TRIGGERnometry - Can We Live Without Religion？ - Alex O'Connor

00:00:00.000 We know you've been waiting, and your full Great Outdoors Comedy Festival lineup is here.

00:00:05.520 On September 11th through 13th at Arendelle Park, comedy superstars John Mulaney with Nick Kroll,

00:00:11.880 Mike Berbiglia and Fred Armisen, Adam Ray as Dr. Phil Live with Miss Pat and TJ Miller,

00:00:17.860 Hassan Minhaj and Ronnie Chang with Michael Kosta and more hit the stage.

00:00:22.060 Three nights, five shows, huge laughs.

00:00:24.940 September 11th through 13th. Buy tickets now at greatoutdoorscomedyfestival.com.

00:00:31.580 Human beings are a religious animal, and in the absence of actual religion, we will begin to seek others, 0.98

00:00:39.020 which is one of the reasons, to put it crudely, our society is so fucked up right now. 0.96

00:00:43.920 My position is that I just don't think this is true. What do you want me to do here? 0.90

00:00:48.160 You know, if we remove religion from our society, things go downhill. 0.59

00:00:52.260 Okay, what do you want me to do? I don't think this is true. Do I just sort of, just lie to my children?

00:00:57.920 It's not that people shouldn't question religion. It's that the denigration of religion, has that been beneficial? 0.51

00:01:04.340 And that's where I started to lose my faith in atheism.

00:01:07.560 Your full Great Outdoors Comedy Festival lineup is here on September 11th through 13th at Arendelle Park.

00:01:16.480 Three nights, five shows, huge laughs.

00:01:19.660 September 11th through 13th. Buy tickets now at greatoutdoorscomedyfestival.com.

00:01:25.260 Alex O'Connor, Cosmic Skeptic. Welcome back.

00:01:27.920 Before we talk about all the serious stuff we want to talk about, we wanted to sit you down and have a go at you, right?

00:01:33.600 Because last time you were on the show, you talked about not eating meat.

00:01:36.800 Yes.

00:01:37.180 And you ruined our producer.

00:01:38.700 That's right.

00:01:39.180 He stopped eating meat.

00:01:40.340 Yes.

00:01:40.660 We had to fire him.

00:01:42.440 And he's not been the same since. We still employ him in a different capacity, but he can't be our producer anymore, basically.

00:01:47.640 It's a real shame. I remember that was when you were still filming out of the comedy club.

00:01:50.820 Yes.

00:01:51.000 Yes.

00:01:51.480 It's been quite a time since then.

00:01:54.640 Yes.

00:01:55.400 Yeah, I do occasionally. It's a little bit awkward. Of course, I had to do a sort of big, serious YouTube moment of saying that I'd not just changed my mind, but changed my lifestyle.

00:02:07.800 And I occasionally get people coming up to me. I was at a sort of club party rave type thing, and someone came up to me, held up their Instagram on their phone, and they went,

00:02:20.080 is this you? And I went, yeah. And they went, whoa, I'm vegan too. And I sort of had to, in that moment, usually when that happens these days, I have to have this sort of conversation where I say, well, listen, thank you so much.

00:02:33.280 I really appreciate that you listened to what I'm saying and that it's affected you, but you should know that I made this announcement I'm not vegan anymore.

00:02:42.580 But in that moment, I just sort of had to go.

00:02:46.340 Yeah.

00:02:46.980 You know, that was all I could muster.

00:02:49.480 I really can't imagine you at a rave.

00:02:52.580 You'd, yeah, I mean, I...

00:02:54.840 Do you keep your blazer on when you're at the rave, Alex?

00:02:57.080 You know, Chris always has a go at me for this. He always likes to tell the story of when I showed up for a boat party that he'd organised in a suit,

00:03:04.920 because I'm sort of trying to live out the philosophy that there's no situation where you can't wear a jacket.

00:03:09.420 Which I think is true.

00:03:10.120 No, you're going to rapidly discover that's not true.

00:03:12.360 I woke up like this, you know.

00:03:13.760 I actually sleep with the bow tie on, but I sort of take it off.

00:03:16.480 We'll take it off. You dress down for us.

00:03:18.760 But anyway, so you've, so you ruined our producer.

00:03:21.760 He didn't eat meat for a while, right?

00:03:23.420 It was tense. It was difficult.

00:03:25.440 We've got him sorted out now. He's all right.

00:03:27.080 He's got a girlfriend now. He makes him eat meat.

00:03:28.980 So it's all good, right?

00:03:30.260 However, you stopped eating meat.

00:03:31.600 No, you started eating. You stopped eating meat and then you started eating meat.

00:03:35.760 Yes. I mean, look, it's one of the most sort of significant things that's happened in my channel's history.

00:03:44.800 And it's an awkward terrain to navigate because you want to be open and you want to keep people sort of informed with what you're doing.

00:03:53.840 But at the same time, I didn't want to become in any way like an anti-vegan type guy.

00:03:59.720 There's a bit of a pipeline that sometimes occurs when somebody isn't vegan anymore, especially if their entire thing has been veganism.

00:04:08.360 You know, there's this perception amongst vegans that people like to cash in on it.

00:04:12.800 And that suddenly you're going on, you know, you're going on trigonometry and talking about how you're no longer a vegan.

00:04:17.020 And the last thing I wanted and want to do is that because I still think that factory farming in particular is perhaps the greatest moral emergency that we're facing.

00:04:25.500 Everything that I've ever said about factory farming, I stand by and I think it's still true.

00:04:29.180 And I still think I know that I don't know if you still do this, but you like to ask your guests what people aren't talking about, but should be talking about.

00:04:36.520 And I still think that factory farming has to be the answer to that question.

00:04:40.560 I mean, you've had some interesting answers to that.

00:04:42.300 You know, people have, I actually really liked Peter Hitchens's answer about cars and how they've come to dominate modern cities.

00:04:47.900 That's fascinating because, you know, that's something that people don't tend to notice.

00:04:50.840 But something like factory farming generally doesn't even enter into the equation.

00:04:54.540 If you ask people the moral or political issues that they care about on the street, they'd name a hundred before they got to anything involving the plight of animals.

00:05:03.940 And that's because I guess it's at the moment at least seen as a strictly moral issue rather than a political one.

00:05:09.480 Well, the thing is, I don't know that it is because I actually think it's a market problem that can be solved with the market.

00:05:15.320 Like, I am as concerned about factory farming, probably not quite as much as you are, but I don't like it.

00:05:21.760 I think it's wrong.

00:05:22.980 And I try to buy meat that isn't sourced in that way.

00:05:27.220 In the UK, actually quite difficult.

00:05:28.780 In America, not that difficult.

00:05:30.700 You can order stuff very, very easily from all sorts of different suppliers.

00:05:34.480 But I think if there was a company in this country that wanted to mass sell grass-fed, organically bred, free-range, whatever meat, there'd be a big demand for it.

00:05:46.980 And people would pay a lot more than they're paying in the supermarket for it.

00:05:50.340 I think that's true of people who are in a position to pay more money.

00:05:53.740 Yeah.

00:05:54.480 It's certainly the case that people are moralized into spending more money in a great many areas.

00:05:59.980 It happens all the time with environmentally friendly goods, for example.

00:06:02.360 People are happy to pay more, but if you can't afford it, if you don't have the money, if you're struggling to eat any food, let alone quality-sourced meat, then of course you're going to buy the cheapest thing in the supermarket.

00:06:13.180 So I understand that position, but I have to say that I've grown a lot more convinced that the way to solve this problem has to be top-down regulation.

00:06:21.600 I mean, it's all well and good saying we're going to boycott animal products.

00:06:25.840 And, you know, great, awesome.

00:06:27.080 Boycott factory farming, why not?

00:06:28.440 But with, I don't know, like veganism can grow, but meat consumption can grow at the same time.

00:06:37.100 Like, it's great.

00:06:37.940 Like, there are less people eating these products and buying these products than otherwise would be.

00:06:42.800 But the industry is still massive.

00:06:44.540 And I don't think it's going to go away just because people are making different purchasing decisions.

00:06:47.860 That has a huge effect.

00:06:48.660 But that can't be the only way to solve this problem.

00:06:50.700 Especially because if it's the case that people aren't going to be vegan, right?

00:06:56.260 Because the vegan movement says the problem is just that we don't have enough people on board yet.

00:07:01.080 And one day there's going to be a critical mass and then suddenly everyone's going to be vegan.

00:07:03.960 And we won't even need to worry about regulation of the animal, you know, farming industry because it just won't exist anymore.

00:07:09.720 I'm not so optimistic that that's the case.

00:07:12.140 However, what that means, or I shouldn't say however, what that means is that we're going to need to solve the problem in another way.

00:07:17.660 And I think there has to be top-down regulation.

00:07:19.800 I don't know how you feel about that, but I think that's...

00:07:21.920 Well, Francis, I know you want to jump in, but since we're on this.

00:07:25.060 You top-down regulation, you basically, you're going to make meat very, very expensive.

00:07:30.000 That's what's going to happen.

00:07:30.780 Perhaps, yes.

00:07:33.340 It's not perhaps.

00:07:34.220 Yes, you are.

00:07:35.120 There may be ways that we can solve that problem through subsidies, but also maybe the answer is to say, yes, it's going to be more expensive and people are already eating too much in the way of animal products and just need to be eating less.

00:07:46.020 I don't know.

00:07:46.980 That's when you start getting into sort of, you know, governmental tyranny, telling people what they're allowed to eat.

00:07:52.600 But I don't think it's quite the same.

00:07:54.020 You know, you have this image in your head of the government coming in and saying you're not allowed to eat red meat.

00:07:57.400 I think that is different in principle to the government introducing legislations based on moral principles about the treatment of animals and animal cruelty that make it such that some products are more expensive, so people have to eat less.

00:08:10.800 I understand that that feels like the government is coming along and saying you're not allowed to eat meat, but that's not what it's doing.

00:08:15.720 It's saying, look, a lot of the products that we consume in this country would be made a lot more cheaply if we just got rid of health and safety regulations in our factories, for example.

00:08:27.400 They'd be so much cheaper, right?

00:08:29.340 But the fact that the government is saying, you know, your jacket is going to be more expensive if you buy it from a UK source because the people working in those factories are sort of beholden or the people organising the workers are beholden to certain regulatory practices.

00:08:45.140 That's not the government coming in and saying you're not allowed to wear a nice suit.

00:08:50.020 It may be that the suit is more expensive, and that's kind of the government's fault.

00:08:53.620 But what the government's doing there is prioritising the well-being of workers over, you know, a cheap suit.

00:09:00.820 And I suppose in this instance, what the government will be doing is prioritising the well-being of animals over a cheap meal.

00:09:06.300 Well, that is, as long as cheap meals are still available for those who need them, you know.

00:09:10.860 I'm actually quite convinced by your argument purely because the British love animals so much and they care so desperately about their welfare that actually, I think, if someone came along to make that argument in a coherent fashion, I actually think a lot of people in this country would be OK with that.

00:09:28.240 Yeah, well, people in this country love pets.

00:09:31.140 To say that they love animals, I mean, I should be fair, most people maybe don't quite know what's going on in factory farmings, or they do, but they figure, well, someone's surely doing something about it.

00:09:41.880 You know, it's not exactly their fault.

00:09:43.340 But, I mean, for example, the RSPCA, I've always talked about how I think the RSPCA will be looked back upon with sort of probably ridicule in the sense that you have a royal society for the protection of animals.

00:09:56.180 That's just like totally fine with some of the most abominable practices imaginable.

00:10:00.760 The pig industry is the worst. 0.99

00:10:02.940 I think pigs get the worst of it. 1.00

00:10:04.440 If you're a piglet that's too sick to be profitable, if you're not going to make any money, you know, if you're not going to make it into adulthood, then you're killed. 0.98

00:10:12.740 And the way this is done, colloquially known as thumping, blunt force trauma, they're taken by their hind legs and they're smashed into the concrete in the skull until they die.

00:10:22.020 There was a high welfare farm, I think I know where, but I won't say just in case I get it wrong, that was discovered, a so-called high welfare farm that was discovered to be thumping piglets to death by smashing their skulls against the cages that their own mothers were being kept in.

00:10:37.720 This is a horrible practice.

00:10:39.040 Now, thumping as a practice is officially approved by the RSPCA as a way of euthanizing these pigs.

00:10:45.140 Now, do you remember when Kurt Zuma, the West Ham footballer, was caught on Snapchat kicking his, I say caught, somebody posted a video of him kicking his cat across the...

00:10:53.520 I think he actually uploaded it himself.

00:10:55.300 Yeah, I think he might have done it.

00:10:56.220 An extraordinary event, but also, you know, it's almost like he was doing a social experiment because the RSPCA eventually confiscated that cat.

00:11:03.100 The same RSPCA that's fine with taking piglets by the hind legs and smashing their skulls into the concrete because they're not going to make enough money, and if they were going to make enough money, would be killed most likely in a gas chamber choking on their own breath.

00:11:15.880 But you kick your cat across the kitchen, and not only do you get a media furore, I think even the mayor of London was on Good Morning Britain or something condemning Kurt Zuma.

00:11:26.960 Well, the mayor of London, virtue signaling, no.

00:11:28.740 Can you believe it?

00:11:29.540 No.

00:11:29.920 Can you believe it?

00:11:30.880 Yeah.

00:11:31.700 And the RSPCA took away the cat.

00:11:33.720 The same RSPCA that's totally fine with...

00:11:35.400 Look, I just think that there is, shall we say, an element of cognitive dissonance.

00:11:40.480 Yeah.

00:11:40.840 I actually liked it a couple of days later.

00:11:44.020 I think when they played, when West Ham played Watford, someone kicked him particularly hard, and he fell on the floor screaming, and the entire stadium started singing,

00:11:51.440 Now you know how your cat feels.

00:11:52.680 That's quite right, and I wonder how that stadium would feel if they saw any human being in front of them go through what the animals go through, that they kill to eat their food, you know?

00:12:03.520 It would look like a horror show.

00:12:05.500 But it's funny, isn't it?

00:12:06.100 Because, you know, they were, yeah, the chants were quite funny, but they were also a little bit, I don't know, it's cause for reflection.

00:12:16.920 Because if I saw somebody leaving that stadium who got mugged, somebody came up to them and slashed their throat open and watched them bleed out on the concrete so that they could, you know, steal a little bit of their money for some added convenience getting home.

00:12:30.660 And I started chanting at them, you know, now you know how your halal pal feels. 1.00

00:12:36.600 I don't think it would be looked upon with such comedic fact.

00:12:39.920 But that is an experiment I would like to see.

00:12:41.860 Yes, absolutely.

00:12:43.100 Well, people do this all the time.

00:12:44.140 People do these kinds of social experiments where they mimic animal conditions on humans, and they do it in shop windows.

00:12:50.320 And I sort of have a strange relationship with these things.

00:12:54.740 You know, you see people walking into supermarkets and throwing fake blood all over the place.

00:12:58.120 And it's hard to know, I think the question there is whether they're just effective or not. 0.98

00:13:01.540 But a lot of people just think they're sort of stupid or immoral or disruptive or whatever. 0.98

00:13:05.000 But this is an accurate representation of what we're doing to animals. 0.98

00:13:11.860 And people say, you know, well, of course, yeah, no, I'm against animal cruelty.

00:13:16.420 I care about animal welfare.

00:13:18.140 But it's like, I don't think we understand just how unimaginable the suffering is and how unfathomable the numbers are.

00:13:28.820 It's amazing.

00:13:30.120 I mean, we kill millions of fish every minute.

00:13:36.020 Millions.

00:13:36.940 Not to mention the environmental effects.

00:13:38.460 I mean, the whole industry just needs a complete shakeup.

00:13:41.880 And that's not the kind of thing that can happen by just people, you know, refusing to buy a particular kind of product.

00:13:50.060 I don't think that that's the only way this is going to happen.

00:13:51.840 It's got to be governmental regulation.

00:13:53.800 And also, veganism simply isn't sustainable for the vast majority of people.

00:13:58.040 It's going to sound like a hack joke.

00:13:59.660 It's rare I meet a vegan who looks well.

00:14:02.040 Yeah, you do look a lot better, Alex, I have to say.

00:14:04.420 You've got flushed cheeks, your eyes are sparkly.

00:14:07.520 You're nice and pink, you're going full gammon.

00:14:09.500 Yep.

00:14:10.020 That's just because I'm blushing because you're being so nice.

00:14:12.640 I think, look, I can't speak to this.

00:14:16.560 I've seen many vegans who look healthy.

00:14:18.100 I've seen many vegans that look unhealthy.

00:14:19.460 I've seen many non-vegans who look very unhealthy. 0.85

00:14:21.280 You know, it's certainly harder.

00:14:24.880 And I don't doubt that it's possible to be healthy on a vegan diet if you do it properly.

00:14:30.920 The fact of the matter is that if you don't eat, I won't say a perfect, but, you know,

00:14:35.840 an optimal diet, then if you're eating animal products, if you're not eating an optimal diet,

00:14:40.840 you know, you're going to have some problems.

00:14:42.360 If you're eating a vegan diet and you're not eating an optimal diet, you're going to have

00:14:45.880 some problems.

00:14:46.400 You're just probably going to have more problems.

00:14:48.460 And so I can understand why that might be the case.

00:14:50.440 I mean, if it were proved, for example, if you could show me a study that showed actually,

00:14:53.980 yes, like, let's say the majority of people with nutritional deficiencies were vegan.

00:14:58.740 I don't think that's true, but let's say it were true. 1.00

00:15:01.060 My answer to that would not be to say that's because veganism is unhealthy, but because

00:15:05.160 being healthy as a vegan is harder than being healthy as a non-vegan.

00:15:09.360 And that's something I said, you know, since 2019 or whenever it was.

00:15:14.000 Do you think veganism in certain instances, when you see it at the way that it manifests

00:15:20.920 within certain sections of society, do you think it's almost akin to a religion?

00:15:25.160 Well, people say this about all kinds of things.

00:15:29.380 They say it about wokeism.

00:15:30.960 They say it about, like, anything that becomes a philosophy that people care about, let's

00:15:37.380 say.

00:15:39.020 No, but people mean something else, too, on all the examples you're giving.

00:15:43.040 Well, what they mean, when people say that wokeness is a religion or that, I've never

00:15:48.900 heard anyone say veganism is a religion.

00:15:50.560 I certainly wouldn't argue that.

00:15:52.100 However, what people mean is that it is a set of beliefs that causes people to behave in

00:15:57.260 a way that is impractical and irrational.

00:16:00.080 And they do it in the service of an idea that has almost mythical power over them.

00:16:06.900 What I would say is a religion is the doomerism of climate change.

00:16:12.020 There's absolutely, it has every element of religion, including people acting irrationally.

00:16:17.820 I know what you mean, but would you say, for example, that, I mean, you've probably had

00:16:22.180 people on the show talking about the threats of artificial intelligence.

00:16:24.980 Yes.

00:16:25.260 Yes.

00:16:25.520 And how there's potentially sort of calamitous world ending implications.

00:16:28.540 Would you call that a religion?

00:16:30.260 I wouldn't call that a religion because they don't behave in the same way about it.

00:16:34.260 They're not going out and throwing soup on things.

00:16:36.180 We say that, but then I don't think there's, like, if people start taking seriously the

00:16:41.200 idea that we seriously need to slow down or stop artificial intelligence, look at the

00:16:45.400 environmental movement where, you know, people start raising awareness that climate change

00:16:49.840 is a thing.

00:16:50.560 And then a decade, a couple of decades later, people start taking it very seriously and start

00:16:54.660 protesting in the streets.

00:16:55.880 And then the arguments are sort of like, well, look, I get what you're saying.

00:16:58.920 It's probably right, but your methods aren't effective.

00:17:01.120 And, you know, what about China?

00:17:02.320 Why should I care about what we're doing?

00:17:03.760 The same thing can happen here with artificial intelligence.

00:17:06.740 It's already happening when people say, hey, let's just slow down.

00:17:09.540 Let's put a pause on this technology.

00:17:11.040 And people are saying, what, you think that other countries are going to put a pause on

00:17:13.460 this?

00:17:13.640 No, there's nothing we can do, right?

00:17:15.500 And it's also apocalyptic.

00:17:17.420 You know, the world's going to end.

00:17:19.020 It's like all of the elements that you're identifying as potentially religious here based

00:17:22.440 on this, I mean, you call it mythical, but it's always grounded in some kind of reality,

00:17:27.860 right?

00:17:28.040 Like the climate change stuff is grounded in the science.

00:17:30.780 The veganism stuff is grounded in the very real animal cruelty.

00:17:34.300 The artificial intelligence stuff is grounded in the actual technology of AI.

00:17:38.740 But it's still, you know, I could describe it as an apocalyptic death cult.

00:17:41.240 And I could say that the effective altruists are saying that we should stop taking money

00:17:44.920 that we're currently giving to try and, you know, fix malaria and buy malaria nets.

00:17:49.960 We should be taking that money away from that kind of suffering and investing it into AI safety

00:17:54.980 because that's a more important issue long term.

00:17:57.600 If they're correct, then maybe that is what we should be doing.

00:18:00.460 But it seems ludicrous and irrational to stop giving money to people in need to try and

00:18:05.320 lift people out of politics.

00:18:06.040 Well, we haven't had anyone like that on the show.

00:18:07.400 So that we can build better computers.

00:18:08.620 But people are doing that, right?

00:18:09.880 And so I could point to people like that and say, see, this AI thing, it's just an apocalyptic

00:18:13.880 death cult.

00:18:14.700 And I feel like that's kind of what people do when they point to veganism, wokeism, environmentalism

00:18:19.680 and say it's a religion.

00:18:20.900 No, I disagree.

00:18:21.780 And here's why.

00:18:22.560 I think the reason I disagree is people who are warning about AI, the people who are at

00:18:28.060 the forefront of that, the people who are being talked up as the warning necessarily

00:18:34.400 about these issues, they're people who are otherwise sensible and who are advocating

00:18:38.380 fairly sensible things like this is a new technology.

00:18:41.340 We don't know how powerful it's going to be.

00:18:42.840 Let's slow it down.

00:18:44.080 Let's make sure that we're not overusing it.

00:18:46.740 Let's make sure it's regulated, et cetera.

00:18:49.320 Right.

00:18:49.820 The people who are advocating on the environmental issue, for example, there are people who are

00:18:54.680 demanding that we essentially suicide our economies to in order, by the way, to make

00:19:00.680 very, very little impact on the problem.

00:19:02.300 There's a very big difference between those two things.

00:19:04.820 So it's kind of like people say this about the BBC.

00:19:08.640 People say, well, the BBC, you know, you've got left wing critics and right wing critics.

00:19:12.480 Therefore, the BBC is in the middle.

00:19:14.560 And by the way, some departments are in the middle.

00:19:16.540 But actually, if you look at who the critics are, who say it's too left wing versus too right

00:19:21.740 wing, it's a very different picture.

00:19:24.040 The mainstream center right thinks the BBC is incredibly left wing.

00:19:27.840 The people who think the BBC is right wing are people on the very, very extremes of the

00:19:33.160 left.

00:19:34.540 So just because people are criticizing an issue or there's that parallel doesn't mean

00:19:38.400 it's the same thing.

00:19:39.780 And I think AI is not the best example for those reasons.

00:19:43.720 And also as well, one of the core components of any religion is a moral framework.

00:19:48.280 So if you look at wokeism, for example, that has a very clear delineated moral framework,

00:19:52.940 which the AI example doesn't, in my opinion.

00:19:55.620 Yes, I think I see what you're saying and will agree with elements as you do with any

00:20:01.280 conversation like this.

00:20:03.600 The idea that the people at the forefront, you know, are not going a bit crazy, I would

00:20:09.780 say just wait.

00:20:10.960 I mean...

00:20:11.480 Elon Musk is not Greta Thunberg is what I'm saying.

00:20:13.820 Sure.

00:20:14.260 But you understand that, like, I don't know where you consider yourself politically.

00:20:18.480 I know that you were named in the new statesman's list of, you know, the top 50 most powerful

00:20:21.500 conservatives.

00:20:22.460 Congratulations, by the way.

00:20:23.440 46.

00:20:23.660 Four positions above the former prime minister list for us.

00:20:27.120 Yeah.

00:20:28.300 Imagine how high up I would be if I were actually a conservative.

00:20:31.120 When you were on my show and I asked you about being a conservative, and I posted that clip

00:20:35.900 when that was announced, because there was this clip of you saying I'm not a conservative.

00:20:38.740 Yeah.

00:20:39.240 And when I gave the context that the new statesman had labeled you as the 46th most powerful conservative,

00:20:45.960 I didn't mean for that to cause this, but people were sort of, they began attacking

00:20:50.080 the new statesman, saying, you know, oh, the new statesman, they're lying about Constantine,

00:20:54.160 they're attacking him as a conservative.

00:20:55.700 I don't think they were doing that.

00:20:57.340 I think they just genuinely saw you that way.

00:20:59.140 But what I was going to say is, you know, suppose you are a conservative. 0.99

00:21:03.900 You're going to look at Greta Thunberg and think, you know, she's insane, she's crazy, 1.00

00:21:07.360 she's, you know, absolutely mental. 1.00

00:21:09.240 Okay, fine, right? 0.71

00:21:10.640 If you're on the left, you might look at her and say, well, look, sometimes I think that

00:21:15.440 she says something a bit silly, but she's not like crazy like they're making her out

00:21:18.740 to be compared, now you compared her to Elon Musk a second ago. 0.81

00:21:21.500 Look at what left-wingers say about Elon Musk all the time.

00:21:24.760 Look at the, look at the way they describe him.

00:21:26.420 Look at how they say that he's one of the most dangerous people on planet Earth, that 0.97

00:21:29.240 he's insane, that he's immoral, that he's evil. 0.84

00:21:31.680 I would wager that you don't agree with that. 0.88

00:21:33.320 But clearly this is being thrown at, like in both directions, right?

00:21:37.980 No, but Alex, this is the point that I think we're disagreeing over.

00:21:40.700 The fact that people say the same thing about different people is not necessarily a reflection

00:21:45.400 of the fact that those people are equivalent.

00:21:47.400 Of course.

00:21:48.080 That just, you have to look at who it is that is saying it and why they're saying it.

00:21:52.500 I, my, what I say about Greta Thunberg is not based on some kind of personal antipathy

00:21:58.900 towards her.

00:21:59.540 It's based on the fact that what she's advocating for is impractical and irrational and would

00:22:04.220 be very damaging to the very people on whose behalf she's advocating.

00:22:07.340 Yes.

00:22:07.640 Right?

00:22:08.160 What people say about Elon Musk is essentially a guy who's not one of us has taken over one

00:22:13.300 of the means of communication and we don't like it.

00:22:16.160 That's, that's a big difference.

00:22:18.080 I, I would say, and I suppose the only point I'm making here is that if you were speaking

00:22:23.420 to somebody who was like a Greta fan and somebody who hated Elon Musk, if they were sat in his

00:22:27.620 chair and they were able to articulate it.

00:22:28.940 What would they say?

00:22:29.520 That's interesting.

00:22:29.980 I don't, I don't know what they would say because I'm not really in that position, but

00:22:32.840 they would probably say something like what you've just said.

00:22:36.220 They'd say, they'd say, you know, my dislike for Elon Musk is not some, I don't think

00:22:41.400 what you, I don't think he's just like, oh, it's because he's not one of us because he's

00:22:43.860 this billionaire and I just hate people like that.

00:22:45.800 No, it's based on the things that he does.

00:22:47.720 It's based on his Twitter podcast.

00:22:49.000 Like, I don't know.

00:22:49.700 But you have to say this other bit, otherwise this conversation doesn't make any sense.

00:22:54.220 What is the rational critique of Elon Musk?

00:22:56.500 And I can give you one.

00:22:57.760 It's just not going to be the one from these people.

00:23:00.040 Sure.

00:23:00.240 Well, maybe Elon Musk is the wrong example for me to be talking about.

00:23:03.320 Okay.

00:23:03.560 Give another example.

00:23:04.480 I always say potentially with Musk, what they would say is that his views aren't consistent

00:23:10.100 and they're dishonest because he claims to be in favor of freedom of speech, but then

00:23:14.960 he bans the account.

00:23:15.980 But that isn't their critique, though.

00:23:17.660 That just, that isn't their critique.

00:23:19.540 That's a critique that I can give and you can give and Alice can give because we recognize

00:23:23.840 he's, you know, no, but this is what I said.

00:23:26.300 Free speech absolutism doesn't exist.

00:23:28.280 Nobody who says they're free speech.

00:23:30.140 Free speech absolutism is something you can maintain when you're sitting in your basement.

00:23:33.660 Yeah.

00:23:34.400 Or your mother's basement, more likely.

00:23:35.960 Right.

00:23:36.540 Once you get into the real world and you start to have to make decisions about how to administer

00:23:40.660 content on a platform, free speech absolutism is impossible.

00:23:43.800 So that's a valid critique.

00:23:45.100 It's not consistent.

00:23:46.300 But that is not what the equivalent of the Greta critics might be saying about Elon.

00:23:51.160 Right.

00:23:51.800 Why?

00:23:52.140 So let's, let's have another example because this is an interesting point you're making.

00:23:55.440 That's also, that's also not equivalent to what the critics of Greta often, because

00:23:58.720 you sit there in the chair and say, well, I think, I don't like what Greta's saying

00:24:02.420 because I think that what she's saying is, you know, fundamentally self-destructive or

00:24:06.760 something like that.

00:24:07.340 Right.

00:24:07.560 But surely you know that there are people who do just say she's an annoying teenager. 1.00

00:24:13.400 Why are we listening to a kid?

00:24:13.860 Oh, she's definitely that too. 0.92

00:24:14.880 You know, this, this kind of like.

00:24:16.620 But she is that too.

00:24:17.580 It doesn't matter where you look, right?

00:24:19.080 Like, like you're going to get both.

00:24:20.460 You're going to have people looking at Elon Musk and saying, I think that he claims to

00:24:24.080 be pro-free speech, but he's banning people on Twitter.

00:24:26.560 And this is, this is sort of, uh, going to have a knock on negative effect onto the sort

00:24:31.880 of cultural social media.

00:24:33.000 Right. 1.00

00:24:33.200 And then you're also going to get people who say he's a billionaire asshole. 1.00

00:24:35.320 Right. 1.00

00:24:35.680 And the same thing's going to happen with Greta Thunberg. 0.99

00:24:37.600 But my point is the people who are making the critique that Francis just made are not

00:24:41.280 on the left.

00:24:42.280 It's more people like us who are in this heterodox center or whatever, who are going

00:24:45.980 to go.

00:24:46.840 What?

00:24:46.960 Because the right will love him for, you know, opening up the Overton window, whatever.

00:24:50.620 But people who are objective will say, look, I think it's, I think it's incredible that

00:24:54.920 he's bought Twitter just because it's the one place where there's less censorship now.

00:24:59.500 And then that means everyone else, there's no point for them censoring on Facebook and

00:25:02.840 elsewhere, because you're still going to get the information from Twitter.

00:25:05.400 So I think it's great.

00:25:07.120 But the critique still applies, which is he claimed he was a free speech absolutist.

00:25:11.380 I just think it was a, sorry, Elon wants me assassinated.

00:25:15.580 I just think it was a mistake to do so.

00:25:17.600 It's an interesting example because free speech has kind of become a bit of a right

00:25:21.240 wing issue, which kind of complicates this particular example.

00:25:23.820 But I mean, do you think that there aren't any left wing critiques of Elon Musk to be

00:25:29.320 taken seriously?

00:25:30.200 You give me one and we can talk about it.

00:25:32.080 Well, again, this, Elon Musk is probably the right, I can't remember who first mentioned

00:25:36.600 him.

00:25:36.660 Let's pick a different person.

00:25:37.800 But before we do as well, because we were talking about this in the context of the AI

00:25:41.420 thing and you were saying, you know, people aren't, as Greta is in your view,

00:25:47.600 going out and telling people to do things which are essentially suicidal, wait until

00:25:52.100 artificial intelligence becomes, as it's already becoming, integral to our sort of

00:25:57.540 workforce and economy and wait until while that's the case, people begin to take really

00:26:03.020 seriously the idea that it's incredibly dangerous and start saying, we need to put an end to

00:26:06.640 this.

00:26:07.300 And people start protesting in the streets.

00:26:09.420 It's coming down the road.

00:26:10.800 And when that happens, what are people going to say?

00:26:12.540 They're going to point to the protesters of artificial intelligence and they're saying

00:26:15.960 they're essentially telling us to suicide our own society because it will destroy our

00:26:20.140 economy.

00:26:20.320 And I'll be one of the people making that critique.

00:26:22.280 And that's why I think, although you might be right that right now they're disanalogous 0.95

00:26:25.480 because people aren't doing that yet.

00:26:26.700 I don't think we're far off that.

00:26:28.300 Okay, fine.

00:26:29.020 So at some point you believe it will become cultish or religious in nature, certainly according

00:26:33.780 to the definition of Francis Gave.

00:26:35.200 To the same extent that you would, because we began, you were asking about whether vegan is

00:26:38.660 a religion, I think, if yes, then only to the same extent that something like, in more

00:26:44.780 obvious cases, environmentalism, wokeism, you know, but also, because especially I think

00:26:51.820 listeners to the show will happily think, yeah, that's a bit religious.

00:26:54.080 But when you think about something like AI, you think it'd be really weird to call that

00:26:57.840 like a religion.

00:26:58.500 But you can see how just having a sort of moral position on an important issue and it becoming

00:27:03.360 basically the focal point of your campaigning can very easily be described in religious terms.

00:27:08.660 No, but to me, see, this is the difference though, because your moral position is one

00:27:12.800 thing.

00:27:13.120 It's, it's what you then do on based on your moral position.

00:27:16.900 Sure.

00:27:17.300 I might think, I'm not saying I do think this, but hypothetically speaking, I might think,

00:27:22.080 I don't know, sex before marriage is wrong. 0.84

00:27:24.140 Right.

00:27:24.780 But he would never, I'm not going to be in your bedroom going, no, no, no, no, like I, my

00:27:30.100 moral position is for me.

00:27:32.120 Do you see what I mean?

00:27:33.320 Yes.

00:27:33.540 But that, that's, it takes a religious element to be like, you need to do this.

00:27:38.460 Not always.

00:27:39.480 Not always, but it can be.

00:27:40.500 Because, because look, like the thing about sex before marriage and the reason it's such 0.77

00:27:43.720 an easy argument to make is because there's no victim involved, right?

00:27:47.220 That's completely untrue.

00:27:48.520 Yeah.

00:27:49.080 Completely untrue.

00:27:49.980 Where's the victim in, in, in...

00:27:51.340 Look at our society.

00:27:52.160 Okay, okay.

00:27:52.380 You've got, maybe like, maybe like children.

00:27:53.820 You've got half the children in this country, maybe children.

00:27:54.500 Okay, okay, fair enough.

00:27:55.340 No, no, no, no, it's important.

00:27:57.600 Half the children in this country grow up without, without a stable two-parent family, right?

00:28:02.100 Why do you think all the social disease that we have, dis-ease, is the consequence of

00:28:06.200 that?

00:28:06.680 So the victim is not just the child involved, or by the way, the people themselves.

00:28:11.520 It's also potentially the entire society and someone getting stabbed 20 years later, once

00:28:16.640 that kid's grown up without a father, is also the victim.

00:28:19.760 Yes.

00:28:20.060 No, I think I...

00:28:21.020 So there is a victim.

00:28:22.300 I misspoke when I put it too simply.

00:28:24.080 You're quite right.

00:28:24.820 But the point that I'm trying to make is that there are certain instances where, let's

00:28:28.460 say, the harm is so immediate and obviously sort of directly caused, because the longer

00:28:34.500 the causal chain gets, the more difficult it is to place, let's say, specific blame.

00:28:40.180 So, for example, I don't know, if you have a moral antipathy towards abortion, let's say

00:28:48.540 you're pro-life because you think that, you know, we shouldn't be able to kill human

00:28:52.860 beings in the womb.

00:28:54.420 Now, I could say to you, as pro-choice activists do all the time, they say, well, hey, if you

00:29:01.120 don't like abortions, don't get one, you know, stay out of my body. 1.00

00:29:04.120 And what do the pro-life activists say?

00:29:05.780 They say, look, I totally understand the intuition that you've got of sort of like,

00:29:09.400 well, my morals are for me and I can't force them on you.

00:29:11.640 But because the moral position that you're holding is killing another human being, as they

00:29:16.440 see it, that justification just doesn't fly and shows that you're not actually understanding

00:29:21.580 a word of what I'm saying about the importance of the issue.

00:29:24.240 The same is, this happens all the time in the vegan debate when people say, look, you know,

00:29:29.280 I don't tell you not to eat your lettuce, so you can't come and tell me not to eat my

00:29:34.860 hamburger.

00:29:36.060 And it's like, do you really not see why that's different?

00:29:40.040 Do you really not see why eating lettuce doesn't have a victim, but eating a hamburger

00:29:44.480 does?

00:29:44.780 And you could say, well, actually, eating lettuce does have a victim because it means that maybe

00:29:48.860 you're going to be nutritionally deficient, which means that, you know, you're going to

00:29:51.200 perform worse at your job and then your kids are going to have less money and go to worse

00:29:53.900 school.

00:29:54.180 Like, that's true, but it's far less direct.

00:29:57.320 And when you have a situation where somebody is quite obviously causing direct harm or risk

00:30:01.520 of direct harm to somebody, then somebody stepping in and saying, you're not allowed to do this.

00:30:06.160 I think everybody intuitively knows it's justified.

00:30:07.940 And the sort of line of like, well, I have this moral view, but I'm not going to sort of

00:30:13.240 step into your world and enforce that upon you.

00:30:16.000 Well, the moment that there's a direct victim, I think that you'll do so and you'll do so

00:30:18.980 with an intuitive force of how obviously correct that is.

00:30:23.100 But the problem is, Alex, is when you start looking for victims, you're going to find

00:30:26.600 victims everywhere.

00:30:27.600 So you look at the lettuce farmer and then you're looking at the effect that their farm

00:30:31.300 is having on the environment, the use of pesticides, the killing of birds, the killing, how it's

00:30:35.800 absolutely decimating the local ecology, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:30:40.680 And you could argue, you could make a pretty coherent argument that actually maybe the lettuce

00:30:44.880 farm is doing far more damage than the cattle farm.

00:30:49.560 Yeah, you always can.

00:30:50.800 I mean, I'm not sure if that quite works with the lettuce thing.

00:30:54.620 I mean, there's always that bit that-

00:30:56.540 Or avocados or whatever.

00:30:57.660 But sure.

00:30:58.620 Yeah.

00:30:58.760 I mean, the reason I'm speaking carefully here is because I know when people listening

00:31:02.060 and they hear somebody say, because Joe Rogan says this occasionally, one of his guests

00:31:06.720 say, you know, well, if you want to harm the most animals, then be vegan, because think

00:31:11.520 of all the animals that are getting died.

00:31:13.180 And vegans just cringe because that's sort of so not true, at least in the case of factory

00:31:19.560 farming.

00:31:19.860 But that granted for, you know, the people at home, as it were.

00:31:24.540 Sure.

00:31:24.980 Yeah.

00:31:25.080 Maybe that causes more harm.

00:31:26.560 Yeah.

00:31:26.840 But I mean, I can't remember why we got, I can't remember what issue it was you were

00:31:29.820 talking about.

00:31:30.020 We started on religion.

00:31:30.940 And actually, I think we should probably move on to religion because what you asked was

00:31:34.400 a question about religion and veganism.

00:31:36.020 But actually, what I think we're dancing around is something we wanted to talk about

00:31:39.260 anyway, which is, I think we both have had Richard Dawkins on the show.

00:31:44.500 Yes.

00:31:44.800 And one of the threads of conversation, particularly in this space that we all kind of semi-inhabit

00:31:54.100 from different sides, with different feet, et cetera, is essentially that while some people

00:32:01.940 can be new atheists and have a great life, and Richard Dawkins is clearly someone who enjoys

00:32:07.580 his life and is not devoid of meaning and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, human beings are

00:32:13.440 a religious animal.

00:32:15.340 And in the absence of actual religion, we will begin to seek others, which is one of 0.99

00:32:21.240 the reasons, to put it crudely, our society is so fucked up right now. 0.99

00:32:25.340 The death of God is why we are where you are, and it's all your and Richard's fault. 0.99

00:32:29.540 Yeah, maybe it is.

00:32:31.720 I mean, look, there's some compelling evidence to show that religious communities, like I saw

00:32:38.560 a study recently that religious communities coped better with the COVID pandemic, for example,

00:32:43.440 and there's evidence to show that people feel more fulfilled.

00:32:48.900 I think even like in their sex life, if they're religious, you know, there's so many reasons 0.69

00:32:54.340 why there might be utility in being religious.

00:32:57.800 And I suppose my answer to that is to say, well, of course, because if I don't believe

00:33:02.140 that this is true, I have to account for why it exists.

00:33:06.160 If you've got this thing that isn't true and is unambiguously harmful for society, then

00:33:11.340 why the hell would it evolve?

00:33:12.680 Of course, it must be doing something, right?

00:33:14.680 And of course, the corollary of that is that by murdering God, yeah, we sort of, you know,

00:33:20.740 the streets are covered in blood and people are sort of trying to erect false idols out

00:33:27.160 of the DNA.

00:33:27.940 And they end up with, you know, as you would probably see it, wokeism, as some would see

00:33:32.520 it, you know, Christian nationalism.

00:33:35.140 Sorry, not Christian nationalism, because that's a form of religion.

00:33:36.900 But nationalism, let's say secular nationalism, and that's true. 0.99

00:33:41.200 Yeah, of course, that's the case.

00:33:42.800 Human beings seek transcendence.

00:33:45.620 They seek the divine.

00:33:47.480 My position is that I just don't think this is true.

00:33:49.900 And I don't have much more to say on this apart from asking, what do you want me to do

00:33:57.080 here?

00:33:57.420 And I'm not exactly asking you, because I don't think either of you are religious.

00:34:00.360 I'm not sure.

00:34:00.780 Maybe you're agnostic or Christian.

00:34:01.840 I don't know.

00:34:02.720 But somebody says, well, look, you know, if we remove religion from our society, things

00:34:08.960 go downhill.

00:34:10.180 Okay, what do you want me to do?

00:34:11.280 I don't think this is true.

00:34:12.380 Do I just sort of just lie to my children?

00:34:15.300 Do I just bring them up to believe something that I don't think is the case, because I

00:34:18.440 think it's going to be beneficial for society?

00:34:20.420 Like, maybe.

00:34:21.600 But what does that look like?

00:34:23.420 You know?

00:34:24.060 And people say, well, why don't you just sort of act as if you're religious?

00:34:28.100 You know?

00:34:28.940 And Jordan Peterson says that people do this all the time.

00:34:31.600 I don't think that's true.

00:34:32.700 I think, sure, you can act like you're religious in the sense that you can go to church on Christmas.

00:34:38.180 Cool.

00:34:38.660 You can sort of, I don't know, take part in your local religious community affairs and

00:34:43.760 stuff.

00:34:44.020 But when it comes to actually having to make an essentially religious sacrifice, like

00:34:48.960 a real sacrifice, if you have to sort of put your life on the line for essentially a

00:34:52.960 religious principle.

00:34:53.840 Let's say you were just sort of pretending to be a Christian. 0.90

00:34:55.680 You're just acting like a Christian. 0.99

00:34:56.840 And suddenly there's a political invasion.

00:34:59.940 A different religion sort of is taking over the country. 1.00

00:35:01.820 And they come to you. 0.99

00:35:02.300 They hold a gun to your head. 1.00

00:35:03.300 And they say, say that Jesus is not God or I'll shoot you. 0.99

00:35:06.620 In that moment, you're not going to pretend to be a Christian for the social utility. 0.94

00:35:09.820 You're just going to throw it out immediately.

00:35:10.660 Yeah.

00:35:10.760 But that's not what people mean when they say, act like you're a Christian.

00:35:13.700 I don't think going to church is actually what they mean either.

00:35:16.400 What they mean.

00:35:17.240 So, for example, we hear every time we have a meal here at the studio, we say grace.

00:35:20.540 Right.

00:35:21.140 No, I don't think anyone here is religious.

00:35:22.740 Well, no one who eats here is religious.

00:35:26.360 The woman editing this is religious.

00:35:28.280 So she's upset with all three of us.

00:35:30.880 Now, so what I think they mean is there are certain practices around religion that will

00:35:37.360 make your life better.

00:35:38.780 Yes.

00:35:38.980 And I think that's definitely true.

00:35:41.140 The constant practicing of gratitude, the appreciation of the fact that you're not the

00:35:46.260 center of the universe, the connection with the transcendent or the divine, the recognition

00:35:53.140 that other people are as equal and equally important in the world as you are, the serving

00:35:59.480 of others.

00:36:00.640 All of these things are practices that most religions have developed in one way or another

00:36:05.360 that a secular person is unlikely to get themselves into because they're not natural to human

00:36:10.540 beings.

00:36:10.900 It's not natural to put other people ahead of yourself.

00:36:13.940 It's not natural to practice gratitude.

00:36:17.140 Most people, particularly in our society, don't.

00:36:20.000 Right.

00:36:20.440 So I think what people mean when they say act as if you are religious is adopt some of the

00:36:26.300 kind of the best things about religion.

00:36:29.100 And it is an interim answer, by the way, because you mentioned children.

00:36:32.500 Once you have children, it becomes very difficult.

00:36:33.980 It's hard to explain to a five-year-old why they should do something without, you know,

00:36:39.740 the bearded man in the sky, which I know religious people will get upset with me about because 0.99

00:36:43.360 it's an unfair character, but I use it exactly for that purpose.

00:36:46.100 Not to mention talking about things like death.

00:36:48.240 Yeah.

00:36:49.360 I mean, I don't know.

00:36:50.260 I don't have children.

00:36:51.600 I know that you do.

00:36:53.200 If you think, as you seem to be implying, being religious might have some societal benefit

00:37:00.500 and some personal benefit and that being an atheist might lead to being, you know, more

00:37:05.500 self-serving and less sacrificial and this kind of thing.

00:37:09.060 I mean, are you going to raise your child as a theist?

00:37:13.080 Are you going to teach them that God exists?

00:37:14.340 Are you going to take them to Sunday school?

00:37:15.800 I don't think I'm going to teach them either, actually.

00:37:17.680 I think I'm going to let them discover their own way of relating to that thing that does

00:37:23.560 exist, whether it's not that it's God that exists, but there is a connection that binds

00:37:29.180 all people, all human beings together in some way.

00:37:31.440 And we all feel it.

00:37:32.560 And the spiritual within us is part of that.

00:37:35.440 Now, do you code that as the bearded man in the sky caricature?

00:37:40.180 Do you code that as spirituality or whatever?

00:37:43.480 It's up to you.

00:37:44.380 But that thing exists.

00:37:45.480 There's no pretending otherwise.

00:37:47.120 But then notice that's essentially what secular society does on a societal level.

00:37:53.520 A secular society is not like an atheist society.

00:37:57.180 It's not like communist Russia that's actively persecuting religious ideology.

00:38:03.400 It just says, hands off.

00:38:05.240 We say, look, I'm just going to leave it up to you.

00:38:07.260 You can explore this religion, that religion.

00:38:09.160 You know, we just hope that there's some kind of unifying spirit that we're all just going

00:38:12.580 to come together and get along, even though we're all exploring our own ideas.

00:38:15.360 And that's the thing that people are pointing to and are saying it's disastrous.

00:38:19.540 No, no, no, no.

00:38:20.320 They're pointing to Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and all these other people who

00:38:24.740 continually attacked religion as a thing that should exist.

00:38:30.560 Right.

00:38:30.900 God is not gray and all of this other stuff, Hitchens book and et cetera.

00:38:35.180 They were people who...

00:38:35.800 This is my issue with New Atheists and it's one I lost interest. 1.00

00:38:40.180 I wrote a whole thing about it called The Atheist Delusion on my Substack. 0.99

00:38:43.180 Yes.

00:38:44.540 It's not that people shouldn't question religion.

00:38:47.920 It's the denigration of religion.

00:38:49.960 Has that been beneficial?

00:38:51.100 And that's where I started to lose my faith in atheism.

00:38:54.640 The other thing that ties in with the New Atheist Movement, which I think a lot of people forget,

00:39:00.300 is it also came about because of the excesses of the church and the Roman Catholic church

00:39:06.760 and the way that it covered up abuses.

00:39:10.100 And so when people were criticizing religion at that time, that was still very fresh in the mind.

00:39:16.040 But the power of the church and especially the Catholic church has been utterly decimated.

00:39:20.820 So they have gone from being this institution which had real power to being something that

00:39:29.640 most of us don't really think about.

00:39:32.320 That's true.

00:39:33.320 I mean, New Atheism is traditionally thought of as springing up in the wake of 9-11.

00:39:39.380 And you can imagine.

00:39:40.780 I mean, it's difficult to imagine.

00:39:42.080 I can't remember a time before 9-11.

00:39:45.760 The idea of...

00:39:46.300 You poor, poor child.

00:39:47.480 It was such a great time.

00:39:48.880 It was.

00:39:49.140 It was such a great...

00:39:50.640 9-11 was such a great time.

00:39:52.160 It was.

00:39:52.380 9-11.

00:39:52.860 Before.

00:39:53.700 Yeah.

00:39:54.020 The 90s were brilliant.

00:39:55.200 I sort of can't...

00:39:56.060 Anytime I'm in an airport, I mean, I obviously didn't experience it, but I tried to think

00:40:00.100 of what it must have been like.

00:40:00.960 I mean, I can't...

00:40:01.680 I mean, getting on a plane without sort of, you know, being...

00:40:05.800 Thoroughly having my civil liberties just like frisked on the spot, it would feel unnatural

00:40:11.880 to me.

00:40:13.340 Mate, you used to be able to smoke on a plane.

00:40:15.960 Within my lifetime, I used to smoke on a plane.

00:40:19.340 I remember this.

00:40:20.160 I don't smoke anymore, but it was still great.

00:40:22.520 And when I was a kid, I remember flying.

00:40:24.660 I mean, admittedly, this was the Soviet Union, so it was a different environment.

00:40:27.620 But flying from Uzbekistan to Moscow, there were no seats left on the plane.

00:40:33.640 So they were like, oh yeah, just come in the cockpit.

00:40:36.400 Yeah.

00:40:36.580 That's what it was like.

00:40:37.380 Yeah.

00:40:37.840 You still can smoke on a plane, of course.

00:40:39.840 You'll just be punished for it.

00:40:42.440 But it's nice to remind oneself that there is still the freedom to do as you please.

00:40:46.120 If you're an atheist, after all, you know, everything is permitted.

00:40:49.540 Anyway, you're talking about New Atheism post-91.

00:40:51.020 I don't remember a time.

00:40:52.220 The thing that I can't imagine is people not really knowing anything about Islam.

00:40:57.720 People not...

00:40:58.240 That not being really part of the political conversation.

00:41:01.100 You know, there's like the Muslim world over there, and there are Muslims living among us,

00:41:03.980 and maybe there's a bit of sort of cultural antipathy or whatever, but now it's like huge

00:41:07.860 political issue.

00:41:08.480 I can't imagine that not being the case.

00:41:10.400 And you can imagine why an event like this instantly thrusts it into the national conversation,

00:41:15.600 because people want to say this isn't what Islam is about, and other people want to say

00:41:19.460 this is, you know, what Islam will allow, and it becomes this huge political conversation.

00:41:23.880 So you can see why a book like God is Not Great is going to be extraordinarily successful

00:41:28.880 in that moment, and that's the new in New Atheism.

00:41:31.920 I mean, there's nothing new about atheism, right?

00:41:33.980 Yeah, I mean, okay, so it's like it's a moment, and that moment arguably has passed.

00:41:41.540 The Catholic Church isn't probably like a seriously...

00:41:45.220 I mean, it's still a seriously powerful organization, but like its cultural power in the UK, for example,

00:41:49.040 is basically next to nothing.

00:41:50.540 People complain about bishops having reserved seats in the House of Lords.

00:41:53.860 That is a bit weird.

00:41:54.960 That's probably not great.

00:41:56.040 You know, why do we reserve seats in our parliament for bishops of the Church of England?

00:42:00.700 But does it really matter?

00:42:02.340 Like, really?

00:42:03.380 Does it matter more than the fact that there are still any hereditary peers in our legislature?

00:42:09.320 Like, maybe not.

00:42:10.120 So, yeah, it's just sort of not got this cultural force anymore.

00:42:13.760 That's why it's sort of not cool to be an atheist anymore.

00:42:15.900 People like to be countercultural.

00:42:17.580 And in 2006, being an atheist was edgy.

00:42:20.240 It was cool.

00:42:20.800 You could be the guy to say, well, actually.

00:42:22.740 Whereas now, the well, actually, technically, that's not true is coming from the religious side, I think.

00:42:29.220 Well, I would push back on this slightly in that it's now very edgy to be atheist if you're going to criticize Islam.

00:42:37.820 That's true.

00:42:38.220 I mean, then it's incredibly edgy.

00:42:42.720 And actually, let's be honest about it, downright dangerous.

00:42:47.040 For sure, yeah.

00:42:47.960 But I don't think that the edginess there is the atheism.

00:42:51.060 It's not saying God doesn't exist.

00:42:52.740 It's saying Islam is bad for society. 0.93

00:42:54.440 Yes.

00:42:54.540 Which is a totally different claim, you know.

00:42:58.240 And, okay, actually, maybe that was still the case with Christianity in New Atheism.

00:43:02.820 It was like in America, people would say that Christianity is bad for society.

00:43:06.000 You know, evangelicals are ruining our society. 1.00

00:43:07.700 And that was edgy.

00:43:08.340 But it wasn't dangerous.

00:43:09.520 It wasn't dangerous.

00:43:10.440 I mean, sure, going through the Bible Belt on tour.

00:43:12.980 Like Christopher Hitchens famously did a tour through the Bible Belt of America promoting God is not great.

00:43:17.920 And, like, you know, that's kind of funny.

00:43:20.720 You know, how dangerous.

00:43:21.660 I mean, sure, maybe he could have got shot or something.

00:43:23.740 Fine.

00:43:23.940 But you can't really imagine him doing the same thing through the Muslim world. 0.99

00:43:28.100 I mean, he's been to the Muslim world as a political reporter.

00:43:31.180 But he didn't do a book tour, God is not great.

00:43:33.840 I mean, it's a different category.

00:43:35.820 But it's also a different category of edginess.

00:43:37.720 That's not New Atheism anymore.

00:43:38.940 That's sort of, you know, that's its own breed of politic and philosophy.

00:43:44.900 And looking at the younger generation, do you think they're suffering for a lack of spirituality?

00:43:50.400 Or are they replacing it with something else?

00:43:54.460 We've spoken about wokeism.

00:43:55.740 But is there something else that's bubbling under the surface?

00:43:58.040 Well, people are suffering from a lack of meaning.

00:44:01.260 Meaning is...

00:44:03.260 People always ask about meaning and purpose.

00:44:06.600 And there's that really tired joke about what meaning means.

00:44:10.620 But it's not a joke.

00:44:11.280 Like, what are we talking about here?

00:44:13.100 Like, it's such an intuitive question that people ask all the time.

00:44:15.700 What's the meaning of life?

00:44:16.680 What the hell are you looking for?

00:44:17.980 Like, what do you mean by meaning?

00:44:20.180 And the best I can come up with is something like a non-contingent reason to act.

00:44:25.340 So, like, a reason to act or to be that isn't dependent on something else.

00:44:30.360 Right?

00:44:30.480 Like, in order to do anything, you need, like, a reason to do it.

00:44:33.420 Like, why are we sat here to film a conversation?

00:44:36.440 Why are we filming a conversation?

00:44:37.800 Well, to put it on YouTube.

00:44:39.180 If we weren't going to put it on YouTube, we wouldn't be sat here with all these cameras.

00:44:42.520 It would be ridiculous.

00:44:43.320 You need the thing before it in order to justify why you've set the camera up.

00:44:46.780 And so you can keep going back and back and back.

00:44:49.500 And the meaning, the purpose of life in your life is the stopping point, is the first thing.

00:44:56.220 And bear in mind, some people say, well, I just don't have any purpose.

00:45:01.140 Probably they mean, like, no objective purpose that should be prescribed.

00:45:05.780 But you must have something that is ultimately motivating you.

00:45:08.960 Otherwise, you wouldn't be doing anything.

00:45:10.720 And so what the religious will often do is say that whatever that thing is, that's God.

00:45:15.600 And so Peterson defines God as whatever's at the top of your value hierarchy.

00:45:20.080 That's just his definition of divine.

00:45:22.240 He says, you know, you're writing an essay.

00:45:23.800 Why?

00:45:24.280 To get a good grade.

00:45:25.480 Why?

00:45:25.980 To get a good job.

00:45:26.760 Why?

00:45:27.020 To provide for your family.

00:45:27.960 Why?

00:45:28.520 And if you keep going down, whatever you bottom out in is God.

00:45:32.400 Now, the point that he makes, and I think the reason he then says, you know, famously,

00:45:36.440 oh, you think you're an atheist?

00:45:37.820 Well, you don't act like one.

00:45:38.780 You're not really an atheist kind of thing.

00:45:40.120 It's because he correctly identifies that everybody has to have the sumum bonum.

00:45:45.100 Everybody has that first motivating reason.

00:45:49.160 So everyone's going to have one no matter what.

00:45:51.880 And I think that the sort of nihilism and confusion that people experience is that before

00:45:55.840 they were told what it was.

00:45:57.520 They were told, even if you don't recognize it, the thing motivating you is God.

00:46:01.360 Whereas now, it's unclear.

00:46:04.820 And people who are struggling with meaning, I think, are sort of going on a journey of

00:46:09.760 trying to discover what that thing is.

00:46:13.280 And sometimes they find that they don't like it.

00:46:14.940 Because if you're an atheist materialist, you realize that ultimately the thing that's 0.73

00:46:18.360 motivating me is my genetics and my crude bodily desires.

00:46:23.480 And you can explain morality.

00:46:26.440 The reason that morals exist is because of reciprocal altruism or because we share genes with each

00:46:30.540 other and that's why it evolved.

00:46:31.460 But ultimately, you break it down.

00:46:32.760 Well, what's the ultimate motivation?

00:46:34.140 Well, because I've got genes inside me that are dictating that I do particular things.

00:46:38.480 That is the sumum bonum.

00:46:39.780 And we've replaced the Imago Dei, being made in the image of God, being created with a telos 0.98

00:46:46.460 and a natural purpose, which is communion with the Almighty, to you're an animal.

00:46:52.360 And that's not a nice realization.

00:46:53.940 And I think that's probably at the basis of people getting a little bit thirsty for something

00:46:59.440 with a bit more narrative, let's say.

00:47:02.300 I think as well, what people find is that when they start to do something which is more

00:47:07.540 in service of others, which is, for example, have a family, or you see it in Alcoholics

00:47:11.780 Anonymous, people who were once hopeless addicts, but now their mission in life is to help others

00:47:17.540 and to help others who are suffering from addiction, they become a different human being almost

00:47:22.880 overnight as a result of that purpose and drive.

00:47:25.840 And I think that's one of the things that we're lacking, which is, what is your life's

00:47:31.140 mission?

00:47:31.920 What do you want to do?

00:47:33.040 What do you want to achieve?

00:47:34.740 Yes, you need purpose.

00:47:36.440 And that purpose, as I say, everybody has a purpose.

00:47:39.540 But if you recognize that the purpose is something essentially trivial and something that's outside

00:47:43.580 of your control, then I suppose the motivation starts to fade away, which is why God was

00:47:50.100 a good one, because God being the same thing as love and the same thing as beauty entails

00:47:54.820 that you can do things like helping other people, and you can say that it's in the service

00:47:57.700 of God, whereas now you have to sort of rationalize it as, yes, ultimately the reason I'm doing

00:48:01.560 it is in the service of my own genes and my own self.

00:48:05.460 That just doesn't have the same sort of romance.

00:48:06.980 Yeah, but that's because you don't have to stop at that particular point.

00:48:10.880 So once you've got to the point where you go, well, I'm here to reproduce, that's all

00:48:16.200 I'm here, that's all my purpose that I have, then you're free, actually.

00:48:20.760 And then you can create whatever purpose you want.

00:48:23.100 The purpose can be to serve other people.

00:48:25.320 You know, I've reproduced, right?

00:48:26.880 Now my job is to raise my son so he can reproduce. 0.99

00:48:29.220 Okay, cool, I'll do that.

00:48:30.440 But in the meantime, I can create a show that other people will enjoy.

00:48:33.940 I can give meaning to people by articulating things that they struggle to articulate.

00:48:38.400 I can advocate on behalf of people who are not able to advocate on their own behalf.

00:48:43.300 I can create a business with Francis in which other people work who otherwise wouldn't have

00:48:50.120 a job that fulfilled them, right?

00:48:52.020 I can mentor the young guys coming through.

00:48:54.680 There are things, there is meaning you can create for yourself, even if the realization

00:48:59.820 you have is the ultimate meaning is to reproduce your genes.

00:49:03.020 I'm not sure that you can create your own meaning in a fundamental sense.

00:49:05.720 I'm always suspicious of this concept.

00:49:06.900 I think everything you've just said already presupposes an underlying value judgment.

00:49:10.620 And I'll tell you why, right?

00:49:11.380 So you say, well, I've decided that, you know, I'm going to have a child and raise that child.

00:49:16.380 And I've just sort of created that.

00:49:17.460 I've just decided.

00:49:18.580 No, no, no, no.

00:49:19.120 I'm saying I have fulfilled my biological function.

00:49:21.860 Oh, sure.

00:49:22.360 And it's my biological function to get him to adulthood so he can reproduce.

00:49:26.580 So that's the biology aside.

00:49:27.940 Sure.

00:49:28.060 And also, at the same time, there is other areas of my life where I can create meaning,

00:49:34.380 whether that's, you know, growing a garden or helping my neighbor, whatever it is.

00:49:39.160 Yeah, but, you know, supposing one person, let's say we can just choose our own meaning.

00:49:42.700 We just create meaning in our lives.

00:49:43.860 Okay, so one person decides to create meaning in their life by raising as much money as they can for Oxfam

00:49:52.960 and lifting thousands of people out of poverty.

00:49:55.300 Another person decides that their meaning in life is to count the blades of grass in Hyde Park.

00:50:01.700 They just want to count how many blades of grass there are.

00:50:04.200 And sometimes, you know, someone comes along and mows the lawn and they have to start again.

00:50:08.040 And you say to them, well, what's meaningful about that?

00:50:11.620 And they say, well, what do you mean?

00:50:12.740 You just get to choose that it's meaningful.

00:50:14.200 I've just decided that it is.

00:50:15.860 You'd be committed to the view that both of those lives are as meaningful as each other.

00:50:18.800 No, I didn't say that.

00:50:19.800 They're not as meaningful as each other.

00:50:20.940 But how can they not be if there's no sort of exterior prescription as to what meaning ought to be

00:50:29.880 and you just get to create it for yourself?

00:50:31.940 That's what I mean by the underlying value judgment.

00:50:33.860 Because if you want to say that that person's life is more meaningful than the other.

00:50:36.980 But who said that that's what we're doing?

00:50:38.740 The comparison was introduced by you for reasons that are unclear to me.

00:50:41.660 Well, is one of those lives more meaningful than the other, do you think?

00:50:46.380 Based on my own personal value set, yes.

00:50:48.960 But it's my value set.

00:50:50.040 So that value set is already dictating what you would consider meaningful and not meaningful.

00:50:55.800 For me.

00:50:56.840 And for other people.

00:50:58.040 Because you're saying based on your value set, that person's life is more meaningful than another's.

00:51:01.840 Again, we come back to this.

00:51:02.840 I have no intention of going to that person and telling them this value set is not as good as my value set.

00:51:07.900 Of course, that's a separate question.

00:51:08.520 A better example would be not counting blades of grass by becoming a serial killer.

00:51:11.980 Yes, I was going to say that that's sort of the next step, right?

00:51:14.720 The question is really, well, I'm not trying to judge whether that way of life is more meaningful or not.

00:51:21.560 There's clearly some people in human history who were mass murderers who got a lot of meaning from it.

00:51:28.560 I can give you lots of names that we all know, right?

00:51:31.020 However, the issue is, is their behavior acceptable to the rest of society as we reflect in our laws and customs, etc., right?

00:51:39.380 Sure, but those are two separate questions, right?

00:51:41.320 I mean, somebody's life could be flooded with meaning.

00:51:44.320 It could be the most meaningful life that anyone's ever lived.

00:51:47.100 And yet, because it's really bad for the rest of us, we still sort of put them in prison, right?

00:51:50.160 Yeah.

00:51:50.460 But their life is still much more meaningful than anybody else.

00:51:52.960 Do you think Genghis Khan had more meaning than you?

00:51:54.880 I think he probably did.

00:51:55.680 Exactly, right?

00:51:56.620 But what we commit ourselves to by saying that you can just create your own meaning is that however one decides to create their own meaning,

00:52:04.880 as long as they feel that meaning, their life just is meaningful.

00:52:08.060 And that's fine.

00:52:08.940 Maybe that's what meaning is.

00:52:10.040 That's what I'm saying.

00:52:10.300 But it just rings a little bit hollow to me when you start to recognize that if somebody is just able to decide that spending their entire life counting blades of grass is meaningful,

00:52:18.900 there you go.

00:52:19.260 That's the meaningful life.

00:52:21.100 As long as they feel that it gives them meaning.

00:52:23.620 That's the key point.

00:52:24.720 It's creating, meaning seems to be something like, or purpose seems to be sort of something to do.

00:52:31.080 It's a reason to do something.

00:52:32.580 So it's sort of a task to fulfill or an objective to attain or to strive for.

00:52:36.460 And so to create your own meaning is to create a task just for the sake of filling the task.

00:52:43.320 No, it's an expression of who you truly are.

00:52:46.880 I don't know what that means.

00:52:48.240 I know.

00:52:49.580 What do you mean by that?

00:52:51.100 The meaning that you choose to create is an expression of who you truly are as a human being.

00:52:59.260 Sure.

00:53:00.540 Yeah.

00:53:00.920 But I mean, do you see what I'm saying when I, I mean, that's why I like the word purpose.

00:53:05.060 Yes.

00:53:05.540 Because I think it more.

00:53:07.960 The point is you are not creating it necessarily.

00:53:11.760 You're not sitting down with a piece of paper.

00:53:13.800 It's not an invention.

00:53:15.040 It's an expression of who you already are.

00:53:17.940 Well, meaning is either something that you invent or that you discover for yourself.

00:53:21.420 Exactly.

00:53:22.240 And I suppose the position of the atheist materialist has to be that it's something you invent.

00:53:27.760 Because there's nowhere from which you can discover it.

00:53:30.380 If there's nothing more than, you know, if there's nothing more to the mind than just human beings and biology.

00:53:37.900 Where else can an idea like that come from?

00:53:39.980 It has to come from themselves.

00:53:41.040 They have to invent it.

00:53:41.860 Of course, if you're religious, you can, you can discover the meaning that's, that's sort of embedded into your very creation.

00:53:47.660 But if you don't have that, you have to invent your own meaning.

00:53:49.800 And I don't know if you see what I'm saying here about this, this, this purpose task thing, right?

00:53:53.540 Like if I, it's kind of like if you're, if you're bored, you know, like the, the, if you're really bored, you might just sort of like knock over a glass of water so that you can go and mop it up just to give you something to do.

00:54:05.320 And that's kind of what I feel like is going on with people creating their own purpose.

00:54:08.980 Because the purpose is to have a reason to do something.

00:54:12.860 It's a, it's a reason.

00:54:13.780 It's a, it's something to strive for.

00:54:15.180 It's an objective to a thing, right?

00:54:17.040 And if you create that for its own sake.

00:54:18.440 When you find your purpose, you will know what I'm talking about.

00:54:19.940 When you create that for its own sake, I think that's what you're doing, right?

00:54:21.980 But also as well, I mean.

00:54:23.560 But maybe, maybe you're also right.

00:54:24.740 Maybe.

00:54:25.340 It's, you're not creating it for the purpose of fulfilling it.

00:54:28.740 But notice what you just said.

00:54:29.440 You said when you find your own meaning.

00:54:30.540 Did you say find?

00:54:31.140 Yes.

00:54:31.780 So, so now we're talking, if, if one day I find meaning, if I discover meaning.

00:54:35.140 Yes.

00:54:35.300 Then not only will I suddenly have a much more meaningful life, but I'll also be rid of the conviction that we do create our own meaning.

00:54:41.100 Because it'd be something that I've discovered that's been set upon me.

00:54:43.500 Yeah, because that's what I'm saying.

00:54:44.680 It's an expression of who you truly are.

00:54:46.560 And I totally agree that if it is something you discover, if it's something that's set upon you from the outside, then that's, that's absolutely something.

00:54:51.460 No, I didn't say that.

00:54:52.160 I didn't say it's from the outside.

00:54:53.600 I said it's an expression of who you already are inside.

00:54:56.880 So it's something you discover about your own self.

00:54:58.440 Correct.

00:54:58.700 That's fine, too.

00:54:59.740 And what that means is that you're discovering what you most fundamentally value.

00:55:03.900 Yes.

00:55:04.440 And that's fine.

00:55:05.960 But some people will find that the thing they most fundamentally value is something that I think you would look upon and think is, is bad or wrong.

00:55:16.060 Agreed.

00:55:16.480 Or immoral.

00:55:17.040 Agreed.

00:55:17.420 But you wouldn't think that affects how meaningful their life is.

00:55:21.560 No, but it clearly doesn't.

00:55:22.640 There are people who advocate for things in the public space that I think are abhorrent and wrong.

00:55:28.200 But it clearly, their activism, quote unquote, gives them meaning and purpose.

00:55:31.860 I suppose people might intuitively want to say that, well, that it makes sense.

00:55:35.900 Do you think it makes sense ever to say that while somebody feels like their life is really meaningful, it's actually not?

00:55:42.760 Do you think that can ever be true?

00:55:44.120 Well, people sometimes lie, but that's not the same thing.

00:55:46.700 Okay, discounting lying, right?

00:55:48.120 But if somebody thinks their life is meaningful, can they be incorrect?

00:55:51.860 Because the view that you're putting forward here, and maybe it's true, means that they can't be incorrect.

00:55:57.100 I think that people sometimes will delude themselves about, they will do things that make them feel good and they will get confused and they will think, well, you know, advocate, throwing soup on the Mona Lisa is the purpose of my life.

00:56:11.500 And my meaning is to go out there and advocate for climate change, awareness or whatever.

00:56:15.660 And then they grow up and they realize maybe that wasn't the purpose of meaning of the life.

00:56:19.680 However, I do believe there is a meaning and a purpose to be discovered by that person at some point.

00:56:24.620 And they may, in the right conditions, do that.

00:56:26.740 So that's interesting.

00:56:27.300 If they think that the meaning of their life is climate activism, and then one day they grow out of it, as you say, the question is, once they've grown out of it and they look back, is it the case that their life was meaningful at the time?

00:56:38.360 It was, yeah, clearly, well, obviously, then fine.

00:56:41.260 But I think, I suppose the objection that I'm driving at is that it just seems to make it all a bit arbitrary.

00:56:49.360 And meaning is supposed to be the big foundational human thing.

00:56:54.080 It's what makes us human.

00:56:55.480 You know, it's having that reason to get out of bed in the morning.

00:56:58.200 It's having a reason to act.

00:57:01.360 And if that grand thing is reduced to something as arbitrary, it's just like, you know, whatever you sort of happen to want.

00:57:10.100 That's not what I said, though.

00:57:11.940 I didn't say it's whatever you happen to want.

00:57:14.740 It's discovering your most fundamental value.

00:57:16.700 Yes.

00:57:17.040 Which is whatever you happen to want most fundamentally.

00:57:20.800 No, because want is, for me, rooted in desire.

00:57:24.420 Yes.

00:57:24.720 Want is, I desire this.

00:57:27.160 Is value not rooted in desire?

00:57:29.360 No, no, no.

00:57:30.100 Value, to me, is something completely different.

00:57:32.280 Value, to me, is what is important to you and the way that you see the world and the way that you move within the world.

00:57:38.660 It's important to you, right?

00:57:40.240 Yes.

00:57:40.840 But a desire is something that I don't think is of importance.

00:57:46.680 I can desire something, but it's not actually of importance.

00:57:49.940 I don't think you can desire something that you don't value.

00:57:52.500 Let's put it that way.

00:57:53.980 Yeah.

00:57:54.720 Well, I disagree.

00:57:55.900 You can desire to buy, you can desire material possessions.

00:57:59.960 They're not actually of importance.

00:58:02.180 You may believe they are of importance, but they're actually not.

00:58:04.680 I know what you mean.

00:58:05.540 This is where I think it gets a bit complicated because I think that when you desire a material object,

00:58:11.440 you don't desire the material object.

00:58:12.740 You desire the joy that you're promised from the material object.

00:58:15.460 So when you buy the material object and it turns out not to be what you wanted, it's not that you desired the material object and you were wrong.

00:58:21.840 It's that you desired the joy and you didn't get it.

00:58:24.980 When I say you can't desire something you don't value, there seem to be really obvious counterexamples.

00:58:31.440 I can desire material goods, but actually I don't value them.

00:58:35.300 The thing is what you really desire from that material good is joy and you do value the joy.

00:58:39.880 Do you see what I'm saying?

00:58:40.380 Yes, but I'll use an example for, let's say, a comedian or somebody who is in the performing arts.

00:58:47.620 They say they desire success, but you talk to enough successful people, comedians, whoever it is,

00:58:54.440 and they will actually say to you, once they've reached a certain level, that actually the adulation is empty.

00:59:01.820 The true joy comes in the creating.

00:59:04.080 And the creating, the reason that they love it so much is because it's an expression of who they are.

00:59:10.020 And I'm not going to sound religious when I say this, but art is an expression of the soul.

00:59:14.880 Yeah, okay.

00:59:15.820 And so that's where the joy comes from.

00:59:17.480 It doesn't come from a million Twitter followers.

00:59:20.780 It doesn't come from playing out huge venues.

00:59:23.540 It comes from doing what you love and making a connection with another person.

00:59:30.820 Yeah, but notice the thing that's desired there is the joy.

00:59:33.560 Yes.

00:59:34.160 So like you say, somebody desires success.

00:59:36.340 Well, if we're going to be pedantic about it, which I think we have to be when we're having this kind of discussion about essentially definitions, right?

00:59:44.480 You don't desire the, let's say, success or the fame or the audience.

00:59:51.000 What you desire, strictly speaking, is the sort of positive mental state, the joy, as you put it, that comes from having that.

00:59:59.700 Right.

01:00:00.040 If I told you, for example, if somebody said, well, I really, I really desire to play in front of 5,000 people.

01:00:05.960 And I said, well, look, how about this?

01:00:07.680 I can grant this to you, but I will just make it so I'll go into your brain chemistry and make it so that you hate it.

01:00:14.180 You, I promise you that you can do it, but you will hate it.

01:00:16.420 You'll have a terrible time.

01:00:17.200 You'll be in pain.

01:00:18.060 You'll be embarrassed.

01:00:18.900 You'll, you'll hate the whole experience.

01:00:20.100 You'll probably be like, well, actually, I don't want to do that because you didn't desire to be in front of 5,000 people.

01:00:25.460 You desired this joy and you're using the phrase, you know, selling out a venue as a proxy for that thing that you desire.

01:00:31.160 Right.

01:00:31.920 And, and so the thing that's actually desired in and of itself is that thing which you value, which is joy.

01:00:38.940 And that's why I think that desire and value are essentially the same thing.

01:00:42.000 Thus, when you say that finding meaning is about essentially discovering what your fundamental value is, it's about discovering what your fundamental desire is.

01:00:50.100 And that seems arbitrary to me.

01:00:51.360 But it's also about the expression of the self.

01:00:54.780 Right.

01:00:55.320 That's what it goes down.

01:00:56.460 So for instance, I know a comedian.

01:00:58.160 He's very good.

01:00:58.960 He's very skillful.

01:00:59.800 He's built this huge online following.

01:01:01.980 He's now achieving his dream.

01:01:03.720 I know for a fact that he doesn't particularly like his audience.

01:01:07.620 His material isn't actually honest to what he thinks and believes.

01:01:11.920 He's essentially traps now.

01:01:14.600 And that is a very, very quick way to make yourself miserable because you are living a life

01:01:19.300 and you're producing an art that is completely inauthentic to who you are.

01:01:23.160 Yeah.

01:01:24.100 Yeah.

01:01:24.940 Because, yeah, I, I, I, I, I know what you mean, right?

01:01:27.940 So, so the, I suppose the, the desire element there is this, is this desire to express yourself.

01:01:34.280 But I, I, I never.

01:01:35.100 But that's not a desire.

01:01:36.220 This is the difference.

01:01:37.440 I think, and to be honest, I think we may be getting sort of lost in the weeds here.

01:01:40.540 And I'm not, I'm not entirely sure exactly what it is that we're, we're, we're arguing

01:01:43.400 about, but this is the, this is the problem with when you start talking about meaning and

01:01:48.800 purpose and spirituality and this kind of thing, you end up watching these discussions

01:01:52.620 and, and, and, and, and people think, you know, what are we even talking about anymore?

01:01:56.160 We were talking about like, you know, whether desire is intricately linked to value.

01:02:00.280 Like, okay, that's an interesting conversation, but it sounds like something out of a bloody

01:02:03.380 platonic dialogue or something.

01:02:05.020 You know what I mean?

01:02:05.440 Well, that's what I was about to say, desire, not desire, expression of your true self is

01:02:11.020 a lot like love.

01:02:11.880 It can only be experienced.

01:02:13.060 It can't be explained.

01:02:13.960 Like we could sit here and have this exact same conversation that we've just had about

01:02:17.260 the word meaning or the word purpose, about the word love.

01:02:20.720 There is no way to communicate it through language.

01:02:23.180 There isn't.

01:02:24.020 That's, that's true.

01:02:25.080 There are, there are.

01:02:25.440 Other than it's irrational brain chemistry that makes you feel certain feelings, what those

01:02:29.820 feelings are, you cannot possibly explain.

01:02:32.140 Right.

01:02:32.220 That's true.

01:02:32.620 Yeah.

01:02:32.720 So what I'm trying to tell you is the, the, the thing we're talking about in terms of

01:02:38.260 meaning and purpose is not something that actually can be communicated through words

01:02:43.040 to somebody who hasn't yet experienced it.

01:02:45.200 I, I can, I can understand that.

01:02:47.000 I understand that there are things in the world which can only be known through experience.

01:02:50.280 Yes.

01:02:50.660 Let's say.

01:02:51.220 Yes.

01:02:51.440 And, um, I suppose, I think, uh, a good example of this is probably parenthood.

01:02:57.640 Um, I, I, I can sort of take a guess at what it's like to sort of have a kid and really

01:03:04.240 care about your kid and, and find meaning and bringing them up.

01:03:06.560 But I, I imagine that it's like, you just don't even come close to getting it until you

01:03:12.140 have a kid of your own, right?

01:03:13.060 No.

01:03:13.260 And maybe there's something like that going on.

01:03:14.640 That, that's, that's totally.

01:03:15.620 That's it.

01:03:16.100 Yeah.

01:03:16.240 But yet, if you ask me to define, you know, what does it mean to have a child or what

01:03:21.100 does it mean to, you know, value their upbringing, I think I could still take a pretty good crack

01:03:24.920 at, at, at saying what that is.

01:03:26.240 And I, I do think that this definition of meaning, if not essentially being linked to

01:03:31.220 desire and, and, uh, and, and, and value, but value being desire.

01:03:35.900 I don't know what meaning is in other words, but if you, if you, if you have a better definition

01:03:39.580 or, or can land on one, then, then, then you let me know.

01:03:41.940 All right.

01:03:42.300 If you're watching this, you need to get pregnant by Alex so you can have a child and realize

01:03:46.080 everything you just said doesn't make sense.

01:03:47.740 Anyway, Alex, it's been great having you back.

01:03:49.580 Yeah.

01:03:49.980 It's, um, it's, it's, it's always a joy.

01:03:51.760 I hope it's not gotten a bit too, um, a bit, a bit too sort of wordy and, and, and abstract.

01:03:56.680 Look, at least you didn't walk out like PGHs.

01:03:58.420 Yeah.

01:03:58.840 Yeah.

01:03:59.140 Actually, you know, if you're going to make this whole interview about meaning and value,

01:04:03.120 then good luck.

01:04:05.140 Frankly, I'm sick of the subject and I'm sick to death of the people who promote it.

01:04:08.980 Yeah.

01:04:09.220 And that's when I saw it.

01:04:11.240 Just don't rip the microphone as you leave.

01:04:13.280 Um, before we go over to our local supporters who get to ask questions to, uh, Alex, our

01:04:20.280 final question is always the same.

01:04:21.680 And you've, you've actually mentioned it at the start, ruining the reveal, which is what's

01:04:25.840 the one thing we're not talking about ads to society that we really should be?

01:04:29.120 Okay.

01:04:29.280 Well, so there's, there's that, but, but because I'll, you know, I want to give you something

01:04:32.060 else. Um, I think the extent to which emotions are at play in what we think is rational decision

01:04:45.860 making, everybody recognizes this to some degree. Everybody recognizes that, oh, you're, you're

01:04:50.960 actually, you know, being more emotional than you realize. But I mean, like really specifically,

01:04:54.520 I recently spoke to Robert Sapolsky. I don't know if you've had him on the show. He just wrote a book

01:04:58.620 about, uh, why there's no free will, which, um, which I agree with. I don't think there

01:05:02.400 is. And as part of discussing that, he talked about this so-called hungry judge phenomenon.

01:05:06.400 I don't know if you've come across this. There was this, this, this large scale study done

01:05:10.800 about, um, uh, parole boards and they were trying to figure out what's the biggest predictive

01:05:19.520 factor as to whether a judge grants parole or not. And they found that the biggest predictive

01:05:23.140 factor is how long it had been since the judge had eaten a meal. Now that's really, that's

01:05:29.360 really like cool and funny. And like, oh, what an interesting anecdote that people go

01:05:33.240 to prison or get their freedom based on whether or not a judge is hungry. And I think it's my

01:05:41.240 contention that this happens all the time, that we are essentially emotive creatures, that

01:05:45.840 things we think are plain, simple, propositional truths are not. People recognize this to some

01:05:51.020 degree. Oh, I was hangry. Oh, you need to sleep on it. They recognize that sometimes,

01:05:55.360 you know, the, the, the way that your emotive status can affect how you're reasoning. I think

01:05:59.520 it's like emotion through and through. I think so much of what we think is emotion. Moralizing

01:06:04.680 is emotion. Ethics is expression of emotion. Even like, you know, uh, when, when you consider

01:06:11.600 your, your basic philosophical premises, I've, I've sometimes argued in the past that we can

01:06:17.520 emotivize all of philosophy. I mean, why can't P be true and false at the same time?

01:06:21.000 Why is the law of non-contradiction fundamental logical law? Why does it hold? Well, because

01:06:26.020 when you try to consider P being true and false at the same time, your brain just goes, no,

01:06:31.620 just goes, boo, just goes, I don't like it. I think that so much of our thinking is emotive

01:06:36.620 and, um, there's nothing we can do about that. People bring it up to say, well, why don't

01:06:39.480 we fix it? You know, the hungry judge phenomenon. If, if we, uh, if we all recognize that, then

01:06:44.220 we can, we can start trying to make judges act in accordance with reason and said, no, we can't.

01:06:49.100 It's not going to go away, but we have to be aware of it so that we can mitigate the fact

01:06:52.440 of its inevitability.

01:06:53.280 It's a great answer. There's a lot I disagree with and find out what that is on Locals.

01:06:59.620 Cosmic Skeptic, as far as I've seen, you have avoided the trans debate. What are your views

01:07:04.700 on the whole situation?

01:07:05.740 Your full Great Outdoors Comedy Festival lineup is here on September 11th through 13th at Arendale

01:07:15.500 Park. Three nights, five shows, huge laughs. September 11th through 13th. Buy tickets now

01:07:22.080 at greatoutdoorscomedyfestival.com.

01:07:24.580 See you all across the beach.

TRIGGERnometry - March 24, 2024

Can We Live Without Religion？ - Alex O'Connor

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript