#20 — Still Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon
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Summary
Jihadism is the cat call from the middle ages, or from Middle Earth, and it is the call that we will have to live with for the rest of our lives. This is the Cat Call from the Middle Ages, or the call from middle earth, that we all need to wake up to, because if we don t wake up, we will be living with the echoes of it for a long time to come. And in order to wake ourselves up to it, we have to wage a war of ideas to be waged and won, and we must wage it and win it with ourselves first and foremost. This requires an admission that there is such a war, and that it can be waged, and won by ourselves, but the balance has to be struck between denying this problem, denying the problem, and denying that islamism has a unique problem at this moment in history that has to become as unseemly and as reputationally costly as any dangerous expression of bigotry now is, and certainly more costly than an honest discussion of the problem. And that is what we must be fighting for, and what we need to wage, and why it is a generational fight, not just one that can be fought and won in the 21st century, but a fight that is a fight for our children and grandchildren, and a fight we all have to be prepared to wage and win, and not just in the twenty-first century. -Sam Harris Sam's Note: This is a transcript of an essay I wrote a few years ago called "Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon" and it's one of my favorite short pieces of work, "The War of ideas" which I wrote in response to the events of September 11th, 2001, 2001. It's a few days after the 9/11, but it's still very much relevant to the current moment in which is still relevant to our time, and still has a lot of relevance to the present day, and is worth listening to today. . In order to access full episodes of the making sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe to the Making Sense Podcast, where you'll get access to the full episode of the podcast. You'll get the full series of episodes of Making Sense, where I'm making sense of what's going on around the world, and I'm trying to make sense of the world and what's happening in the world around us, and you'll be able to access it all, and more.
Transcript
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welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing
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okay well it is saturday november 14th a day after paris and as you all know at least 129
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people were murdered last night by jihadists probably affiliated with isis isis has claimed
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credit for it and many hundreds of people were injured so the death toll will almost certainly
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rise by the time you've heard this i hope to get this podcast out tomorrow sunday but anyway that's
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where things stand at the moment and my twitter feed is just inundated with people wondering what
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i have to say about this event and i have nothing new to say this is a situation i've been in now
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many times i i sit down to write or in some other way respond to recent events and i find that i've said
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this stuff a hundred times over you just have to change the dates and a few of the nouns in a blog post
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or a lecture and you find what you've said is totally appropriate to the moment now that's depressing
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because it means we are making the same mistakes over and over again and the stakes are all just
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getting incrementally higher so rather than struggle to write something new i'm going to read an older
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essay entitled sleepwalking toward armageddon and i wrote this uh just a year ago on september 10th
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2014 after the murder of journalist james foley by jihadi john who was killed yesterday i believe
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in a drone strike or was reported to have been killed so i will read that and perhaps um offer an
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aside or two on recent events i'll be speaking with douglas murray on monday i'm not sure when i'll
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publish that podcast probably might take a week to get that out but our conversation of this week was
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preempted by a cold of mine and which i'm just getting over so my voice is even less euphonious than
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it normally is sorry for that i offer this essay because it really is what i'm thinking now
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uh but one thing to keep in mind as i've been saying for 14 years this is the big story of our
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time and it is an incredibly boring one right let let the boredom of this just sink into your bones
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realize that for the rest of your life you're going to be reading and hearing about and otherwise
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witnessing hopefully not firsthand the lunacy and attendant atrocities of jihadists
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please pay attention to the recurrent shrieks of allahu akbar this is the cat call from the middle
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ages or from middle earth that we will have to live with for the rest of our lives so this fight
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against jihadism and islamism generally this is a generational fight this is something we are doing
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for our children ultimately and our children's children and we have a war of ideas that we have
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to wage and win and unfortunately we have to wage it and win it with ourselves first and again this
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requires an admission that there is such a war of ideas to be waged and won which is the purpose of my
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most recent book with majid nawaz but the balance has to swing denying this problem denying the problem
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of islamism denying that islam the religion has a unique problem at this moment in history that has to
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become as unseemly and as reputationally costly as any dangerous expression of bigotry now is it
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certainly has to be more costly than an honest discussion of the problem is people are referring
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to these events in paris as a wake-up call who on earth at this moment needs a wake-up call
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if you didn't wake up on september 12 2001 there may be no hope for you what will it take to get your
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attention there are no surprises anymore we have to relinquish our capacity for surprise here
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there is nothing so destructive that these people won't attempt it the only thing that has prevented
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them from killing millions of people is a lack of technology and we have to ensure that they never
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get it but the idea that our enemies are sufficiently like ourselves and that they won't set this world on
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fire is pure delusion most of you aren't even comfortable with the word enemy right to refer to
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jihadists as our enemies somehow that is provocative we have grown so effete as a civilization as to
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imagine that we have no enemies or if we do they're only of our own making and when people on the right
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call them barbarians well then that is just demagoguery those are just our own demons springing into view
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you have to get some perspective here it is not mere wartime propaganda that we will one day look back
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on with embarrassment to call isis a death cult to call them barbarians to call them savages to use
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dehumanizing language they are scarcely human in their aspirations the world they want to build entails
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the destruction of everything we value and our right to value and by we i mean civilized humanity
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including all the muslims who are just as horrified by the islamist and jihadist project as i am
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we have a project that's universal that transcends culture that unites everyone who loves art and
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science and reason generally who wants to cure disease who wants to raise each new generation to
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be more educated than the last and this common project is under assault so if you can't get your
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head straight about that you think there might be two sides to this war and that this is blowback
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that we're somehow culpable for it you have not understood what these people are about and they
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have been telling you what they're about ceaselessly so the problem is with you watch some of their
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videos if you can stomach it and if you can't stomach it that should tell you something and
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unfortunately most of us we have to keep convincing ourselves that evil exists that not all people want the
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same things and that some people are wrong in how they want to live and in what sort of world they
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want to build and if we can't convince ourselves of this once and for all well then we'll have to
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wait to be convinced by further acts of savagery of the sort that we just saw in paris why wait why not
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get your head straight now again the the situation i most fear is that more and more with liberals failing
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to see the dynamics of this problem there will come a time where the only people who have the moral
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conviction to oppose this death cult behavior will be nearly as bad as the islamists themselves now i'm
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speaking of right-wing christian fascists of some sort you know you have to ask yourself you know
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if there was an election in paris tomorrow who would you vote for right and if this happens 10 more
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times in paris who will the french vote for this mass psychological experiment is being run in every
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country in europe and no doubt will be run again if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation
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