#397 — A New Year's Message from Sam
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
147.45818
Summary
Donald Trump is returning to the White House for a second term, and it's time to reflect on how much worse it could have been, and how much better it would have been if he hadn't been elected to the presidency.
Transcript
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welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris well another year has elapsed
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and 2025 is upon us if you're over a certain age every year now appears absurdly futuristic
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how young do you have to be for 2025 to not look like the chyron at the start of a science fiction
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movie i don't know when that started for me somewhere around 2014 maybe where are the robots
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as i look back over the year and look ahead to what may be coming it's hard to escape the sense
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that we are witnessing more than the usual degree of change and chaos liberal democracies are under
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threat globally the conflict between israel and her neighbors continues and there's the looming
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prospect of a proper war with iran there was the fall of the asad regime in syria and the uncertainty
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about what comes next the war in ukraine continues to rage and there is a simmering hostility between
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the u.s and china unlike most periods in memory if someone came from the future and said don't you
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realize that world war iii started months ago that would seem if not plausible at least possible
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and in this context it remains hard to believe that we're returning donald trump to the white house
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there are just so many reasons why this seems like a bad idea to name only one he is the sort of
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president who thinks that pete hegseth should run our department of defense as most of you know the
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list of hegseth's disqualifying sins is so long and miscellaneous that it's hard to perceive his
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nomination as anything other than a terrible mistake that is until one recalls that trump put forward
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matt gates to run the department of justice happily gates is suffering the fate of so many who come
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within range of trump's enthusiasm humiliation and oblivion that is until he resurfaces selling
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gold-plated rifles or starts a podcast with andrew tate trump's nominations really do seem like some
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sort of troll or act of vandalism i mean even the optics are ridiculous both gates and hegseth could
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easily be cast as villains in a batman movie less obscene but perhaps even more dangerous we have
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the prospect of tulsi gabbard serving as director of national intelligence her well-documented patience
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if not fondness for the asad regime isn't aging very well and if you think she's been smeared on this
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point just listen to her describe her meeting with asad on joe rogan's podcast they discuss it for a
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full 10 minutes in a clip that's available on youtube it's from about five years ago where she
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was responding to all the criticism she'd received for speaking so diplomatically about asad the level of
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naivete and frank delusion on display here given who we knew asad to be at that point is just astounding
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so when the world could really use a shining city on a hill that is a healthy liberal democracy
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capable of leading not merely by force but by example we've decided to return a man to the
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presidency who refers to his fellow citizens all the democrats who didn't vote for him as vermin and
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scum we can't pretend that this is normal and it has been frankly nauseating to see the parade of
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business leaders many of whom despise trump and his effect on our politics race to mar-a-lago to kiss
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the man's ring and much else it's tempting to ask these captains of industry all of whom are rich beyond
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imagining what's the point of having fuck you money if you never say fuck you i mean this really
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was an opportunity to say we're rich enough and our companies will be fine this is still a country
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of laws and if the president targets us in any way our lawyers will be ready and real journalists will
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be eager to tell the story i'm not betting that everything trump does in his second term will be
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bad and i'm certainly hoping for the best but all these billionaires should understand that
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normalizing trump and trumpism by purchasing million dollar tables at the inauguration isn't without
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risk of embarrassment just take a moment to reflect on how this will look if any of the darker
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possibilities of a second trump term are realized or just give another thought to january 6th it's only
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decent to notice that no one is worried about what will happen on that date this year we won't see
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kamala harris or joe biden inspire a mob to attack the capital how refreshing may everyone who is now
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sane washing trump and trumpism should at least acknowledge the difference here and it's worth reflecting on
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how much worse january 6th 2021 could have been and how trump played no role at all in preventing the
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worst possible outcomes if you're someone who thinks that the significance of january 6th has been
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exaggerated what do you think would have happened if the people who are chanting hang mike pence had
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gotten their hands on him do you actually think that people who had traveled halfway across the country at
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the summons of the president and had just spent the previous hours stabbing police officers in the
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face with flagpoles and who had successfully breached the capital as a result of this violence
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and who are now by their own account hunting for the vice president and other leaders in congress
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do you really believe that these people would have suddenly turned docile and shown themselves
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to be merely eager to chat if they had found their quarry cowering under a desk what about the people
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carrying zip ties did they just want to talk to nancy pelosi but do you really not understand that
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what appears merely ridiculous in failure was likely to have been quite horrific in success spend some
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time reading about the french revolution or any other circumstance where the crowd actually got its
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hands on the people it was hunting perfectly normal human beings regularly behave like monsters
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when they join a mob it may seem strange to relitigate an event from four years ago but it reveals the
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danger of treating trump like a normal president i think it is true to say that we escaped tragedy on that
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day as narrowly as trump escaped assassination in 2024 how strange would it be to normalize that the fact
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that trump is still alive doesn't make the attempts on his life any less real or disturbing or significant
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of ongoing danger to him i mean just imagine if i said that the attempts on trump's life didn't need to
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be taken seriously they've just been blown way out of proportion because the guy was barely
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scratched i mean really i know people who have been injured far worse in their own kitchens would that make any
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sense no and yet no one who is busy laundering trump's reputation seems to understand the obvious parallel to january
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how would trump and trumpism seem if a couple of senators had been beaten to death or hurled out of windows
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on that day how would trump's continuous line about the election having been stolen
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again ask yourself what do you think would have happened if the mob had gotten hold of nancy
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pelosi or mike pence it's no credit to trump that this didn't happen he knew that the people he had
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turned loose on the capitol were calling for pelosi and pence to be killed for hours he knew this and he
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just sat on his hands whether he actually said that pence deserved to be hanged as cassidy hutchinson
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testified will surely be doubted by trump's defenders but what cannot be doubted is that
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he declined to lift a finger to defend his vice president or any other member of congress for
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hours he just watched the violence on television and refused to do anything useful and he's done
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nothing but defend the rioters ever since and he has promised to pardon them and of course he still
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claims that he won the 2020 election this is the person who will be president of the united states in
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a few weeks this is the person you're honoring with your million dollar tables at the inauguration this
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guy is capable of making your efforts to normalize him more than a little embarrassing anyway stepping out
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of politics and looking ahead to the new year i think it's worth reflecting on why we are tempted
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to reflect at all at the end of each year what is it about the calendar change that matters i think we
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may as well ask the question that lurks behind every new year's resolution what is a good life or put
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another way what makes life good or with a slightly different emphasis what is life good for
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of course there are many answers or parts of answers love and friendship creative work and enjoying the
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creativity of others learning that is growing in our understanding of some sliver of reality or
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learning new skills doing things that are hard or beautiful or just fun and of course there is
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pleasure pleasure of all kinds if your life is full of laughter and sunsets and sex and ice cream and
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rewarding work you're probably not miserable though you might be amazingly you still might be miserable
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and of course there's also compassion there is so much suffering in the world and relieving some
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portion of it is one of the good things we get to do here however there is a deeper answer to the
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question of what makes life good and one can be led to it if one interrogates any of the answers
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already given what makes love and friendship or creativity or learning or fun or laughter or compassion
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good and how are they different from all the things that seem to make life less than good hatred terror
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boredom despair envy resentment contempt there is a deeper answer that is more philosophical or spiritual
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and therefore tends to be unhelpfully bound up with religion when i talk about this i tend to talk about
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meditation and while it's a helpful starting point and even a necessary one it's also misleading
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meditation sounds like a practice it is something you do something you add to your life in the
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beginning it certainly seems this way i mean you can ask someone did you meditate today no i forgot or
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yes for 10 minutes right before lunch but real meditation isn't something you do it's something you cease
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to do it is non-distraction it is the freedom to notice what is already here you're not changing
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anything about yourself which is itself a profound change in attitude in real meditation you're recognizing
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the condition in which all apparent changes occur the very nature of your mind so the question about a
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good life becomes what is there to notice right now that matters what's available to your powers of attention
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in this moment that is important or even sacred again the language one reaches for begins to have religious
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connotations there is a freedom to be found here in recognizing what it's like to be you what life is actually
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like in each moment rather than what you think it's like or hope it's like or fear it's like meditation is
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simply noticing what is real as a matter of experience now and always but always and only now
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if you're alone in a room what is in that room with you what are you really as a matter of experience and
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where are you and where is the room are you in it or is it in some sense that is philosophically and
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scientifically interesting in you every religion will tell you that there is something you have to
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believe at this point there's something to profess if only in the privacy of your mind
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some set of propositions that must be added to your solitude to redeem it and make it sacred
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but this is demonstrably untrue you can believe all sorts of things but belief is obviously not enough
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ideas are not enough thought is not enough to make solitude and silence matter in fact thought is the
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very thing that makes the privacy of our minds often feel like a prison what is life good for when you are alone
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with your thoughts and aren't you always alone with your thoughts even when you're out in the world
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with other people there's a veil of opinion and judgment and prejudice and pointless chatter that comes
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between you and everyone and everything don't you see how every experience no matter how pleasurable or
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intense gets distorted by your mental efforts to grasp it secure it prolong it rehearse it narrate it
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compare it change it i'm not saying that thoughts aren't useful or even necessary they obviously are and
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their character matters because we spend most of our time lost in them if we spent most of our time
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dreaming our dreams would determine the quality of our lives so they too would matter and the truth is
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dreams are nothing other than very vivid thoughts and ordinary thoughts are dreams of a kind meditation is
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nothing other than the act of waking up properly and that's what we call the app waking up it's more than
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just an analogy there really is something dreamlike about our default state of thinking every moment of the day
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i haven't talked about this topic much on the podcast of late because it's my whole focus over at waking
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up if you want to know more about meditation and why i think it's important and why much of what people
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think they know about it is mistaken you can find all of that in the waking up app as for new year's
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resolutions i have one this year that i hope will cover more or less every aspect of my life it's not a
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concrete resolution exactly it's more like a new conceptual frame that i'm going to try to place
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around everything i'm going to try to live this year as though i knew it would be my last i am
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perfectly healthy as far as i know and i don't mean to be morbid but i think it is very powerful to put
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the finiteness of life at the center of one's thoughts more or less all of the time
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the question would i do this if i knew i only had a year to live is quite clarifying of one's
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priorities it might seem like too stringent a filter it would seem to prevent any long-term
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planning for instance but i don't think that's necessarily true i have kids and i obviously care
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about their future and i care about the future of society generally so there are many things i might
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do that could at least in part be motivated by a time horizon that stretches beyond 2025
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so for my new year's resolution i'm going to work with this thought would i do this would i pay attention
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to this would i care about this if i knew that 2025 would be my last year of life would i watch a bad
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movie probably not would i watch a bad movie with my girls absolutely this year i'm really going to
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do my best to live in a way that would be impossible to regret i know i can't control everything i mean
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almost everything that will happen in the world and much that happens in my life is outside of my
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control but i can pay attention i can cease to be preoccupied with things that don't really matter
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i can let my hopes and fears vanish i can notice that they are always in the act of vanishing and i
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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