Rev Left Radio - Contemplative Practice and Political Struggle

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

Jay Michaelson is a journalist, meditation teacher, author of many books, and worked as an LGBTQ activist for ten years. Jay holds a Ph.D. in religion from Hebrew University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, a nondenominational rabbinic ordination, and is authorized to teach in the Theravadan Buddhist lineage.  Jay joins Breht to discuss spirituality, grief and suffering, Judaism and Buddhism, the importance of collective political struggle, what meditation can offer organizers/activists, and much more!  Find out more about Jay here: https://www.jaymichaelson.net/ Outro Music: "Lost in the Country" by Trace Mountains ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I have on rabbi, meditation teacher, lawyer, activist, and many other things, Jay Michelson to talk about the intersection of spirituality, religion, and political struggle, the role that capitalism plays in climate change. Some of our political disagreements come out, which is really fun to go. back and forth a little bit on. And we just cover a lot of ground, including, of course, spiritual and religious suffering and how to turn suffering into something productive that can be used to alleviate the suffering of others. So all in all, this is a really fun, wide-ranging conversation with a really cool, intelligent, insightful, and just overall friendly human being. So I think everybody will really enjoy this. And as always, if you like what we do here

at RevLeft Radio, you can support us by going to patreon.com, forward slash rev left radio signing up to the patreon in an exchange for a few dollars a month you get access to bonus content we are 100% listener funded always will be so it's incredibly important and appreciated to get that level of support and if you can't give financially doing something as simple as sharing these episodes with a friend or leaving a positive review on iTunes can be very helpful you know we have a funny little rating where the vast majority of our ratings are five stars and then we have barely any two three or four stars and then we have like a significant portion of zero stars or one star whatever and those are all from you know right wing people sometimes

we'll have waves of them coming and and downgrading the show to try to make us look shittier and to decrease our reach etc so every positive a review goes a long way and counteracting that nonsense and we really appreciate it so without further ado here's my discussion with j michelson Hi, I'm Jay Michelson. I'm a meditation teacher, former LGBTQ activist, and I'm a colonist for New York Magazine. Yeah, well, welcome to the show, Jay. It's an honor and a pleasure to have you on. I think we're going to have a really interesting conversation.

You come out of a background that's both politically oriented as well as spiritually and religiously oriented, which is an intersection that I'm personally interested in and have covered questions. quite extensively on this show. But to begin, just to help orient our listeners to who you are, can you just talk a little bit more about your political and your religious background in particular? Sure. Yeah. So I've definitely for the last, I guess, 20 or so years, I've worked at that intersection, politics and religion, politics and spirituality. So I, on my kind of spiritual religious path. I was born and raised in a Jewish tradition and am now also an ordained rabbi. That kind of came late. So I'm going out of chronological order. And that's my root tradition. But I'm also authorized to teach in a Taravaden Buddhist meditation tradition, Sri Lankan lineage. And so my Buddhist practice, which has also been in 15, 20 years at this point, is kind of central to my outlook on how problems can be addressed from a sort of inner and outer basis at the same time.

And again, that sort of nexus of activism and contemplative practice. Professionally, so I graduated law school and did a few different things and I've worked kind of in an activist space in one form or another for the last 20 years. I spent 10 years as an LGBTQ activist, mostly working in religious communities. I wrote a book a while ago called God versus Gay, the religious case for equality, arguing that mainstream kind of Western religious values favor inclusion and diversity. So it's not, wasn't a compromise, but that's actually living out those values. And transitioned around 10 years ago to working more in the journalism field.

So for a while, I was at the Supreme Court columnist, The Daily Beast, and doing opinion writing. So it was activism with a pen, I guess, instead of kind of on the ground. And I have written a lot about the intersection of, kind of law, religion, sexuality, and lately, also in the last five years, climate change, which I know we'll talk about a little bit later. It's funny, I've kind of come full circle, because when I started law school, I was focused on climate change, some of the first work I did back in the 90s, so a million years ago. And now for me, it's seeing where our biases and limitations of the human mind are impacting,

literally impacting the earth, but impacting our inability to do anything about maybe the most pressing crisis of our time. That's the first time I've given that short summary. I hope that landed. Yeah, it did. It's really interesting. Just as a side question, how did you come to be interested in Buddhism and Buddhist practice? Obviously, you're born into a Jewish tradition, but what pushed you in the direction of Buddhism and meditation? It's funny. You know, a lot of kind of podcasts on spirituality subjects often start with the question, like, were you a weird kid? and I definitely was I like spending time alone and in nature

I always had that kind of impulse or wiring there might be some sort of cultural and social reasons for that I'm not saying it's literally like genetic or anything but for some reason I've always been moved in that tradition in that direction and in my 20s

I started getting into meditation this was kind of before it was fashionable I guess and eventually first I was doing sort of secular meditation and then what I thought was kind of Jewish meditation but eventually kind of followed those to their roots, which was in Buddhist traditions. So starting in the 2000s, I started doing kind of longer meditation retreats, three-month retreats and, you know, long periods of time and silence.

And that became sort of my main contemplative orientation. So even though I still work in the Jewish community and practice in that way, it's very much infused with what's now called like a Abuju sensibility, the Buddhist Jewish sensibility. Yeah, that's a really interesting mixture, and both those traditions are ancient and beautiful in their own ways. I'm wondering, as both a rabbi and a Buddhist meditation teacher, if you can talk about some of the overlap and possibly even the tensions between those two traditions in particular. Sure. I mean, for me, I think a lot of what I used to say, and I guess it's still somewhat true, is that my mind is very Buddhist, my heart is very Jewish.

now that I said that just now, I'm not sure I still feel that way, but that's still sort of true. I think as a, I'm not a traditional theist. I don't have sort of a traditional God belief. I wrote a book a number of years ago called Everything is God sort of a pantheistic iteration of mystical theology. But I don't have this like the old man in the sky view. So that's sort of the Buddhist mind. And I see the challenge of human existence the way the Buddha did, suffering and the end of suffering. You know, we experience suffering, and in dealing with it, we create suffering for more people. You know, one of the quirks about how Western Buddhism developed was that it developed out of a kind of monastic tradition that didn't have a lot of social justice engagement. Now, for the last 200 years, there are 100, 200 years, there are a lot of forms of engaged socially conscious Buddhism. But the roots of that tradition don't have that. And so for me, I've actually been animated a lot by the Jewish social justice. orientation, which is very strong, not necessarily lived by every Jewish person or Jewish state in the world. But at least, you know, in the tradition and in the texts and in the community,

there's a strong activist orientation and a very progressive kind of Jewish tradition, certainly in the West, for the last 100, 150 years. So kind of those pieces sort of fit in together. So I love like the sort of Jewish folk practices, whether it's lighting candles on Friday night or the holidays and things like that. But I don't have what some would consider traditional Jewish beliefs about God or commandment or afterlife or things like that. I'm much more focused on the here and now. Yeah, absolutely. That's really interesting. We've done a lot of work recently on the 17th century Portuguese philosopher Spinoza,

coming from a Jewish tradition, but articulating a sort of pantheistic vision of God, you know, a single substance, et cetera. So it kind of dovetails with what we're talking about here a little bit. And that opens up this question, which is, you know, what religious or philosophical thinkers from any tradition, historical or contemporary, have influenced you and your thinking the most? Yeah, it's hard to like pick five or ten out of the field. You know, I think on the Jewish side, I mean, the one that comes to mind is Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched with the civil rights movement in the 60s, and who came out of a Hasidic Jewish mystical dynasty, left that world, became kind of a progressive, startling, progressive Jewish thinker in terms of his spiritual writing and teaching, but also very much in an activist world. He said one time when he was marching with Dr. King that he felt he was praying with his feet.

That's definitely how I see the best kind of prayer is one that's active and that's activist and that's motivated by compassion, not by supernatural beliefs, but by, you know, a real desire to change the world. That's probably true. I think for my second one, I might name a contemporary of mine, Rabbi Jill Hammer, who's the sort of pagan Jewish priestess rabbi who has really transformed how I think about these traditions. in general. There's a poem by Adrian Rich, a wonderful sort of lesbian Jewish poet of the 20th century called Diving Into the Rec, that when we engage with these traditions, we're diving into a kind of shipwreck. And there are treasures in there, but let's not forget that it's a shipwreck, a shipwreck of patriarchy, a shipwreck of oppression. She uses, Adrian Rich, uses the words, you know, we're reading a book in which our names do not appear. And Jill, Jill Hammer, has been one of the people

who's really helped me see how to do that, how to engage with a tradition and a history that's so problematic and keeping our eyes wide open while also, you know, maybe diving for the treasure that might be there. Yeah, I love that metaphor of a shipwreck with any of these traditions. I mean, you know, history weighs upon the mind of the living like a nightmare, as it was once said. And so any tradition that goes far back enough is going to be sort of shaped and molded by the lesser aspects of human nature, if you will. So I like the way that's put. So, yeah, on that point about Abraham Joshua Heschel, I actually heard of him through Cornell West, who is another one of these figures who, you know, marries social justice activism to a spiritual tradition in a really effective way and does both a service in the process.

So if I wanted to, like, I've wanted to dive into Heschel's work, would you have a recommendation off the top of your head of where I should possibly start to dive into his work? Yeah, there's an anthology of his work, his work called Moral, Granger, and Spiritual Audacity. And, you know, some of his stuff, that's, I would go number one in terms of certainly the intersection. On just the spiritual side, he has these sort of longer books of philosophy, which can be, you know, a bit of a handful. He has a short book called The Sabbath, which is about the practice of keeping the Sabbath, but which is really about his kind of notion that religion is the art of learning to live in amazement. And then how do we respond to that amazement?

So it's not just about like getting high and having the amazing experience, but then how does that change your life? And what are the imperatives that you have to other people and to the earth as a result of that encounter with the numinous, with the mystery. So I think the Sabbath is an easy read, and the moral grandeur anthology is a good sort of sampler of his work. Awesome. Yeah, I'll definitely get those right after this recording.

That's awesome. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah. Do it on my Amazon page. Just kidding. Absolutely. Moving forward a little bit and talking about a book that you wrote, in 2015, you wrote a book

titled The Gate of Tears, Sadness, and the Spiritual Path. you know, suffering with, in my case, in the case of many others, I think a little help from psychedelics is what put me personally on a spiritual path in my teenage years and continues to be an impetus for spiritual practice. Listeners of the show probably know that over the past few months I've lost both my dad and a baby. So grief and loss have been, you know, very predominant in my life for the last year, not to mention all the social stuff with the pandemic, mass death, climate chaos, etc., adding to that. But I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that book, The Gate of Tears, and specifically what Judaism and Buddhism can uniquely offer to people in periods of loss, despair,

suffering, et cetera. Thanks. And as I expressed over our emails, you know, I'm moved and, you know, feeling a lot of empathy for some of the loss that you've experienced. I had a kind of a strange pandemic in which I had a lot of mentors of mine die, but none of COVID. They're just, during that, the year, 2020, 21, I lost four of my kind of key mentor figures. And it was strange that there was, on the one hand, this global loss and grief that we still not processed. And on the other hand, my own loss just over that period of time, which wasn't exactly the same. And it sounds like yours wasn't either. And yet, you know, you're in this period of grief while the world is as well. for me I think the gate of tears came out of both extraordinary sadness and ordinary sadness

just the kinds that we might feel every day and from the Buddhist perspective it's not you know these these feelings aren't things to banish it's just a thing they're perhaps uninvited houseguests of the mind that we might maybe welcome in or at least greet as a friend and it's kind of the attempt to make everything bad go away I think they gets us into trouble, you know, the resistance to the sadness rather than the sadness itself. That's where kind of that suffering comes from. And in fact, you know, sadness and loss can be incredibly generative. You've experienced that. It generates art and it generates connection and solidarity with others. It generates compassion and caring about others.

When we experience really grief and loss, and that's also true for those of us who've had some experience of marginalization or oppression, we can see it. And with someone else, We don't want them to have that experience. You know, so for myself, you know, this is kind of the spiritual intersectionality piece, you know, where I've encountered, I've obviously very privileged as a kind of, you know, relatively middle class white guy in America. I've also experienced a little bit of marginalization for being queer. And so when I see other people experiencing that being on the wrong end of privilege or being on the wrong side of oppression, I kind of can draw. on my own experiences of pain, not to say it's the same or comparable, obviously nothing like that, but just to say, well, oh, yeah, I kind of might have a sense about what it is, what it does

feel like to be othered in that way or to be, you know, marginalized or stigmatized by society in that way. So that's that experience of being present with our grief or with our loss opens us to empathy and to solidarity. And, you know, I feel like if someone hasn't suffered, it's a lot harder to kind of really get someone else's suffering. So that's kind of that last piece is really more from the Jewish tradition. My favorite verse from the Bible is do not oppress a foreigner or a stranger because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. So that shared experience of slavery is meant to inspire ethical action toward those who we might

easily marginalize. But it comes from that experience, right? And whether it's the experience of slavery in Egypt is an. imaginative memory and a collective one. But we all have our experiences of grief and loss that are direct. And from that, I think, can come all kinds of wisdom and action. And so that's sort of what that book is about. And that's been a really nourishing bit of wisdom for me over these last few years. Yeah, absolutely. Well said. For me, you know, specifically focused on the Buddhist tradition, which I know the most about it and have engaged with the most. There is this,

you know, this ability over, you know, years and years of practice to, as you say, be present with difficult emotions, open yourself up to the waves of grief or the depths of sadness in a way that before practice I would have tried to repress, escape, squirm out of, etc. And through that radical openness to the experience of something like grief, I think there's a healthy processing that goes on and a facing of the challenging emotions that can deepen you. And the nuances of differences between negative emotions like grief is not the same as depression and is not the same as sadness. And to be sort of curious and to explore these emotions and to find where they overlap and how

they differ, I think is a fascinating, insightful practice that comes out of being able to hold your attention for a period of time, you know, through a practice like meditation. And then the turning of suffering into compassion, I think, is real heroic spiritual work. You know, losing a baby or now that I've lost a parent, you know, there's the pain and the acute grief that comes with those losses, or in the case of a miscarriage, the lack of a future that could be. But there's also now this new understanding that I have with every human being who's ever lost a parent or every human being who's ever miscarried a baby. And, you know, to be able to open up to that core of humanity at the center of that suffering and to sort of universalize your suffering on one level is

like, yes, this is my suffering, but it's also the suffering of humanity. And that generates so much compassion now the next time a friend of mine loses a parent or, you know, God forbid, goes through a miscarriage or loses a child, you know, I'll be able to connect and help and maybe guide and be a touchstone for them when they're going through their grief. And that turning around and turning one suffering into compassion for others and then acting on that, right? That's the core feature of what makes that useful is going out in the world and acting on that radical compassion to help alleviate the suffering of others, I think is truly profound. And it's a process it takes time, but it deepens you as a human being in ways that few other things can.

Totally. Yeah, I think that's really beautiful. I remember when my mom was having chemo, she was in Midtown Manhattan for chemotherapy, and she had finished the session, and, you know, these are long, you know, hours, long sessions. And I had to get us a taxi to get home. And so I was out on the street while she was, like, waiting in the lobby of the hospital. And I felt like, you know, I was getting the. very unusual taxi, but I was just some guy on the street, right? Nobody else knew that I was

trying to get a taxi for my mom who was, you know, dying of cancer and just had chemotherapy. And then I kind of looked around and that's true for everyone on the street, right? Like there's no, you know, I live in New York City. There's no, you don't know who you're, who you're next to on the street, you know, and what they're going through and what, what they're suffering is in in the past or the present. And it was something that really, it felt really connecting. I had just imagined everybody trying to hail a taxi or something. I don't know why. I didn't an uber but i was trying to get a taxi specifically uh and uh anyway it's like you know you you you know you just sort of see them in it in a different light and connecting the dots you know to

some of the political stuff that i know we're going to talk about you know for me it's that kind of just basic core empathy that sometimes seems so missing on the right you know like oh well who cares about so called you know quote unquote illegal immigrants or whatever you know like if you just spend even a moment you know getting to know somebody's story of course you care about right people who are undocumented and who are, you know, in some process of migration for whatever reason or, you know, oh, who cares about, you know, trans kids or whatever? Like, I'm just going to, I have some stereotype or some fear. And I'm not going to, if you actually get to know anyone who's trans and I have a number of trans friends, like, you just, you get it, right? It's just about humanity and

wanting people to be able to flourish and be who they are and, and not suffer and not feel the stuff that we've just talked about. So I think there's, to me, a direct connection between being present with that grief and suffering and then the empathy that leads to a kind of political program. And that's also true, obviously, for climate change as well, which is, you know, could become the great humanitarian catastrophe of the coming century. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that idea on the right, you know, obviously there are people on the right who have compassion or whatever, but generally speaking, especially many of those who claim to be genuine followers of Christ, lack and ability, it seems, to empathize with another human being, and that increases with

how different that human being is to them or how they view that person as being different. And in a lot of cases we see with right-wingers, public figures, that until it happens to them and still something touches them directly, they're not willing to be empathetic or to try to put themselves in the shoes of somebody else. So, like, you know, the classic example is like, I think it's like Dick Cheney, you know, anti-gay marriage until one of his daughters comes out of gay, right? And you've been seeing it now with COVID, right? I mean, we're seeing, like, people who are denying science and, like, denying any sort

of public health, like, oh, this isn't real or this or like, and then all of a sudden they get sick. And then they suddenly turn on a dime. It's like, oh, wow, everyone said, take this seriously because I got sick. It's like, well, geez, weren't you paying attention, you know, when half a million Americans died of this thing? Like, what, we're, yeah. So I think it is that sort of disconnect that's aided by.

And it's not to other right-wingers. We all have all these capacities within ourselves, right? Everyone, I certainly have the capacity to not care about someone else or to give into fear or to let anger make decisions, you know, as opposed to empathy and compassion. So it's not like they're different for me. I'm just as implicated. But, you know, it's which part of ourselves do we hand the microphone to? You know, which inner voice do we want to amplify?

And I think there's that, I forget the exact metaphor, but it's like we have two two animals, one on each shoulder, you know, the kind one and the anger-based, you know, cruel one, which one is stronger is the one that you feed, right? It's not like every, it's not, we all have them. It's just where do we, which one do we want to nourish? Absolutely. Yeah, and being aware of, you know, in Yungi in terms, your shadow or those aspects of yourself that you would rather look away from or discard or repress or escape, being aware of those aspects allows you to work through those aspects and allows you to have a much less dogmatic and holier than thou view of yourself and others in the world knowing how flawed and imperfect in minute detail that you are

helps you to accept and understand those frailties and humans around you and to not expect you know the impossible from finite imperfect beings and so even even that realm of work can be very productive in that sense right absolutely well let's go ahead and move into the climate change in the political action part of this conversation. And I came across you in an interview did with 10% happier. And you talked about climate change. And, you know, you had this wonderful argumentative position about the necessity of collective political action

and a sort of rejection of the sort of hyper individualist lifestyle consumer choices that sometimes gets propped up, particularly in spiritual communities, but just within a liberal society, broadly. And I think there's even ample evidence that, you know, big oil fossil fuel companies have promoted the individual carbon footprint narrative in order to say that culpability is all of us and sort of, you know, get it away from them as an institution or divert the eyes from structural analysis of any sort. So can you kind of talk about this problem of hyper-individualism

and consumerism in our culture and how spiritual and religious communities can internally, that and maybe just go over your argument for why, you know, marrying these spiritual practices to political struggle is, is so essential. Sure. So, yeah, for me, this is kind of where where a lot of my energy is right now, you know, in these couple of years. And so, you know, for me, a foundation starting point is a thinker named Joanna Macy. She's a meditation teacher, poet, brilliant writer, and also long-time activists, primarily in environmentalism. And, you know, kind of her, one of her many kind of guiding points or guiding thesis is that for many of us, you know, the pain or the gigantic tragedy of climate change is so great that we

just literally, we just cannot deal with it. And so we compartmentalize it and put it away. And that's true, obviously, for many people who are climate deniers, right? It's like they can't possibly face the enormity of this challenge or of the changes that would be necessary. But it's also true for those of us who do care about climate change, but want to just do something about it and end up doing things that are not necessarily helpful. So I'm not going to really speak to the climate denier side. I'm hoping that not too many of your listeners are on that team. But many of us are on this kind of second group. Like we care and we just, we want to do something.

And so rather than be with the fact of like looking at what's really difficult of what we can and cannot do, we do things to make ourselves feel better, basically. And sometimes these are ethical things and they're good things to do, you know, individual actions that do reduce our carbon footprint. But from a sort of numerical, scientific data-driven point of view, and this isn't like me making this stuff up. This is kind of, if you look at the drawdown project, I think is the best. easy resource on the on the web of just like looking at where greenhouse gases are coming from

carbon dioxide and others and what needs to be done to draw them down individual action is pointless it has no impact it has point zero zero zero zero like eight zero is one percent impact on on the world even if all of the virtuous people in the world took all of the individual actions that we should do you know recycling everything and going to a low waste life style and you know living in a smaller house and not driving a lot and not taking airplanes even if we all did that it wouldn't move the needle at all on global climate change and those are just facts right that's not an ideological position that's reality and the reality is that climate change is driven by a few large industries and large human activities mostly power generation also agriculture

and in order to change those things it doesn't work to drop off the grid your we have to change the grid, right? So even if I conserve electricity, and I should say I drive an electric car, I have, my house is powered by wind power, which is sort of fake, but I do it anyway in terms of how that works. Basically, I'm enriching the utility company, but I'm still doing it. Like, I do these things because they reflect my ethical values, but I'm under no illusion that that is what's going to save the earth. It is not. No individual action is going to save the earth. Again, dropping off the grid is a good example. If we don't change the grid for everyone, if there is still a grid, climate change will continue, right? Power generation is a systemic

collective issue, and that's just one of many, and we could go through some of the others. So the challenge is that that's hard, right? That's hard to do. And even, and you and I'll talk about this in a little bit, you know, even if we agree that we want to change, change the world or change the grid, well-meaning people can have disagreements about how to do that, right? So not only is it difficult to do, but we don't really even agree about how to do it. So that's hard, right? I mean, you know, we're recording this episode as yet another international conference on climate change is taking place. And, you know, like all of the other ones, they're going to, like, come up with some insufficient answers, which we still won't, or policy changes, which we still

won't live up to, but it's better than nothing. So we're doing it. That's kind of crappy, right? That's not the kind of like empowering individual action that feels good. So even if we're on the left and like we don't believe the messaging, you know, around, you know, you can make a difference or whatever, we still have a tendency to fall into that. And I think there is that way of thinking where we do things that don't actually matter. And I think that's because of what Joanna Macy put her finger on that, you know, we feel like we want to do something. And even if that's something that we do has no impact, it's that's more comfortable. I guess than then looking at what really has to be done, which are these systemic changes. But as you mentioned, you know, it was, it was big oil that popularized the term carbon footprint.

And they did it and that you can, you know, research that and Google it. It's not hard to, you know, there's documented evidence. It's not like a weird conspiracy theory. It actually was true. You know, here's how to calculate your carbon footprint so you can do your part. And that was a dodge. That was so big oil is responsible for climate change, not you. and they're the ones who have to really change,

and we have to force them to change, right, through political power. So that's the, you know, the idea of putting it on you as an individual was very much a tactic, and it was a tactic to deflect responsibility from where it belongs, which is on systemic structural and corporate structures. Exactly right. You know, one of the analogies, metaphors, whatever,

that I used to drive this point home about the, impotence of individual action when it comes to a global problem like climate changes, I always say if you and everybody that you personally know, all your friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, everybody that you have a personal face-to-face, you know, relationship with all, you know, I usually might say die, but I think that's a little too disturbing. So let's just say raptured, right? Immediately raptured.

That sounds more pleasant, yeah. Much more. Raptured off the planet, so you never, you know, did a single carbon footprint ever again. it would still make absolutely zero difference to the overall amount of carbon going into the atmosphere and the problem of climate change itself. And so that just takes the entire apparatus and any hope of having an individualist argument out of play. And it just makes intuitive sense that that's not going to be the way to do it.

Now, the points you make about, you know, behaving and living in a way that accurately reflects your ethical commitments, I think is important in its own right. But you just cannot confuse that with actually making. making a practical difference in the world. You can do the collective struggle to make the actual difference while also maintaining ethical commitments that you, you know, adhere to in your day-to-day life. And I think there is an importance there. But even with all of that, oh, go ahead.

Let me throw in one little piece on that, too, which is just to, this is a point that came from Anthony Lyserowitz, who directs the Yale Center for Climate Communication, which is really my favorite data gatherer. Like, it's a really good data source just for what people think and what motivates behavior change and like just sort of really nuts and bolts. And so he made a nice point about individual action that it does have a communicative value. So, you know, if I'm, you know, generating less waste, let's say, or, you know, I'm recycling or something like that, that does have a zero impact on climate change.

But it has a non-zero impact on communicating the importance of ecological sustainability to the people who come in contact with me. So there is a value in addition to. expressing our ethical commitments, which I think is my, is one main value. There is a sort of value of being in communication about what's important. So we see people do it. It kind of raises the profile. Part of the challenge in centrist and right-wing communities is no one's doing these things. So like we derive social norms from our social communities. And when no one you know, you know, gives a crap about climate change and no one's making any behavior changes in their

life, that makes it pretty clear to you that this is not a real issue and not something that you need to think about or worry about. So just adding that in, you know, since I usually bash individual action and we've now both bashed it for good reasons, just like it does have those values of letting other people know what's important. Yeah. And I completely agree with that. And to your point about, you know, communities where that's not happening, I mean, it's even part of people's political identity to be sort of anti-environmentalist to like not believe at all or to like, you know, make a point of not believing or to poo-pooing the the fact that it even exists as a problem or that humans even cause it like that's part of people's political identity which is right

absolutely right do you remember those bumper stickers like in the early aughts i think it was after the iraq invasion there were those pave-the-planet bumper stickers that big trucks really right i just think that is like drill baby drill right you know like let's have more offshore oil drilling to like you know have more oil and and hurt more ecosystems horrendous yeah yeah yeah some some no and that you know that's like this culture that we're living in of like the best thing you can do is own the libs right so like i'm just going to go i'm just going to be as much of a schmuck as possible you know to like really show it to you like you know and again we see it in every issue right we see it around covid we see it around the big lie and the

and voting stuff we see it you know just all the time this kind of um valorization of meanness uh that is pretty repulsive absolutely absolutely well to that individual is point, and specifically within spiritual and religious communities, I'm wondering why, why, and to what extent, I mean, you could disagree with even the premise that in these spiritual communities, there is this turning away sort of like from politics as like a messy, grotesque affair and fetishizing of individual consumer lifestyle choices instead. Why do you think that exists? And what are just the unique challenges of advancing these sorts of politics in like these deep religious or spiritual communities

in general. Yeah, it is this sort of endemic challenge. So, again, it would like maybe divide it into a couple of parts. So part of it is capitalism, right? So let's call it McMindfulness or you know, Mick Yoga or whatever, you know, where it's kind of making a lifestyle out

of contemplative practices. That's kind of easy. I think, again, for your listeners to kind of spot and ridicule, rightly, ridicule. You know, so it's like, yeah. I mean, if what your meditation practice is about is like finding your Zen by having the exactly perfect candle and looking like Gwyneth Baltrow or something, sure, you know, you're not going to necessarily connect that to social engagement. But, okay, so let's move those guys onto a shelf because that we know about. You know, I think what's more interesting sometimes is to just see that, you know, for a lot of folks, politics harshes their mellow. Like, you know, I want to feel a certain way.

I did one time at a meditation center here in New York, I co-led. a session called, why are you so sensitive, you know, social justice and spiritual communities? And it was with a black activist, friend of mine, who's also a meditation teacher, who had received all kinds of pushback by talking about racial justice and in meditation spaces. And this, I should say, actually, was before the kind of reemergence of Black Lives Matter in 2020. This was back in, before the pandemic, it was probably around 2018, 2019. So I think some of what we were raising then might not be applicable now, because a lot of spiritual communities did get sort of a wake-up call last year.

But at the time, people were like, well, why are we talking about race? I don't want to talk about race. We're talking about meditation. And we're trying to have like, you know, some spiritual thing. And like, don't bring in the, you know, we were like bringing in, you know, bad vibes into their happy place. And that, you know, that is, it's kind of spiritual materialism, right? And it is a tendency, you know, when you're focused on yourself and you're doing

this work on yourself, which I do think is of central. importance, right? I'm into that. There is a tendency to just, you know, get into your little kind of cocoon. And that's, I think, some of the work, right? That's some of the challenge. And I think one of the things may be that this kind of awakening around racial justice has done in some of these communities is realize that that's really a very immature kind of way of looking at practice. Like if that's, that's clearly not the intended result when it's, whether it's any religious tradition or any contemplative tradition obviously the result is not meant to be like well I feel good so done but you know you do find that a lot and politics is really messy and again

on climate change in particular it's particularly messy because of the systemic and collective nature of the problem right so like a lot of issues we really can think of well okay how can I get my own house in order and racial justice is half that as well like how can I look at my own privilege. How can I look at my own blind spots? How can I like look at where I'm failing to show up and stuff like that? But then there is this other part of the systemic and that is really messy. And I think one of reasons I've personally received pushback about the anti-individual action piece on climate change is like that's no fun, right? I want to be able to like just do my own gardening and homesteading, both of which are very good things to do. And like if I'm,

and that's my part. I'm doing my part. And that fits my spiritual. lifestyle and you know getting involved in again whether it's whatever kind of politics it is whether it's electoral politics or whether it's activist politics you know that's like less pleasant and you come into contact with conflict and with people who disagree and it's like that's not as zen so to speak as you know just focusing on yourself yeah absolutely i think there is a general truth uh in spiritually seeking communities that there is some segment of people who are on a spiritual path as a form of escape

from the messiness of their own lives to say nothing of the global political context and so that can definitely come into play and to be fair politics definitely harshes my mellow as well like it sucks like a part of me is like why do I do this to myself but it's because there is so much suffering in the world in politics is a vehicle

if not the vehicle on a collective level to attempt to redress and address these problems and solve them ideally so you have to do. be engaged on that level. But coming to terms with the fact that, you know, to look suffering, global suffering and injustice in the eye is painful and disturbing and sucks. And it is often much more comforting to look away and to recoil into your own personal bubble and your own personal life. The fact is that is a sort of irresponsibility that I think we cannot allow just on

in a general level. And I would hate to see it in myself that part of myself that wants to look away and not care anymore because it is exhausting and scary and horrifying, you know, we have to become aware of that and not fall into that. So I think that's a part of it. Well, and surely there's like a dynamic process here, right? There's like an oscillation, right? So it's not just like finding the balance, like just find the right amount of politics for you. I'm not sure that's quite it. I think it's, you know, you go back and forth, right? So you get really engaged and that involves getting messy and getting, you know, getting dirty. and often, you know, anger and things, emotions like that can be your allies, right?

You need to get angry about some of these things, right? And then, you know, then it's, then you take a step back. So it's like, you know, in dealing with, I kind of learned this from dealing with trauma that, you know, when somebody's traumatized, you know, you want to sort of, you do this thing called pendulation, which is like going back and forth, like a pendulum. You get a little bit closer to the painful subject, whatever it is. And then you can, you can, with mindfulness in particular as an ally, you can notice when you're getting, this word gets overused, but when you're getting triggered. And then you move back a little bit.

So if you're a survivor, let's say, of sexual trauma or something like that or a survivor of violence, you might want, you get a little bit closer to that traumatic, to that source of the trauma. But you also have your kind of attention up to see, okay, I'm too close. Now it's too close. Now I'm triggered in a real way, and not the BS way. like now I'm actually really triggered I need to move back and move back to whatever spiritual practice or other practice nourishes me and then I can go in again and I think that's true for politics for political action as well it is you know I want to say it's traumatizing that's but it is you know it is low level traumatizing to be in some of

the mess that that activism requires and so I think it's that going back and forth and then regenerating and being able to go back in yeah could not agree more a perfectly Yeah. And that resonates deeply with my own experience on both those fronts as well. Now, on the flip side of this, many people in the political world, activist, organizers, etc., particularly on the left, can be skeptical of spirituality and religion altogether and fail to see its relevance to social transformation and political struggle. So with that in mind, what benefits can meditation in particular offer to those of us engaged in activism? Sure. First, I want to validate that suspicion. You know, sometimes religion is the opiate of the masses and definitely spirituality is too. And we just talked a few minutes ago about how that works, right?

I can go to my personal happy place and then I don't care about the rest of the world because I'm in my personal happy place. So what do I care, right? I mean, that is literally an opiate. Oh, I know if it's literally. That is metaphorically an opiate where I feel good. And so I don't think about ending oppression. So I want to validate. that skepticism. You know, in my experience, which now, again, is about 15, 20 years of spiritual

activism, there are a number of answers to your question. So first is what I just said about regeneration, that having the resources to not burn out is ultimately for the good of everyone. At least if you're on the good team, maybe I want the people on the right to burn out. But if you're on the left, right, I mean, burnout is real. And it's, and we do need tools to regenerate. And we all know that. It's just that a lot of tools that many folks use are themselves actually more destructive. So, you know, I'm not certainly not against a good cocktail or, you know, or other substances. But if that becomes the primary coping mechanism, you know, that can itself have negative effects, right? So let alone, right, when it turns into abuse of alcohol

or drugs or anything else. So having some way to regenerate and come back to what's true and being able to be with the difficult, you know, those are the kind of technologies that I think contemplative practice, meditation, and others can really lead to. Second, for me, I've found that being able to be more aware of sort of the more powerful, potentially destructive emotions has made me more effective. So a story I've told many times is when I was doing LGBT activism, I was giving a talk and I was heckled, basically. And in the moment of being heckled, right?

So I was, again, triggered, right? I definitely wanted to shout at this guy and jump down his throat and, you know, punch him in the face. But, you know, thankfully, like, there was enough mindfulness present where I could just actually have a little spaciousness around that anger. Like, okay, I'm feeling really angry. I know what that feels like. I feel it in my arms and stuff. And, you know, I can feel the tension building up. And, okay, so let's think of, like, what's the most skillful thing to do right now in this interchange?

And clearly, this is like sort of activism 101, your point is not to try to convince the heckler, obviously, that's pointless, but to try to win over everyone else, right? So for me, it was to, in that moment, kind of tell a personal story, an emotional story, and one that clearly made me out to be the more reasonable, but also, you know, kind person in the room between me and the heckler, you know, and that, it's not that that response is always the right response. Sometimes the right response is to respond with rage or whatever. the point is that there was that mental spaciousness to be able to decide how to be skillful. And I don't always succeed at that. Actually, just yesterday I sent a really, or yesterday two days ago, I sent a really angry email, which I try never to do. But actually, I still sort of defend that one. But I won't go on a side track about it.

It was not political. It was just, it was about money. So, but in general, right, having that ability to choose, right, to decide, to respond, rather than to react. So again, sometimes anger and rage and stuff is the right tool. You know, maybe more often that not, it's not. So in addition to the regenerative power of spiritual practice, and for me that means meditation primarily,

there's also the fact that it empowers me to be more effective. And that's maybe the last piece that I would say that, you know, we talked earlier about empathy. And I think for me, having a meditation practice keeps me tuned into what actually matters and alerts me to where I am shutting off somebody else's experience or where I'm not opening to feeling the pain of someone else's experience. So not only does it make me more effective in activists, it actually makes me care more if I actually just kind of sit and think about it. And just really briefly, I know we're both parents and I have almost. four-year-old daughter. And, you know, we definitely went through it in the pandemic. Like having a, you know, having a then two-year-old in the pandemic was not easy. But just moving for a moment from

our experience, which again, like my kid was really fortunate. I mean, two parents, you know, we didn't have financial problems during the pandemic. Like, we were very attentive, like, and just even spending a moment opening to the pain of somebody in a less fortunate, privileged environment and what the pandemic meant for them, for those kids and continues to mean in terms of mental health struggles, you know, that leads me immediately to, like, want to have more of a social safety net. That makes me want to have, you know, health care that's accessible. That makes me, like, it happens on a very quick, in a very quick way from just inhabiting what it might be like to be, you know, a kid in a challenging environment, a difficult neighborhood

or different contexts, you know, domestic violence went way through the roof during the pandemic. I mean, it's just, you know, the pain of that leads me very directly to want some pretty significant changes in how we do health care in this case and in this country. Yeah, I cannot stress that enough that one of the biggest things for me, especially I started meditation, you know, as a late teenager, none of my friends were doing it. I was sort of, you know, 15, 16 year old, you know, straight white kid like machismo and all that bullshit and, you know, trying to be the toughest guy at the party or whatever. And meditation radically expanded my compassion and reoriented my heart towards loving other

human beings and caring and trying as best as I can to alleviate the suffering of others. I wonder, though, do you think in your experience that this radical compassion is always a byproduct of meditation or have you seen? or been aware of people who no doubt have wonderful achievements in the realm of spiritual practice and meditation, but who don't seem to bring along that sense of compassion for others? I mean, there's stories of gurus gone wrong, right? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't even, yeah, I think that's like the main, the $64 question, you know, that's like the, like, of my life.

And I definitely vacillate back and forth to my answer. So, like, there was a time in my life earlier, you know, in my meditation practice where I was like, nope, meditation naturally leads to compassion. Like, that just is natural. Now, I definitely don't. There's just too much contrary evidence. And it doesn't even have to be bad gurus. Like, it can just be, again, like,

like mindfulness or it can be. And we struggle with this. You know, I work at 10% happier, which, you know, we have a meditation app and a couple of podcasts and stuff. And we went through it, you know, in 2020 in Black Lives Matter, you know,

we felt that as a company, we couldn't just be silent about this awakening. that was happening, you know, it was, it, because being silent was to say something, right? That was to say, like, it's not important or it's like not relevant or something. And so silence for us was not an option. And so we had a number of writers and teachers, you know, writers in the newsletter, which I edit, which, by the way, is free if people want to get the newsletter. It's at 10%.com slash newsletter.

I did an advertisement. You know, we had people talk about the intersection of justice work and meditation. and we heard from like a bunch of people who are on the right and who were very upset that we were bringing racial justice into their meditation app and they were pissed and these were people who had done a fair amount of meditation. And we continued pissing them off and we lost some of them like they weren't they unsubscribe and you know we just we felt we don't have any doubt like we knew that that was the right decision for us to make like it's not like we regret that but it was definitely a rude awakening to see that and this wasn't like we were. weren't even really being that challenging. We weren't like putting out like abolitionist stuff like on the newslet or we were just like here is what you know unconscious bias looks like or here's what you know here is again some of the stuff we talked about like here the intersection between activism which can look very angry and justifiably so and also contemplative practice. And like so we weren't even putting out like particularly, you know, revolutionary material. But no, I mean, unfortunately it definitely seems like I still think and there is some data. to support this, you know, in terms of empathy that percentage-wise, you know, if you have 100 people doing meditation, you know, 60 or 70 of them will, like, report increases in empathy. But that's not 100. So it's definitely not sufficient.

You know, to respond to those, to those haters, you should have an entire section of your app dedicated to Malcolm X speeches and see how that. Yeah, that'll go over well. That's the thing, too. We also like, you know, we had, we decided, we also made a decision. We weren't going to censor. Most, you know, the writers who were writing were black or, you know, people of color. And like, we weren't going to like, no, no, no, tone it down. Like, we definitely weren't going to do that. But we did make a choice to like, we're like, well, let's not, you know, let's try to not be extra extra. Like if people have different, you know, views about, you know, cops or whatever. Like, like, people say what they say,

but like we're not going to like, but no, there was no way. Even just mentioning it was, was enough to like piss off a lot of people. And the same thing, we just did it with climate change in the last couple of months and you know why are you talking about that i don't know but i it's less about you know our haters that's not the but it is definitely true look and there's also forms of meditation i mean i'll call it out you know transcendental meditation doesn't have which tm is very popular especially with celebrities um it does work as a meditation practice it can do wonders for people but it doesn't emphasize it doesn't come from a tradition that has the strong a kind of ethical orientation. And it's really popular on Wall Street. And I know someone personally who taught

meditation to the board of directors or whatever of Goldman Sachs, right? So like clearly something is not, you know, some dots are not being connected for folks. And it is possible to abstract out some of the like cool benefits of meditation, you know, on productivity or things like that and leave behind what I would consider to be some of the essential pieces. So, you know, it depends on the teacher and it depends on like what what the values are and what the emphases are yeah i totally agree and and rooting my practice in buddhism in buddhist culture and buddhist history um it gives rise to practices that are very relevant to the conscious cultivation of compassion like there's entire practices within buddhism dedicated to just that there's the concept of the bodhisattva there's

the whole mahayana tradition um and every good buddhist that i've ever studied read learned from etc. has to one degree or another emphasize the impact of ethical behavior on the practice as a whole and in fact, you know, the four noble truths and the eightfold path that the Buddha himself laid out stresses right action, right speech, ethical behavior as part of the path itself. And to try to divorce that component, the compassion and ethics component from the more just like pure mindfulness insight part of it, I think is an error. But of course, when these things are co-opted and brought into a whole new culture, especially one as rapacious as the U.S. capitalist culture,

those things can easily be stripped out. Although, let me not give Buddhism a pass because there's plenty of bad Buddhists. True. So, you know, there are Buddhist nationalists in Myanmar and Burma who, you know, supported the genocide. And there are a lot of, some of my Buddhist friends want to say, well, those weren't real Buddhists, which, I don't know, they're bad Buddhists. You know, they're just like any other tradition, you know, it's big enough.

The Buddhism is a big enough civilization to encompass a lot of questionable behavior within it. There were, you know, there were Zen Buddhist priests who supported the Japanese emperor and the empire and militarism. And, you know, and now they're living Buddhists in Myanmar now today who are supporting violence. So just people are people, right? There's no system that's pure of, of, of, the lesser angels of human nature and that's just who we are yeah and that's true of every spiritual and religious formation every single one yeah yeah so let's go ahead and talk a little bit more you mentioned uh co-option productivity the increase of interest in aspects of meditation from

silicon valley we've seen the greatest invention of the 21st century the amazon zen booth be invented recently to to ramp up productivity for amazon workers um but i i think it's fair to say that that we do differ politically a little bit. I mean, you identify and correct me if I'm wrong more as a progressive social democrat and I'm somewhere more on the Marxist left. So I am curious as to your view on the role that capitalism plays in the climate crisis and ecological destruction more broadly, the conspicuous consumption, the anarchy of market production, incentives towards short-term profiteering in a way for more long-term rational planning, the obvious and corrupting effect of big corporate money on our political system,

etc. So what are your views on capitalism in the role it plays or doesn't play in creating and sustaining such crises? Yeah, I suspect that you and I agree on the diagnosis and just disagree on the treatment. So I don't disagree with everything that you just laid out in the litany of bad stuff. And we could just keep going more litany for the rest of our time. it's just a matter of what to do about it and I guess I've just having been more

a little bit further on the left than I am now when I was a little bit younger I'm just purely very pragmatic and I'm also like a little humble in my views I could definitely be wrong like it may be the case that the system is so irretrievably corrupted

and terrible that trying to do anything within it is a waste of time that may be true of course we won't know until it's too late, you know, but I don't, I'm not so like committed or, you know, to my correctness that, you know, I think you're definitely wrong and I'm definitely right. You know, so I think it's like a question of sort of evidence and like, well, where's the evidence for like successful Marxist revolution and certainly in an advanced capitalist society like, like the

United States, you know, whereas I can point to evidence of like boring ass incrementalist successes. So for me, you know, what's broken about the system is that there's just, you know, we're living in an anti-democratic system. The Senate is anti-democratic. The electoral college is anti-democratic. These were systems that were set up by white supremacists to be anti-democratic. Like, it wasn't, the system's working very well to do exactly what it's supposed to do. But there are also elements within the system that are democratic and that do occasionally deliver the goods. So, you know, as lousy as the Democratic Party actually is, you know, they deliver a lot of incremental good things. You know, Obamacare is a really good example of that. This is clearly an inadequate

solution to our health care crisis. But I do think that it's better than what we had before. And I'm just sort of epistemologically very skeptical of the possibility for, you know, really radical change to happen. So, yeah, and then I'm sort of skeptical that it would have and be for the good anyway. So, yeah, I, if, you know, I said to tell myself, I wouldn't quote the John Lennon thing, you know, we all, you say, when a revolution, you know, we'd like to see the plan. I guess I just did quote it, but I meta quoted it. So maybe that doesn't count.

Yeah, it just sort of falls apart in the details. And that's even true in a less hard left versus near left thing. It's even true just within, let's say, Democratic Party politics. Like, I was more on board with Bernie's policy proposal. than with anyone else's, I just didn't think they were going to win, you know, and I didn't think they would win the primary or the general election. So I just was sort of skeptical that there were enough people who actually agreed with that. And I know there's an argument that, you know, we'll never know until we try and actually

lots of people do agree with it. I get that. But just as a sort of factual evidence matter, I'm not sure that the numbers are really there for those views. But hopefully they will be soon, right? And if you look at where Gen Z is, where like 18 to 25 year olds are, if 18 to 25 year olds voted as much as people over 60, which they never have in our country, but hopefully maybe one day, right? We would have a very different political culture from what we have. There's a great map if you just, you know, look for the maps of like if 18 to 25 votes were at the same percentage of, you know, people voting as like 60 to 70 or something like that, you know, like three quarters of the country is blue.

and like by far, it's more to the left edge of the Democrat Party that that would be in power. It would be great. So for me, like I turn to things that look like boring incrementalist establishment liberal things like, you know, voter engagement and fighting voter suppression and things which may well look like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and may be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. But I would say there's actually very little connection in my choice of that. between that and my contemplative practice, that's really driven by empiricism. And again, I might be wrong. Yeah. No, I think that's really interesting and honest, and I love having these back and force.

I think no matter where we are on the political spectrum, we tend to silo ourselves into, you know, little groups that only agree with us and we only hear our own already existing ideas reflected back to us. So, you know, I like having people on that disagree on this fundamental dividing point. But just a couple of things from my perspective is I agree with you that, you know, the classic idea that we're going to have a revolution and topple the U.S. government and, you know, that is not really how things are going to play out. So it's not really the difference between, you know, reforms versus a full-scale revolution. But I do think Marxist politics in this context would put us in more of a confrontational posture against institutions like the Democratic Party itself. So as opposed to trying to run a candidate like the Bernie Sanders within it, I think the more Marxist approach would be to point out how the Democratic Party itself is often almost always primarily beholden to their donor class. And it's actually like we see with the reconciliation bill, not Republican pressure preventing Democrats from doing huge transformable things

that would really help people in their lives. But it's actually coming from within the Democratic Party itself as corporations. Big Pharma, these money elite and their lobbyists, don't have to buy off every Democratic politician. They just have to buy off a couple. And you rotate them every four or so years, and we're always getting less and less than what we ask for. So in the case of Obamacare, for example, you know, it is wholly, I think, inadequate. And yes, it extends an institution to a few people, but it also gives the Democratic, or more people, millions of people. But also gives the Democratic Party leeway to say, okay, we don't have to worry about that problem now. It's solved. Meanwhile, tens of millions of other people, including myself, go without health insurance, are one catastrophe away from, you know, complete and total bankruptcy. So I don't know if that is the operating difference here is like, you know, what role does the Democratic Party actually play? And I think from my perspective, it would be one of co-opting more revolutionary grassroots forces and energies.

stripping them of anything that can meaningfully challenge the class hierarchy and offering relatively small or purely symbolic things in exchange for real material change. And I don't know if you have any thoughts on any of that. Yeah, I mean, obviously we disagree about that. That's maybe even not that interesting. But, you know, if we don't like what Joe Manchin and Kristen Cinema are doing in the Senate right now, and I certainly hate what they're doing in the Senate right now, you know, had we flipped a couple of other states, we wouldn't give a crap about those losers, right? So, you know, I was involved tangentially. I want to give myself any credit.

But like in the Sarah Gideon campaign in Maine, you know, she's a good sort of, she's not even that far left or good sort of solid liberal challenging Susan Collins, who's horrible, right? And who's like, we will be single-handedly responsible for, you know, ending abortion rights in this country. Right. And we lost and we lost badly in Maine. I was also, you know, I was really encouraged by like Cal Cunningham and North Carolina.

We lost that one. I was encouraged in South Carolina, challenging Lindsay. Graham, we lost that one. Had we flipped those, you know, those three states, right? No one would be saying Joe Manchin's name, right? He can vote against anything he wanted. Same with cinema. He's like even more annoying. Right. So for everything that you just said, you know, and who wrote the initial, right, the original reconciliation bill with the social justice stuff in it. Bernie wrote it. Right. So we would have, we would have had a Bernie bill. The Bernie bill passed the house. Right. So the lousy-ass Democratic Party that you're rightly saying is, you know, beholden his donor. Donor. class passed a bill that was half written by Bernie Sanders that would have radically that would have made a really remarkable change in our social contract and on climate change which we talked about earlier you know it would have made significant inroads and was torpedoed by freaking Joe Mansion you know the coal miner right who's like indebted to literal physical like the actual big coal in his own state which is destroying his state but he's still right so like he's hardly

reflecting the interests of his constituents, right? That is like a perfect example of like his donors versus his constituents. These people who are trashing West Virginia and, you know, poisoning their own workers with crappy ass low wage jobs. And he's, that's the people he's supporting. But we're only in this pickle because we didn't flip these other states. So I don't, you know, I don't buy into like the premise that it's the party that's the problem.

It's the fact that enough people, just not enough people, gave a crap. And again, had young people voted in Maine and in North and South Carolina, you know, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, and I forgot who the North Carolina guy is, would be out of office. So yeah, you know, but it's the same thing. Like, we'll, we could debate it forever because you could be like, yeah, but if there was a real left, then they would have voted for the real left and the Democrats wouldn't sap off the energy. But I just don't, you know, when I look state by state, district by district, zip code by zip code, right now with the current electorate, and it might change in 10 or 15 years when those.

18 to 25s get a little bit older. Right now, there's just not enough people who agree with you to, like, swing any of these elections. So even if there were a vibrant left-wing party that wasn't co-opted by all the bullshit, which the, I don't know if I'm allowed to say bullshit, which the Democrats are, there's just not not yet enough people. But eventually, I think you're going to win because I do think that certainly once, you know, once climate change gets even worse.

And if you really look at what Gen Z says they think and even some millennials, percentage-wise feel like they think, the future does seem to look a lot more like AOC and a lot less like Joe Manchin. Whether that's enough for you, I don't know. But that does look like the demographic future, fortunately. Yeah, I mean, you know, we'll move on. There's a couple things I of course could say, one of them being the time span that we're on, the gradualist, incrementalist, reform-oriented processes and paths seem to be wholly inadequate compared to the timeline of like climate catastrophe, as well as like the homelessness, crisis, health care, etc. But we'll see. One thing I do want to say to those on my side of the line is like there

tends to be this idea sometimes floated on the more socialist left that the only way that will ever be able to meaningfully address climate change is after we have some sort of socialist reorientation of the global economy. And I just think that that's not going to be possible. It's not going to happen. The timelines do not match up at all. So for better or worse, we are going to have to attempt to meaningfully address the climate crisis, at least for now, within the confines of the capitalist, democratic, liberal world order. And maybe in that process of meaningfully having to wrestle with the climate crisis, we will see some seeds of socialism crop up around the world. We'll see certain societies experiment with different economic modes of production

and relations of production, and maybe one of those will be wildly successful and begin to spread and almost like a little laboratory of real democracy. So, yeah, it remains to be seen. We shall see, but I appreciate you going back and forth with me on that. To move forward a little bit, just to maybe just touch one more time on something we've already kind of brought up, but is somewhat like the broken institutions and like seemingly unresponsive mechanisms of American government, regardless of our views on economics or ideology or anything, you know, whether you're a Republican Democrat or anything else, it just seems like the American government, for a multitude of reasons, just can't do anything. It can barely solve basic routine social problems that other countries can solve without any, you know, uproar at all, just like as the way of doing things. So I'm just wondering what role you think that plays if that's going to change or if there has to be some, you know, radical. more radical reform to address the gridlock and the divisiveness of the current American political

system. Yeah, I mean, I again, like bring it back to that spiritual political nexus, which is where I think the interesting stuff is, you know, clearly between 30 and 50 percent of America is like on a really different page from where you and I are in terms of what these challenges are. So like for them, the challenges are like the losing of white supremacy. see like they wouldn't say that out loud of course but like right they would describe it as immigration or you know cancel culture or woke culture or whatever like they'll talk about it or critical race theory which i can't even say with a straight face because i studied actual critical race theory in law school like so it's just very it's like funny if you like imagine

yourself going to like grad school or something and you learn some like obscure thing that like five professors care about and then somehow 25 years later it becomes like you know the rallying cry to win the governorship of Virginia or something. It's so bizarre. Anyway, so they won't say it's about white supremacy, but they'll say, right, critical race theory, whatever, right? And like, that's, or the decline in, you know, in morality, you know, the erosion of traditional gender roles. Like, this is what, again, 30 to 50% of Americans see as like the main problem. And they see us, you and me and others, is like part of that problem, right? So I sort of think that the divisiveness of American politics is actually.

actually reflective of the divisive, like the divided nature of Americans. And it's accurately reflecting that. Like I think, you know, I'm a little more optimistic on some of the problems that government has solved and is continuing to solve. But like, but, you know, clearly, let's take paid family leave, right? The idea that, like, that one issue is somehow like a huge stumbling block in the current moment is crazy, right? When you look at like every other Western democracy, which, you know, pays months and months of family leave. And we were like, we couldn't get through a week or something. So, like, that's a good. example, but like that reflects not, to me, that doesn't reflect the sort of failure of

politics. It's like, that's politics reflecting a failure of our culture. And somewhere along the line, and, you know, we could spend a different hour talking about that, you know, a third of our country, which is evangelical Christian and religious belief, or if that's even a religious belief anymore, more than a political belief, you know, has a view, you know, that if we, if we have a socialist state, which for one, two weeks of paid family leave would be the equivalent of socialism for them. You know, that

that will destroy our values and they'll destroy manhood and it'll encourage lazy people by which they mean black people because for them, and that's it's all racialized, right? And that this would be like a terrible thing for our society. And so like the battle line isn't between you and me, right?

It's not between like, should we have you know, should we have three months of paid family leave per year? Or should we even have a whole different system where it's not, you know, capitalists at all. The dividing line is like fundamental on sort of what are the challenges that our country faces. And again, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, um, that, it's, um, that for me is the challenge. So it's not, I don't have the view that, like, if the people with a capital P, like, were to rise up, you know, we would end up somewhere better. You know, because, again, between a third and a half of those people think that what we need is a kind of theocracy where moral values derived from a certain fundamentalist view of religion are driving government decisions. Yeah, maybe I'm more pessimistic than you.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure. There's definitely that truth of like the backlash and just the way that America is structured, settler colonialism, history of white supremacy. the increasing urge on the American right to institute some form of minoritarian rule, the amount of just guns and the psychology of reactionaries who, you know, sort of view themselves in a possible prelude to an action movie where they're running around shooting people they just like, you know, any attempt by the left or the right to rise up in any real meaningful way to try to actually go after political power will be met with a huge backlash from the other side and inevitably go into something like,

a civil war, unfortunately. But I do think one of the things that the right has done, and it kind of shot themselves in the foot, is for my entire life, I'm 32, calling everything good socialism. And then they wonder why, like, 60%. They've done a good PR job. They really are. Paid leave is socialism, wearing a mask is socialism, health care for your family, socialism, action on climate change is socialism.

Oh, yeah, 70% of young Americans are socialist now. Oops. So I think that's kind of a funny thing. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. So let's go ahead and just, you've been very generous with your time. So last question here. I heard you say on 10% happier that you assumed in the 90s when you were even writing on the climate crisis that only once the impacts of climate change really became clear to everyone, would we see meaningful action.

But as you said in that episode and we see quite clearly, the past few years have proven that even seen straight out of an apocalyptic, dystopian movie haven't been enough to really spur action so in your opinion what will it take and ultimately how optimistic are you that we can keep warming below catastrophic levels to 2.5 3 degrees etc yeah so yeah i mean i saw this is like the it's it's the hardest question in a certain way because it's it's the hardest for me to it's my own joanna macy moment right where like i have to confront the the the thing that's hard to put up with and so what you said is accurate. You know, I wrote in a bunch of articles a long time ago that, well, you know, this is a temporary problem because by the time climate change happens, we'll, you know, we'll see it, but the

problem is by then it'll be too late. Well, now it's too late, right? You know, whether it's wildfires or floods or hurricanes and whatever, and people still are in, you know, a level of either denial or, or disinterest. And by the way, the hardcore denialists in the United States are now fewer than 20 percent. The people are like climate change is a hoax. It's not happening. So there's actually pretty good news on that. But there's still about 25 to 30 percent who are like, yeah, it's an issue, but it's exaggerated or it's like, you know, half natural or whatever, just as a side note. You know, for me, what's actually been the most disturbing and it may not seem related at first, again, has been the pandemic. Right.

So like with COVID, the science is clear. The effects are clear. Like everything's pretty clear. Like, of course, there's stuff we don't know and whatever. But like on the basics of the transmission of the. the transmission of this virus and its effects, pretty clear. Super safe vaccine, you know, which now like two billion people or something have received at least one dose of.

And yet there's still like not just random denialism, but like violent, crazy people, right? And that, again, is maybe 20%. That's not a majority of the country. That's not 30 to 50%. But there's like a significant chunk of Americans who are like putting themselves and their kids and their parents at serious. risk, right? People are killing their own family members for crying out loud and not, you know, in the face of this wild, this obvious contrary evidence, creating wild sort of conspiracy theories

to deny reality. And I find that really challenging and terrifying around when it comes to climate change, right? So like if we have a real life crisis that happens, that involves science and, you know, things in the world and such a large number of people, for whatever deep felt psychological or social or cultural reasons you know I prefer to inhabit a fantasy world of conspiracy theory and nonsense you know from ivermectin to space aliens

literally when it comes to COVID what does that mean for climate change right so even if like things continue to get way worse so there's now climate refugees you know hundreds of millions of climate refugees around the world and you know coastal cities and non-effluent countries are inundated, you know, and it just, it is, it's very sobering to see how much tragedy so many people are willing to put up with before making a change. So ultimately,

I, I would say I'm somewhat optimistic that some changes will happen relatively soon, actually, and they're already happening. And again, if you take someone like Joe Manchin, you know, if you see where he is now compared to where he was 10 years ago, he has, he has, moved. And again, the guys from a freaking coal mining state. But that obviously is not enough. So I'm pessimistic that my, our children's world. And it's funny, you know, I don't know if it's true for you, but when I became a parent, that cliche turned very real. You know, politicians say that crap all the time. What kind of world are we leaving our children? Yes. But one kind of like, that actually did change for me. Like now I'm thinking about my child. It's a little selfish, really.

But like if you think about it, like, oh, who cares about those billion other kids? But like, what about my kid you know that's maybe how the how the human mind works uh it does become very concrete you know and like you think about what world my kid's going to live in you know in 20 or 30 years and i definitely think it's going to be a very different world and there was some new data that came out this past week about what gen z thinks about their world and one contributing factor to them being so socialist is they assume that the economic system is going to if not collapse then at least like not support you know lifestyles the way it is right now in part because of climate change so it is interesting to interesting maybe too light a word to like see how people who are affected by these

changes also perceive them um but i you know i come back to like well what is what's possible probably my most controversial idea which we haven't talked about it's like i actually kind of like geoengineering and can talk about that in another podcast episode people can google me in that name In fact, I'll just say really briefly that there's a conspiracy theory about geoengineering, which is like intentionally manipulating the atmosphere that has to do with the chem trails, which is like this conspiracy theory about what come, you know, the contrails that come out of airplane exhaust. And somehow I managed to get sucked into that as like I'm part of the bad guys wanting to, wanting to poison America or whatever, keep us docile by spraying chemicals from airplanes. that's my claim to my claim to fame is a tertiary role in a conspiracy theory anyway a waiver the conspiracy theory in reality I think there there are some actions that we will eventually have to take that are dangerous but are less

dangerous than the alternative so that's actually a pessimistic ending point I do think we will avert global catastrophe but by doing other things that will also be catastrophic yeah I largely agree with that I just for the chem trail point, it was always funny to me because it never made sense why, you know, this cabal of people who ostensibly live in the world and have family and kids in the world and want to poison the skies that they themselves have to breathe. So that's a good point. Always an interesting hole in that conspiracy theory.

Well, maybe they're the lizard people, so they're not affected by the, uh, by that. Yeah. But I have had on, um, Holly Jean Buck, who wrote after geoengineering, um, climate tragedy, repair and restoration for an interesting perspective. and I do think that there is this knee-jerk refusal to even think about those things on the left. And for good reason, we don't want that to become a replacement for actually decarbonizing. And there's plenty of potholes to hit on the path towards any form of geoengineering. But I also had on Kim Stanley Robinson who wrote a Ministry for the Future.

And in that book, he depicts a context in which climate change gets so bad globally that certain countries more or less go rogue and begin engaging in their own forms of geoengineering, you know, regardless of like a global agreement or anything and all the conflicts that that can create. So however it happens either rationally and strategically or more of a last-minute Hail Mary, I think it's going to play a role. But obviously, decarbonizing is the biggest thing.

I just learned another word from Kim Stanley Robinson, who I just Googled when you mentioned them, clify. I haven't seen that word before. Climate fiction. So there you go. It's really good. And we're seeing more of that.

We're living in clify. We don't need the phi anymore. Climate reality is quickly becoming as terrifying as climate fiction. Yeah, it's true. Just one point on the optimism point is just that I've long argued and I've had, I mean, periods even this year of like doom spiraling into depression and anxiety about the future that my kids, my nieces and nephews are all going to have to inhabit. But one thing is true, which is the more that the impacts continue to be. obvious and continue to impact more and more people the more action you'll see. And I think there is this generational divide. If you're like a 65-year-old Republican, you have an ideological

tendency to not believe in this stuff. But you're also, you know, especially if you don't have a lot of empathy for other people or maybe don't have grandkids you particularly give a shit about, you can just sort of poo-poo it and like, who cares? It's probably not real. It's all a hoax. But if you're like a 15-year-old kid, you just don't have that luxury. It's your entire future. And more and more kids are becoming aware of that. And I think as we see them grow up into political activity and political age, we'll see more and more pushback. The political systems around the world will reflect the will from the people of wanting more movement on it. And I think we might be, in the best case scenario, in this sort of interregnum, where, you know,

consciousness is getting to the point reaching that threshold. The political and economic and leaders and systems are lagging behind. But eventually, They'll catch up, and we will more or less get this thing under control. But even in the best case scenario, huge amounts of needless suffering around the world. Yeah, I just want to respond to that quickly. I know we're running up on time. But first, a very smart friend of mine suggested that Gen Z are the people who were born after an inconvenient truth came out. And for a lot of older folks, certainly boomers and stuff, like climate change is new.

You know, it's now been, you know, we've known about for 30 years. but it's new in terms of their lives. Like before it was not a thing, and then it became a thing. And for people who are now 20, it's always been a thing since before they could remember, right? So they've grown up with it being a thing, and they understand some percentage of them, understand, you know, what it's going to lead to in their own lives. And I think you're right that it's, and if you look by analogy at other transformative things, so like look at how, again, Zoomers, you know, are even older than Gen Z, like 18 to 25,

look at gender, for example, right? So I grew up at a time, I didn't know what transgender was. Like, I was, like, in my 20s before I heard that word, right? And I'm in the queer community, right? So, like, I had no idea. Like, I just didn't, you know, I knew the word transvestite or whatever, but I didn't, you know, I didn't know anyone trans, certainly. So for me, it's new in a certain way.

And I had to, like, do some work on myself and see my own stuff and my own, you know, biases around that. Whereas, again, for if you're 18 or. something, that's just part of your world, right? And you probably know people who are non-binary or genderqueer. And like, so it's not, and we see that on race, we see it on a lot of issues where like when people have to like learn it when they're old, like me, you know, they don't quite get it in the way that when people are growing up with that. So I think you're, I think you're right. It goes like again to time horizon. Like if we could just hand the reins to that generation now, you know,

we'd have immediate action. But unfortunately, by the time. they seize power it's it's going to take some time but i just i did notice that you said you know about cycles of depression and anxiety and that did trigger my in a good way trigger my meditation teach yourself which is like that's the perfect illustration right of what we've talked about for most of our time which is that nexus point of where contemplative practice can really help right so we know or it should know that just sort of as an analytical rational matter like cycles of depression anxiety are not helpful they're not empowering you right it's not like those cycles are making you a better activist or podcaster or whatever right those are those are debilitating so that's where you have an you already have enough information right and now you've gone over into the too much information side let's say and it's leading to those adverse consequences that are holding you back that is the perfect time where your practice can hopefully come in and be helpful right where there can still be there should still be sadness and fear about

the future when you think rationally about it, right? Because that's a rational response to what the data is saying. You should, if you're not feeling like sadness and fear and worry, you're not understanding. Yeah, exactly. And then, but when that then turns into, when sadness turns into despair or where fear turns into anxiety, that's where you can actually find it.

And the sort of key jiu-jitsu move of meditation, and I know you know this, but just for listeners, is not making the bad, stuff go away. That's not the move. It's actually the opposite. It's like, okay, wow, I feel a lot of sadness, fear, anger, you know, and anxiousness about the future for my kids and the rest of the kids in the planet. Here's what this is and I can be with it. And I don't have to spiral it. And I can see myself spiraling. And that's where I could choose not to do something, not to make the bad

feeling go away, but like I don't have to make it worse. And I know what I do when I spiral. And I can see that happening. And that I can nip in the bud, right? That I can stop before it blossoms. And so, like, I think you sort of, it was a side. It wasn't your main point. But like that sort of for me is that perfect illustration of what we've talked about, which is where contemplative practice can be an ally to people who are politically engaged.

Yeah, beautifully said. I could not agree more. You know, in Buddhism, there's that concept of the two arrows of suffering. You know, the first thing that you can't change, the fact of climate change. But that second arrow of suffering we so often inflict on ourselves, which is spiraling, getting identified with the fear and the thoughts and the anxiety and not having that space to step back and sort of dispassionately engage with those feelings as opposed to, you know, suffer under their weight. And so that's always helpful to think about. Yeah, Jay, it's been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate you coming on.

I really also appreciate the back and forth politically. It can always be a little uncomfortable, but I really appreciate hearing your perspective. perspective. Before I let you go, can you just please let our listeners know where they can find you and your work online? Sure. So I have a website jemichelson.net. And as we mentioned, I also work for 10% happier, which is at 10% all spelled out.com. And the newsletter is free. And if some of the approach to meditation that I've sketched out here, I don't write it every week, but I edit it. So you can find kind of diverse approaches that are aligned with that at 10%.com slash newsletter.

Awesome. And I'll lead to all of that in the show notes. Thank you again, Jay. It's been a wonderful conversation. All right. Thanks. Take care. Think about the old days more and more.

The fettiness in my life and the way it was. If I speak to you through a dream, would you hear me? Across this norms of country, across the great divide over the people trying to get by, I used the venue Wi-Fi. I checked my email twice as I sat and cried. The sewer from the other band asked if I was all right, and they sat with me a while, in the cold, dark country. There it's summer here.

I thought we were going to be in the beginning. We need deeper, we're deeper understanding of the ways we're moving around the ways we're moving around the ways we think about ourselves in this moment and all the years gone by people that we pass by and all the people that we pass by. might happen if we actually looked them in the eye and as i write this down i could feel it all now the words rush in a moment and the part of my life that's kept me hiding inside has died and the soul in my heart is always hungry and i'm off in the deep wide country I don't know if you're going to be in common sense now. I can't be common sense now. I can't be in the silence now.

They can't be able to silence now. I don't think about the old sense I don't hear nothing that's sad son I don't hear nothing that's so

I don't think about I've been think about the old days more and more the pettiness of my life and the way it was if I speak to you through a dream

would you hear me Thank you. Thank you, so, so, I've broken love it's awesome, and we're looking. Yeah, it's awesome, we've got it never, I think, and look at the same, so, you don't hear a lot of the place in the ground, you've got a place, and look at all the place,

so I can't know, um, you know. It's on your time. It's on your tongue. Thank you.