned and converse
We totally normal people can be lured into behaving more and more like psychopaths in a badly tuned system, where the incentives are all wrong right.
I think, more more. We need to be alert to that and we need to want to design systems work
becomes easier and easier for ordinary conflicted beat a mediocre.
people, people who are not even thinking about F
All that much right, I've done it won't do that.
what were they want? His
easier for them.
hey more and more like saints, because the incentives are aligned to hear that way to take em examples
recently top of mines are like
have a problem with the problem of climate change. We will you well intentioned
I want to do something about it. We don't want to create the most profligate harms,
ourselves unnecessarily rice would be great to have a system of incense
There is an economic opportunities and technologies that
easier and easier to be wise with respect to carbon. Our carbon footprint in there
a lot of great ideas in this space and being one of them, as it will listless by electric cars regulate, was less transition from a europe, a fossil fuel economy of transportation to an electric one. Well,
that sounds wonderful and I've. You know I just I've had an electric car and I've had it by just had to get a new car
and I was poisoned by an electric and another electric car, but then I
we're on Joe rogan podcast from this guy has just published a book. It's good it's coming out and I prefer forgive me. I've forgotten his name. I think it's a thing as sriram krishnan, but I could have that wrong, but he has put his book coming out called cobalt read, but he hitched it to our podcast with rogan, which was just this litany of horrors that attend what it did aches the extraction of cobalt
I'm congo raised like seventy percent two percent of the world's cobalt in congo. We use cobalt in all of our that batteries. Basically, our supply chain for cobalt is on top of just slave labour and and child labour,
kids getting buried alive him in his just. It was just as
as you can imagine, and so
well here we have a system where we all we just. We all want to buy the next electric car, because this is a good thing that this was the virtuous thing to do
but now we find out the batteries are, are soaked in blood, there's no good.
right and now have to be with the air, we have to pretend
that we didn't hear that podcast worthy that it and the people in a billiard.
designing. The batteries are pretending, they don't know where the cobalt comes from, and this is why we need to figure out, and it is this. This itself should be a simple problem to solve, and just I is probably a few percentage points of profit margin that would make the extraction of call cobalt, a and ethically, do
defensible practice right and is probably this probably some cobalt free technology that we could design in the future, but it just to get these things right,
it really matters, and if you don't get them right, you've got
people who are deeply conflicted.
now what they're doing or not, or just not completely unaware of what they're doing and creating these these massive now
but if externalities they manner even know about. Like a leg, it like, I could, I literally was now is-
Twenty four hours from buying another av right, so I can do is not that is not there.
my with loan purchase or not aren't or not of a single card is gonna matter that motion scheme of things by sight
it would have had. I not heard this particular episode of Jos podcast. I would have bought
That is the thinking I was doing and unimpeachable virtuous thing,
hm right, and now I have a much more conflicted decision to make around you know: what's threat right, car to drive in light of my climate change concerns, this is just to say that
The individual can't solve the cobalt supply chain problem right, so we need. We need these solutions to come at the system level in the areas
level and and that's an that's where being a good person is, is
beyond the scope of any one individual choices like I do you need it. We need to collectively solve a massive court coordination problem together where
in the act of guinea, a gratifying. Our desires, we're we're rm.
Creating less and less harm and doing more and more good moralists effortlessly
and that's that really is you can appeal
George is not thinking about purifying anything.
behaving in really impeccable ways, given good incentives and that's some more moral.
in about the yeah? I love that you're thinking about then, and I think it's an idea to preferred, though, is that it's also that the people that are setting up the institutions and the systems are all individuals. It's like a vicious cycle.
The leaders at the top. The people have made all these decisions.
to go out- and you know.
coal is global and make sure that it was picked by child slay
zero child labour, whenever maybe I'd Ivan,
in the putting us at the context.
But some one made that decision and some system never thought to correct that, because that was led by
some people. So I think I mean I agree with you, but I think it's both its say. You know
I think, even where systems have been made tight, you still see
we're trying to find a loophole. I mean that's your other human mind is set up, and so you ve gotta, be the loophole mindset of like ok. Well, let me find a way to exploit this manipulate this towards my benefit anyway wrote, and so you ve got
both. I think both are important. I think like year. If you were the decision maker,
If you were building a vs, you would be able to make that system in your company and you set it up and I'll come back to you here
but it can. I get you if we taxed carbon instead of tat.
in incomes and how that works area in terms of the balance sheet, but something like this or where it we're dead.
You were using attacks to disincentive. I something we want a disincentive eyes yet pollution and were not penalizing. Something is intrinsically
I just billion creating value and ban being pay for their value, which, as you know, what income in the best case is coming from
So there's that and then all of a sudden people or if it is
Asking me money to be pollute
well, then I'm going to figure out how to not do that and that's just spoken
my more interesting to align their rights, as it is probably a hundred thousand cases like that, but it
where I was going with them: either
a lot about what
We call this the effect of altruism movement images headed how to do good.
more reliably more systematically. The many of us have been disillusioned with with how philanthropy has been done traditionally as likely that there's a there's, a distinction between the sketch. It comes back to em some, what we ve been talking about
with the difference between being led by one's emotions, yeah and actually understanding what what the outcomes are in the world that one is accomplished.
when you're trying to do good in the world materials that you give into a mere children's hospital, saying that she seems an intrinsically good thing to do but
so much. We know that so much of our impulse to do gooder impulse towards altruism into impulse toward effect of compassion.
Is driven by the big companies.
ngo compelling story: the single in a single identifiable protagonists, you're, the one little girl who's got cancer and we can help her right and that we were to go to sleep when were told statistics reiser like we do it
We we perversely, we care more about the one little girl than we care about the tens of thousands of little girls, just like her
maybe even the tens of thousands of little girls, including her
rise like www, you can run psychological experiments where you you show people,
another girl. He asked them how how much sterical inclined
help and how much money they give. They give the maximum amount under those conditions.
You show them the same little girl and you lay or on a story of just how many there other
There are like her. Their peoples, compassion, impulse, reliably diminishes writers,
this is clearly a moral bug of our
an operating system, so we know that they take the good feels we get from giving our separable from the from the actual effects of of our of our given in the world. So anyway,
but in a more about this, I brought on in a very sweet moral philosophers, have to speak about this on both on damp and on my back ass. An
one change I made in response to. One of these conversations with has just decided that waking up as a company,
would give a minimum of ten percent of his profits to to the most effective charities. Each year,
I personally would give a minimum of of ten percent of my pre tax income to.
Nature. Now I was, I was already giving money away to charity and that felt good
once I decided I right, here's the formula have to give this minimum
This isn't this minimum amount is already allocated to these ends.
what's more. These ends have to be not just charities and and causes that I feel really personally engaged by.
We're. Just things that I want to support like you know some, and I want to
money to college or symphony areas as like, something that I or where I see somebody's go. Fuck me page and touch,
my heart strings. I want to get money to that. No, that's! That's all separate here! Here's ten percent,
it's going to charities that I up in the kind of sober, rational analysis have decided, are going to do the most good. Irrespective of how I feel about these things, because there are certain causes that I just don't find especially sexy,
that you start like. I just can't have continually rethink my my interest in them, but they are objectively.
but if you want to, I want to save the life per unit. Repaper dollar put into the system is the best use of that you're you're dollars rising away. One has been
malaria mitigation in sub saharan africa. Just just bed, malarial bed nets right, think! That's I just can't get to
I do not doubt handing out bed nets right, but that something is worth supporting. I just decided that rocket.
Well dot. Org is has not run this analysis there, a great source of information about effective charities here, their top ten,
here. It is whether I find these sexy or not. I know I can outsource the cognitive labour to these people because I've I've spoken to
now five analyze, what they ve done there they're doing enough! This is there
time job all right
yeah until I hear otherwise I'm going to take their advice, he doesn't matter how I feel about these charities, where I'm going to get my good feels. L else
but what will happen is once I decided that
let me give this amount of money to charity each year and is happening by default.
there. I am thinking about it or not whether am gratified by it or not, a very interesting thing. Flipped one is
wanna confront all these other opportunities to give money away, big that are our tugging. On my heart strings. They almost
europe is as a kind of guilty,
sure, like I literally have had the feeling of giving money to a children's hospital or giving money to to somebody's go find me page, and it's it's almost
leveraging the same greedy, sir,
It's in the brain as you'd get if you like,
a catalogue of end
You want everything on penal, both pages like I was like I like it, it's it is a is. Is it to do
the very visceral experience of selfishness and selflessness, totally merging and is cited as like wise selfishness is the same thing.
Selflessness, but it has the energy of like. I really want to do this and
cause I sort of no I'm I've I've rash.
Allocated to this to a certain amount of doing this good autumn
laser even out of sight or out of mine, and I spent a lot of time thinking about where that money is going. It is to change my relationship to
all these other occasions where I'm having to decide on
This is my intuitions moment a moment whether I want to give and how much to give in its it religious conflict there,
thing upside down in a way this interesting and again, is it. It's all
based on having made a sort system level default change. That is a sort
hidden structure in which I am now moving rhythm, is,
because, again, I'm not until you,
make a decision like that you're constantly rethinking what
if you want to do. It's almost like going on a diet. I don't eat dairy anymore right so once
when he dare anymore, I'm a lot of dairy, but but
either we have won it didn't dare anymore, you just
the bright line, and then you do not hear a costly rethinking whether you're gonna have ice cream and if so, how much and answers in this massively clarifying and
That's that's greg's great example. True yeah did the clarity of constraints
having borders and boundaries and constraints.
allowing you to not waste as much time and energy on,
on figuring that our moment by moment,
I've got a good two, more questions, reason that I want to make sure. I asked
Someone like you is it as a meditative for so many years as someone who showed thoughtful about these topics, as somebody wants to see a change in the systems and institutions as well. How do you interact with the news? Because I find that to be such your soul?
serve in and stress for so many people here are probably listening to us right now and I'd love
here, how youth bill
a healthier sit, hopefully systematic, logical relations with it.
is well a change recently for me because I deleted my twitter account
which is where I was getting a lot of my newsman
Can I get the news from twitter per se buzz. I was just seen or following lots of smart people
and seeing what articles they are recommending a socially going through. That is a whose it was kind of like my news feed
So I still you read the new york times over the atlantic. There's a may things I read, and I and others
see the news and various channels, but
was using twitter as the first filter on that, and that, for a variety of reasons, became.
Really toxic for me and in toxic, in a way that I was convinced, was missed,
Feeling that that was a thing they got me to. Finally just read the bandit off, because I it wasn't just
but I was seeing the worst of people and that was having a certain effect I was
vince. I was seen people,
at their worst, who are actually not as bad as they were seeming to me on twitter like a what what it would twitter was calling out of them was just
misleading picture of who they actually artisans in some cases, and I would new, I knew the people in real life and I'm seeing them behave.
In an abominable ways on twitter, and I just think are. This is this: is it
There's a funhouse mirror that isn't cycle out psychologically healthy to keep staring into day after day after day
and also to so many of the things that I was it was it was
amplifying stories that I was
upon castor. I was tempted to react to, and I thought
I was getting a misleading signal as to just how salient a representative. Those stories are of of the way the world is. Rights are like
this just as it was just a phenomenon been to online. Ultimately right, yes, oh, my blue, so is
whereas twitter was news or or a simulation of news. That has really changed for me. I just I just and not seen it, and now I just
yeah. I mean I have a few sources of of news that I go to as more or less reflexively, but again it's
it's some more and more, I'm asking the question what
Do I want my moment to moment life to be learned
Who do I want to be at the end of the day when I'm hanging out my wife
kids rather than an and what are the consequences of? Having spent my attention, attentional budget over the previous out
is in one way, verses another and men twitter, wait for me ass. It was. It was a big change because it was like getting out of an unhealthy relationship
yeah, but for all my talk about meditation and being able to unhook from your anger and other other states, a man could unhook and I could let go of of negative motion and cetera, mr, not that that the tools don't work, but
I was spending a lot of time looking in
it is very easy to range in space and time.
Danger for everybody, but for me, because it is what do you make about my job and under my approach to my job? Is it in? I criticized
the right and left politically
a lot and with equal ferocity, and so I get
I'm not lemme tribal aligned with anyone, and I get a lot of pain from both sides and it's it's a lot of its is not honest, pay and it's not like it's. It's not like honest criticism of
views. I actually hold it's like lots of lying about views that I don't hold, and you know it's just it's just misrepresentations and people take. You know clips out of context and people people cut together. Clips of my podcast
I am seeming to say the opposite of what I in fact said in context and they release those and the people with big platforms you to retweet them. So it's all, it's all
it was a pervasive experience for me of seen myself.
lied about an
and wondering whether there is anything I should do about that right, and so it was the very sticky
detailed to getting sucked in because, like ok, that's not what
That's not what I meant
I'm seeing the evidence of lots of people being misled by this misrepresentation and it bothers me and I'm pretty sure, should bother
may, because I like this is not the outcome. I want right, it's not why I have a pod. Gas is not why I went on that other persons by gas, and so
there's some burden on needed to try to clarify the misunderstanding. I was continually getting sucked in
to the illusion that clarification was possible rise. I would
because I really wanted to use twitter as a channel of communication was the only social
in reply for my reused. I never use facebook or b. I may have facebook and instagram accounts, but those are just marketing. You know channels from my team, I'm never on those
I was on twitter really was me, and I was in as much as I can step away.
From it because it seemed unhealthy for a time I kept seeing the evident,
of confusion and misrepresentation. I thought I I'd try again to clarify things right.
And that was there was such an unrewarded experience that it wishes that was used
a residue of them
despair and contempt magic ragists fell. I just felt polluted by I. Just
but I had met like all the cycle paths.
In the world on a daily basis. I there can't be, as many psychopaths
in the world, as I was seemed to be meeting online as much as I could step away from it and just sit and and put it down, I kept picking it up again, and so I just thought this is crazy, so is I I just ripped it off,
and has been an immense challenge, and this really is sometimes you need to actually do the thing that is you. You can't just keep yams putting yourself in this dysfunction
situation and then pay
says in your reaction,
Ask yourself: why are you doing this? Why are you spending your time and attention this way in the first place, yep, and so, if
me. It was twitter. I mean, I understand, other people. You know, depending on what they're there could just be put at least they're if they're sharing
Cat videos on twitter there's getting nothing but love. I have no idea what you're talking about, but trust me it's possible to have a truly lousy experience, underwear
Welcome to mile five thousand thirty three
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Most importantly, our cells- we chat about things like what's to do in a friendship, ends how to know when it's time to break up with your therapist and housing in the cycle of perfectionism. I'm your host doktor joy, harden bradford a license. I colleges in italy into georgia and I can't wait for you to join the conversation every wednesday.
Listen said that there be for black girls pie cast on the heart radio ep apple pie, cast a wherever you get your podcast take
here. What if anything, would bring you back, because I love what you're saying there that you know if you doing
same thing. It's giving you the same result. You tried a new thing with its giving you the same resolve some
We have to cut it after to create a healthy balanced to reconfigure, to do
work you gonna do what, if anything, would allow you to go back to your? How would you see yourself if you were to go
to end a healthy away. I'm thinking of all the people who cut
without their lives because they need to feel that distance from it because it's taken hold of them
but then they know that in reality they may have to go back. You weren't you
I'm not
an end to go back, I don't you hadn't, really see that they are made
marketing- and I don't need this year- is a mission. I missed the good parts of india, desolate media, those following a lot of smart funny people and there is an end in- but
truth is even the good parts were
Ultimately,
diverting in a way that in retrospect feels like a bit of all, which is a waste of time, and it was just like I'm getting.
I didn't have to spend as much time even with the good parts of it in a just. It was kind of like in just like
too many car between that part of my information diet. You know, twitter was was all carbs. I mean
Back, I would just
I would probably use it much more like I, I use or don't even use my other social media channels. I would just use it as I would have someone pose, for me,
post and without ever looking about was coming back and that people are people who
get alive. Negative stopped coming back of them and they just never see acreage. Never look and that's. I couldn't
one of those people I was that sort of person for some periods of time, but I just kept getting
lured by the technology by the promise of clarifying confusion here that here there like good,
the person who said something to me, and I can say something back and why not and if necessary,
didn't none of the other social media platforms have ever hooking up.
In that way, I've never been tempted to get on facebook or insta
then and use it in that way, and I am not looking for a substitute for twitter, I'm so that that is interesting as many people are recommending substitutes, whether in a building there
New platform you they got off twitter for whatever reason, but is not I'm just not tempted to fill that
twitter shaped hole in my life with anything. So it's good
and then one last question before we dive into the final five is
spoke by this right. The beginning, a new men mention the inner.
The problem, the impermanence problem, like how do you see yourself, thinking about all meditating on preparing for death or the de impermanence of life like how does that come in to your consciousness? Well,
To size to him, it is there's your own death and the deaths of everyone you care about, and that's that are really different problems in a way and added some
Yeah, so when I, when I think of the the
Iran's of having those close to me die that some may I know
as has already happened. I have gone through that will, in the cases of certain people and
if I'm lucky enough to live a long time, will then it's going? It's gonna happen, so I'm sure many times again and
I made a fundamentally mysterious thing. I made that the fact that we drop out the bottom of this place is just its is truly imponderable
and yet I know that is possible to be happy in the absence of everyone.
Rain, and is it some paradoxes here that you and I have this conversation now
Everyone we love is not here.
In our you I just met Elizabeth. I get is always we're just we're just get to know each other,
You know my mom's out here my wife's now here my is not here. You ve got your list of people, you love who are not here. It's ok to not,
be with the people we love. So we know that right and to take the other side or what it's like to to personally die say: yeah. We we go to sleep each night
and we were not all is not only is it ok
completely relinquish. Ah,
hold on this world Emily. We we we, we yearn for it like.
If you got insomniac, you can't fall asleep. That becomes a problem. You are desperate to lose you
We are seeing and hearing smelling and hastened and touching and thinking it you'd. Just why you want to complete. We get zero out every night and that's
you know if it is it. If nothing happens after datum April, we can leave aside the possibility that the third the death is,
in sometimes an illusion, but if,
If you really just get a dial tone after you die right, really, there's just nothing.
It somewhat analogous to sleep amidst like you're, the lights go out right
reunite. We do that and we do it happily and it's not as nov vienna vague as some people have sleep issues where they're afraid to fall asleep, but
It's really not the common case right and so to the to the contrary. We yearn for it. So.
It is somewhat paradoxical that these I got the war.
the thing about life is the the thing that you that people are terrified to experience themselves and they're terrified to experience in the case of of losing the the people. They love
we in in the most routine way we have really analogous experiences that are fine rice
like that you're fine alone in a room and your fine to go to sleep, and these are theirs. It there's a bit of death in both of these,
because europe, everyone, you love, really is absent, and when you fall asleep, you really forget everything about your life in this work.
Until it till you are dreaming and then you're completely confused,
Your life, in some other circumstances, unless it's a lucid dream, which is to say that is actually it's it's possible to be. Ok,.
ultimately, even with the with the reality of death from both
from either side and I'm not I'm so am certainly expect into to grieve. Would the next time someone
most of me dies not expecting kois idea, but that is a. I understand,
and that, as an expression of love for small ass yours,
if you'd even wanna, be without the experience of grief
you'd have to ask yourself, for instance, watch
would want to do in the event,
we had designed a perfect cure for grief, repelling, say pill. I, like the perfect, is not an anti depressant, but as an aunt I sadness pill
and has not conceptually incoherent muslim women might one day have that pill in it. It might be a pill that you'd
compassionately wanted, lay there people who who are suffering some just
intractable. Unendurable bereavement that just never lived in there just be another canker, their light back together and that you they're you'd want to give that pillar that person. But the question is: how
soon would you want to take a pill, and would you want take that pill? Fifteen minutes after your closest connection in this life died in us,
That's the body is still warm and it would be pop in this bill. I don't think so. I think it is
something like how care free do you want to feel in
in the immediate aftermath of a person, you love dying
even though you wanted you want the gravity of that land. You know you want to feel that you want to feel that loss, because that's
in some sense the only appropriate register of.
What they meant to you, you know just how and the life you lived together right. You know he's like interview
up the grief bill and then you're, saying I'll, go what's on netflix red,
That would be a desecration of all that you a chair with his person, so I don't know if it's very interesting,
question where you would, because I think
Ultimately, you would want to be able to give that pills, someone whose life had become completely derailed by grief, but
just where it is where's the line? I mean? That's that's an interesting question: yeah, it's a great onset there.
All right. So we we end every episode with a final five which have to be
answered in one sentence maximum each
The challenge for may visited allowance for sure I'm excited days were yards is the fifth.
I shall which reveals to every guest on the show, is perfectly
designed for you. After today's conversations and identities, wanna say on camera we just caught because the cameras were getting me
sad, because we ve been taping for so long, but I'm just saying that the combination of ad would send today has been so different from,
I thought I'd have with them after reading his book, anatomy is a sign of a good,
conversation, because it was true curiosity
the mystery and agenda.
creation in the moment and presence in the moment from both of us. I love that
questionable one. What is the best meditation advice you ever heard received or given? You are not this next thought. A second question is: what is the worst meditation advice you ever had received a given
while I practised for a long time in a very goal, oriented tradition where it was just? You know I spent months and months on retreats with with the burmese meditation masters, who who had a very dualistic goal, oriented seeking kind of model as not as an
you couldn't benefit from that, but I will get you a sentence that this setup, the centers enters the
primary analogy being used was rubbing.
You sticks to get fire and the moment you stop. They call off right such as is so whatever the senses. It is like meditations like robin to stick together to get fired
continuously. Do it and the moment you break you, your back to zero, know no barrier.
That's it. That's a painful it painful, really painfully eyes. Ok,
Number three: what's the biggest lesson you learned in the last twelve months, answers humbling too,
to admit it, but it really was getting off twitter just written with a recognition that the left as a whole has super set of preoccupation. Here was not worth it end,
not healthy, even the good stuff images, every side of this diabolical jewel.
I was sort of ugly when I really looked at it, and so I was. I was in great question on before what something you think
people value highly, but you don't value anymore identity.
And made it really in every sense and adjust to stir.
tribal identity. You know you're real,
religious identity or ethnic identity. Your fired,
it can lead to identify with the face you see in the mirror each day, or, as I say, how much less should you have to identify with people who just superficially resemble you and in any way so, but even just the identity of feeling like
Like aids, the in my career, in any mode in which I am showing up in the world, its lesson like
Hu. I feel I am while doing that is less and less abstained,
I don't. I don't really is not really grasp you know, and so I don't.
I got you know. I spend a lot of time, teaching meditation in
on waking up, but because it because of the technology because an app I don't know-
feel like a meditation teacher yeah and I'm not showing up in the world as a meditation teacher. I don't have a there's no place. You can go sit it with me and in a in a hall you know so.
Have students in the ordinary meditation teacher way, but the real
I believe that through waken up seem strange to say, but I could be teaching
not all mindfulness to more people than any one on earth. At this moment, a mrs risk really like crazy how it escape.
But yet I don't. I never think of myself in that role. So like them, the raw
based identity and I am a right. I've got a bunch of books, but I am not. I don't really think of myself ass, a writer as much they used to,
I've been there just now. I just don't feel like does not live up to
The thing that I would any way which I would label what I'm doing,
The label really does feel like it's. It's a bit. Barely adhesive to the to the project ministers is, is this there just for the for the m.
The utility of just summarizing the integers like what do you put on this forum? You know: what's what's your: what's your occupation right, but it's like it's just doesn't get at what I'm actually doing and it it doesn't get it. How I see myself so the ident,
is something that people think about
Yes, I'm sure there's some stage in life. We want a healthy identity. I've got two daughters. I want them to have healthy idea,
they don't let them have healthy egos
Ultimately, it's not about being someone in any kind of sense: the hales that site
The identity feels like a fist, and I really want an open hand in life, and that is that the southern I never make of it
it's, but it's like he wanted. You want to relax. That is as soon as you notice it. It is really interesting from a personal practice point of view and from a human scale practice point of view, because what you just said is
the eight the perfection of the ideal. Almost the way I see is like with your daughter's at an how old they are bad. You know
I'm guessing it you're, not nine and fourteen year right, and so it say you want them to have a healthy sense of identity, because at that stage of life that such an important danger,
almost like the evolution of the idea is like well there's a stage of life. What that is- and you know that the directive thing- and I think,
so it so hard because you find everyone who is listening watching experiencing life had such different. Here
animals and it's almost like someone being able is the same as what I was saying earlier with the identity from a systematic point of view, it's like something
oh that's where they are- that that's just where they,
where their identities will gives their life meaning, and then you see someone's. So yes, yes is fascinating to me how at different stages of life identity,
indifferent things in Gaza is really the emotion of pride really crystallized from it,
yeah, for my daughter's its it is totally appropriate,
for them to feel prior, want them to feel prior right moments and I feel proud as aids. Some is not quite the right framing, but something
pride for them, I go. I wanna play that that healthy pride game with them, but
I don't feel pride in my life at all. Just pride just does not map. I just have the right shape to map on to my sense of what it is to be a person really like. I am not responsible for any of my gifts
because they are like I just like your again? It comes back
lock in so many ways and what you do with that luck. But again, the even the doing with the luck is more more good luck. You know, so I just feel immensely grateful for everything that has gone well in my life, and I just admit it's just
gratitude is is overwhelmingly and my prime,
a positive emotion now, it's just that. I have so much to be grateful for and pride just as a pride just does not fit as a puzzle, piece that you may be once fit and may bid and granted if you're, if you're a kid. Yes, yeah, it's a it's. It's
It again is is a is a totally appropriate game at a certain stage of life, but later on it is a game that you just really have to grow. Yeah I get I can relate to that completely and fully fully loved. I loved hearing the fifth and final question
If you could create one law? It is the one that I said we ve lost every get out. I feel like it's perfectly designed for you.
it could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow. What would it be? The price we pay for four dishonesty
at every level of society
so enormous and they're so little price paid for
fine. Amid the lagoon wanted one a when a politician is
found to be line right or whether the person has immense responsibility is found to be lying. In a but four legs
severe cases of fraud that are actionable like like, like like lion, is just under the purview of free speech really as like as not illegal, to lie right. I,
come in such a law. I think if we had lie detection technology, that that was that we could rely on which is there.
For his interesting reasons? Why we we don't have that in may, never have that, but if we had that live
if a lie. Detection technology was like
Your dna analysis in a court of law I use put them on the witness stand,
and you could tell whether they were line right. I think that would be the overnight. That would be the biggest ethical change that we could ever imagine society. So I think so anything that that brought the appropriate level of approval.
M to line re, especially line when it matters that would be some version of that law.
You can't lie when it matters law, whatever. That is also what I do that it would be a technological solution. Would you
more and more of people knew they were in a situation where
she can't get away with line right, because the technology is such that the information space is such that its, but they d the ad
peace, is that the norm
The norm. Violation needs to be just more urgent in august by people
most people walking around with his head. I everybody lies, all politicians lies or like a normal lie. What do you expect you nice? That is, and so is not, but the edges the amount of harm
and the amount the amount of good that would be accomplished. If you just new people were being honest, and
you're, not gonna, be unpleasantly surprised by here. So it's a lot of growth, cultural growth in that direction. But
I saw him, hope you get involved in their changing subsistence
forever observed. The studies that today of lake erie gray, if you're influencing the influences in mostar
If we try with our humble but guess what
never has been listening. Watching the pod causes code making sense the app is called waking up. The book is also called by the same title will put the
things in the captions, in the notes that you have access to all of
dams work,
make sure you grab a copy of the book AL
today with him on the waking up, app and, of course, subscribed to the podcast making sense
some of these are the first of many conversations, we get to have pleasure it
Yeah. It's really really been it's! It's really
phenomenal conversation. I hope we have many offline to nice,
anyone has been listening and watching make sure you grab your favorite segments points inside that really stood out to you share them with.
friends, start a conversation based on air
tag me in
salmon. Let me know what really stood out you are resonated with. You may be some things that are making you question or think differently, like I'd love, to see what came out of it for you
This has been a very different job of conversation on purpose, and I know you can appreciate it
I've got a big. Thank you to sam again for his generous time. They examined
every single one of you been listening and watching I'm with you again for another episode of on purpose. Thank you guys
If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with doktor gabble mattie on understanding. You trauma
and how to heal emotional wounds to stop movie
on from the pause, I'm evil and
I might take on MR horn were so excited to introduce you to our new podcast hungry for history, on every episode, we're exploring some of our favorite dishes: ingredients, beverages from our mexican culture, the bush, our personal memories and family stories. Decode, culinary customs and even provide arrests, appear too for you to try and home listened a hungry for his dream.
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Transcript generated on 2023-04-28.