Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 234: How to Engage Corona-Deniers (and Other Ethical Dilemmas)

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

So many of us have people in our lives who we feel are not taking this pandemic seriously enough. How do we handle them? Yell, lecture, call them out on Twitter? What about flooding them with articles? Or is there a saner course of action that is likely to be more effective? In this episode, we have two experts in ethics to sort through this and other ethical dilemmas in the age of COVID. JoAnna Hardy is a meditation teacher with a special interest Buddhist ethics. Greg Epstein is the humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT. Issues we tackle include: Is it ever ok to break social distancing? What are the ethical implications of moving your family out of the city to the country? And, what about stocking up on toilet paper? Episode Resources: JoAnna Hardy: https://www.joannahardy.org/ JoAnna on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joannahardy65/ Greg Epstein: https://chaplains.harvard.edu/people/greg-epstein Greg on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregmepstein Full Episode Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/joanna-hardy-greg-epstein-234 Ten Percent Happier Live: Website: www.tenpercent.com/live In the Ten Percent Happier App: https://10percenthappier.app.link/TenPercentHappierLIVE YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb3AWCFuxotrXmgqUHQdwyg See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does it even mean to live a good life? Is it about happiness, purpose, love, health, or wealth? What really matters in the pursuit of a life well lived? These are the questions award-winning author, founder, and interviewer Jonathan Fields asks his guests on the Top Ranked Good Life Project podcast. Every week, Jonathan sits down with world renowned thinkers and doers, people like Glenn and Doyle, Adam Grant,

Young Pueblo, Jonathan Height, and hundreds more. Start listening right now. Look for the Good Life Project on your favorite podcast app. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad.

Where did memes come from? And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcast. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, hope you're doing all right. I am recording this podcast introduction from the floor of my wife's closet, glamorous times. Speaking of the times in which we're living, quick reminder, as I've mentioned before, don't forget to join us for the sanity breaks we're doing every day, or every week day, for the foreseeable future.

We're calling this project 10% happier live, three Eastern noon Pacific, you can view it by going to 10%.com slash live. We'll put the link in the show notes. Every weekday, we bring on one of the best meditation teachers in the world. We do five minutes of guided meditation, followed by your questions. One of the big teachers coming up is Joseph Goldstein. Very excited about that, and he will be on this podcast very soon. One other quick note before we dive into our

episode this week, we're still working to get our audio game, the quality of our audio. We're working to get that improved. I think we're doing a better job this week than we have in recent weeks, but your continued forbearance will be appreciated. All right, we're diving in now. So many people, I've been hearing from a lot of people who have this issue. So many of us know somebody, maybe many people who we feel are not taking this pandemic seriously enough. So how do we handle them?

Do we yell at them, scream at them, lecture them, call them out on Twitter, do we flood them with articles? Or perhaps is there a say in her course of action that is likely to be more effective? In this episode, we have two experts in ethics to sort through this and other ethical dilemmas in the age of COVID-19. Joanna Hardy is a meditation teacher, a great one,

and she's actually one of the featured teachers on the 10% happier app, and she has a special interest in Buddhist ethics. Greg Epstein is the humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT. Issues we tackle here include, is it ever okay to break the social distancing rules? What are the ethical implications of moving your family out of a city into the country?

And what about stocking up on toilet paper? All that and more in this special edition of the 10% happier podcast with Joanna Hardy and Greg Epstein, here we go. All right, Joanna and Greg, thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. Great to be here with you. Thank you.

So we got a lot of juicy stuff to dive in on here. But let me just start by, I would love for each of you and I'll start with you, Joanna, to give your, my friend Sam Harris, who's the host of the Making Sense podcast, when he introduces people, he asks for them to deliver their potted bio. So can you deliver your potted bio, Joanna, and also talk a little bit about how it relates to your view on ethics. It's so sad because I don't know what potted biomines. Is that P-O-T-T-E-D or P-O-D?

It's like a, it's like a, it's instead of taking a big tree in the wild, you don't give me the whole thing, you take a like a potted plant. I know, I'm sure that's beautiful. I love it. Great. So my potted bio right now just feels really like human being, living in a world that's trying to function in a loving kind yet, you know, real way. So I teach, you know, I teach mindfulness. And I teach in populations that wouldn't typically get access to a lot of these teachings because it seems to be very reserved for a certain demographic. So I'm interested in what's happening in communities that have less access to a lot of what might seem like, you know, special care or care that people get when they have more than enough.

So kind of working in a lot of social, racial, justice topics around mindfulness and what does that look like to take care of, you know, the greater world versus an individual need? Just to be more specific there, you have been teaching mindfulness for many and studying mindfulness for many years and you teach in criminal justice,

in a criminal justice context, though long with some other contexts, in which places other meditation teachers don't often go. Yeah, yeah, it seems like it actually, one thing I'm really liking seeing is that more and more people are going into the just, you know, going into the prison system, going into underserved schools,

going into foster care facilities, going into places that don't have access. But yeah, that's, that's my core passion, I would say. And not only going into and teaching mindfulness, but looking at systems, you know, looking at systems and structures, and how when we pay attention, and we'll talk about this around ethics, right? When we pay attention to harm and human need, what can change if care is the predominant function versus economics or, you know, progress or power? So I'm just kind of mostly right now interested in systems and structures from this and through this mindfulness,

non-harm lens. You've also done a lot of work, including with us, a 10% happier on individual ethics and how we navigate the world from an ethical standpoint. And you've had a particular interest in Buddhist ethics. Can you just give the basics on Buddhist ethics and why you're so interested in it and sort of what a layperson would need

to know at the most basic level? Yeah, yeah. So it starts with me being a very, a person who thought that rules did not exist for me. And I probably have broken all of them in some way or another and realizing the impact that had on not only myself, my own heart, my own mind, how it shut me down, how it numbed me, when I didn't care about myself or how I was treating myself, but also how it affected

my relationships with other people and how I'd caused harm to them and to, you know, people around me that I really, you know, didn't quite yet know how to care about, but eventually did. So a lot of my interest comes from personal, you know, my personal path of why am I so miserable, why am I so numb, why doesn't my heart work, you know, I thought my heart didn't work. There was something wrong with me. What do you mean by my heart didn't work, meaning like you just didn't give a there was something wrong with me. What do you mean by my heart didn't work? You mean, like, you just didn't give a crap about anybody else? Yeah, pretty much.

Pretty much. It was a, my movement was really about getting through each day and having what I wanted and if it looked like something that was interesting to me, I'd take it, right? So whether that was actually physically taking it or emotionally taking it from somebody else or If anything was in my way, I would find a way Around the system so that I could have it You know, and I don't need to get into all that But one of the reasons that I'm you know interested in the juvenile justice system is because I was a kid who

Had to deal with being in that system And it wasn't because I grew up poor or without access to funds. My family was upper middle class, right? So it was really just like this internal lack, emptiness, emotional emptiness. But why I spend so much time on this is through my mindfulness practice, through seeing like, oh, getting that does not actually make me happy, but getting that is very temporary. And once I found that, oh, actually,

this idea around delayed gratification or this idea around the natural law of cause and effect, if I do this thing, then that thing happens, you know, very simply, if I get in a fight with a friend and I cuss them out and I call them names just because anger is arising in me, the impact and the outcome is going to be a friendship that's not working. Or if I steal or if I lie, the outcome, very, the outcome, there's no magic to it, is that something not great is gonna happen. So a lot of my interest in this

is the very pragmatic, practical standpoint and viewpoint of this sort of natural law of cause and effect. And we have this immense responsibility towards ourselves. And we also have this immense power within ourselves as well as how we relate to others and the world around us through our actions, through our speech.

And sometimes when we can talk about this more through our thinking, through our speech. And sometimes when we can talk about this more, through our thinking, through our mental habits. So once I realized how powerful this was in my own life, it was something, of course, I wanted to share more. And really took these as, I would say core components to my practice. And when I say practice, what I'm talking about is my spiritual practice, my ethical practice, the way I live, the way I show up, whether it's

in my own home or driving down the street. Can you just give us the basics on Buddhist ethics? Because we did a whole course on the 10% happier app, which I learned a lot about. Buddhist ethics are, well, there are some pretty clear rules, like it's probably not a good idea to kill anybody. It's much less dogmatic and dictatorial and specific than many systems of ethics that I've encountered. So can you hold forth a little bit? Right.

And again, because of my sort of rebellious and anarchistic heart and mind. I was really drawn towards this offering of these guidelines that were not commanding me to be any certain way, but offering me sort of the challenge to if I show up in a certain way, if I don't cause harm in a certain way, how much clearer, cleaner, lighter, again going back to this numb heart, my life could be. And so the Buddhist ethical practice really rests in what we call the five precepts. And the five precepts very simply ask that we do not cause harm.

You know, I mean, that's the basic. And not cause harm to both ourselves or others, right? So it's it also has a very altruistic and generous spirit to it really looking out for taking care of the other people, other beings on this planet. And it's not and I shouldn't say like I said, it's other beings. It's not only people. And so the five precepts, five guidelines, not killing, not stealing, or not taking what isn't freely given, is another way it said, being wise and careful with our sexuality, so not harming relationship, being wise and careful with our speech. And I'm happy to get into that. That means not lying, it means not gossiping, it means being kind, but not untruthful, right? So that's a big one.

And then the last is not using intoxicants that lead us into mindlessness or heedlessness. So those are the five precepts. And for me, it just says, basic guidelines, I take these every morning as a reminder, oh, today I'm not gonna kill, okay. We can look at that in the way of I'm not gonna kill another human being,

but also how through fear do we cause harm to another being? But it can be as simple as somebody living in their life and I remember as a kid, I had spiders in my room, you know, so I was, I think, nine years old. And there were these spiders that would come and visit me every night. And instead of feeling, now again, I wasn't a practitioner yet, but instead of feeling the need to squash them or call my dad to come to the rescue, I remember I started talking to them, right? And it was sort of like, okay, we have to live in this room together.

How are we gonna cohabitate? How about you don't harm me and I don't harm you? And that coming from a very pure child's heart, right? But, so there's this thing where we can cause physical harm to another living being, let's say, again, it's a bug because we as humans have that very easy potential to just swat it, something and kill it. But what, you know, what the mindfulness practice offers us

is the pause and the why. You know, and so often we cause harm to others out of fear. Right? And so if we, if our mindfulness practice really allows us to check in and check into our own fear, check into our resistance, check into possible impact or outcome, it allows us to stop in a moment and have a heart that might be filled with a little bit more capacity to say, oh, this is an ant, you know, how much is it really ruining my day?

I mean, like, you know, Dan, I could go on this for, so you let me know when it's time to stop. And, you know, also, I'm thinking right now about, obviously, so the second preset, this not taking what isn't freely given, there's so many subtle levels. So, we can look at that as not stealing, very simply, okay, I'm not gonna take your stuff and you're not gonna take my stuff, right?

I'm not gonna steal a bike, I'm not gonna steal off the shelves. But the converse of not taking what isn't freely given is also being generous, is taking care of others. And so I'm thinking right now, while we're in the middle of this COVID, very intense time is what is taking something that we don't actually need look like?

And we're looking at it. And it feels metaphorical, the toilet paper, right, which is like how random, you know, that it's that and not dish soap or, you know, whatever, something else. But how does our idea around, you know, societal responsibility and ethics show up vital responsibility and ethics show up at a time when right now we're all in this together and me taking something that I don't actually need is taking from somebody else. And so, you know, I've spent a lot of time looking at that and what does renunciation look like in terms of what do I really need? Like do I want a half-hour Sunday totally? Do I really need a half-hour Sunday? Probably not. So there's

this really beautiful process that myself and my family, you know, we're talking about it quite a bit. What are we going through right now? And it really keeps coming back to me around this idea of the presets and our ethical practice. And how we cohabitate. I have a lot more to say about to ask and say and comment about Buddhist ethics because it's such an incredible subject and I actually think it ties into self-interest in a pretty deep way. And as you know, I'm very interested in self-interest. But I do want to bring Greg in and we'll get some

of this other stuff. Greg, can you just do the potted bio thing and also just tie your personal and professional history to your interest in ethics? Sure. So my title that I'm probably best known for is I'm the humanist chaplain at both Harvard and MIT now. Been the humanist chaplain at Harvard since 2005 and have been at MIT as well as at Harvard for the last couple years. So I'm a chaplain for the non-religious, essentially, people who define themselves as humanists

or atheists or agnostics or otherwise religiously unaffiliated. For a lot of the last decade, I ran a congregation of what we called atheist agnostics and allies that was really interesting, sort of hundreds of people coming together and trying to build community with one another. But in the past year, I took a sab, it's given a grant to take a whole year long sabbatical to focus on researching and writing about ethics in the technology industry. And I was really diving into that research and finding it absolutely fascinating until a little something called corona happened. And in the last couple of weeks, I've kind of taken a sabbatical from my sabbatical

because people have been really hit hard in so many ways on the campuses that I serve and obviously everywhere by this crisis. And I just found myself a couple of weeks ago, all of a sudden having a lot of students to help care for. What about your background and personal and professional interests brought you to thinking about ethics? You know, I think I was the kind of kid from an early age that just really wanted to try to understand why.

Why is this world the way it is? Why are we living the way that we're living? Why don't we try to live a different way? I mean, I think it became clear to me as I got older and realized, well, my mom's parents were refugees twice over. They, you know, our parents had to come from Eastern Europe as young teenagers to, they got to Cuba. And they had to build a whole new life there

because they were fleeing programs in the Holocaust and what have you. They had to send my mother to this country on two days notice by herself with nothing. And they were separated as a family for multiple years until they could reunite. And they had to build a whole new life here, learn a whole new language here a second time. And you know, I'm the product of intergenerational trauma. And it took me a long time to figure that out. My whole family, my whole existence really

is sort of predicated on the fact that humans have to go through incredible suffering at times. We have to go through experiences that are just so hard and painful and scary. And we don't know the way out. And we don't know the way out and we don't know if there will be a way out. And we find ways to cope in the midst of that,

but it's not easy. And I guess, I just happened to be somebody that was sort of steeped in that from early on, but also had a kind of massive privilege. Like I had this very mixed sense of myself in the world where I could sort of identify with people that were in power and that were doing very well in life and I could also just really deeply feel

the part of myself that was in pain and was suffering and had been wronged. And, you know, I've just been trying to use my life to figure out, you know, what the path to walk is, you know, when, you know, all of us have some degree of both of those experiences. Great. I appreciate that. Thank you.

So, Joanna talked about her ethical framework, which is a Buddhist one. What is yours? Because you're a humanist. And I've heard from people who are, and I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but back when I used to be a religion reporter, I heard from a lot of my newly formed friendships with people of faith, and I would explain that I'm an agnostic, and they would say, well, if you don't believe in God, how do you discern between right and wrong? So, how would you describe your ethical framework? Sure.

Thanks, Dan. And you happen to have given a great interview, asked a lot of good questions to a young Chaplain that I know about 10 years ago that influential on on my life. So I appreciate that. You know, as we've discussed then, although my perspective on it has stayed the same at times and in some ways and and has evolved in others. Yes, I have a humanist perspective. I come from what you call a humanist life, the answer, worldview or philosophy of life. And that means that I believe that human beings created religion, not vice versa, that we human beings have created our entire culture and value system. We did it as animals that evolved to develop

moral systems and ways of living that are a little different than other forms of animals that live on this rock, this pale blue dot that's four and a half billion or so years old and in a universe that's about 14 billion or so years from out of a big bang that blew up whatever came before it. We're all trillions of interconnected cells. We're billions upon billions of congregations of living entities that make up who we are and what we are. And at our best, we are, we're extraordinary examples of collaboration and cooperation and mutual concern and care, just in one little finger. But at our worst, we stop cooperating, we stop listening, we stop interacting and we destroy

ourselves, not to mention one another. So, to me, humanism is an exhortation, It's a call to our fellow human beings to live the best possible lives that we can. And that, to me, very much means living a life of love and care and connection with one another, a life of truth and understanding to the greatest degree that we're capable. Because those are the only things I know that really make life worthwhile. Let me just ask one follow up here, because maybe this is the same. Maybe it comes down into many ways. The humanist ethical structure framework is similar to the Buddhist one, which is from

what I'm hearing from you, and you should please correct me. It's a kind of don't harm. The bottom line seems to come down to we're all interconnected in this mysterious existence. Let's try to not hurt each other. That resonates with me to some degree. I certainly wouldn't it's not wrong. To me feel I feel the need to respond to that with what can we try to do on a positive side too? You know, there are so many things that we actually can do for and with one another that

make life more worth living. And no, there aren't any perfect formulas about that, but you know when you're in the middle of a moment in life when people are coming together and helping one another and it feels good to be alive. You just know that, but the point is, to me, do I have connections with other human beings who are also only human and who are also suffering and struggling?

We see each other, we know each other and we're with each other and we get to experience how worthwhile that actually makes life. Because when I was in my 20s and even early 30s, which is when I met you for the first time, Dan, I don't know that I really fully recognize that. I was still so caught up in just trying to, for me, it was like, I was told that if I didn't accomplish things in life and didn't do things that were special, that I would really basically not be worthwhile as a human being. I kind of got that message I internalized that. And I think I was like still

my late 20s or early 30s. I was still very much like caught up in I'm going to prove that I can show everybody, you know, how good I am. And it sucked. It was just a terrible, terrible. I wasn't really like, I don't know that I was actively harming anybody but I just wasn't connecting with them. I appreciate that. I appreciate your clarification about it. And it rhymes in many way with what Joanna was saying that you can interpret not stealing in the negative, you can also make it more positive and interpret it as be generous. So all right, that's great. Now that we have like you're both of your framework

on the table, we can dive into some ethical dilemmas. So let's talk about COVID. In the midst of this pandemic, there are so many ethical dilemmas for us as we try to navigate this. So I wanna go through a few of them and get your thoughts on how we can navigate.

And I'll only just start with the one that I'm hearing about the most from people, which is, what do you do when people in your life are not taking this seriously? Who are not socially distancing, not washing their hands, raising questions about whether this is all hoax, let me start with you Joanna. What's your view on giving your background on how we can handle this? Do we talk to them? Do we not? How do we talk to them, etc.?

Yeah, no, thank you for that because it's definitely something I'm dealing with in my own family. And not you know, I'm gonna go to the wise speech precept because it's when I've really depended upon. And one of the aspects of the wise speech precept is, is it timely, right? So what is the right time to talk to somebody about something? So that the possibility of it right time to talk to somebody about something so that the possibility of it going in and making sense is real. So I don't think it works to start sending, you know, flooding somebody with articles, flooding somebody with, you know, proven points by the CDC or the president or the governor, a mayor of whatever state or city that you live in, to me that doesn't feel, when we're talking like we are about this ethical,

mindful way of approaching something, what I'm realizing is that when I talk to somebody truly and meaningfully from a place of like, I'm worried, right now I have two living parents and I'm worried about them and one of them lives with my brother and my brother works at a car dealership and the car dealership is still open.

And so he, on the daily, and he not only works there, but he kind of runs it, right? So on the daily, he's engaging. He said, Joanna, just know that I'm not shaking hands. And I was like, okay, good, okay, first step. But so what I'm asking him is, you know, I won't see his name, but I'm really, I'm worried.

I'm worried about mom. And I love that you're taking care of her. But I'm hoping that, you know, we can be in this care together. And I'm noticing how he softens when I come from that perspective versus, you know, the Matilda law, the Matilda law is New York state's law. And I think it's a great, you know, but it's like, it's really a law about how to treat the elderly predominantly or other people. I'm not seeing that as a function

that's really working very well, right? This sort of marshalling people in this country, in particular, and I know we have people from other countries that listen to 10%, but martial law is not how we politically work. So for me, just coming from this place of kindness, care, sensitivity, understanding, because I want to listen to the person that says this is BS, right? I want to know where they're coming from also. Are they coming from a

place of fear? Are they coming from a place of lack of understanding? Are they coming from, you know, why I asked my brother why? Like, what are you listening to that I'm not listening to? And I'm listening to the politicians and the news stations that I wouldn't typically listen to so that I can I can kind of have a broader view of what other people might be experiencing. Great. What's your view on this ethical dilemma? How how would you advise people to handle a situation where somebody in their life is in the view of the person to whom you're speaking, not taking this situation seriously enough? First of all, I think it could help to just acknowledge that extraordinarily radical changes, that it seems like we've all made in our lives in a space of half a month.

I mean patterns of living that took us all decades to establish and it's like no, okay, I got the news, okay, there's going to be this virus and we're going to just change it all. And so in that sense, you know, in our mindset, in our hearts, I think that can allow us to have some compassion for the person that is just rebelling against this right now and saying, screw this, I don't want to make these changes. I don't think I need to. I think what we can do, the sort of practical thing, like the first thing that you can do to start changing somebody, because they actually, they have to voluntarily change.

Like, we're not capable of following people around in this environment and say, I saw you, I saw you, you screwed up, you know. So we have to actually motivate the people in our lives every one of us do to make some changes. And I think expressing compassion for them has been the thing that has worked best in my life. You know, like I can kind of screw up calling my mom at times, you know, like, I'll go a couple weeks and I know she wants to talk to me, but I just don't, and, or my brother, or, you know, I don't make the calls to my friends that I sometimes think I should make. And I think what I tried to do, in this case, is like, identify the people in my life that I think were most at risk

of not taking this seriously and just try to do a better job than I usually do of letting them know that I really care about them. And I really want to see them make some changes in their behavior because this is not going to work for them and for any of us if they don't. And you know, it's such an imperfect strategy, but at the same time, like, if we can't all as a society start expressing more love and care and compassion for one another now, then we're all really in a bad place. And I actually think it's the thing that works with this ethical dilemma best. That, I mean, I really agree with place. And I actually think it's the thing that works with this ethical dilemma

best. I mean, I really agree with that. And it's a big ass though. It's interesting because, as Joanna knows, because she's been on, I've been hosting these daily sanity breaks at three Eastern noon, Pacific. We've been doing these daily live meditation breaks for people. And we take questions in the audience and so many people are saying, we get the same question all the time. How do I manage my rage at people who are not taking this seriously? And there are a lot of answers to that question. You can be mindful of your rage and all the stuff. But the radical move or a radical option is to really try to empathize with the denial of the people you're angry at.

And to think about, you know, I'd look at the kids in Florida who were partying on the beach recently and I looked at their, you know, interviews on the internet and I actually thought to myself, wow, I was heedless when I was a young person. And is it possible that I would have done the exact same thing? Yeah, and do I feel in some ways they're desire to be connected to their friends, to live out their youth, the way they want to live out

their youth, they're talking about it in terms of partying, but another way to think of it is belonging. And so there are some deep needs there if you're willing to look at it in the right way. And so I do think empathy is an uncomfortable thing to ask for for people who are angry at the COVID deniers, but I do think it's potentially a really useful thing

to ask for. Can I just throw one more thing in there too, is that, you know, for talking about this from the sort of 10% happier mindfulness meditation perspective, is that, you know, us being practitioners does not mean that we have to just take whatever's thrown at us. It does not mean that, you know, it's just like we passively sit back and accept,

you know, the word acceptance is used a lot or be with or let go or, you know, all those terminologies are often used in the mindfulness world. But, you know, it's also a time now, it's okay to stand up for and like, I am the mama bear with my home, you know, like I'm going to take care of my house and my family and the people that walk into this are into my home.

They, there are certain guidelines, you know, and that's kind of just the way it is right now. So there's a lot of wisdom, you know, and a lot of clarity that comes with our mindfulness practice that can take some of the confusion out of these conversation questions, you know, so that so that kid in Florida, the one that became the meme and everywhere, he did a big apology yesterday. And I don't think he wrote the apology because it's like, he likes his parents hired somebody good to write that apology. But it's sort of like a lesson was learned.

A lesson was learned by probably somebody being firm and clear and straightforward. So there's also this aspect, you know, it's like, yes, there's the empathy and the compassion and like we all want to be that and do that. And at what point is it really important to say no? You know, because we're looking, when I look at the title of this, if it's still the same as societal responsibility or social responsibility, You know, when in our society is time, have we not said no? And in turn, you know, Greg, you're talking about your family.

I know I'm talking about my ancestors. You know, and Dan, I'm sure your ancestors, you know, it's like at what time did we not say no? And suffered hundreds of years of consequences. I'm not saying that's what's happening here's happening here, but just like really paying attention to the balance of what ethics is asking for. We keep talking about the kindness and care, but there's also like this very important aspect of what are we taking care of?

What are we doing to move forward? And what are consequences of not taking care? Greg, I'd love to bring you in on that because this is a tricky balance because Joanna, you said a couple of things that I don't view as contradictory, but there are different approaches to the same thing. On the one hand, you are very tough when you need to be with somebody who's potentially at a line

or not taking seriously enough the dangers here. On the other hand, with your brother, you're being firm and tough and clear, but you're also trying to empathize with his standpoint. You're trying to not flood him with articles. So you are, you're doing both of these things, and that strikes me as an interesting balance to try to strike I mean I'll say at the beginning of this crisis. I did my first Twitter call out of my life I'm not a fan of Twitter callouts. I think it Twitter brings out our worst a lot and it's a lot of sort of Not always but there's some sort of preening and virtues signaling that I see on Twitter and but I

I saw somebody who I randomly happen to follow a radio host who said this is nothing but a bad cold the media is making a big deal of it and I retweeted it with the comment. Sorry dude, this is just like I didn't say I can't remember exactly what I said but something effective this is just phenomenally irresponsible. I don't know like I so ethically was that the right thing to do or should I have tried to like have an offline conversation with him? What do you think, Greg? First of all, you're not going to get it perfect every time.

I would say, I like what Joanna was saying, I think that anger is one of our basic emotions. It's part of who we are. I tend to have trouble accessing my anger, actually. I grew up in a way, I was raised in a way, I think a lot of women are typically raised this way, where we're taught to be nice and we're taught to be accommodating and kind of to help other people feel all right. But I think that in any case, anger, sadness, fear, these are just basic emotions that are bubbling around in our brain 100% of the time. And whether we're feeling them or accessing them or whatever, I think that we are always with those things

and they are always with us. And so the question to me that I find really interesting and that I have to kind of live the day-to-day dilemma of myself is, what's the, first of all, how do I, in a crisis, if I have no idea who I am and what I'm even feeling, which I'm perfectly capable of just completely losing sight of that, then I'm not going to be that much used to other people in most of the time.

It's going to be very difficult to help other people if I'm just a mess of emotions and I have no idea what any of them even are. And then once I get a hold of them, I find that I actually have to make some decisions about is this an okay time to just let my anger out? Or should I try to put it back into place? And I think letting some anger out it,

you're doing wrong, your actions are going to hurt people is totally appropriate and healthy. And I think there's a difference between a kid on spring break who's really screwing up and might make a lot of people sick and like a politician or a media leader who ran for office or or or replied for a job that puts them in position to influence countless thousands, millions of people, and our anger at those kinds of situations and people is well placed. Like, we've got to focus it. We've got to focus it on shutting their harmful actions down as quickly as we can if we can.

Stay tuned, more of our conversation is on the way after this. Stay tuned, more of our conversation is on the way after this. Life is short, and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time, pure on earth, and what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short, with Justin Long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions,

like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you, but I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life.

We explore how they felt during the highs, and sometimes more importantly, the lows out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is Short, wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondering Up. All right, so here's another ethical dilemma I'd like to dive in on. Joe, I'm going to start with you again.

You referenced before toilet paper. And actually, somebody sent me a meme today of a bunch of cats looking their butts. And the caption was something of the effective. Actually, somebody sent me a meme today of a bunch of cats looking their butts and the the, the caption was something of the effect of, I don't know what this big toilet paper fuss is all about. Anyway, setting that aside. I, I, I empathize with the desire to like if I, it's impossible in New York City right

now from what I can tell to get Clorox wipes. If I walked into the store tonight and saw a bunch of Chlorox wipes, I would probably buy too many. And so how do we navigate this? We were scared. And so it gives us a sense of control to accumulate, to acquire. What's your recommendation in this situation that many of us face? No, it's so good. It's so good, it's so juicy, it's conversation really. And in this question, what I really am hearing is like, well, how am I including? How am I being thoughtful of and remembering that I'm not the last person on the planet?

I am appreciating stores in my neighborhood because they are limiting purchases to, it's the number two right now. And I'm really appreciating that because they're kind of putting the kabash on, you know, or they're putting the limit for people that can't limit themselves. You know, and it comes back to, I brought it up on the live thing, the other day, that marshmallow experiment with Stanford,

that idea that if you take one now, you can eat it and if you can actually wait, you can have two, right? So it's that idea that the why, the why, is the deeper question. And again, and because we're on the 10% podcast and we're asking into practitioners to really feel into the why. And if fear is the leading factor here, we're going to be

overwhelmed by that. I mean, it's impossible not to be. I mean, I can't even tell you how many times I've been watching the TV and going, this is fake. Like, I don't mean fake in the way that people, I'm like, this is all being shot in a movie, you know, studio and we're being manipulated right now. Like this actually isn't happening. They're stealing my money. Just like the moon landing. Yeah, it's a Margaret Outwood book, you know, and I'm just like, this is sci-fi that we're

living in right now. And so just to come back to your point is, and I don't want to sound corny and like spiritual and practicing about it, but really asking into that question of why, because there are, yes, there are things that we don't have, like ventilators and masks and gloves and gowns. And those things we know we're in a deficit of in this country, we are not in a deficit of toilet paper.

We are not in a deficit of Chloric's white. They just can't stock them fast enough, right? That's what we're being told, again. So, I guess the question that I'm asking people to ask themselves is why they're doing what they're doing when they're doing it, and really just having a reflection on it, and is it if it's completely and totally fear-based? Again, like, you know, whatever empathy or compassion we're turning towards other people, we need to remember to turn towards ourselves. Like, yeah, I'm scared right now.

I'm afraid right now. I am doing things that I wouldn't normally do. How am I taking care of others? And this is what I just, I love the word humanist. I'm so interested, Greg, and what you're talking about. And I'm gonna definitely look into it more. But just the idea of, you know, if we were living in a tribe right now, you know, if we were all sitting around a fire

in a tribe, like, you know, we would not even be considering sharing. That would just be a given because our whole survival is dependent upon our individual survival in vice versa. So I know it's a big, it's a big ask and I can say that from a place of privilege and I can say that from a place of having everything I need. But when I know when I'm taking something, it means somebody else is not getting something.

So I hear a bunch of things in there that are interesting to me. One is, yeah, to look at what's motivating you in the moment when you're shoving 75 rolls of toilet paper into your cart. Another is to step back and consider how that would impact other people. And yet another aspect is to recognize that there are times when you're going to do the thing you're not proud of, because we're all in this new shocking set of circumstances. And we are, there are gonna be days where, maybe weeks where we operate in ways that we're later not super proud of. And we need to be easier on ourselves,

given that we're trying to navigate a whole new world. So it sounds like self-compassion, which is not my favorite term, but it is a concept I really like, is gonna be key in terms of doing the right thing here. Well, and this is such a true reflection for us on our, you know, this is sort of the microcosmic experience around, you know, when we're talking about global warming and we're over-talking about racial injustice or what we're talking about. These, all of these things that we're being faced with right now are not new in human experience. I mean, they might be new in the last, I know the number, no president has had to deal with something

like this in the last hundred years. But this isn't new to human existence and human survival. So it's really, you know, we are being asked the bigger questions, we are being asked the bigger ethical questions right now. But I want you to go back to self-compassion because I don't, that somehow, it feels to me like we're all gonna make mistakes, we're all trying to do the right thing here, but there are gonna be times when we make mistakes and self-compassion seems like a really important thing

to employ. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Because, right, so coming back to, let's say we're having an incredibly fearful moment, Greg pointed out, fear, anxiety, anger, all of these things are real human emotions. We can't pretend they're not here. Anytime we pretend they're not here, then we're bypassing something.

So those are very real. And so the kind of tenderness and care that we can hopefully reflect back on ourselves is the acknowledgement, not the, you know, the acknowledgement. I'm afraid right now, right? And that in and of itself is compassionate. If instead, just like all the gobbling

and greed, and you know, we call it sometimes the hungry ghost or that kind of pushing people out of the way and not even thinking about it, all compassion is out the door. But the compassion piece, the self-compassion is, yeah, I'm afraid. And my fear makes me angry. My fear makes me feel lonely. You know, there's so many lonely people right now. You know, I keep talking about, oh, it's so great to be with my family and my husband. And again, that's privilege talking,

because there's also people that are feeling really alone right now. So again, a need for compassion, like a lot of care, a lot of taking care, I'm going to take care of myself in this loneliness, I'm going to take care of myself in this fear, I'm going to take care of myself in this sickness, you know. And then I want to just go back to the wisdom piece that I pointed to earlier. Compassion and pity can kind of be, call them the near and far enemies. So self-compassion does not mean self-pity, right? So it also means like, okay, well then what do I need to do?

What action can I take to really take care of myself? It's not about wallowing in it. It's like, okay, and now what's my next step? Oh, actually I need to really take care of myself? It's not about wallowing in it. It's like, okay, and now what's my next step? Oh, actually, I need to pick up the phone and call somebody and say, I need some, I need food. You know, or I need something, right? So really watching the difference between compassion and pity, especially for the self.

Again, this is where I feel like mindfulness is so helpful at saying to us, wait, wake up. Look at what's actually happening. What is happening right now? I'm afraid, I'm alone, I'm hungry, I'm whatever, and what do I need to do about it? There are two other ethical dilemmas I wanna run by you guys, and we'll try to dispatch with them quickly and then let you go.

There's been a lot of gnashing of teeth over the issue of more affluent people leaving crowded cities to go to suburbs or the country, you know, here in New York City, people are going out to the Hamptons, which is on the eastern tip of Long Island or people are flying to Hawaii because they want to be away from crowded areas. They think it's the safest move, but the people who live in those areas are like, well, you're bringing germs here and you're going to stress our food supply and our health systems. But I see it from both sides. I mean, I understand why people would want to, if they're going to be hunkered down for three, four months to be in a place where it's, you know, they have a backyard,

et cetera, et cetera. And I see why somebody who lives in a place where there are backyard would be frustrated by an influx of city dwellers. So Greg, what's your take? Right or wrong to want to leave the city? Well, I think it's too late now. I mean, I think at this point, people who are trying to do that, especially like, let's say if they're leaving a place

like New York City where it's already that I have the storm, the heart of the pandemic, to go somewhere else, I think they can rightly expect their neighbors wherever they get to to be absolutely furious with them. And unless you really are accidentally, through very, very little fault of your own, sort of trapped somewhere right now,

where it's just utterly unsustainable for you to stay there, you know, you gotta look at it like, yeah, it is your own fault. If you know, and you are, you do hold some blame, if you're trying to get somewhere else just to be a little bit more comfortable. Joanna, do you want to weigh in on that? I have friends who left the city. Now, they did it a while ago before I don't think they brought the risk of germs to where they went, but I understand the

desire, the friend of mine has a house in the country. So he went there, it's his house. But it is adding strain to the food supply and to the more importantly, I think, because the food supply isn't really in jeopardy, but to the healthcare system. So what would the Buddha say about that? I feel like that's probably more of a New York problem than across the board in this country, just in general, like, that's probably more of a New York problem than across the board in this country, you know, just in general.

Like, that's not most people don't have second homes or another option. I do know people that are going to stay with family members because they want to be close to their parents or their cousins, siblings, whatever. So people are moving households to go be with other people in case anything drastic happens. But again, if we go back to this sort of, since this is like this ethical thing, it's like, well, what's your intention?

What's your intention and what's the impact? And are we paying attention to that? Yeah, I mean, it's people who can afford an Airbnb somewhere. And they feel like, hey, the world is still my oyster. I can still go wherever I want to go. I can still do whatever I want to do. And the point is that there was a lot that was harmful about that kind of mentality before all this.

And you can see some real obvious harms now. I mean, I'm not saying that I haven't become like a so total socialist, whatever that everybody needs to have the exact same amount of money and all of that. I hope your listeners won't just shut me down immediately because they think that that's what I'm trying to say. But I am saying that we live in a world of savage inequalities. If somebody wants to just take their own, you know, they're in a city like New York that where they're already incredibly likely, or you know, in other words, there's a very solid chance that they're carrying this virus

around with them and just go wherever they want to go for no other reason than their own comfort and pleasure. They need to take a close look at that and expect their neighbors to be angry at them when they get there. Fair point. Let me run one more dilemma by you guys. I've been reading about folks who are sort of knowingly breaking the rules of social distancing occasionally because they want to show personal affection. I read about the case of a mom who's immunocompromised and she shouldn't be snuggling up with her grown kids because she might get sick, but she really wants to. And so she occasionally will break the rules.

The argument, it's hard to argue against that, but the argument against it would be that she's upping the odds that she ends up in a hospital taking a ventilator that maybe she wouldn't have had to have taken if she had been more careful. And so that strikes me as really difficult. So, I'll start with you, Joanna. Yeah, this, this one I don't feel so confused about. Again, it goes back to this idea of renunciation and of the hashtag not right now, you know, it's like really watching our impulses, you know, really watching what this need,

this desire, this immediate, you know, because like my daughter lives in New York, my daughter is one of those people that migrated away because she was a student and came home. But I could, you know, she lives away for five, six months out of the year. I want to hug her every day. Every day I want to hug my daughter, but she doesn't live here, so I can't. Right. And so what I then work with are those experiences and feelings of of want of, you know, like not having something that I really want. People don't have things that they really want

and even really need every day all the time. And so what's it like for right now to say, yeah, I really feel this way. And I'm gonna wait because it's serving the bigger progress and the bigger process and the greater good or whatever, whatever anybody's tradition wants to call it. And I feel, and this is where I feel like super meditator dominant, is as a meditator, and it's especially as somebody who sits retreats and silent retreats. We really know what non-ciations about. We really know what it's like to not have something right now

Right and and to learn how to hold it to sit with it to experience it To not say it doesn't exist. It's not not there. It's not that we don't care. It's not that we don't love It's just you know, this is important like this is really really important. So I Don't know who that mom is and I, you know, I have nothing but care for that. And at the same time, it's sort of like, yeah, and what would those kids feel like if they knew they got their mom sick? I mean, that would just be, you know, so it's like, what are, again, what is our intention? Why are we doing what we're doing and do we need to do it right now or can it wait a little bit?

I would add that none of us that I know of unless we're really just totally isolated alone in one apartment not going out ever, somehow able to get our supplies dropped off at our door and then by whom none of us are doing this 100% perfectly but there's the the Talmudic invocation you are not required to complete the work but neither are you free from to desist from it. You know we're all really really really trying to cut down right now to flatten the curve to help each other to stay alive for longer and to find a solution to this terrible crisis.

I'm not asking anybody out there in this world to be perfect because I'm not there and none of us are going to get there, but to do anything and everything that we really can and to try to stretch ourselves to do more to flatten this curve and help these people is what we need to do right now. I like that a lot. Let me ask a final question of you, Joanna, and this will bring it back to framing it as Greg has exordered us to do in the positive.

I have some thoughts, some sort of early stage thoughts on Buddhist ethics, and I'm going to run them by you and then you see what you think of it. To me, it's, as you know, I don't really love phrases like listening to your heart. What does that even mean? But I've done a lot more loving kindness meditation over the last couple of years. I've done a couple of longer retreats of meta practice. And I've more I've noticed that actually there is like an intelligence that lives beneath

the neck, beneath the thinking mind. And often there's like a positive bodily response on the level of the molecules and the level of the gut, on the level of the viscera, to when we're doing the right thing. And the heart knows, the body knows when you're doing the right thing. So it's like I said before, when I promised that I wanted to get back to self-interest, I think it really does come back in many ways to the quote often attributed to Abraham Lincoln that he was repeated to have said, when I do good, I feel good, when I do bad, I feel bad, that's my religion. And that's how I think

of Buddhist ethics. And I know we're all going to screw up, but that's kind of my north star in this situation as in every other situation. You're totally close. You're totally close. I mean, it's just like it comes down to the basics of, you know, how do you sleep at night? Or how do you move through a day? If something is repeating itself in your mind because you, you know, cut somebody out or because you stepped in front of somebody in line, I know for me, like those kind of things, I just play over and over and over and over again in my mind. And so we have this term, you know, the bliss of blinelessness and that freedom, the freedom,

the liberation, the weight off of us when we're not caring things around. And you know, there's this term that I really love, the cognitive dissonance that can kick in when we override, when we really learn society, culturally from our families, whatever, to override harm and to override when we're doing something that might not be ethically in alignment with our hearts,

but it's like, yeah, we all know what it feels like to be free of that. You know, those moments when we're not carrying that weight around. You know, and in the mindfulness world, we really, really know it when we're sitting on the cushion. We know what follows us to the cushion when we're trying to meditate. And most of the time, when we can't very well, it's because we're being chased. And sometimes it's by things we've done, sometimes it's by things others have done.

Guys, thank you very much for doing this, appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. It was a pleasure. All right, big thanks to join on Greg. Before we go, just a reminder, join us for 10% happier live weekdays, three Eastern noon Pacific.

You can just click on 10% dot com slash live. That link is in the show notes, 20 minute daily sanity break. Big thanks to the people putting together this podcast under difficult circumstances and we've increased everybody's workload because we're now twice a week. Samuel Johns is leading the effort. He's a hero. We also have on board a couple new folks. Jackson Beer

Felt is our editor, Maria Wartell is our production coordinator and of course thank you as always to my guys Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan from ABC News. We'll see you on Wednesday with a fresh episode. Stay healthy. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com-survey.