#243 — A Few Points of Confusion
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
147.57013
Summary
In this episode, I talk about the role meditation plays in my life, and the role it plays in shaping my political views. I also talk about why I think there's no such thing as a black or white moral code and why I don't even identify with the face I see in the mirror. And I discuss why we should all get over racism, because it's a symptom of mental illness, not a form of mental ill-health, and why it's not possible to get past racism in the first place. And, finally, I discuss how to deal with the problem of racial insensitivity in our society, and how we can begin to move away from it in order to live a more compassionate and compassionate life. I hope you enjoy it, and that it makes you think about how important it is to have a healthy relationship with your own mind, and with your body, as a tool for self-awareness and self-improvement, and to have compassion for other human beings. Make sense of it all, and remember that you don't have to identify with anything you see in your mirror to be free of racism, mental illness or a bad dream just like everyone else does not have to do so to be a good human being even if they don't see themselves reflected in a mirror . and that we can all be good human beings no matter what they see in it or not in it . and how they look in it. or how they see it or how they feel what they look it s possible to be good or bad or what they think they have a good or they think they have the dream or they are not that are their dream. and they have a good dream, a good how to get over race, and so on why they not to to be better , and what is possible so that is that they can be can "the dream? to have a real of ? if they have been as a good dream , what does that mean? What does it mean, and what is it really mean, what is the dream ?
Transcript
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Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast, this is Sam Harris.
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Okay. I've had a few encounters recently on other people's podcasts and on social media
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that have made me think that many people are confused about some of the views I express
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on this podcast. Those of you who are using the Waking Up app probably have a better understanding
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of what I'm up to, but I get the sense that many Making Sense listeners really don't know
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where I'm coming from much of the time. So clearing up this confusion requires that I
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say a few things about the role that meditation has played and continues to play in my life.
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First, let me say that unless you're deep into it, the term meditation almost certainly conjures
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the wrong ideas in your mind. Meditation has no necessary connection to Eastern religion,
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say, much less to beads or incense or any of the trappings of New Age spirituality, unless
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you're unusually well-informed about it. When I use the term meditation, as I do from time
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to time on this podcast, I would bet that 99% of you get the wrong idea. Meditation is
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just a bad word for the recognition of specific truths about the mind. It's a process of discovering
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what is already true of your own mind. Of course, the discoveries one makes here are directly
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relevant to living a more satisfying life, which is the important part, and that's why
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I spend so much time recommending that people look into this. But the benefits aside, more and
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more I'm realizing that many of you can't understand the positions I take on this podcast
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without understanding your mind. And these are positions which, on their surface, have
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nothing to do with meditation. My experience here is often the key to understanding my criticism
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of specific scientific and philosophical ideas, like the debate about free will, or the nature
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of the self, or the hard problem of consciousness. I mean, yes, a person can follow the purely philosophical
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or scientific arguments and arrive at some of the same conclusions. For instance, someone
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can understand how free will and the conventional notion of self don't make any sense in terms
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of ongoing neurophysiological changes in the brain. But even most people who understand and
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accept those arguments don't really have the courage of their convictions, because they still
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feel like selves that enjoy free will. Most people don't have the introspective tools to
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discover that their experience is actually convergent with what makes the most sense scientifically
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and philosophically. So they're stuck trying to grapple with a pseudo-problem. How can we make sense
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of our experience of an unchanging self that has free will, when we know conceptually that these
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things don't make any sense? That's where many people are stuck, quite unnecessarily. Meditation is also
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the key to understanding my criticism of specific religious ideas. How can I say with confidence
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that most religious doctrines are not merely scientifically implausible, many people can say
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that, but that they are also a perversion of a very real opportunity to experience self-transcendence?
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I can say this because there's nothing hypothetical to me about the kinds of experiences that people
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like Jesus were rattling on about to anyone who would listen. And when you've had these experiences
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and can have them on demand, it's not just a matter of having taken LSD a few times and dimly
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remembering how different things were. When it's absolutely obvious to you that the conventional sense
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of self is an illusion, then it's also obvious that our spiritual hopes need not be pegged to the idea
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that some historical person might have been the son of God who died for our sins.
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My experience in meditation largely defines my politics, too.
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that the explosion of identity politics that we see all around us
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How can I know that it's an ethical and psychological dead end
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to be deeply identified with one's race, for instance,
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and that all the people who are saying that there's no way to get past race in our politics
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Well, because I know that a person need not even identify with the face he sees in the mirror each day.
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In fact, the deeper you examine your experience,
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the more you discover that freedom ultimately depends on not identifying with anything,
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How much more so is it unnecessary to identify with millions of strangers
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who just happen to look like you in that they have the same skin color?
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In light of what's possible psychologically and interpersonally,
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in light of what is actually required to get over yourself
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and to experience genuine compassion for other human beings,
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it is a form of mental illness to go through life identified,
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Of course, to say that as a white guy in the current environment
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and even seeming indifference to the problem of racism in our society.
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I mean, what greater symptom of white privilege could there be
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than to declare that we should just all get past race?
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That's a retort that I believe I can hear percolating in the minds of many listeners.
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And most well-intentioned people have been successfully bullied by that kind of response.
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How much easier would it be to back down here and just say,
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There are massive incentives to take that path.
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But to insist upon the primacy of race is to be obscenely confused about human potential
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And I'm not going to pretend to be unaware of that.
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So when I'm talking about racial politics on this podcast,
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even though the topic would never come up in that context.
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And when some of my critics say that I'm just practicing my own version of identity politics,
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And to be clear, I'm not claiming to be fully enlightened.
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But there are certain things that I actually understand about my own mind
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And the idea that racial identity is something that we can't get past
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Insights into the nature of mind can't help but touch politics.
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For instance, my attitude toward wealth inequality
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is born of the recognition that no one is truly self-made.
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All these rich guys walking around with their copies of Ayn Rand,
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given the overwhelming influence of luck in our world,
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we have to recognize that we need an effective system of wealth creation
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that doesn't allow people to truly fall through the cracks.
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the floor beneath which no one should be allowed to fall
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So this is just to say that what I think I've learned
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influences many of the views I express on this podcast.
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because there are so many other things to discuss.
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What I'm building at Waking Up is the laboratory
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where you can run this same experiment for yourself.
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And there's really no substitute for doing that.
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your intellectual and ethical and political life.
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and to discover all the ways in which you have failed to do it so far.
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Again, I'm not claiming to have everything figured out.
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I'm very much in the process of still figuring things out.
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Each of us has to negotiate the terms of our disenchantment
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and with the ways in which culture distracts and misleads us.
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Especially if you think you know what meditation is
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I can virtually guarantee that you're mistaken about that.
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you need only send an email to support at wakingup.com
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So please do not let money be the reason why you don't check it out.