Making Sense - Sam Harris - #397 — A New Year's Message from Sam

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris well another year has elapsed

00:00:27.800 and 2025 is upon us if you're over a certain age every year now appears absurdly futuristic

00:00:35.820 how young do you have to be for 2025 to not look like the chyron at the start of a science fiction 0.99

00:00:42.260 movie i don't know when that started for me somewhere around 2014 maybe where are the robots

00:00:49.800 as i look back over the year and look ahead to what may be coming it's hard to escape the sense

00:00:56.420 that we are witnessing more than the usual degree of change and chaos liberal democracies are under

00:01:02.920 threat globally the conflict between israel and her neighbors continues and there's the looming

00:01:09.120 prospect of a proper war with iran there was the fall of the asad regime in syria and the uncertainty

00:01:17.060 about what comes next the war in ukraine continues to rage and there is a simmering hostility between

00:01:24.520 the u.s and china unlike most periods in memory if someone came from the future and said don't you

00:01:32.840 realize that world war iii started months ago that would seem if not plausible at least possible

00:01:40.700 and in this context it remains hard to believe that we're returning donald trump to the white house

00:01:47.860 there are just so many reasons why this seems like a bad idea to name only one he is the sort of

00:01:55.140 president who thinks that pete hegseth should run our department of defense as most of you know the

00:02:01.020 list of hegseth's disqualifying sins is so long and miscellaneous that it's hard to perceive his

00:02:08.400 nomination as anything other than a terrible mistake that is until one recalls that trump put forward

00:02:14.000 matt gates to run the department of justice happily gates is suffering the fate of so many who come

00:02:20.800 within range of trump's enthusiasm humiliation and oblivion that is until he resurfaces selling

00:02:29.420 gold-plated rifles or starts a podcast with andrew tate trump's nominations really do seem like some

00:02:37.780 sort of troll or act of vandalism i mean even the optics are ridiculous both gates and hegseth could

00:02:45.260 easily be cast as villains in a batman movie less obscene but perhaps even more dangerous we have

00:02:52.620 the prospect of tulsi gabbard serving as director of national intelligence her well-documented patience

00:02:59.240 if not fondness for the asad regime isn't aging very well and if you think she's been smeared on this

00:03:06.560 point just listen to her describe her meeting with asad on joe rogan's podcast they discuss it for a

00:03:13.340 full 10 minutes in a clip that's available on youtube it's from about five years ago where she

00:03:18.800 was responding to all the criticism she'd received for speaking so diplomatically about asad the level of

00:03:25.620 naivete and frank delusion on display here given who we knew asad to be at that point is just astounding

00:03:35.040 so when the world could really use a shining city on a hill that is a healthy liberal democracy

00:03:42.280 capable of leading not merely by force but by example we've decided to return a man to the 0.93

00:03:48.580 presidency who refers to his fellow citizens all the democrats who didn't vote for him as vermin and 0.99

00:03:55.920 scum we can't pretend that this is normal and it has been frankly nauseating to see the parade of 0.98

00:04:04.860 business leaders many of whom despise trump and his effect on our politics race to mar-a-lago to kiss 0.96

00:04:12.000 the man's ring and much else it's tempting to ask these captains of industry all of whom are rich beyond 1.00

00:04:18.900 imagining what's the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you i mean this really 1.00

00:04:26.180 was an opportunity to say we're rich enough and our companies will be fine this is still a country 1.00

00:04:32.540 of laws and if the president targets us in any way our lawyers will be ready and real journalists will

00:04:39.860 be eager to tell the story i'm not betting that everything trump does in his second term will be

00:04:46.100 bad and i'm certainly hoping for the best but all these billionaires should understand that

00:04:52.340 normalizing trump and trumpism by purchasing million dollar tables at the inauguration isn't without

00:04:59.180 risk of embarrassment just take a moment to reflect on how this will look if any of the darker

00:05:04.500 possibilities of a second trump term are realized or just give another thought to january 6th it's only

00:05:11.700 decent to notice that no one is worried about what will happen on that date this year we won't see

00:05:17.700 kamala harris or joe biden inspire a mob to attack the capital how refreshing may everyone who is now

00:05:26.340 sane washing trump and trumpism should at least acknowledge the difference here and it's worth reflecting on

00:05:34.100 how much worse january 6th 2021 could have been and how trump played no role at all in preventing the

00:05:41.460 worst possible outcomes if you're someone who thinks that the significance of january 6th has been

00:05:47.220 exaggerated what do you think would have happened if the people who are chanting hang mike pence had

00:05:53.620 gotten their hands on him do you actually think that people who had traveled halfway across the country at

00:05:59.540 the summons of the president and had just spent the previous hours stabbing police officers in the

00:06:04.660 face with flagpoles and who had successfully breached the capital as a result of this violence

00:06:10.180 and who are now by their own account hunting for the vice president and other leaders in congress

00:06:15.220 do you really believe that these people would have suddenly turned docile and shown themselves

00:06:19.860 to be merely eager to chat if they had found their quarry cowering under a desk what about the people

00:06:26.580 carrying zip ties did they just want to talk to nancy pelosi but do you really not understand that

00:06:34.020 what appears merely ridiculous in failure was likely to have been quite horrific in success spend some

00:06:43.060 time reading about the french revolution or any other circumstance where the crowd actually got its 0.55

00:06:49.700 hands on the people it was hunting perfectly normal human beings regularly behave like monsters

00:06:56.980 when they join a mob it may seem strange to relitigate an event from four years ago but it reveals the

00:07:04.420 danger of treating trump like a normal president i think it is true to say that we escaped tragedy on that

00:07:12.820 day as narrowly as trump escaped assassination in 2024 how strange would it be to normalize that the fact

00:07:22.580 that trump is still alive doesn't make the attempts on his life any less real or disturbing or significant

00:07:30.820 of ongoing danger to him i mean just imagine if i said that the attempts on trump's life didn't need to

00:07:37.540 be taken seriously they've just been blown way out of proportion because the guy was barely

00:07:42.500 scratched i mean really i know people who have been injured far worse in their own kitchens would that make any

00:07:48.980 sense no and yet no one who is busy laundering trump's reputation seems to understand the obvious parallel to january

00:07:57.140 how would trump and trumpism seem if a couple of senators had been beaten to death or hurled out of windows

00:08:05.700 on that day how would trump's continuous line about the election having been stolen

00:08:11.300 again ask yourself what do you think would have happened if the mob had gotten hold of nancy

00:08:18.500 pelosi or mike pence it's no credit to trump that this didn't happen he knew that the people he had

00:08:27.140 turned loose on the capitol were calling for pelosi and pence to be killed for hours he knew this and he

00:08:35.620 just sat on his hands whether he actually said that pence deserved to be hanged as cassidy hutchinson

00:08:42.180 testified will surely be doubted by trump's defenders but what cannot be doubted is that

00:08:48.020 he declined to lift a finger to defend his vice president or any other member of congress for

00:08:53.780 hours he just watched the violence on television and refused to do anything useful and he's done

00:09:00.420 nothing but defend the rioters ever since and he has promised to pardon them and of course he still

00:09:06.180 claims that he won the 2020 election this is the person who will be president of the united states in

00:09:13.380 a few weeks this is the person you're honoring with your million dollar tables at the inauguration this

00:09:20.020 guy is capable of making your efforts to normalize him more than a little embarrassing anyway stepping out

00:09:27.700 of politics and looking ahead to the new year i think it's worth reflecting on why we are tempted

00:09:33.940 to reflect at all at the end of each year what is it about the calendar change that matters i think we

00:09:41.620 may as well ask the question that lurks behind every new year's resolution what is a good life or put

00:09:49.140 another way what makes life good or with a slightly different emphasis what is life good for

00:09:57.700 of course there are many answers or parts of answers love and friendship creative work and enjoying the

00:10:06.100 creativity of others learning that is growing in our understanding of some sliver of reality or

00:10:14.340 learning new skills doing things that are hard or beautiful or just fun and of course there is

00:10:20.820 pleasure pleasure of all kinds if your life is full of laughter and sunsets and sex and ice cream and

00:10:29.300 rewarding work you're probably not miserable though you might be amazingly you still might be miserable

00:10:38.500 and of course there's also compassion there is so much suffering in the world and relieving some

00:10:45.220 portion of it is one of the good things we get to do here however there is a deeper answer to the

00:10:51.780 question of what makes life good and one can be led to it if one interrogates any of the answers

00:10:57.620 already given what makes love and friendship or creativity or learning or fun or laughter or compassion

00:11:06.740 good and how are they different from all the things that seem to make life less than good hatred terror

00:11:15.460 boredom despair envy resentment contempt there is a deeper answer that is more philosophical or spiritual

00:11:25.860 and therefore tends to be unhelpfully bound up with religion when i talk about this i tend to talk about

00:11:31.620 meditation and while it's a helpful starting point and even a necessary one it's also misleading

00:11:39.140 meditation sounds like a practice it is something you do something you add to your life in the

00:11:46.020 beginning it certainly seems this way i mean you can ask someone did you meditate today no i forgot or

00:11:52.260 yes for 10 minutes right before lunch but real meditation isn't something you do it's something you cease

00:12:00.420 to do it is non-distraction it is the freedom to notice what is already here you're not changing

00:12:07.940 anything about yourself which is itself a profound change in attitude in real meditation you're recognizing

00:12:16.180 the condition in which all apparent changes occur the very nature of your mind so the question about a

00:12:23.060 good life becomes what is there to notice right now that matters what's available to your powers of attention

00:12:32.900 in this moment that is important or even sacred again the language one reaches for begins to have religious

00:12:40.580 connotations there is a freedom to be found here in recognizing what it's like to be you what life is actually

00:12:48.740 like in each moment rather than what you think it's like or hope it's like or fear it's like meditation is

00:12:56.980 simply noticing what is real as a matter of experience now and always but always and only now

00:13:06.580 if you're alone in a room what is in that room with you what are you really as a matter of experience and

00:13:15.940 where are you and where is the room are you in it or is it in some sense that is philosophically and

00:13:23.300 scientifically interesting in you every religion will tell you that there is something you have to

00:13:30.020 believe at this point there's something to profess if only in the privacy of your mind

00:13:36.100 some set of propositions that must be added to your solitude to redeem it and make it sacred

00:13:43.140 but this is demonstrably untrue you can believe all sorts of things but belief is obviously not enough

00:13:52.260 ideas are not enough thought is not enough to make solitude and silence matter in fact thought is the

00:14:01.540 very thing that makes the privacy of our minds often feel like a prison what is life good for when you are alone

00:14:10.660 with your thoughts and aren't you always alone with your thoughts even when you're out in the world

00:14:16.580 with other people there's a veil of opinion and judgment and prejudice and pointless chatter that comes

00:14:24.500 between you and everyone and everything don't you see how every experience no matter how pleasurable or

00:14:31.220 intense gets distorted by your mental efforts to grasp it secure it prolong it rehearse it narrate it

00:14:41.220 compare it change it i'm not saying that thoughts aren't useful or even necessary they obviously are and

00:14:49.460 their character matters because we spend most of our time lost in them if we spent most of our time

00:14:55.540 dreaming our dreams would determine the quality of our lives so they too would matter and the truth is

00:15:02.260 dreams are nothing other than very vivid thoughts and ordinary thoughts are dreams of a kind meditation is

00:15:09.380 nothing other than the act of waking up properly and that's what we call the app waking up it's more than

00:15:15.700 just an analogy there really is something dreamlike about our default state of thinking every moment of the day

00:15:22.500 i haven't talked about this topic much on the podcast of late because it's my whole focus over at waking

00:15:28.820 up if you want to know more about meditation and why i think it's important and why much of what people

00:15:34.660 think they know about it is mistaken you can find all of that in the waking up app as for new year's

00:15:40.980 resolutions i have one this year that i hope will cover more or less every aspect of my life it's not a

00:15:47.060 concrete resolution exactly it's more like a new conceptual frame that i'm going to try to place

00:15:53.380 around everything i'm going to try to live this year as though i knew it would be my last i am

00:16:00.500 perfectly healthy as far as i know and i don't mean to be morbid but i think it is very powerful to put

00:16:07.380 the finiteness of life at the center of one's thoughts more or less all of the time

00:16:13.220 the question would i do this if i knew i only had a year to live is quite clarifying of one's

00:16:21.780 priorities it might seem like too stringent a filter it would seem to prevent any long-term

00:16:27.540 planning for instance but i don't think that's necessarily true i have kids and i obviously care

00:16:32.820 about their future and i care about the future of society generally so there are many things i might

00:16:38.500 do that could at least in part be motivated by a time horizon that stretches beyond 2025

00:16:44.660 so for my new year's resolution i'm going to work with this thought would i do this would i pay attention

00:16:52.180 to this would i care about this if i knew that 2025 would be my last year of life would i watch a bad

00:17:01.300 movie probably not would i watch a bad movie with my girls absolutely this year i'm really going to

00:17:09.540 do my best to live in a way that would be impossible to regret i know i can't control everything i mean

00:17:16.740 almost everything that will happen in the world and much that happens in my life is outside of my

00:17:22.340 control but i can pay attention i can cease to be preoccupied with things that don't really matter

00:17:28.900 i can let my hopes and fears vanish i can notice that they are always in the act of vanishing and i

00:17:37.220 can increasingly enjoy life as it is in the present perhaps you'll join me i wish you all much happiness in the new year

00:17:58.900 what's happening?

00:17:59.860 new year

00:18:04.100 um

00:18:05.140 dav wild

00:18:10.240 what's happening

00:18:11.640 uh

00:18:12.740 is

00:18:13.000 is

00:18:13.840 am

00:18:17.140 you

00:18:18.660 you

00:18:20.560 you

00:18:22.860 you

Making Sense - Sam Harris - January 01, 2025

#397 — A New Year's Message from Sam

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript