Making Sense - Sam Harris - #243 — A Few Points of Confusion

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 ?

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast, this is Sam Harris.

00:00:24.760 Okay. I've had a few encounters recently on other people's podcasts and on social media

00:00:34.740 that have made me think that many people are confused about some of the views I express

00:00:42.680 on this podcast. Those of you who are using the Waking Up app probably have a better understanding

00:00:48.240 of what I'm up to, but I get the sense that many Making Sense listeners really don't know

00:00:55.000 where I'm coming from much of the time. So clearing up this confusion requires that I

00:01:00.880 say a few things about the role that meditation has played and continues to play in my life.

00:01:06.880 First, let me say that unless you're deep into it, the term meditation almost certainly conjures

00:01:14.140 the wrong ideas in your mind. Meditation has no necessary connection to Eastern religion,

00:01:20.840 say, much less to beads or incense or any of the trappings of New Age spirituality, unless

00:01:29.080 you're unusually well-informed about it. When I use the term meditation, as I do from time

00:01:34.680 to time on this podcast, I would bet that 99% of you get the wrong idea. Meditation is

00:01:41.240 just a bad word for the recognition of specific truths about the mind. It's a process of discovering

00:01:47.760 what is already true of your own mind. Of course, the discoveries one makes here are directly

00:01:53.860 relevant to living a more satisfying life, which is the important part, and that's why

00:01:58.280 I spend so much time recommending that people look into this. But the benefits aside, more and

00:02:03.520 more I'm realizing that many of you can't understand the positions I take on this podcast

00:02:07.980 without understanding your mind. And these are positions which, on their surface, have

00:02:15.560 nothing to do with meditation. My experience here is often the key to understanding my criticism

00:02:20.900 of specific scientific and philosophical ideas, like the debate about free will, or the nature

00:02:27.060 of the self, or the hard problem of consciousness. I mean, yes, a person can follow the purely philosophical

00:02:33.020 or scientific arguments and arrive at some of the same conclusions. For instance, someone

00:02:37.940 can understand how free will and the conventional notion of self don't make any sense in terms

00:02:42.420 of ongoing neurophysiological changes in the brain. But even most people who understand and

00:02:48.600 accept those arguments don't really have the courage of their convictions, because they still

00:02:53.520 feel like selves that enjoy free will. Most people don't have the introspective tools to

00:02:59.680 discover that their experience is actually convergent with what makes the most sense scientifically

00:03:05.040 and philosophically. So they're stuck trying to grapple with a pseudo-problem. How can we make sense

00:03:11.300 of our experience of an unchanging self that has free will, when we know conceptually that these

00:03:17.560 things don't make any sense? That's where many people are stuck, quite unnecessarily. Meditation is also

00:03:24.840 the key to understanding my criticism of specific religious ideas. How can I say with confidence

00:03:30.600 that most religious doctrines are not merely scientifically implausible, many people can say

00:03:37.160 that, but that they are also a perversion of a very real opportunity to experience self-transcendence?

00:03:44.260 I can say this because there's nothing hypothetical to me about the kinds of experiences that people

00:03:51.300 like Jesus were rattling on about to anyone who would listen. And when you've had these experiences

00:03:56.740 and can have them on demand, it's not just a matter of having taken LSD a few times and dimly

00:04:02.460 remembering how different things were. When it's absolutely obvious to you that the conventional sense

00:04:08.960 of self is an illusion, then it's also obvious that our spiritual hopes need not be pegged to the idea

00:04:16.540 that some historical person might have been the son of God who died for our sins.

00:04:21.740 My experience in meditation largely defines my politics, too.

00:04:26.240 And for instance, how can I be so sure

00:04:28.740 that the explosion of identity politics that we see all around us

00:04:32.800 isn't a sign of progress?

00:04:35.200 How can I know that it's an ethical and psychological dead end

00:04:38.880 to be deeply identified with one's race, for instance,

00:04:42.320 and that all the people who are saying that there's no way to get past race in our politics

00:04:46.340 are just confused?

00:04:48.580 Well, because I know that a person need not even identify with the face he sees in the mirror each day.

00:04:54.960 In fact, the deeper you examine your experience,

00:04:57.780 the more you discover that freedom ultimately depends on not identifying with anything,

00:05:02.420 even with how you look in the mirror.

00:05:03.800 How much more so is it unnecessary to identify with millions of strangers

00:05:09.880 who just happen to look like you in that they have the same skin color?

00:05:15.200 In light of what's possible psychologically and interpersonally,

00:05:19.680 in light of what is actually required to get over yourself

00:05:22.980 and to experience genuine compassion for other human beings,

00:05:26.720 it is a form of mental illness to go through life identified,

00:05:31.360 really identified with one's race.

00:05:34.420 It's just a bad dream.

00:05:37.280 Of course, to say that as a white guy in the current environment

00:05:41.680 is to stand convicted of racial insensitivity

00:05:45.160 and even seeming indifference to the problem of racism in our society.

00:05:50.180 I mean, what greater symptom of white privilege could there be

00:05:52.820 than to declare that we should just all get past race?

00:05:56.120 That's a retort that I believe I can hear percolating in the minds of many listeners.

00:06:00.220 And most well-intentioned people have been successfully bullied by that kind of response.

00:06:07.020 How much easier would it be to back down here and just say,

00:06:11.440 sorry, I don't know what I'm talking about.

00:06:12.860 I'm just a white guy.

00:06:13.520 There are massive incentives to take that path.

00:06:17.540 But to insist upon the primacy of race is to be obscenely confused about human potential

00:06:25.500 and about society's potential.

00:06:27.840 And I'm not going to pretend to be unaware of that.

00:06:31.620 So when I'm talking about racial politics on this podcast,

00:06:36.500 I am also talking about meditation,

00:06:39.080 even though the topic would never come up in that context.

00:06:42.900 And when some of my critics say that I'm just practicing my own version of identity politics, 0.99

00:06:47.460 I'm in a position to say bullshit. 0.96

00:06:51.420 And to be clear, I'm not claiming to be fully enlightened. 0.99

00:06:54.100 I'm definitely still a work in progress.

00:06:56.100 But there are certain things that I actually understand about my own mind

00:07:00.360 and about the mind in general.

00:07:02.880 And the idea that racial identity is something that we can't get past 1.00

00:07:07.680 is total bullshit. 0.99

00:07:11.880 Insights into the nature of mind can't help but touch politics. 0.99

00:07:16.800 For instance, my attitude toward wealth inequality

00:07:19.200 is born of the recognition that no one is truly self-made.

00:07:23.220 All these rich guys walking around with their copies of Ayn Rand,

00:07:27.020 thinking they're self-made.

00:07:28.820 It's pure fiction.

00:07:31.180 And given how we do become ourselves,

00:07:33.620 given the overwhelming influence of luck in our world,

00:07:37.280 we have to recognize that we need an effective system of wealth creation

00:07:41.300 that doesn't allow people to truly fall through the cracks.

00:07:45.000 And as we get wealthier,

00:07:46.360 the floor beneath which no one should be allowed to fall

00:07:49.140 should keep rising.

00:07:50.440 Compassion has to be built into capitalism

00:07:53.940 because it doesn't seem to occur naturally.

00:07:57.100 Otherwise, totally normal people

00:07:58.580 begin to resemble psychopaths

00:08:00.560 in how they conduct themselves in business.

00:08:03.560 So this is just to say that what I think I've learned

00:08:05.920 through the practice of meditation

00:08:07.500 influences many of the views I express on this podcast.

00:08:11.260 But I can't get into the details here

00:08:13.480 because there are so many other things to discuss.

00:08:15.780 So that's what I'm doing over at Waking Up.

00:08:19.300 What I'm building at Waking Up is the laboratory

00:08:21.540 where you can run this same experiment for yourself.

00:08:24.580 And there's really no substitute for doing that.

00:08:28.220 I mean, you can pretend to want to integrate

00:08:30.500 your intellectual and ethical and political life.

00:08:33.700 Or you can really want to do it

00:08:35.300 and to discover all the ways in which you have failed to do it so far.

00:08:39.920 Again, I'm not claiming to have everything figured out.

00:08:42.580 I'm very much in the process of still figuring things out.

00:08:46.140 Each of us has to negotiate the terms of our disenchantment

00:08:49.900 with who we were yesterday

00:08:51.460 and with the ways in which culture distracts and misleads us.

00:08:55.700 And that's what I'm doing over at Waking Up.

00:08:58.140 So if you haven't checked it out recently,

00:09:00.160 I just want to invite you to do that.

00:09:02.380 Especially if you think you know what meditation is

00:09:04.660 and you think it's not relevant for you.

00:09:07.260 I can virtually guarantee that you're mistaken about that.

00:09:11.660 And if you can't afford a subscription,

00:09:13.340 you need only send an email to support at wakingup.com

00:09:17.100 and ask for a free one.

00:09:18.960 So please do not let money be the reason why you don't check it out.

00:09:22.180 As always, thanks for listening.

00:09:24.820 I'll see you next time.

00:09:30.360 I'll see you next time.

00:09:35.360 Thank you.

00:09:37.460 Thank you.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - March 28, 2021

#243 — A Few Points of Confusion

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