EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,000 words- 0:00 – 0:23
Intro
- SHSam Harris
You know, on some level, wisdom is a matter of making your mind your friend. My friend, Sam Harris. Sam Harris. Sam Harris.
- CWChris Williamson
One of the most influential pioneering thinkers of our time.
- SHSam Harris
The more you pay attention to your own mind, you see that it has absolutely no shame. Wisdom is- is simply a capacity to take your own advice. (instrumental music plays)
- 0:23 – 9:42
Life After Twitter
- CWChris Williamson
Sam Harris, welcome to the show.
- SHSam Harris
Thank you. Great to meet you finally.
- CWChris Williamson
What is life like after Twitter?
- SHSam Harris
Uh... It is immensely improved, uh, to a degree that I find actually embarrassing in retrospect because it's a, you know, it's proof that I was needlessly degrading the quality of my life for, um, almost 12 years, technically. I think it was probably five years where it was actually degrading the quality of my life. But it- it was, um... I mean, in retrospect, it was a psychological experiment that we all got enrolled in, and no one, you know, read the consent form, much less signed it. And it- we- i- it has given, for me, I mean, if you're someone who has a significant platform and you're at all controversial, I think it gives you a sense of what the world is, which, um, is basically false and destructive to your- your feeling- f- the feelings you have for the- the rest of humanity. I mean, it was- it was- it was sort of incrementally, like a slow ratchet, um, but never to be reversed. Um, al- often undetectable, but still nevertheless always in one direction, changing me into a misanthrope. I mean, I was just starting to perceive people who I had never met and, um, many who I had met as the worst, most grotesque versions of themselves. And it's not that it's totally inaccurate. It's not that... You know, I mean, people- people tweet what... Y- you see them at their worst moments or- or their most bad faith moments or their most cynical moments. Um, but the- it's like the evidence of that, of those moments becomes indelible, and you lose sight of the rest. And I just was noticing this mismatch of, you know, being out in the world with people, and people are great, and then checking into my life online and recognizing that people are horrible, and just bouncing back between these two views. And I just realized I- I really only wanted one of them.
- CWChris Williamson
It seems to me that a lot of people feel that, that when they step out into the real world and the people who spend more time in the real world, they realize, "This is kind of nice. Everyone seems pretty balanced out here. No one's that antagonistic. No one's backbiting-"
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"... or screaming or shouting or accusing me of being a bigot or a racist or- or a whatever." And then for some reason, you step onto the internet with frictionless communication and all hell breaks loose.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, yeah. And it's not just anonymity. Anonymity is part of it, but i- it's also people you know who are captured by their echo chamber, which you're not seeing, right? Like there, it's this illusion that you're i- inhabiting the same space with the people you're- you're in conversation with, but in reality, they're talking to their fans. You're talking to your fans. You're kind of... You have weaponized your fans against their fans and- and vice versa. And without even necessarily thinking in those terms, that's- that- those are the- the network dynamics of what's happening. And, um... I mean, I just- I just kept getti-... I mean, I- at one point I recognized that barring some, you know, bad health outcomes in- a- among friends and family over the years, objectively, the- the worst things that had happened to me in a decade were the result of my engagement with Twitter. Um, and in- in many cases, the only bad things that had happened to me in a decade, o- of any significance at all, w- was born of Twitter, so-
- CWChris Williamson
I think you managed to torpedo a family vacation in some beautiful-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was one, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... paradise by sending a- a random tweet and then putting your phone down to come back to it and find out that there was a- a wasteland-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... where once there was a Twitter account.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was... I- it just- it kept giving- giving me a sense... It was a... The time course of interaction with it gives you this, I mean, this endless opportunity to comment on stuff. It's like it's always ready for your hot take. In fact, you're- you're- you're on there to give your hot take and to see the hot takes of others. Um, again, this might not matter if your hot take is, "Here's another cute photo of my cat," and you just get nothing but love back, right? And I know there's, there are people who have that experience. Uh, but given that I was violating the- the blasphemy tests of both the left and the right on more- more or less on a weekly basis. I mean, I'm not aligned politically with the left or the right. Um, you know, it was just pain on both sides. And I, you know, I- and I had no tribe. Like if you're- if you're just on the right, you know, or- or some segment of the right, if you're, you know, Ben Shapiro, um, you have a tribe that is going to just incessantly defend you against the left, right? And you... And at a certain point you just, you learn to discount the attacks of the left because you don't care what the left thinks about you. You've priced that in-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SHSam Harris
... you know, you're on the right. Um, and so it is with the left. If you're in the middle and you're actually not even an especially political person, you don't even... You don't care about politics. Politics are- are... It's just an ugly necessity that you continually have to touch, but it's just you view it as a- an opportunity cost getting in the way of the things you actually care about. And you're not tribal and you're not reflexively aligned with- with, you know, the- the bullet points on- on one side of the aisle or- or the other.... you have, you have offended everyone on both sides at some point.
- CWChris Williamson
You're getting-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... ideologically spit-roasted here.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah. And you're not, and you don't have, you don't have the people who will defend you blindly, um, e-
- CWChris Williamson
Because you pissed them off last week-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... with a view about X or Y.
- SHSam Harris
Even within your own audience, which is, which is fine. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm very happy to have the audience I have, and I, I like h- having an a- an audience that really cares about the integrity and honesty of the very last thing I said. And if the v- last thing I said didn't make sense, they're going to, uh, I'm gonna hear about it. But social media is just the wrong platform for that kind of conversation.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you ever think about what civilization would be like without social media? You know, some of the smartest minds of our time have had their hours captured arguing over whether men are men-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and women are women or not, or-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... about this particular topic or that particular topic. Do you think about how far it's set us back? Is it a net negative, net positive overall, do you think?
- SHSam Harris
Well, I think it's a net negative, I think it's a massive opportunity cost for almost everybody. Um, I just think we're, you know, w- you look at what you're doing and not doing based on your engagement with these platforms. I mean, you're not tending to read good, long books anymore. It, uh, uh, at minimum, even if it's your job to read those books, it's become harder to do that. And I, I was certainly noticing that for myself. Um, it's, uh, we're just, uh, it has served to fragment our attention and our lives in ways that, uh, uh, just can't be good. You know, even if, again, even if your diet of information is almost entirely positive, there's this fragmentation effect. You know, it's like you just... I mean, I notice people, certainly I notice young people now, who are, who appear almost neurologically incapable of watching a great movie from beginning to end without interruption.
- 9:42 – 18:16
Is Tucker Carlson Leading the Media Revolution?
- CWChris Williamson
reflected much on Tucker Carlson's move to Twitter from Fox News? Is this the beginning of some legacy to alternative media breakwater event? Or is it just a, uh, a nothingy to you?
- SHSam Harris
Well, I mean, I think Tucker Carlson himself is, um, worth considering. I mean, we know, you know, he's, he's someone who has shilled for Trump r- you know, rather avidly for years, and yet we now have his behind the scenes commentary on the Trump phenomenon, describing him as a demonic force and some- somebody who, who he hates with a passion. And-
- CWChris Williamson
That's what Tucker said about Trump?
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, this ca- this came out of, his texts got leaked from the, the Dominion lawsuit against Fox, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- SHSam Harris
So we know like, like, the mismatch between who he is pretending to be for his aud- his audience and who he is behind closed doors is something that I think should trouble his audience, but it apparently doesn't, right? And that, and that's also true of, uh, of someone like Trump. So, you, in, in, in many cases, you have these characters who, to my eye, are very low integrity people. I mean, they're not, they, you know, you're not getting an honest look at what they really think, even though they're purporting to tell you what they think, you know, every hour of the day, or at least every day for some hours. Um, and, you know, I view Tucker as that sort of person, but I, I, you know, I think we're in a, we're on a political landscape now where there's no impediment to his building an enormous business on the basis of, of having left Fox or having gotten fired from Fox, um, for reasons that, which I guess are still obscure. Um, I mean, he's very good at what he does, he's a very good demagogue, and he's, he's very facile. Um, I don't think there's an ethical core there, but there's a, a political one, you know? Or certainly an, uh, an opportunist, uh, one in, in the political space. And there's a, there's a, an immense appetite to have someone call bullshit on the powers that be, the so-called elites, the institutions, again and again and again, w- whe- whether they're right or wrong, you know? It's just like, it's, it's a, this is how it sort of opens the door to conspiracy thinking of every flavor. Um, it's not that these contrarian takes are always wrong, because they're, they're not, right? I mean, that we have, we're living through a time where many of our institutions have...... lost trust for a good reason, right? And, uh, it... but get- what gets layered on top of that are just, you know, lies and misinformation and half-truths and, and, uh, a crazy sort of, you know, John Nash style connect the dots with everything. And you can, you can find... and if you're just searching for anomalies and you're not actually held to any sort of coherent standard of, of having a basic theory as to what's going on, you just can find the next anomaly, well, then you'll find anomalies everywhere, and they don't have to add up to anything except a kind of pornography of doubt, right? And that's, that's what's being spread by people like Tucker, in my view.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you see Douglas Murray's debate with Malcolm Gladwell-
- SHSam Harris
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... and Matt Taibbi? Malk, right? He called him Malk.
- SHSam Harris
I saw, I saw, um... or I think I heard, uh, most of it, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And on that, it was a discussion around, is the new alternative media, is this where we're getting the most truth from, they're unencumbered, the audience capture incentives are there, but also you are liberated to not be tamped down by whoever the bigwigs are that have got some nefarious agenda-
- SHSam Harris
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... but then the other side is saying it's this freewheeling Wild West where people can just make all manner of these sorts of claims.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What did you make of, uh, of that landscape?
- SHSam Harris
Well, I mean, I... so I'm very biased for, for that particular debate. I, I love Douglas. Douglas is a friend, and he's, he's, uh, obviously brilliant and just a joy to listen to. Um, and I get a lot of his hate mail because aga- he's... again, he's, he's somebody who's happily on the right or right of center who doesn't have to worry about what the left thinks about him, but, you know, w- every time I have him on the podcast, I get nothing but pain from half my audience.
- CWChris Williamson
If there is anything that is worth the pain of half of-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... your audience, it's bringing Douglas Murray on.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, yeah. No, he's fantastic. But, um, he is adjacent to many people who are not so fantastic, right? I mean, this is, this is the sort of guilt by association problem that he has, um, navigated in a way which I, you know, I don't know if it's successful. I mean, it, it... he s- I think sleeps soundly at night, uh, given what he's done, but the truth is, he has been... he's shared stages with people who I wouldn't want to be on stage with, and I don't think it was good for him to be on a stage with the person. And half of the reason why I would get hate mail about having Douglas on would be because he shared the stage with those people. Um, and yet it's... he's c- completely correct in recognizing how hopeless it is to do a full moral inventory of everyone you might be, uh, uh, you know, uh, forced to shake hands with and to decide in advance whether it's worth shaking their hands or having a conversation with them. Um, so yeah. I mean, we just... it is the Wild West, and you just have to do your best and, uh, just be honest, uh, whenever y- you're in front of the microphone.
- CWChris Williamson
It feels to me like that guilt by association thing seems to have slowed at least a little bit. Piers Morgan put out a, a video recently about, uh, "We're at peak woke."
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I, I, I wouldn't agree. I think, uh... I can't remember whether it was... if it was Matt Taibbi or, or, or somebody else in the, the summer of 2020 said that that was peak woke-
- SHSam Harris
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, the most, you know, inflammatory, over the top, any slight indiscretion is worth being smashed in the face for.
- SHSam Harris
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, I wouldn't agree that that's the case now. And it seems to me like there is at least a little bit more reason beginning to seep back into that discourse.
- SHSam Harris
He... I, I, I hope so. I, I feel like it seems to be the case for me, except I don't know if it's just a- an optical illusion because I'm no longer on Twitter and I no longer care, right? Like, so I just don't... uh, you know, I used... the, the... there are certain kinds of attacks which a few years ago I might have taken seriously for 15 minutes, and now they just, uh-
- 18:16 – 26:39
How to Live Well While Accepting Death
- CWChris Williamson
Do you remember the talk that you gave on death and the present moment? I think it was-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the Atheist Australian, New Atheist Society, something like that?
- SHSam Harris
It was a big, uh, it was called the Global Atheist Convention, but, yeah, or Global Atheist Alliance, but... Um, I, I think at- at the, at that point, maybe still, it was, like, the biggest atheist convention ever. Um, so I, I went to a few of those, but that was, that was one.
- CWChris Williamson
How should it inform the way that we live our lives, do you think, given that we know that they're going to end sooner or later?
- SHSam Harris
Well, I really think that is the, um... Whether you think about it or not, that is the ever-present subtext to almost everything you, you care about, should care about, fail to... You know, when you f- when your priorities are not straight, you know, you, you... When you, when you have regrets, it's in li- it's against this, the, um, the incessant ticking of the clock that the, that all of that makes sense. And the, and the imperative of, of, um... The incremental loss of this non-renewable resource. You know, it's like it's, it's the one thing you don't get back. I mean, as I said, I think even more than time, attention is, is the, the real cash value of time. But, um, because we know that you can safeguard your time and squander it, right? So it's like a, it's, it's... And you, and we know you can find real joy, surprising joy and equanimity and, and even transcendent experience in the midst of experiences that you wouldn't otherwise think were optimal, right? You can have, you can, you can be in a shitty situation where nothing has really gone the way you expected and still be radiantly happy, right? I mean, it really is a matter of what you're doing with your attention and, and the kind of mind you have. Um, but the fact is, is that everything is changing at every moment, and we're not... There's no real stability, right? There's no final stage of control over experience. Every, every goal you attain becomes a memory the moment you attain it, right? And then you, then you're just left to think about it, right? And then the question is, what are you gonna do next? And we have this perpetual challenge of figuring out what to do next. I mean, what, you know, morally, intellectually, as a matter of just trying to, to safeguard our own sense of well-being, and you're never, you never arrive. And it's because of the t- the, the, the nature of impermanence that you never do. I mean, everything is, in fact, a mirage if you think that your satisfaction is gonna be a matter of finally putting all of the, the most important features of your life in the correct place, right? Like, you finally have the job you want, the relationship you want, the house you want. You know, you're, you're, you're fit, you're healthy, you're like... You, you, you've just, you've, you've executed on the perfect to-do list, and you finally arrived. Well, at a minimum, you're gonna notice that all of that has to be maintained at great energy, right? Like, like, it, it, it take... Entropy is such that, you know, you can't stay fit, you can't stay healthy, you can't stay rich, you can't s- you can't... Your, your relationship's not gonna maintain itself. And what's more, most people's minds are out of control, uh, anyway, right? And, and they're not satisfied anyway even having everything. They, the moment you have everything, your, your sense of what you want, I mean, it ju- you just moved the goalposts, or they got moved for you by some hand that you could never see. And so, like, you take all of this for granted, and now you want other things, and you want them just as much as you wanted the last things. Uh, so there is this, there, there's something about the passage of time that as you pay attention to it, and as you get older, this, this is relevant, but I mean, some people get, manage to get quite old without, uh, getting especially wise. Uh, but other things can happen. Even when you're young, you can, you know, you can lose people close to you, or you can, you can suffer some re- uh, profound career setback, or something can happen where you recognize, okay, this is... There's a, there's a false premise here. There's many, there are many bright, shiny objects I've been focused on wh- because they've been, you know, captivating for cultural and psychological reasons that I never inspected and never really agreed to, but they, you know, that's just where my attention went. And there's this deeper principle, which is the effort to become happy never fully fulfills itself, right? Because it's, it's the, the becoming part contains its own dissatisfaction, right? Like, at a certain level, you have to figure out how you can be happy with whatever is already the case, like, to, to want what you already have. And then from that place, move into the next moment, looking to do creative, beautiful, fun things. But your, your happiness is not contingent upon those things working out in any particular way, right? You, you, you realize that you're just... At some level, you have to be process-oriented rather than goal-oriented, uh, because ultimately, there is only the process, right? And you ha- and the goals, and the goals are so... The achievement of the goals is- is such a punctate experience. It's so brief. It's just an i- it's an idea. Before it happens, it's, it's an idea. The moment it happens, it's some burst of sensory experience, and then it's an idea again. It's a memory, and you're talking about it. You're talking about the thing you did yesterday. Um-... it's not good enough. That could never have been good enough for a truly satisfied life.
- CWChris Williamson
We'll get back to talking to Sam in one minute, but first, I need to tell you about our sponsor, BetterHelp. There might be something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals. It is unbelievably helpful to have someone professionally trained who can help you get through whatever you're facing. The service is available for clients worldwide. You can log into your account at any time and send a message to your therapist. They'll give you timely and thoughtful responses. Plus, you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions, so you don't even have to leave the house. It is a quicker, cheaper, and more convenient way to start doing therapy. And you do not know just how good the texture of your own mind could be if you started working with someone professionally trained, who can help you get through whatever you're facing. You can switch therapists for free if it doesn't work out for any reason, and there is no additional charge. Head to betterhelp.com/modernwisdom to get 10% off your first month of therapy. That's betterhelp.com/modernwisdom. Someone that you might not have been expecting to give you mindful wisdom that you might agree with, Andrew Tate has-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... a quote where he says, uh, "Having things isn't fun, getting things is fun." And I think that what he's referring to there is the, the hedonic treadmill that we're talking about.
- SHSam Harris
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
The fact that it's in the anticipation of an event that we think it's gonna happen, as a club promoter for forever, and we would be creating anticipation for this next new DJ, this next new whatever that would happen. But the protracted nature of the buildup was what people looked forward to.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
They looked forward to the advance of it when the event happened. In fact, they did a study where they got people to track, they pinged their phones and got them to track how their happiness was throughout the entirety of a night out.
- SHSam Harris
Correct.
- CWChris Williamson
And the most fun part of a night out-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... is getting ready with your friends-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... before you head out of the door.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah. I mean, neuroanatomically, the, the reason why that is the case, because it's just our, our dopaminergic system gets driven not by pleasure itself, but by the expectation of pleasure. Th- things are about to get b- it's, it's the, the center of the bullseye is the s- the pleasant surprise. Like, th- this is about to get better than I was expecting, right? Like that, that's the thing that, that is truly reinforcing.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah, I fear I might have, uh, made an error by saying that I have a, a guest coming on that I was very excited about. And now if, if someone isn't as sufficiently excited about you-
- SHSam Harris
Right. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... then I've, that dopaminergic system's gonna fall through the floor.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, there's one disappointment after another.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SHSam Harris
But, so like,
- 26:39 – 33:19
The Rise of Andrew Tate
- SHSam Harris
Andrew Tate's a perfect example of somebody who, again, he's not, um, he's radioactive for obvious reasons. I haven't met him. I haven't done an especially deep dive on what he's guilty of or, you know, I mean, he's, obviously he's, he's got issues. But, um, I just feel like we're, we're at a moment now where... I mean, there, there is such a, a thirst for wisdom that, you know, it's, it can come from so many different places. And, and those places can be more or less contaminated with concepts that are more or less toxic, more or less divisive, more or less confusing. And yeah, I mean, I've wa- you know, I've watched enough of his stuff to see why young men are getting addicted to his content and thinking that he's their, their life guru. Uh, and I've also watched enough to think that it's not, um, it's not ideal that he's the voice of a generation, right? Like, we need a, a, um, a more compassionate, less self-infatuated standard for manliness and, and success than, than what he's, he's putting out.
- CWChris Williamson
If I was to... I've got Jordan, uh, coming on the show again-
- SHSam Harris
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... at some point later this year, and it's something that I think I'll speak to him about, that he's onto big things with this Arc, which is kind of his competitor, I think, to the WEF that he's doing later this year.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, I haven't, I haven't followed that. Yeah, no.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, but I do think that Jordan's relative abandonment of the conversation directly to young men-
- SHSam Harris
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, to move on to other things, whether it be climate change or the trans issue, or pick your poison about whatever he's got interested in recently, uh, I think that that has left a vacuum. And you can't expect-
- SHSam Harris
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... young... You can't expect anybody to go through life without insights coming from somewhere. And whether that insight is for young men or young women, or old men or old women, whether it's Andrew Tate or-
- SHSam Harris
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... you know, Whoopi Goldberg or whoever happens to have the hot take of the week and, and trend sufficiently highly on Twitter, uh, people are gonna look for someone. They're going to look for answers. And in a world where we are chronically mismatched, our evolved psychology and the world that we find ourselves in has n- never really been further apart, people are gonna find answers.
- SHSam Harris
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And, and sometimes fluency is a really brilliant proxy for truthfulness or insight.
- SHSam Harris
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And if you can say things with a sufficiently, uh, well-rounded, compelling delivery, regardless of who you are-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... whether it be Whoopi Goldberg or, or anybody else, uh, people will say, "That sounds, that sounds true. Sounds fluent. Not sure if it's true."
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, except the, the thing that surprises me is that it should be more obvious than it is to more people that someone's an asshole, right? It's like that, like it doesn't matter how fluent you are, you are, you're only just declaring your assholery in sh- in more concise form, right? Um, and so it, it's kind of a Trumpian moment. Like, Trump is obviously an asshole. He's obviously a, a selfish person, but nobody, none of his fans care, right? He's like, he's not a compassionate person. He's, he d- he can't even pretend to care about people, really, right? He's, but his, his shamelessness around his selfishness...... has become a kind of superpower for a certain audience, because he's, he's conveying the message, "I will never j- I will never judge you because I'm incapable of judging myself," right? Like, "I'm not, I- I'm not holding myself to any kind of standard apart from the gratification of my own desires. So, you know, I'm, I'm... In s- in some sense, I have a real integrity because I know I'm selfish." All those people who are pretending not to be selfish or pretending to be ethical and compassionate, they care about, you know, uh, the- the sub-Saharan Africa and, uh, you know, the education in developing countries. I mean, someone like Bill Gates, right? No, Bill Gates is somebody who can't get laid and he's just gonna microchip you with the next vaccine, right? Like, that, that's... This is gonna be a great, uh, quote to export from this podcast. Um, uh, you're welcome, Twitter. Um, that... So that's the, that's the center of narrative and ethical gravity for these guys, right? I don't, I don't include Jordan there, but like, Andrew Tate, Trump, there's like a, "I've got a fucking Bugatti and you know you want one, and I- I've got no apologies," right? "I've got no fucks to give." Uh, "I know you wanna be like me," you know? "And if you don't... If- if you're not good enough to be like me, I'll sleep with your girlfriend." Right? Like that's, that's the... That's not an ethically wise person on any fucking level, even if he can s- even if he can string together a few sentences that seem actionable and useful to get you to clean your room and get in shape and, and meet a girl, right? Um, we should be asking more of our elders than that, right? And, and so, and, and so where I part ways with Jordan... Again, I w- I do not put Jordan, um, in the same category, but he is... He has a very different view of the, the, the, kind of the status of objective, empirical truth w- in relation to the stories we tell about w- uh, ourselves and our place in the world, and, um, what makes life worth living. What'll, what'll allow, what will allow for a society to really cohere around shared values. Um, and he thinks that there's a, a layer of storytelling and, you know, what I would, what I would call myth and fiction, really, in a, in a way that is kind of somewhat derogatory, right? It's not to say that I'm, um, I don't see the power in it, but it's just... I, what I wanna do is be able to distinguish between the, uh, layer of wishful thinking and a layer of delusion and a layer of, uh, ancient confusion that is still, uh, has good standing among millions of people.
- CWChris Williamson
And probably some symbolic truth or figurative truth in that too.
- SHSam Harris
And, and a kind of harmless, harmless uses of the imagination that are, could be ennobling and fun and empowering, right? Um, and kind of core truths that don't require a story to be ennobling and,
- 33:19 – 37:12
Is the Bible As Wise as We Make it Out to Be?
- SHSam Harris
and-
- CWChris Williamson
Did you see that Jordan got into it with Richard Dawkins? And, well, you wouldn't have done. You're o- you're off Twitter, so I will-
- SHSam Harris
No, no.
- CWChris Williamson
I'll, uh, be the weathervane to update you on whatever's happening in Twitter's conditions at the moment. Uh, Richard, a clip of Richard went semi-viral of him criticizing the Old Testament god.
- SHSam Harris
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And then, I think Jordan basically c- called him out anytime, any place, anywhere. It wasn't far off that, I think, that the actual-
- SHSam Harris
Right, right.
- CWChris Williamson
... tweet was about, saying that it was, uh, I think, damaging science and, and, and, and doing a disservice to maybe Dawkins himself and, and, and, and some other stuff.
- SHSam Harris
Right. Yeah, well, so I mean, that's... I mean, I agree with Richard, uh, with respect to the, what I think of the, the, the Old Testament god and the, the moral instruction we can or can't take from him. I mean, I just think that's... I, I just don't think that the, the Bible is the wisest book we have, even though there are, there are pearls of real wisdom there, which I, I, you know, understand that people love. Um, it's a book. It was clearly written by human beings, right? So like, the, the fundamental, the, the, the breach point is not... Is, is upstream of many of the things people might wanna debate. There's just this basic claim, "Are... We, we've got millions upon millions of books. Were they all written by people or not?" Right? And the moment you admit that they were all written by people, okay, we're having a very different conversation about the status of religion. Certainly, the religion of, of a- any of the religions of Abraham, right? I mean, these are, these are claims at bottom. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are claims about the divine origin of, of a specific book or c- certain texts. Um, and some of these texts were canonical for centuries and then got thrown out, you know, within ch- within Christianity, and then some got added later. Um, so the, the process of cobbling together these, these scriptures was all too human. We know way too much about it. If you... If we knew more about it, it would look much more like Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and the, and it would look like a, you know, the South Park episode that Mormonism in fact looks like, right? And you drag it further into the present and it looks like Scientology, right? And then you're like, you're just staring at L. Ron Hubbard's driver's license and it's just, okay, this goofy guy with bad teeth sold all these people on his, on a story about the stars that was just obviously bullshit and should have, it should have been obvious to them. Now, again, that's not to say that there isn't real wisdom in, in all of these streams of information. I mean, even Scientology. But you just... The basic claim, and I think Richard would agree with this, is that you don't have to believe anything on insufficient evidence to extract all the wisdom that is to be found in the world's literature and in the conversations. Conversations with people in the present and conversations with the dead by reading their...
- CWChris Williamson
... their books. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep's pod cover is keeping me alive in the middle of summer in Austin, Texas at the moment. Good sleep is the ultimate game-changer, and being too hot or too cold is a guaranteed way to ruin your night's sleep. The pod cover from Eight Sleep will actively cool and heat each different side of the bed based on yours and your partner's sleep stages. It is a complete game-changer. And if you're waking up in the morning feeling groggy and not sufficiently rested, it is quite likely that temperature is the culprit. And all of this is fixed with the pod cover from Eight Sleep. It slips over the top of your existing mattress just like a mattress topper, but gives you all of the biometric scanning. It'll tell you how long you were asleep for, your resting heart rate, your HRV, everything, literally from a mattress topper. Head to eightsleep.com/modernwisdom or follow the link in the show notes below for $150 off, plus they ship internationally. That's E-I-G-H-T sleep.com/modernwisdom.
- 37:12 – 45:37
Will Sam Rekindle His Relationship with Jordan Peterson?
- CWChris Williamson
The first time that I think I heard of Jordan was that first conversation that you guys had. It was a, a podcast, maybe in a bar, even a hotel reception or something, and there was a chinking-
- SHSam Harris
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... of glasses.
- SHSam Harris
Oh, no, that would have been probably Dan Dennett. Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, okay.
- SHSam Harris
We, uh, Dan Dennett-
- CWChris Williamson
Maybe.
- SHSam Harris
... and I had a debate in a bar, but Jordan-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- SHSam Harris
... and I had a debate on my podcast for the first time.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Well, I'd heard this-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, heard this conversation, and I remember thinking, like, "Who's this Canadian fuck having a pop at Sam Harris-
- SHSam Harris
Right. Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, at the time, and then later on went on to, to really sort of fall in love with Jordan's work as well. I think there's an awful lot of people who want to see that, um, public relationship between you and him rekindled. Uh...
- SHSam Harris
Well, it, it hasn't, uh, I mean-
- CWChris Williamson
I'm aware it's-
- SHSam Harris
To- to- to my eye, it has not, uh, been broken. I mean, I l- I like Jordan. I mean, I, I think this is just... This is what I imagine 'cause I have not had any dialogue with him in, in a couple years. But, um, I mean, Jo- Jordan and I disagree fundamentally about religion, I think, and we've debated that, you know, ad nauseam.
- CWChris Williamson
Ad nauseam.
- SHSam Harris
I move, probably got like, 12 hours, uh, you know, o- o- on the mic in various venues debating that. Um, and that was fun, and I'm always happy to, to talk to him. Um, and I think he, while we disagree, I think he has really helped millions of people. I mean, I think he's, he... There's no question. I've, I, I, I know what it's like to be with him at an event and to hear from the people who, who are, you know, hear from his fans and my fans side by side sitting at a table for an hour after a, an event where we, you know, had a debate in front of 8,000 people. Um, and there's a slightly different flavor to the people whose lives we've changed, right? He's, he's intersected with a, with a different group of people at a different point in their lives than I have for the most part.
- CWChris Williamson
How would you categorize that difference?
- SHSam Harris
Well, I mean, to, to s- a significant degree is people moving in two opposite directions. I mean, like, they're, they're, the people who were stuck with a religious worldview, stuck, I mean, literally, I- in many cases, traumatized by a fear of hell that had been inculcated into them by their religious parents, but were enamored enough of enlightenment values and secular rationality and science so as to have the, this, the spell break to some significant degree, and they needed some language to, to help them midwife their delivery into a, uh, into the clear light of, of, of reason, right? And they also needed... So, and this is where R- Richard and I have kind of, have had different jobs. I mean, Richard is just critiquing religion and counterposing it with all that's wonderful about science, right? And so for him, the, the spiritual attitude that is on offer when you, o- once you leave religion behind and, you know, you know, close the church doors behind you, is awe at the beauty of nature and just amazement at, you know, everything we ho- are learning and may yet learn about the way the world works and the way the, the mind works. And, um, I mean, we are, uh, to, to use Newton's image, I mean, it's like we are children o- on a seashore playing with shells, and the, the vast ocean of, of ignorance and potential knowledge, it just, uh, awaits our, our inspection. Um, for me, that's not good enough, right? What I mean by spirituality has in fact nothing to do with the amazement that you feel when you look up at the Milky Way, right? It's like tha- that's, that's great, but that's just not, that's just not the, the real opportunity on offer, and that's not what's going to prepare us to die, you know? And that's not what's going to really console you at 4:00 in the morning when you wake up feeling bad about your life and not sure how you can be happy in this world, right? Um, so I'm much more... So I, I, I'm convinced that at the core of every religion, there was, there, there were real transformative and, and transcendent human experiences that are attested to by the literature and traditions that have grown up, uh, around that religion. So there really was, you know, presumably there really was a person, uh, you know, in history by the name of Jesus who had this effect on the people around him and said, you know, something like what he is r- purported to have said in the Bible.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SHSam Harris
And I can, I can understand all of that as a, a, an absolutely predictable result of certain ways of, of paying attention that are available to every human being now, uh, you know, then, now, uh, then and now, um, which allow you to recognize that the, this ego you take yourself to be is an illusion. And it allows you to recognize that unconditional love is actually a possibility, right? Like, you can a- it is possible to just feel, uh, shattered by your love for all sentient beings and to just, but to bask in the profundity of that way of being. And-... that's on the menu. And whether you have to dis- whether you have to go into a cave and meditate for a month to find that, or you take MDMA, or you have m- th- there are ways to perturb your nervous system such that the testimony of someone like Jesus or Buddha is not... is obviously not a fraud. It's obviously not a confession of psychopathology. It's obviously not a delusion about, uh, you know, a belief-based delusion about what happens after death, or about w- invisible parts of the universe em- you know, populated by angels or, or deities. Um, you don't have to believe in anything unempirical in order to experience that range of, of positive experience. You just have to learn to use your attention in the right ways. And i- and if you can't do that, you know, there are, you know, ps- psychedelics offer a, an imperfect method at-
- CWChris Williamson
Pretty reliable, though.
- SHSam Harris
... for, for that. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's definitely reliable. It's a reliable glimpse of something that is different enough, um, assuming you have a positive experience. I mean, you can have a different enough negative experience that will convince you of something else-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SHSam Harris
... but if you have a different enough, extraordinarily positive experience, you'll be convinced that, okay, what- whatever the possibilities of sustaining that may or may not be, it is just clear that this experience is possible, because I just had it, right? I just had it for four hours, and I can no longer imagine that human consciousness is, is in principle confined to kind of th- the mediocre bandwidth I tend to experience when I'm just checking my email, and then checking Twitter, and then worrying about my future. Right? I, I actua- I actually don't think I, I, I actually closed the loop on what, um, I wanted to say about Jordan there, though. So, Jordan... Jor- Jordan and I differ in he wants to support a much more traditional picture of the utility and even necessity of religious thinking and religious identity, and, and that way of giving meaning to one's life through traditional stories. And, and sto- stories which I think tr- a, a literal belief in can't be justified based on what we have come to understand about science. And, um, I just think that the burden is on us at this point in history to find a truly nonsectarian way of telling ourself a story about what we value and what is possible, right? And s- and so... And we do that in other areas of our lives. I mean, science is one very clear place we do that, uh, where there's just, there is no- s- to say that, you know, there's American science versus Chinese science. I mean, it's just, that's just not science. It, it... Like, science is at a layer more fundamental than those cultural differences. Um, and so it has to be with a r- with something like ethics and spirituality. You can't talk a- i- in the end, you can't... You shouldn't be able to talk about Christian ethics or Christian spiritual insight, and Jordan's not convinced of that, or he's apparently not convinced of that. And so, you know, that w- that's what we still disagree about.
- 45:37 – 49:38
What Sam Thinks When People Say He’s ‘Lost It’
- SHSam Harris
But I think the final... The thing th- the thing, the thing I wanted to say was that... So, you, you al- uh, seem to allude to some sort of breach between us, which I certainly don't feel and haven't experienced. I can only imagine though that in his world, given wha- given what was happening to me on Twitter when I left, he perceives me as somebody who has just, um, gone off the rails in some way, right? Because, like, uh, he... He... In his world... And this s- this is what was so amazing to see, um, when I was looking at Twitter, when I... When I... When I... I mean, and this is to... For if anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about, there was this whole Hunter Biden laptop situation, where I, I commented on the Hunter Biden laptop thing, uh, on a podcast. A clip from that podcast got exported to, you know, uh, apparently every planet in the solar system, and, um, it had an enormous effect right of center, right? So th- so right of center, I had just destroyed my career. I mean, like, literally, I'm hearing from people, like, "Oh my God, are you okay?" Right? And in my world, and in every channel I care about, literally nothing had happened, right? And so... But in... But i- Jordan lives in the world where I just kind of torched everything, so I can only imagine that he has some view of my... I mean, he... I- the truth is, I would expect him to be genuinely confused about what I believe about things like free speech or any of the relevant variables there, uh, unless he happens to listen to my podcast, uh, which, you know, I don't know whether or not he does.
- CWChris Williamson
I think the, uh, potential breach that I was talking about was more just that there is a hunger for you and him to speak. I think that you've both been formative to a lot of people's intellectual journeys-
- SHSam Harris
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... in one form or another. And, uh, I, I think people are hoping that there is, uh, yet more juice to squeeze from your conjoined lemons, and however way-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that happens.
- SHSam Harris
Well, I'm always happy to talk to him. I thi- you know, I th- I think the thing that got into my head is someone sent me a clip from Joe Rogan's podcast, where he and Joe were talking about me, and Jordan seemed to be talking about me as, like, a cautionary tale, like, "Look what can happen to/somebody." And, and Joe said something like, "Oh, I still have hope for Sam." P- And they're... In my view, they are in this contrarian echo chamber, right? Where, you know, mRNA vaccines are terrifying, COVID was no big deal, Tr- January 6th was maybe no- a non-event, right? Um, the libtards are trying to ru- ruin everything. And there's a whole picture of sort of audience capture and, and information skewing there, which I understand. I mean, that's sort of h- I... Like, if I look to my left, I can see all that. Uh, but if you're only there-... there's just a lot of half-truths, you know, kind of ri- ricocheting around that echo chamber, which, um... Yeah. I mean, it's... I'm happy to talk to both those guys, but it's just, they're not... I- in the, in... in the lane I'm in and trying to maintain, you know, uh, despite the crosswinds, uh, trying to maintain a, a straight course in... There's oth- that's only half the story, right? So it's, um... And I just think people are genuinely confused now because two things are true. W- we have lost trust in the, the normal channels of information and in, in normal institutions, post-Co- you know, during COVID and, and post-COVID, um, for obvious reasons. But we desperately need institutions and a media that we can trust, right? And we're not going to navigate this moment by just proliferating podcasts and newsletters, right? It's just not good enough.
- CWChris Williamson
As much as we might try.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah. So it's... A- and so that's the... That's a, a seeming paradox because, yes, you can point to the moments where our institutions have become untrustworthy.
- 49:38 – 58:50
Why Has RFK Jr Become So Popular?
- SHSam Harris
But, you know, RFK Jr. is not the messiah we need at this moment, right? Like-
- CWChris Williamson
Why do you think he's so hot at the moment? What is it about RFK?
- SHSam Harris
Well, it's exactly that he's c- he is speaking very directly to this, um... contrarian echo chamber, you know. Contrarian/conspiracy thinking, conspiracy-addled echo chamber where, um, the non-standard version of everything is, is almost certainly the right, uh, account, right? So no one can be trusted. All you, all you really can, uh, it... It is a kind of, um... It's a kind of religion of, of suspicion that is b- that is being born, right? It's like, it's a, it's a, it's a pseudo awakening of... they're all fucking liars, right? Like that's the, that's what happened to so many millions of people during COVID, they're all liars. And we just got Gavin Newsom clo- closing the beaches, and then he's, he's, uh, over at French Laundry, you know, perfectly coiffed, uh, at a fundraiser. It's that hypocrisy that people found... I mean, that was just a 20-megaton moment of hypocrisy that detonated and broke trust with, with half the country, you know? And, and so it's... Again, that's all understandable, but we have to be realistic about just wha- what is true and li- and likely to be true in each moment, and is everything the CDC says likely to be wrong, right? Like is that, is that really what... is that what we want to default to, you can't trust the CDC about anything? Is that how you really want to b- be a consumer of medicine? It just, it's completely unworkable. What we need is a CDC we can trust, and insofar as we don't truly have that, then that is where we have to perform surgery. But it's not like we can tear it all down and then we're just gonna ChatGPT our way to-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SHSam Harris
... health. I- it's just, it's not gonna happen.
- CWChris Williamson
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- SHSam Harris
Um, well, if, um... I'm hopeful that if he keeps expounding upon how, you know, COVID was targeted to avoid Ashkenazi Jews and, and Chinese people and... I mean, I th- it's like, if you, if you give him a mic enough, he will put his foot, you know, he'll put both feet in his mouth and, and in your mouth and in any mouth that's available. I mean, it's just, it's... Um, and it, and, but again, it's not that he's wrong about everything. He's, ih, uh, that, ih- it's, it's harder than that, right? He's, he is right about many things. And, and the fact that people love what he's saying is totally understandable. That's, it's just not, you know, half-truths are harder to deal with. And, or, or statements which are riddled with truths but the c- the general shape of them, uh, is wrong and, and aiming in the wrong direction. Like, that is just, it's, uh, hard for people to parse that stuff. Um, and it's especially hard when occasionally the conspiracy theory turns out to be true, or very likely to be true. So like, if you're the, if you're a person who has an, uh, an appetite for every conspiracy theory, right? So JFK was, ih, well, you know, couldn't have been a single shooter and you just, you've just bought every one since then... Then you're gonna be r- then when, you know, uh, COVID l- likely escaped a lab in Wuhan, if you're the first person to sign up to that in an environment where everyone's being called racist for signing up to that, you're gonna look like this contrarian genius who just like, "I, they couldn't fool me, right? I knew that it, it likely came out of a lab." Um, whereas the, the rational position to have had... I mean, uh, y- you have to take all of these things a la carte, right? Like, you just have to honestly investigate, um, you know, within the confines of, uh...... opportunity cost and, and bandwidth. You, you have to investigate them, um, as they come. And I mean, with that one in particular, it was always obvious that it was a- at the very least plausible that COVID could have escaped a lab. We just know we have a problem with lab leaks. And there was a... There was the Wuhan Institute of Viro- Virology right there working on coronaviruses. It was never ra- It was... That was, that was a woke Shibboleth bullshit to s- call that racist to worry that, that... It, it come out of a lab.
- CWChris Williamson
Should have spoken to Rob Reid. That would have made it easier.
- SHSam Harris
Uh, which Rob Reid is that?
- CWChris Williamson
That did Aferon. Didn't he do a big-
- SHSam Harris
Oh, Rob. Yeah, that... Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I, I was thinking about the, uh, the Christian Rob Reed.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, so no... So Rob and I did a, a podcast on this kind of topic, you know, lab leaks in general and synthe- synthetic bio in general. Um, but a- again, the... You, you can't give... So if, if someone like RFK Jr. likes all the conspiracies, like every one of them. He likes the, you know, cell phones cause glioblastoma, uh, you know, idea, which again, it's totally possible, right? It's like it's wo- it's not that it's not worth looking into, but if you like that one and you like the Bill Gates microchipping one, and you like the, the Wuhan one, and you like that COVID itself was just a plandemic, and you, and you like all of these, and you like the Ashkenazi Jews don't get COVID, you, you just have... It's a characterological problem. You have this appetite for... I mean, you see this. The, the, the true avatar of this way of thinking is someone like Alex Jones, right? Like, and a- and again, I don't know if Alex Jones is just a performance artist and it's, it's cynical and, and not, not real, or if he really believes what he says he believes. But assuming he believes what he says he believes, he is just... Yeah, (sighs) you know, it's like you're a, a, a nymphomaniac for... And, and what you love is lies, right? And, and half-truths, right?You like, you like... You just love the least credible ideas, you know, the, the... Whatever can come over the transom, that's what gets you hard, right? And so that... You're just gonna keep doing that, and it's a, it's a disorder, right? But it's... You know, if it's true that certain frogs are getting turned gay, right? I- like, and you're the first one talking about that. Well, he was right about those frogs, and so he b- he must be right about everything. You're gonna find an audience. And this... The, the... What's so perverse about our current environment online is that there is no evolutionary, real evolutionary pressure anymore, because everything can succeed. There's just enough... There's a... There's always... You can always just find another corner of the internet and another echo chamber, and then just this part of 4chan, and if 4chan isn't good enough for you, you can be over at 8chan, right?It's like you can find this little hellhole where every w- Where you're gonna fi-... A, uh, a requisite number of people to monetize, ultimately, are g- willing to hear and talk about anything. And so I, I... Unlike many of the people we just spoke about, I'm convinced that we have an enormous problem with misinformation that is held in tension with our desire for free speech on every topic, you know, 24 hours a day, that we have to take seriously. We have to say... And, and it... And it's, it's not that we should ever write a law which, which says people have to go to jail for saying crazy things. I, I think the First Amendment truly is sacred and the right... It's, it's just beyond sacred. It's just the right algorithm to have for it to run a democracy. And, and, you know, we have it in America, and almost no one's, no one else has it. But that's not the same thing as having a right to the gamification algorithm that boosts the craziest stuff preferentially to the ends of the earth and maintains it forever, right? And that... And, and now you add generative AI to that, and I think it... The problem just gets worse. So yeah. I'm, I'm worried about consequential lies and half-truths in a way that many of my colleagues in Podcastistan aren't.
- 58:50 – 1:08:34
Principles for Being More Present in Life
- SHSam Harris
- CWChris Williamson
Getting back to something which is less contentious, perhaps-
- SHSam Harris
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... death, and the fact that we maybe should spend more time thinking about it, or at least be a little bit more aware of it-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... I'm gonna read a quote from that presentation that you gave on death-
- SHSam Harris
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
... in the present moment. "As a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now, and I think that this is a liberating truth about the nature of the human mind. In fact, I think there's probably nothing more important to understand about your mind than that if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory. It's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated. It is another thought arising now. What we truly have is this moment, and this. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth, refuting it, fleeing it, overlooking it, and the horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment there because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future, and the future never arrives. It is always now. However much you feel you need to plan for the future, to anticipate it, to mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now. Even when we think we're in the present moment, we are, in very subtle ways, always looking over its shoulder, anticipating what's coming next. We're always solving a problem, and it's possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment, and enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present." You say that your mind is all you have-
- SHSam Harris
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... just before that. What does that mean? And, uh, uh, reflecting on that statement now, what, what did you hope that people took away from it?
- SHSam Harris
Well, it's... There's this... We've spoken about it a little bit already. There's this fundamental truth that-... you never truly arrive. If your, if your attention is always purposed toward looking for the next thing, anticipating the next thing, uh, if even in the presence of that very thing that was the next thing, and now it's now, you are busy telling yourself a story about it, you know? You're, you're... If your engagement with it is mediated by thought in each moment, and you can't actually make contact, whether... You can't, you can't... There's this, there's this dissatisfaction even in satisfaction, right? You get the thing you were longing for, and you, you have such a... You're so distractible, you're so, you're so burdened by this automaticity of thought, this conversation you're having with yourself, that the present moment isn't even sal- salient enough to you, right? And so it's, it's a, um... Most of us most of the time live in that kind of, uh... You know, we get buffeted between the pa- a- anticipating the future and thinking about the past. And that flicker happens over even the present moment, right? I mean, we're just, we're just, you know, like... I mean, e- even in a conversation like this, like I'm saying something... If part of my attention is, "Well, I mean, have I gone on too long about this?" Or it's like, like, "Should... D- did that even make sense? What would..." There's part of me that is, that is potentially talking to myself about the very conversation we're having now. Now, that is all too normal. Everyone is in that position. I mean, people are... People who are listening to us now are struggling to follow my train of thought as I speak. One, because I'm long-winded, but two, it's... My speech is competing with speech that there is, is occurring to them in their head, right? They're saying, "Well, what's he talking about? Oh, J- Jordan didn't say that. Wh- where does he, where does he get off talking about Jordan that way?" And there's someone in their fucking head who seems to be them, but s- strangely not them. Because if they're the one talking and also listening, why are they having that conversation in the first place, right? There's this, there's this... People looking over their own shoulder into the pre- even when they're trying to seize the present with both hands, right? Even if they take my advice in that quote and say, "Okay, I gotta be all about the now," right? "The future never arrives, there's just now, so let's enjoy the now." What they will find is they lack the tools to really do that. And so one tool, uh, again, is something, something like psychedelics, right? You take the requisite dose of LSD or psilocybin or MDMA. Again, these are potentially very different experiences, but they're, they're... What will happen under the aegis of any of those compounds is very likely you will have a full collision with the present moment of a sort that you have never had before, if it's your first time, uh, on one of those drugs. And all of a sudden, the, the, your sensory experience and your concep- even your conceptual experience will begin to unfold. And you will realize there is just much more here than i- than you realized, right? Like, it... Like, everything becomes a kind of miracle. And the problem with that is that finding meaning in everything is crazy, right? You become the guy who's just like, like... You know, if I'm staring at this microphone, I'm so... I come here stoned, and I'm just like, "Oh my God, that microphone is just..." Yeah. That, you know, that's not the guy you want on your podcast, right? So... But it, it is possible. It, it... (sighs) The... It is possible to, to fall into the well of being such that the present mo- the present moment lacks for nothing, right? You're just... You recognize that love, what you mean, what you really mean by love, what you should mean by love, is not this transactional thing that you get going with a specific person because of your shared history together and because of their qualities that you happen to like. Um, it is actually a state of being that you can just plunge into and you recognize this is... The, the point of life is to, is to recognize this more and more, right? And so... And love is one facet to the, to this jewel. Compassion is another. Just, just awe, you know, is, is another. I mean, it, it gets different shadings depending on th- the environment you put it in. I mean, it gets like... If you're in the presence of, of human or animal suffering, well, then compassion is the thing that gets amplified. But in the si- in, in real silence, uh, and in, in, in a real undistracted collision with the present moment, when you don't have this voice in your head diverting you, uh, or coming up from behind seeming to be you, right? What, what happens is people feel like a, a separate self. I mean, they... Uh, here, perhaps I should rewind for a second. Uh, the starting point for 99.9% of humanity, people feel like a self. People feel like they're, they're a subject in the middle of their experience, right? They feel like they're having an experience. They feel like they're, they're on the edge of experience in some sense. They don't feel like... Uh, they don't feel identical to experience, right? So, I'm... So, an experience is, you know, your five sensory channels and your mind, right? So you've got... You're seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, feeling emotions. And th- you've got this whole cacophony of what it's like to be you in each moment. And sometimes it's very, very pleasant and sometimes, sometimes it's very unpleasant, and sometimes it's just, you know, uh, normal and, and there's nothing really especially salient about it. Um, and the default sense is to feel like a self in the middle of that, right? And...... it is that, it's that starting point that is actually the basis for all of our dissatisfaction and psychological suffering. I mean, that is the th- that is the knot that has to be untied to r- th- that really allows for a recognition of what the mind is like prior to identification with thought, and prior to this f- this, this capture by this, this automa- this reflexive seeking and not finding operation that we're, we're constantly engaged with. So, um, yeah, it's possible to... So, yes, on some level, you know, certainly spiritually speaking, now is everything. There really is just consciousness and its contents in each moment, right? And th- and there's, there's never a reason to wait to recognize that, right? Um, this isn't to d- disavow all the other projects we could have in human life that take some time to accomplish, right? I'm not saying you, everyone should just become a monk or go to a cave and starve. I mean, like, there, there are things that I like to do in the world and want to get done, and I have projects. But in each moment, the question is, what is available to attention, uh, and why do you suffer, right? And if you, if you, if you're gonna ask yourself, "Why do you suffer in each moment? Why, why is this moment just a little crappy, right? Why is it just not good enough? Why am I looking forward to this thing in an hour and I'm unable to locate a real ease of being now, you know, before this good thing happens, um, before this uncertainty gets resolved, right, before I've hear from the doctor that I don't have the thing that I'm worried about?" Wh- you know, like, all of these contingencies, what's available now, y- y- what you find is,
- 1:08:34 – 1:13:31
How Meditation Can Improve Your Mindset
- SHSam Harris
and, you know, meditation is the ultimate answer to this, in my view. You find is, this, this on the, on the part of virtually everyone, this basic incapacity to break the spell of identification with thought and just rest attention as consciousness in the present moment. And meditation is simply the act of doing that ultimately. I mean, there are many techniques that, that can seem like something other in the beginning, but ultimately, if it works, meditation is the ability to, to look at this thing you thought was your ego or that you thought was yourself, that you thought was the, the homunculus that was in the middle of your experience, and not find it, and not find it in a way that actually relieves you of the problem of egocentricity for that moment, right? It might only last... In the beginning, it might only last a moment, right? And then you'll be lost in thought again. But the, but the question is, eh, once you learn to meditate, the question is always, what do you do next? And if you don't know how to meditate, well, you'll, you're just gonna helplessly be thinking that thought, and you'll think it for as long as you'll think it, and it'll, you know, make you angry or sad or regretful or whatever, d- depending on its contents. And then you'll try to have to figure out how to r- rearrange your life on the basis of that thought so as to not be angry or sad or regretful. But when, once you know how to meditate, you can recognize thoughts as thoughts, and they just arise and disappear in this wider space of awareness, and you locate your well-being in that space as, as that space. But, b- but if all of that sounds like religious gibberish that, that is of totally un- and interesting, and it would have seemed that way to me when I was 18, the only thing for a hard-headed skeptic, uh, much of the time is an experience that snaps you out of your egocentric illusions for some period of time. And so for me-
- CWChris Williamson
Peru. Go to Peru.
- SHSam Harris
... go to Peru or, um, um, I, which I haven't done. I haven't done ayahuasca. But for me, psychedelics were in- they, they, they were indispensable because I was someone, eh, may... Had you confronted me as an undergraduate in college with, eh, whatever I just said, I would have... Even if I had been convinced to try meditating for an hour, I wouldn't have had the aptitude for it that I, such that I would have immediately noticed there was, there was a there there. I would have, I, I would have bounced off. I would have f- got the sense that it didn't work for me. Like, I, you know, most people, you know, someone like R- someone like Richard Dawkins is a perfect example. It's like I- I- I ambushed him on my podcast with, you know, five minutes of meditation and-
- CWChris Williamson
I thought you were gonna say spiked the drink with-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, he... No, Richard, I told, I told-
- CWChris Williamson
... a heavy dose of psilocybin.
- SHSam Harris
I, I told Richard he should, he should do psychedelics. Um, but most people who are espe- and this is especially true of hard-headed rationalists, skeptic scientist types, um, they're so enamored of thought. Thought is the only appendage they have ever found by which to or- by which to interface with reality, such that they, they can't imagine a mind prior to thought. They can't imagine a non-conceptual engagement with reality that reveals anything. You know, it's, it sounds like, wha- what do you... It sounds like brain damage, right? Like, "My concepts are great. Like y- uh, you should have concepts as good as my concepts, right? Why, why, what are you... Are you gonna hit me on the head with a hammer? Yeah, then I'll have fewer concepts, right?"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SHSam Harris
But, eh, so when you point them inward, when you say, "Okay, just, just notice that... Like, just try, try to focus on your breath for 10 seconds and notice how hard that is. Notice what happens. Notice that, that you get carried away by something that you are not authoring, right? Like, you're... Did you decide to get distracted about what's gonna happen, eh, for lunch, uh, when I just told you to pay attention to your breath and you were on it for two seconds and now you're thinking about lunch?" Like, does that, does that no- is that at all interesting to you that- that's the hardest thing in the world to just pay attention to anything? Some people find that interesting, some people find that that's a, there's a sort of-...an intimation of a path there. Like, okay, maybe there's something to discover here that could provide some relief to something that is in fact ailing me. But for many people, not. And then if you give those people psych, uh, some psychedelic experience, many of them recognize, "Oh, okay. There is a there, there." I, I don't know how, I don't know if this one is optimal. This is just, this is just different, but it's so different, and some of it is so pleasant, and some of it is so undermining of the bullshit that I generally find so captivating, that this is a counterpoint to how I've been living my life, right? And so I need t- I need to f- I need more tools. And that's how many of us have go- got into meditation.
- 1:13:31 – 1:22:39
How Our Consciousness is Influenced By What We Feel
- SHSam Harris
- CWChris Williamson
What is the role of feeling in this? Whatever term you want to call it. The, the embodiment of emotions, the tapping into some sort of intuition. Because I, I resonate a lot with the cerebral horsepower model.
- SHSam Harris
Ah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, relying on whatever it is cognitively that I've got, that I can deploy on the thing that's in front of me. And I take a lot of pride in that.
- SHSam Harris
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And I think a lot of people do. A lot of the people that'll be listening to this podcast, listening to your podcast, will feel the same. You know? We, we take pride in our ability to wrangle the chaos of the world into some sort of order by, by thinking through things and, and taking concepts from different disparate areas and bringing them together and going, "Wow, that's really satisfying."
- SHSam Harris
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
"I now understand the way that these two things could result in this third thing, and that third thing is..." But it does, to me, in some ways, feel a little like a prison. And it's a, almost a prison of your own making, and it's one that you're proud of. You stand there with this gilded prison wall, and-
- SHSam Harris
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... you've, everything's coated in, and the toilet's fucking gold, and the floor is gold, and there's an open sky and all this stuff. Um-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... what's the role of allowing some sort of embodiment or emotion or, or, or, or feeling to come back into this to allow the cerebral stuff to slip away, but not to just be completely blank? To be able to, to hear what you're sort of truly feeling-
- SHSam Harris
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... in the moment?
- SHSam Harris
Yeah, well, it, it... Meditation, I mean, so the, the kind of meditation I, I recommend is, is generally called mindfulness. And it's, in the... Initially, it seems like a technique, and it's taught as a technique, but ultimately it's not a technique. It's not a, it's not something you're doing m- more of. It's you're actually doing less of, of something, which is you're simply not being distracted by thought. And so when you have a feeling, when you feel joy or you feel sadness, mindfulness is... It's, it's often thought of, especially when you're talking about negative feelings that people classically want to get rid of or diminish, like anxiety, right? It's often thought that mindfulness is a way of getting rid of those feelings, right? And it ultimately, it is, but it's not a way of getting rid of them by born of an unwillingness to feel them, right? Like, what you're doing when you're being mindful of an emotion is you're willing to, is you're, you're feeling it entirely, you're feeling it deeply. You're, you're letting yourself become incandescent with that feeling. You're just not thinking about it anymore. And, and it's, it's not that you're blocking thoughts, you're just noticing thoughts themselves arise along with the feeling, but you're noticing them from the point of view of this prior condition of awareness that can just see thoughts as thoughts, right? Um, the, the default case is to not know that you're thinking, even if you could s- say that you know that you're thinking. In each moment, a thought is, is coming up from behind, and you just feel like it's you. And you're thinking about the thing that's making you angry, and that's making you angry, and so you're feeling anger, and then you're thinking about the thing that's making you angry. "And that motherfucker, I can't believe. What was he thinking?" And that's the voice in your head, and that feels like you, right? Like, uh, that you have no perspective on.
- CWChris Williamson
Is that not you?
- SHSam Harris
N- no, it's no more than, than, than these, th- these sounds are you when you hear them, right? Like, literally it is, it is like being asleep and dreaming. I mean, that's why ma- many people, you, I, you know, I've titled my book and my app, Waking Up, and what, you know, this is an ancient analogy, which is all too literal. Breaking the spell of thought is very much like waking up from a dream th- when you, you just didn't know you were having. Like, you were, you're asleep and dreaming, you know, let's leave aside lucid dreams, which are a different case. The normal case is you're asleep and dreaming, and you have no idea what your situation is. You are, you are convinced you are in a totally different situation than you in fact are. You are, you're actually safe and, safely in your bed, and yet you think you're somewhere else. You're at a, you're at a nightclub, you're, you know, at the office, you're, you know, you're at the doctor's. Something, and, and it could be an emergency, and it's completely imaginary, right? It could have some point of contact with your life, but it's completely imaginary. And the amazing thing about dreams is the transition from sleep, uh, from waking to sleep to dreaming is one in which we never register a moment of surprise, right? Like, like, it's just... It is amazing that your mind is capable, like, you are, you go to sleep in your bed, and then the very next thing that happens to you as a conscious entity is totally discontinuous with what, where you were fif- in your memory 15 minutes ago, and where you're, you in fact are in this moment. You've, the, the, the laws of physics have been suspended. You know, dead people are now walking. I mean, literally talking to someone who's dead, and you're not even s- you might be surprised they're dead, but-
- CWChris Williamson
I had a d- I had a dream-
- SHSam Harris
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... a couple of days ago that I'd committed a war crime, and the old cricket team that I used to play for-
- SHSam Harris
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... 20 years ago was hunting me. And I'm pretty sure that you were there as a newscaster. So, uh-
- SHSam Harris
Right. That makes perfect sense. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. Oh- obviously.
- SHSam Harris
Yeah. But so, but that, that failure of reality testing is something we are guilty of in every moment that a thought seems to be what we are. Whe- where it seems like our mind becomes identical......to this voice in our head, where the self, where, uh, you just feel like... Again, you're listening to me, you're not on, you're not, you're not grokking what I'm saying. The voice in your head says, "What is he talking about? Was this... Is this Buddhism?" Or, like, "What's, uh, what's this guy banging on about?" Okay, that th- that is just arising out of you know not where, right? There's a total fucking mystery at your back, and then you've got this language and, you, i- in many cases, imagery getting piped in from, you know, the, uh, you know, stage right and stage left, and you can't, you can't figure out how to turn to see what, where any of this is coming from.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, where is it coming from? Where are, where are thoughts coming from?
- SHSam Harris
It's utterly, uh, uh, subjectively speaking, as a matter of experience, it's, it's utterly mysterious, right? Like, they, they... And once you break the spell, once you see... It's very, again, it's very much like waking up from a dream. Like, once you begin to wake up from a dream, li- like, uh, uh, it could be as, it could be as bad or as c- seemingly consequential as possible, right? You know, you're on a battlefield, you're being prosecuted for, uh, you're being chased as a war criminal, right? Your adrenaline is up. The moment you begin to w- your alarm goes off, and the, the dream, the dream, uh, the dream is so insubstantial that in most cases, you can't even remember it, right? Like, it could have been really intense, and yet it's so discontinuous with your normal waking consciousness that when it, when it begins to erode, sometimes you can just get this wisp of, "Wait, was there a beach?" You know, like, there's just, uh, nothing left, and yet it was all-encompassing, uh, when you were having it. This, we live our li- So, that strikes us as perfectly normal because basically we all dream when we're asleep and, you know, and it seems fine. Most dreams are fun or not, but no, there's no real consequence. We all live our waking lives having this conversation with ourselves, which is also totally normal, everyone's doing it, and yet both of these conditions, being asleep and dreaming and not knowing it, and being s- and thinking every moment of the day and not really knowing it, and certainly not seeing any alternative to being identified with thought, both of them are a kind of psychosis. And they really are. It's like they're so close to what we recognize in other, in, in the canonically crazy people as psychosis, right? And so, your thought is only really different from psychosis in that you have the good sense to keep your mouth shut in public, right? Like, if you were, uh, if you were helplessly exteriorizing all of this conversation, you know, just talking to someone who's not there, um, in the way that you're talking to someone who's not there in the silence of your own mind, you'd be the crazy person on the street who's talking to himself, right? It's not, and I'm not saying, I'm not trivializing the tragedy of psychosis. I mean, there's, there are other things going on there. There's, you know, classic thought disorder where you're, you know, you find Alex Jones credible and you're, uh, you know, th- you're just, every conspiracy theory is, in fact, real. Um, but we, we have, we've all accepted a status quo of, more or less, constant distraction by this inner voice. And it's, it's, so, uh, again, it's universally subscribed, but it's no- it's not... What is also universally subscribed is frank unhappiness and dissatisfaction. And it is the basis for our h- unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
- 1:22:39 – 1:25:55
Why Are Our Inner Voices So Critical?
- SHSam Harris
Episode duration: 3:11:44
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