Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 411: Are You Willing to Challenge Your Own Tribe? | Robert Wright

Episode Date: January 12, 2022

Why, from an evolutionary perspective, is it so terrifying for many of us to contemplate challenging our own tribe? How comfortable would you be hopping on social media and questioning the deeply held convictions of your closest friends and colleagues? Even if you don’t want to be public about it, are there ways to have more empathy for somebody whose views are different from yours? Robert Wright believes the future of civilization hinges on our ability to get better at this. Robert Wright is the author of the bestselling book Why Buddhism Is True. He also writes the Nonzero Newsletter, is host of The Wright Show podcast, and his newest mission is something he calls the Apocalypse Aversion Project. This episode explores: how mindfulness meditation can help us overcome our biases; how we are often manipulated by natural selection; the concepts of confirmation bias and attribution error; the pain and joy of pushing back against the conventional wisdom of your own tribe; the difference between cognitive and emotional empathy; why Robert is a big believer in talking to people with whom he disagrees; and the importance of making friendships across ideological lines. This episode is the second in our weeklong series about bias. If you missed Monday's episode with the excellent journalist Jessica Nordell, you can listen here. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/robert-wright-411See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, why from an evolutionary perspective, is it so terrifying for many of us to contemplate challenging our own tribe? How comfortable would you be popping on social media and questioning the deeply held convictions of your closest friends and colleagues. As tribalism becomes more deeply entrenched in modern culture, I suspect many of us find this prospect to be increasingly unappetizing. But are there ways to do it with some modicum of safety, or even if you don't wanna be public about it, are there ways to have more empathy

with somebody whose views are different from your own? My guest today believes the future of civilization hinges on our ability to get better at this. You may know Robert Wright from his best-selling book with the audacious title, Why Buddhism is True. I love that book. Robert also writes the non-zero newsletter and his host of the right show podcast. I am a subscriber to and fan of both the newsletter

and the podcast, by the way. Bob's new mission, which you can follow if you subscribe to the aforementioned newsletter, is something he calls the Apocalypse a version project. As I mentioned, he believes deeply that in order for the species to overcome the massive challenges confronting us from tribalism to climate to nuclear proliferation, we need to take the next step in our evolution. And as you're going to hear, Bob has put his money where his mouth is in this regard. In this conversation, we talk about how mindfulness meditation can help us overcome our biases, how we are often manipulated by natural selection, the concepts of confirmation

bias and attribution error, the pain and joy of pushing back against the conventional wisdom of your own tribe, the difference between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy, how we can be compassionate towards people and still think that as a practical matter, they should be in jail. And why write is a big believer in talking to people with whom he disagrees and making friendships across ideological lines. This is part two of a week-long series we're doing on bias. If you missed Monday's episode with the excellent journalist Jessica Nordell, go check that out.

We'll get started with Robert Wright right after this. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McG McGonical, and the great meditation teacher, Alexis Santos, to access the course, just download the 10% happier app,

wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10%.com. All one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a 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. Robert Wright. Thanks for coming on. Well, thanks for having me, Dan. Pleasure. I'm a big fan and avid consumer of all things, Bob Wright, from your newsletter to your podcasts, to your books. And I'm particularly interested to get you talking about what seems to be a big idea, big thesis on your mind about humanity right now, which is something to the effect of

we, as a species, are not going to survive unless we're able to transcend the lesser angels of our nature in particular, our not so helpful, evolutionarily evolved biases. Yeah, I think that's a fair summary. I mean, I don't want to over dramatize this situation, but I do think after billions of years of evolution and hundreds of thousands of years of our species being around, we've gotten to a point where it's essential that we get better at overcoming

what are sometimes called cognitive biases, which I think are kind of built into us by evolution. And I think the reason we need to get over them is because more and more, the people of the planet collectively face problems that taken together can be called existential. I think including climate change, which people are well aware of, but also including various other challenges, arms control and various realms, I could go on, but yeah, you're right, I think we need to move to a higher plane and to put it in Buddhist terms, I would say,

I think that we need to move at least some increment in the direction of enlightenment. I think of enlightenment as being on a spectrum kind of like I know I'll never get to fall on enlightenment. I don't know how many people have but I think all people can make at least baby steps toward it. And I think lots of people need to do that if we're going to pass these tests as a species. How would that look practically? This process of inching our way down the enlightenment spectrum or whizing up as I've heard you describe it. Does that mean everybody starts meditating stat or how do we get to the future that you think would be most hopeful in promising? Well, I certainly think meditation can be a valuable tool.

I don't think people have to meditate to become more aware of some of the psychological impediments and biases I'm talking about and try to surmount them. But I do think mindfulness meditation is very well suited to the challenge. And I think generally, Buddhism deserves credit for having diagnosed the problem with being human pretty early on and been ahead of the game in a lot of ways, and even gotten to some insights that Western psychology has only gotten to recently. If I were talking to an audience of people, literally opposed to

Buddhism, I might talk about other paths to the goal, but I think your audience probably is pretty favorably disposed of meditation, and I have to say, I think that can be a really helpful tool here. Now, I think what's great about mindfulness meditation is that it can focus your attention on some really kind of subtle but powerful levers for kind of attacking the problem. Let me just give you one example. Okay, so one famous cognitive bias is confirmation bias. We all are naturally inclined to notice and embrace evidence consistent with our pre-existing views

and not notice or reject or critically interrogate evidence that seems incompatible with them. And that can get us into all kinds of troubles, like if we have this idea that some group of people is bad or they're intrinsically imperever or enemies, then we're going to look for evidence to sustain that. And so this can be a really big problem. And I think where meditation can help here is that the phrase cognitive bias is kind of a misnomer. The word cognitive sounds so kind of detached from emotion and feeling, but I think what really

drives these biases is feeling. So in the case of confirmation bias, like imagine you're on social media, you're on Twitter or something, and somebody tweets something, you know, it's somebody kind of in your ideological tribe and they tweet something that confirms your world view. And you see it, well, if you pay attention, you'll notice that you actually, you feel a favorable disposition toward you. You actually have an affection for that evidence, right? And that's why you uncritically embrace it and may retweet it.

And on the other hand, if you see evidence, it seems it odds with your world view. If you pay enough attention and meditation helps you pay attention to things like this, you'll notice that there's a kind of hostility toward the evidence itself. It's kind of an aversion to it. You want to push it away. And because you're hostile toward it,

you want to critically interrogate it. And you want to say, well, wait a second, where did they get this? I want to see the study that claimed to find this. You don't naturally do that with the evidence it seems to support your role. You just retweet it, right? Because you like it. And I think the first step toward being more careful about what we do and don't retweet and what we do and don't accept is to recognize the feeling that accompany the inclination to retweet or not to embrace or not.

And I think if you go about your social media business that way you'll be a better citizen. And I think mindfulness meditation, I'm sure you'll agree, can help you be attentive to exactly that kind of thing. I do agree. It's fashionable these days to beat up on social media. I can't say that I entirely disagree with that impulse.

Where do you stand on whether social media is helpful or hurtful in terms of the survival of the species? Well, in a way, it's a moot point. I think we're stuck with it. Humans are so strongly drawn toward it. It brings so many things we like that I think it's kind of not going to go away. People have always used the available information, technology to associate with people they have things in common with, to share information that's important to them, and so on.

So I think it's going to be around social media companies. I think they're things they could do to make it more productive, but I think in the meanwhile, it's up to us to use it in ways that are more constructive. And I think happily the goal of being a good citizen on social media largely coincides with a goal of being a happy person who, a happy person is not going crazy. The kind of equanimity you try to cultivate with mindfulness meditation, I think helps in both of those regards. So what does that look like?

I mean, I get that it might look like, in part, noticing the voracious urge to retweet any piece of news that is bad for the opposite tribe and then not giving into it. Might it also look like gently questioning things that your fellow tribes, men and women and people are saying, I know you've experimented with that a little bit? I have. Often on, I think that's the great challenge right now or a great challenge. Is bucking your tribe. When you see something that your ideological kin are embracing uncritically or you see them taking a needlessly uncharitable attitude

toward people in, you know, and the other ideological tribe, or if you see them doing something that's very common on social media, which is to act as if the most extreme person on the other side is typical, right? Like, oh, look at this. Look at how these conservatives are reacting to this. When actually it's only about seven people in a given week who are freaking out in a supermarket over a mask mandate or something, you know, not that many people are actually doing that. It's not easy to step out and say, wait a second, folks. We shouldn't overgeneralize and so on.

And that takes what I guess you could call courage. And I think where mindfulness can come in there is, the impediment to courage is fear, it's like fear of what people who's esteem you want will think of you, right? People in your ideological group. There's a kind of fear you have to overcome to step out and say something that may be unpopular. And fear, like any problematic emotion, is something that can be addressed through mindfulness, right? By observing it, you can loosen its grip on you. I also think they're a little trick.

So like, sometimes if I tweet something that I fear is gonna get me a blowback, I just like, tweet it, turn off my computer, go do something, right? Because it can be really, you know, rollercoaster ride to sit there and see what people are thinking of it in real time. There can be virtue in engaging the conversation,

engaging the blowback, but I think there's also virtue in just coming back to it an hour later and replying to the people who you think should be replied to. How has it gone for you when you've pushed back against conventional wisdom in your tribe? Do you have any specific examples that might be worth the dissecting?

Maybe this is a little bit of a cop out, but I have a tendency to try to point out to people things that are unwise tactically a couple of examples. So one was I remember during the Black Lives Matter protests, there was a pretty thing famous video of some protesters going by a restaurant, these people were dining outside and the protesters like demanded that they hold their hands up in solidarity.

Now first of all, I find that completely abhorrent. It's just the idea of subjecting people to any kind of heavy-handed pressure. I mean, you know, you got these sometimes elderly people like dining and all these young vigorous people come by in a crowd and demand a show of allegiance. I find that apporant, but I also find it counterproductive because that is exactly the kind of meme

that is gonna, as it plays out in conservative circles, convince them that actually we are the fascists, right? And my inclination is to point that out to people rather than to say, I personally find this important, and maybe that's a little bit of a cop out, but maybe you get more traction with that. The other example is defund the police. And here I had an advantage, which is because my daughter

had just been holding a defund the police sign in a protest. She had explained to me that it doesn't mean quite exactly what you might think it means. It means, you know, change the nature of policing. But anyway, I'm not in favor of taking away all the things from police departments, but also I think that's just a terrible message, just strategically. I'm not in favor of taking away all the things from police departments, but also I think that's just a

terrible message just strategically. It doesn't even matter what they mean by it. The phrase itself is just a surefire political loser. That's what I said. And to get back to your question of what has the experience been like of trying to do things like this, which I don't do nearly often enough, you often find out that there's more support for you than you would have expected. And some of it may come from people in the other tribe, so to speak, fine. But there are more people than you might imagine who are aware of the dangers of being too reactive to things. And yet, as everybody knows, it can be incredibly painful to be on the receiving end of vitriolic

disaprobation from people whose opinions you care about. And I imagine maybe that's happened a little bit to you and how did you handle it? If so. It has happened a little. I'm pretty good at ignoring it. I mean, and maybe that's where confirmation bias is your friend. It's like, you know, when the people who tweet really unfriendly things in reply, I'm kind of good at dismissing them.

They must be confused. They disagree with me, right? I don't know. If somebody becomes a real problem, I just, I mute them. The other place this has been an issue is, on my podcast, I try to host a great diversity of views, including people on both the right and the left who are considered extremists by people on the other side. And there are times when people, basically, they're trying to de-platform the people I'm having on. And that can be hard because the accusations

can be particularly nasty because when they're trying to de-platform somebody, they tend to be. But I mean, there's some people I wouldn't have on my podcast, but I think it's important to try to understand a very broad array of perspectives. And I think this is one of the most important strengths that needs to be cultivated as cognitive empathy.

That's one of my hobby horses, cognitive empathy being a little different from emotional empathy, you know, emotional empathy being the kind of classic kind of empathy, just kind of feeling their pain, so to speak, but cognitive empathy is just understanding the perspective, not necessarily agreeing with it, not necessarily having any sympathy for the person who holds it, but just trying to understand it. And I think something I really encourage people to work on is at least try to understand why they're doing what they're doing. There's a reason and you're better off understanding it than not.

What do you recommend in terms of modalities for cognitive empathy? I hate to keep getting back to meditation, but as long as we do have a meditation-friendly crowd here, I have found that mindfulness meditation makes it easier to understand perspectives of people you might feel hostile toward, whether for ideological or other reasons. And the reason is that the hostility itself can kind of abate, or at least become less of a distorting influence on your cognition. And the other thing I found is that, you know, sometimes cognitive empathy can lead to the other kind of empathy. It can lead to emotional empathy. And it works the other way around in a very natural way. I mean, you may notice that if there's somebody you're already inclined to feel empathetic toward

in the classic sense, you know, sharing their pain, you hope for the best for them. It's usually not that hard to understand their perspective. The problematic cases of the people you don't feel that way toward. So it can work both ways. Emotional empathy can enhance cognitive empathy. I think cognitive empathy can enhance emotional empathy, but I still want to stress that

understanding the perspective of someone, even someone you think has done a poor thing's need mean absolving them of responsibility for what they've done. Yeah, even if it leads to compassion, we can be compassionate toward people and still think that as a practical matter

they need to go to prison. Another way that one potentially could develop cognitive empathy, perhaps, I'd be interested to see what you think about this, is varying your media diet, whether it's on social media or otherwise. Do you think that's a viable route? Yeah, I encourage that. I mean, I honestly, I find Fox News more interesting than CNN or MSNBC. Partly because there's actual news there and the news is, oh, this is how events are

being processed on that side. I already know how they're being processed on my side. That's not news and it's not very interesting. And to be honest, I sometimes find it kind of disconcerting to see how the media on, quote, my team are just spending so much time reinforcing our biases. I find it more interesting to listen to an outlet that informs me about how things are being processed by people who aren't like me. And that's also, again, I think that's valuable. I think it's always good for you to understand what's going through the mind on the other side of the table, whether it's an enemy or a friend or, as is usually the case, some combination of the

two. There's a tweet I sometimes quote from Ian Brummer from the Eurasia group, Ian's a writer on international affairs. I'm sure you're familiar with them. It used to be his pinned tweet, but it says something of the effect of, if you're using this website, to only follow people you agree with, you're doing it wrong. Yeah.

And I think Ian Brimmer is very much with following. He is good at understanding the perspectives of the various players in the world. Speaking of understanding other people's perspectives, I just want to make clear to this audience who may not follow you as closely as they should. You really do put your money where your mouth is. Every Friday, you do a podcast episode

with a gentleman by the name of Mickey Kouse, who's a long time writer on politics and has in his later years, as I understand it, become, if not a Trumpist, at least Trump sympathetic, and every Friday, you guys hash out the week's news from different perspectives, and it rarely, and I'm an avid listener, it rarely devolves into shouting or name calling, or anything of that sort.

Yeah, well, the irony is, when there is shouting, it's me doing it, and I'm supposedly the meditator, but as one commenter said recently, this is why Bob needs to meditate and Mickey doesn't, because, you know, Bob's inclined to lose it. But yeah, Mickey, I've known him forever, we were at the New Republic together more decades ago than either of us cares to remember, And yeah, he voted for Trump twice. I'm happy to say that I think January 6 finally gave him some second thoughts, but we have very different perspectives. And, you know, the friendship helps. The fact that we've known each other for so long, but I'm a big believer in talking to people that you disagree with. And one thing I've noticed is believer in talking to people that you disagree with and one thing I've noticed

is that actually talking to them can be a very helpful thing in the sense that and this is something I discovered early on. If you would bring together two bloggers who had written nasty things about each other and put them in a face-to-face conversation, they would have a much harder time saying nasty things about each other. So there's a civilizing effect to just often, not always, but often to just face-to-face conversation. Three little thoughts came to mind as you were talking there.

One is the old trope about how it's hard to hate up close. I think that's probably true. The second thing is, there's this video, there's a comedian I love named Tony Baker, he's very active on Instagram. I'm not even on Instagram, I don't have the app, but I will sometimes go through the website just to look at Tony's page.

And he does these incredible, like, seven second masterpieces where he'll take video clips of animals interacting and he'll do voiceovers where he plays each character and it's very, very funny. And one of the clips is these two dogs who each on the opposite side of a fence who are growling and snarling at each other.

And as soon as they open the fence, they stop. And as soon as they close it again, they start growling and snapping at each other. That's, I have two of those dogs, actually. I mean, in terms of the way they behave toward other dogs, I get that, yeah. The third thing that gave me mind as I was listening to you there was you talked about the fact

that you and Mickey have a friendship and I might be mangling his work, but the psychologist and writer Jonathan Hyde from NYU who has never been on the show, but Jonathan, you are cordially invited. I'm a fan of your work, has written about our moral life and moral intuitions being like an elephant and a rider. The elephant is our subconscious

and the rider is our conscious. And we think the rider is in charge, but actually the elephant's running the show. And elephants are very hard to change, but one of the mechanisms by which we can change our elephants, our subconscious assumptions and intuitions and urges, is friendship. One of the ways we can do it is by having friends. So I share those reflections, you can ignore them or pick up on them if you want.

Yeah, it's true. You know, to use friendship to its maximum potential, you have to kind of not just trust your friendship instincts, so to speak, you know, because what you see happening on social media is in a way what's most natural and easy. Your friends with the people you agree with and so on. But absolutely, you know, making friendships across enemy lines can be a super valuable thing.

I think it's almost a cliche at this point to say the country needs more of it. Much more of my conversation with Robert Wright coming up 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 here 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 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 App.

We were talking about forms of bias early on in the conversation. We've talked about confirmation bias. Another form of bias is attribution error. Can you say a little bit about that? Yeah, I think attribution error is the most underrated cognitive bias, and it's relatively unknown. Well, here's the way it was originally thought to work. The idea was that when we are explaining the behavior of other people, we explain it too much in terms of their basic nature, their character, their disposition,

and not enough in terms of circumstance or situation. So in other words, if you see somebody in a checkout line being rude to the clerk, you think, oh, well, that guy's a jerk, and that's the natural reaction. And you don't think, well, maybe he had a horrible day. Maybe he found out that somebody he loves has a horrible disease, we just don't know.

And the original idea was that we just tend to attribute more than is in order to disposition as opposed to situation. It turned out to be more complicated. And the deal is, with people who are friends and allies, if they do something good, we attribute it to disposition, they're good people, they're our friends. If they do something bad, we explain it away

in terms of situation, you know, they had had a bad day. But they're not bad people. Whereas if it's somebody who classifies an enemy, it's the opposite. They do something bad and we go, yep, that's the way they are. That's their characters. Once you've got them in the bad box, it's very hard for them to get out. Buddhism is kind of anti-essentialist. The doctrine of emptiness, which is, you hear more about in Mahayana circles and in Teravada circles, is the idea that we tend to attribute essence to things. Trees have essence of tree,

and cars have essence of car, and my car has a special essence. And the idea of emptiness is that essence is a projection. There is no such thing as actual essence. Things are actually empty of essence. My view is that, A, essence tends to have a kind of affective coloration that is more than we realize. There's a way that looking at my car makes me feel. There's a way that looking at a tree makes me feel. And that's part of the essence we attribute to something. But to get back to friends and enemies, there is definitely a feeling of essence of enemy. I had an interesting experience. I was teaching a freshman seminar at Princeton on Buddhism years ago. And before the class started, there was a woman the guest speaker in the class had brought along. And she was actually notorious in progressive circles. And one of the students was talking to her before the class who didn't know who she was. And then it became clear who the

woman was. She was this notorious right wing woman. And I later asked the student, I mean, I was discussing with the class. I said, what was the moment like when you found out who she was? And she said, yeah, like one moment, she was just this nice old woman. And then there was transformation. I found out who she was. And suddenly it was this bad person. She had essence of badness. And I do think more than we realize, we attribute different essences to people that reflect our experience with them,

and that can be useful as a practical matter. To navigate the social landscape, we have to kind of have a feel for who our friends are, and that's fine. But I do think that if you ask, what is it that drives this particular attribution error? What is it that steers are thinking about why this person did this thing, whether it was disposition or circumstance? I think it's driven by this sense of essence, you know, the feeling, the essence gives us its affective coloration. And this is just another example of how I think, you know, Buddhism has been ahead of the game all along in appreciating how subtly our feelings shape our cognition and our perceptions

and sometimes distort them. It strikes me that these biases unchecked, unaddressed, unexamined really make us vulnerable to manipulation. Yeah, I mean, we're kind of doing them manipulating ourselves in a sense. I mean, my first thought was, yeah, we're being manipulated in a sense by natural selection, right?

The designer of human nature, but what you're thinking of is also true, which is that, for example, somebody who wants to increase their follower count on Twitter can find somebody in the other tribe doing something crazy, say something about it that enrages people in my tribe, and I kind of fall for the bait, because that is my first feeling, right? Yeah, they're horrible. And I ret of fall for the bait because that is my first feeling, right? Yeah, they're horrible.

And I retweet it. And I increase the follower account of this person who is ultimately being kind of manipulative. You know, this is one of the big problems of our time is that the way you increase your stature within your tribe, I mean, this is an eternal truth probably, but the way it's playing out on social media is deeply problematic. The way you increase your follower account within your own tribe is to demonize the other tribe. That's a really unhealthy incentive structure. And you're right that if I don't have some distance from the cognitive biases that are shaping

my behavior and getting me to retweet or not retweet, then I can be manipulated easily. This is what Buddhism is about, right? Awareness is liberation. Awareness can be liberation. As they say, in Buddha's circles, simple but not easy, right? It's a simple principle, but maintaining the awareness is challenging. Guess in another little cliche

that I think is useful here is, there's a reason why we call it a practice. Absolutely. It's for me an ongoing challenge. Meditation is an ongoing challenge. It doesn't come naturally to me, but you know, life is hard. We could agree on that, and I think the Buddha would agree as well. You said something that I didn't want to let slide there, which is that we're being manipulated by natural selection. Can you say more about that? Well, you know, what I mean is there are kinds of two problems that human nature poses us with.

The first is that natural selection didn't design us to be happy. It designed us to do things that got genes spread. Right. So, classic example is the classic Buddhist problem of Tonha or craving, the unsatisfactoryness of life, the fact that you gratify this craving, but almost immediately you want more, it doesn't last. You know, this is designed into a financial selection because it's an obviously good way to keep an animal pursuing various goals that can get genes into the next generation.

So, there's the fact that we weren't designed to be happy. And then there's a second fact that we're not living in the environment we were even designed for. So there are some forms of modern unhappiness that are a product of that, you know, severe anxiety disorder. You don't find a lot of hunter-gatherers with severe anxiety disorder. You do find anxiety. That's natural. That's a tool that natural selection built into us to get us to worry about things. But it's only in a modern environment that it can very easily get out of control in this completely dysfunctional way. I think that's one way to look at what meditation is about is to a

deal with unfortunate byproducts of the fact that we're not living in the environment we were designed for and b of the fact that we're not living in the environment we were designed for, and be to deal with the fact that our designer didn't have our true interest at heart to begin with. It just wanted us to spread genes. What is the apocalypse aversion project? In crass commercial terms, it's kind of, I was going to say it's kind of the pay walled part of my newsletter, non-zero newsletter. I mean, you know, there's there's paid subscribers and unpaid subscribers. I like to think the project is visible to everyone who reads the newsletter. And I think it is. The idea is that, again, I think we face a lot of problems. Some of them environmental problems, climate change, you know, various forms of pollution, some of them old-fashioned arms control problems, nuclear weapons, some of them newer problems,

bio weapons, and some of them emergent problems, weapons in space, artificial intelligence. Do we want to have an arms race and artificial intelligence among nations, or do we want to have an arms race in human genetic engineering? Right. You don't want to have to think about these issues in this environment of kind of nationalistic fear, right? There are just a lot of areas where you'd like to develop rules of the road with other nations. And I think we don't get those under control. We can

be in deep trouble. I mean apocalypse in a slightly fanciful way. But at the same time, I do think the problems can be called collectively existential. And when I say a version, I mean both I'm a verse to this outcome, but also how do you avert it? And I think part of the answer is a lot of policies at the international level, but part of the answer is these psychological obstacles we have to overcome if we're going to get to the point of developing wise policies at the international level and at the national level, you know, we're gonna have to get over the things that are that are dividing us. That's all. So in that realm is that that's when we get to meditation. One of the beefs that some people have with meditation and I'd love to get you to respond to this is that beefs that some people have with meditation. And I'd love to get you to respond to this is that,

contrary to, it's not gonna help us over any apocalypse. Actually, what it's gonna do is make us a bunch of complacent morons, apathetic, blist out useless folks. Well, what doesn't sound that bad actually? Yeah, that actually in and of itself might be. Sounds fun.

Sounds fun. I mean, well, first of all, honestly, in some cases, that would be a more productive way of being than getting super agitated and reinforcing tribal biases on social media. But that's not my main answer to that. My main answer is, let me know when you get to that point. I mean, I think it's true that if you ask, what would true enlightenment be like in the strictest sense, in the strictest old-fashioned sense of enlightenment, and people have different ideas about what enlightenment means, but yeah, it might involve almost an

indifference to external conditions that was demotivating because you managed to maintain equanimity and bliss regardless of what was happening. For me at least, the bigger challenge is, and I think for lots of people, I know, pursuing the passions we have, the ideological passions we have in a more constructive way, a way that's better for the world, better for other human beings, and very often better for our own ideological tribe. I mean, my job, I guess, is to interview a lot of people who are highly attained meditators. People have been doing this for 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And I guess two common denominators I've seen

among these dedicated meditators. One is a sense of humor. They don't take themselves too seriously. And the other is the absolute opposite of apathy, not an irrational and raged engagement, but a deep sense of caring about what's going on the world a sense of connectivity that seems to me as somebody who's not in their minds and doesn't have a mind like that to be very supple and effective

Yeah, I think Meditation first of all tends to make you compassionate toward more people than you might have been compassionate toward before because it makes you less indifferent and compassionate toward before, because it makes you less indifferent to the welfare of people might have been outside your circle as you conventionally reckoned it. You know, and if you're feeling compassionate to people, that's motivating.

It would be a bad world if the people with the best intentions were indifferent and the people with the worst intentions were highly motivated. But right now what I see is a lot of people with the worst intentions were highly motivated. But right now what I see is a lot of people with good intentions who would be more effective if they ratcheted the reactiveness down a little. Much more of my conversation with Robert Wright coming up after this. I want to give you a chance to make and I think this is the right point to do it. I want to give you a chance to make a point I've heard you make elsewhere here, which is something along the lines of the notion of enlightened self-interest, that this work

that you're calling on us to do to transcend these ancient biases is not only good for the world, but it will make us happier. Yeah, I think, first of all, the global problems I've talked about are what are called non-zero-some problems. That is to say, it's possible to have a win-win outcome. And obviously, if we get there and solve these problems, it's good for us in that sense. And in that sense, I guess the good news is that all that's required for the sheer salvation

of the planet, I think, is in light and self-interest. Now, in light and self-interest is not enough to solve all problems, all problems of justice, for example. But I think it's good that at least in light and self-interest could, in theory, get us the chance of keeping the planet together and get out of the business of getting a lot of people killed and polluting the planet and so on. But in any event, it's the second thing we alluded to earlier, which is that the practice of becoming more aware and more effective in your actions and wiser in your actions can make you a happier person. And it gets back to what is kind of amazing about what I think of

as in some ways a fundamental claim of Buddhism, which is that, you know, the reason we suffer and the reason we make other people suffer is that we don't see the world clearly. That's one of these amazing if true things, right? What it suggests is that this one key seeing the world more clearly can help you and can help other people, simple but not easy, right? To say see the world more clearly can help you and can help other people. Simple but not easy, right? To say, see the world more clearly, but at least if this claim is true, and I think it is, at least that tells you where to focus your energies. Yes, everything you just said, and just to build on it a little bit, there's something about making friends with people with whom you disagree that is, I think, when done well, enjoyable, maybe even perversely enjoyable,

but I think actually kind of enjoyable in a wholesome way. And uprooting and seeing the ridiculousness of your own biases, well, painful on one level, is, at my experience, quite enjoyable. And maybe it's just what you said that it somehow feels good to see things clearly, even if that involves admitting you've been wrong for a long time. Well, yeah. For one thing, according to kind of Buddhist doctrine,

the things that are distorting your vision are ultimately unpleasant things, right? I think you're also right that it feels good to know you've triumphed over distortion. And as you said, it feels good to get to know an enemy and realizing that, you know, at least not all of the enmity was really in order. You know, you had exaggerated how bad they are if it's minimum. It's a little like how good it feels if you're in a foreign country and you know a little little language and you actually succeed in communicating with somebody. That's just a gratifying feeling. You know, overcoming all these kinds of barriers actually feel good and it's

not easy because you do, there are valid moral judgments, right? There are things people do that it is right to disapprove of. On the other hand, we are all doing something that it's right to disapprove of. And you're probably going to have more influence over people are doing things as right to disapprove of. If you're in communication with them, then if you're shouting at them. I just have one last question about Apocalypse a version which is what is, as we speak right now, your level of optimism about whether the apocalypse, whether we use that term with seriousness or some level of fancy as you alluded to before,

do you think it can be averted? Well, first of all, I should say, I'm just not by nature an optimist. So you should really discount any pessimism you hear from me. I think total annihilation of all living things on the planet is very unlikely. Total annihilation of the human species is unlikely. And I think if there were something anything approaching that, we would probably emerge wiser. You know, the two world wars were followed by

laudable efforts. I mean, World War One was followed by the League of Nations. You know, you have this traumatic global experience. They do the League of Nations. It turns out to be very flawed. It doesn't work. World War Two happens. They try the United Nations. Still flawed, but structurally a little better. Whatever you think of these institutions, it's evidence that people learn from trauma, right? That the species does reflect on bad things and try to do better. So I guess maybe it's not that I'm pessimistic

in the longest run. I just hope it doesn't take some kind of epic trauma to get us to overcome nationalism and various other kinds of tribalism. That's my hope. And you know, look, there are a lot of encouraging things. This year, awareness of cognitive biases is encouraging. The spread of the word that you're doing so much of about mindfulness meditation is

very encouraging. There's a whole lot of work to do, but we do learn as a species. And I will say, look, when you look at the process that created this natural selection, the only rule is whatever life form gets the most gene spread is the life form that wins. It's kind of amazing that where we are. You wouldn't have even predicted that we do have built in these feelings of altruism, which are built in, even if we're where we are. You wouldn't have even predicted that we do have built in these feelings of altruism, which are built in, even if they're selectively activated

and sometimes too selectively activated, but compassion, all these things are natural. And these are assets we can work with. And in some respects, our history of working with them is itself impressive. I'm almost talking myself and I'm not the message. We should probably stop here before it gets out of control. Maybe you've been doing too much meditating. So tell me about it. Are you doing any meditating these days?

Do you feel pressure to keep meditating? Because you wrote this whole best-selling book about Buddhism? Well, actually, I think that's a godsend. Most people don't have a compelling reason to get on the cushion every day. As you may know, once you're talking to talk, you got to walk the walk. So, yeah, I'm meditating. I mean, this is of course the least of the tragedies of the pandemic, but it has been problematic for me in the sense that I realized I had become pretty dependent on going to a retreat week-long, 10 days every year or two to recharge my practice. And now that by and large, in-person retreats haven't been happening, I haven't done that. So that has been challenging. And I would say my practice has not been as obviously effective.

I guess my coping mechanisms have been, first of all, lower my expectations. When you come off of a treat, your skills are more finely honed than usual. And so you're like, okay, go through the routine, focus on the breath, attain this calm state. And that, for me, that gets harder as the retreat receives into the past. So I have to, I I think become a little less dogmatic about particular paths I've used and Settled for a kind of a freeform awareness. The other thing is I've started setting the alarm on my watch for an evening session Where again low expectations doesn't have to last long But I sometimes find I have kind of more to work with so to speak in the evening than in the morning

You know by that time you're you may be agitated, you may be this, you may be that. It's almost easier to be aware of something because the things going on in your, your head are more salient. They have more of an edge to them. Now, I have to say it's funny. I know you did this podcast with Alexis Santos. Is that his name? Yes, yes it is. And it's funny, this morning I taped an episode of my podcast with Josh Summers, a friend of mine is also a meditation teacher and a yoga teacher. He was pushing when I think is exactly that same thing on me.

He's evangelizing, I think he invoked the same Burmese meditation teacher. And so I have to look into this. I had initially misunderstood what Josh was saying to me, I think, and taking it to mean like, well, whatever happens on the cushion is success, just get up and say, you know, you must have been aware of something. It was fine. Don't worry. But after talking to him more and listening to your podcast, I realize it's actually what he's advocating is actually in a way, well, it's more challenging

than that. It's not trivially easy. This idea of going through the day and intermittently asking yourself, if you're aware what your attitude of awareness is and so on. So I'm an experiment with that. And we'll see. But I am eager to be able to go to another retreat at some point in life. Just to fill in the blanks for folks who might not have heard that episode on the show with Alexis Santos Who's a great meditation teacher and his teacher the Burmese gentleman you references named Saida Ootasia Nia and the most famous Burmese masters are kind of known for maybe this is too strong a word But a sort of militancy or a athleticism in their practice. It's a very kind of strict and

athleticism in their practice. It's a very kind of strict and a little bit strivy, the more famous versions of Burmese practice. Saida Uttesiania is counter-programming against that with a much more relaxed style that instead of being all over your breath like a mad dog or noting everything that comes up in your mind obsessively, he's just kind of has you relaxed and ask yourself a series of questions in your mind obsessively, he's just, you know, kind of has you relax and ask yourself a series of questions in your meditation practice on and off the cushion, where he's strict, is he's really strict about staying aware at all times. But the question is that you referenced our one, is are you aware, or what is being known right now is the way I usually do it. The second is,

what's the attitude of my mind right now? I'm trying to make something happen, am I averse to something that is happening? And the third is not a question, it's more of a statement that you may notice thought patterns, emotions come up, and you can just say, this is nature. Instead of attaching to it as yours, or essentially you just to notice, oh yeah, like any meteorological phenomenon is arising out of a set of conditions and it doesn't have to be solidified in that way. And I found this to be great on retreat because I didn't realize how badly I just liked it until I did something different.

I don't like the strict regimented form of practice that you mostly get on retreat. And I find in my daily practice it's much more enjoyable. So your practice is going well, I take it? Yeah, I mean, I went through a bit of an arc, you know, I've been practicing for not that long, frankly, 12, 13 years. And I started out with five to 10 minutes a day for about a year, and then I went on a retreat. And that was incredibly hard, but also really, it gave me a lot of faith that there's a lot to this practice. I came home from that and started doing a half hour

a day for a long time. And then I wrote a book about meditation and my hair was on fire about it. And it still is on fire, of course. But I tried to do two hours every day, which was just insane. And I did that. I remember that phase.

I remember that phase of your life. Particularly obnoxious phase in my life. And then, considering frankly, to in particular my wife. And then consider it frankly to, to, to, in particular, my wife. And then I cut down to an hour. And then from there, I just started to realize, you know what? I have enough momentum. And I enjoy the practice enough.

I'm going to sit every day. I don't need to count the minutes. I'm going to sit whenever I got the opportunity. Maybe one big sit, maybe a series of small sits, maybe both. And that attitude plus the approach that Alexis brought to the table for me has made my practice way more enjoyable. It doesn't mean I don't struggle with distraction or uncomfortable physical sensations or emotions, but the struggle is a little less frayed.

Yeah, that's good. You know, there are all different kinds of meditation. I mean, I think there's always value in going to a treat and kind of going deep. But at the same time, you're not going to be able to sustain that depth as a practical matter in real life. And you need a way of sticking with the basic practice, the basic concept in everyday life. I mean, that's where it really pays its dividends. I think you sometimes have to rethink in the way it sounds like you've rethought.

And I'm in evolution in that regard. Everything's changing all the time. That's one of the fundamental observations of Buddhism. And that's true for your meditation practice and something might work for you for a while. And then it's always worth not obsessively, but once it wel welcomes worth reassessing and trying something new. Another thing that I added into my practice in a much more systematic way about three years ago was a lot of loving kindness practice, where you sit and repeat these phrases. I've done two 10-day retreats of just that, and I do a lot of it in my daily practice. And that for me, for some people,

it's a very challenging practice. For me, thus far, it has been a very enjoyable practice. It produces a lot of the concentration, which can feel good physically. And so it actually makes me look forward to practice in a way that's much more motivating to get me onto the cushion. And so that's been very helpful, too.

Well, I'm one of the people that has not come easily too, but I guess if you can do loving kindness meditation, maybe that means I can do it. I don't know, maybe I should work on that. I mean, I do find that just plain old, garden variety mindfulness meditation does make me more compassionate towards more people. It does cultivate in that sense, loving kindness.

I've always had trouble with the beginning part, like where you're supposed to feel love toward yourself. That's right, I mean, that's hard. Well, isn't that the way it starts all day? Yes, it's beginning to... It does, I'm sorry to interrupt you, I just got excited. The shift in the way I had a talk to me

by a great teacher, her name is Spring Was Washemba, I did a nine day, actually retreat with her, just kind of one-on-one, was a great privilege. And instead of starting with sending good vibes to yourself, she starts with an easy person. And so she'll have you do days of just one, I did two easy people, my son and our cat. And it was extremely easy to send good vibes to these two beings and very enjoyable.

And there was a lot of concentration that got built up and a lot of physical sensations that go along with that, which can be a little narcotic, frankly. And as soon as you get the engine revved in that way, springs technique is to shove yourself in. And then it will get dry because we're hard. And then you go back to the easy person. And that was very, very helpful for me. I think I would need something like that. I mean, right before you said, your cat, I was thinking, why would start with my dogs? You know, dogs are so easy to love. So maybe that's where I need to start. So maybe I'm salvageable on the loving kindness front.

I believe you're salvageable in all fronts. And I would just close by saying that in terms of averting the apocalypse, mindfulness meditation on fore square and your camp that that would be very helpful. I would just say that this kind of practice too can turbocharge the whole system because you're starting to bring in, well, first of all, having a kind of relationship to yourself

changes the game in some pretty significant ways. And then that can allow you to bring in people who you've regarded as an enemy and without condoning their behavior to start to see it, to start to see them in a more sympathetic light. Yeah, I used to be distainful of the idea of self-compassion, I guess, but I've more and more come to see the wisdom of it. Yeah. I don idea of self-compassion, I guess, but I'd more and more come to see

the wisdom of it. Yeah. I don't think self-compassion. I think just sometimes people say you need to love yourself before you can love other people. I think that's, you can prove that not to be the case. We all know people who are very hard on themselves and are extremely kind and effective in the world.

I do think it makes it much easier to be kind to other people if you are kinder to yourself. And the science around self-compassion seems to be from what I can tell, very convincing. And having road tested a lot of these techniques, both on the cushion and on my sort of free range life, I am a deep believer. Yeah. More and more I am too. So I'm always a step behind you. That is also demonstrably false.

But before we go, can you please plug all of your offerings, your books, your podcasts, slash video blog, your newsletter? I'm glad to do that. The newsletter is called a nonzero newsletter. It's a sub-stack. The title comes from a book I wrote called non-zero, which I also wouldn't discourage you from checking out. The Buddhism book is somewhat obnoxiously titled,

Why Buddhism is True. I mean, some people find it obnoxious, but it's not dogmatic in the way it sounds. I like to think. So the podcast is called The Right Show. I really appreciate the chance, Dan, to engage in Chris self-promotion, even though the self doesn't exist. Exactly.

Exactly. Bob, thank you for coming on. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Thanks again to Bob. And thanks, of course, to everybody who makes this show, Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Kashmir, Justine Davy, Kim Baikama, Maria Wertell, and Jen Poient. And we get our audio engineering from the good folks over at Ultraviolet Audio. See you all on Friday for a very special bonus. We're gonna be dropping an entire episode

of our newest 10% happier show. It's called Child Proof. It's incredibly good. The host, Yasmin Khan, is amazing. So we'll see you all on Friday for that. 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 Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.

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