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

Episode Date: March 24, 2024

Alex O’Connor, formerly known as ‘Cosmic Skeptic’, is a public speaker, debater, and host of the Within Reason Podcast. A graduate of philosophy and theology from St. John’s College, Oxford University, Alex has produced videos with the likes of Ben Shapiro, Peter Singer, Richard Dawkins, Bishop Robert Barron and Peter Hitchens. Go to http://givesendgo.com/triggerpod to raise or give money for anything important to you. Check out Barro’s GiveSendGo campaign here: https://www.givesendgo.com/barro SPONSOR: https://GETSUPERBEETS.COM Use Promo Code: TRIG to get a free 30-day supply + 15% off your first order Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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which is one of the reasons, to put it crudely, our society is so fucked up right now. My position is that I just don't think this is true. What do you want me to do here? You know, if we remove religion from our society, things go downhill. Okay, what do you want me to do? I don't think this is true. Do I just sort of just lie to my children? It's not that people shouldn't question religion.

is the denigration of religion, has that been beneficial? And that's where I started to lose my faith in atheism. Alex O'Connor, Cosmic Skeptic, welcome back. Before we talk about all the serious stuff we want to talk about, we wanted to sit you down and have a go at you, right? Because last time you were on the show, you talked about not eating meat. Yes.

And you ruined our producer. That's right. He stopped eating meat. Yes. Right? We had to fire him. And he's not been the same since. We still employ him in a different capacity,

but he can't be our producer anymore, basically. It's a real shame. I remember that was when you were still filming out of the comedy club. Yes. It's been quite a time since then. Yes. Yeah, I do occasionally, it's a little bit awkward. Of course, I had to do a sort of big, serious YouTube moment of saying that I'd not just changed my mind, but changed my lifestyle. And I occasionally get people coming up to me.

I was at a sort of club party rave type thing and someone came up to me, held up there. Instagram on their phone and they went, is this you? And I went, yeah. And they went, wow, I'm vegan too. And I sort of had to, in that moment, usually when that happens these days, I have to have this sort of conversation where I say, well, listen, thank you so much. I really appreciate that you listen to, listen to what I'm saying and that it's affected you, but you should know that I made this announcement. I'm not vegan anymore. But in that moment, I just sort of had to go. Yeah. You know, that was all I could, that was all I could muster.

I really can't imagine you at a rave. You'd, yeah, I mean, I... Do you keep your blazer on when you're at the rave, Alex? You know, Chris always has a go at me for this. He always likes to tell the story of when I showed up for a boat party that he'd organise in a suit. Because I'm sort of trying to live out the philosophy that there's no situation where you can't wear a jacket.

No, you're going to rapidly discover that's not true. I woke up like this, you know. I actually sleep with the boat. tie on, but I sort of take it off. You dress down for us. But anyway, so you've, so you ruined our producer. He didn't eat meat for a while, right? It was, it was tense. It was difficult. We've got him sorted out now. He's all right. He's got a girlfriend now. He makes a meat meat. So it's all good, right? However, you stopped eating meat. You stopped eating meat and then you started eating meat. Yes. I mean, look, it's a, it's one of the most sort of significant things that's

happened in my channel's history. And it's an awkward terrain to navigate because you want to be open and you want to keep people sort of informed with what you're doing. But at the same time, I didn't want to become in any way like an anti-vegan type guy. There's a bit of a pipeline that sometimes occurs when somebody isn't vegan anymore, especially if their entire thing has been veganism. You know, there's this perception amongst vegans that people like to cash in on And that suddenly you're going on, you know, you're going on trigonometry and talking about how you're no longer a vegan. And the last thing I wanted and want to do is that because I still think that factory farming in particular is perhaps the greatest moral emergency that we're facing. Everything that I've ever said about factory farming, I stand by.

And I think it's still true. And I still think, I know that I don't know if you still do this, but you'd like to ask your guests what people aren't talking about, but should be talking about. And I still think that factory farming has to be the answer to that question. I mean, you've had some interesting answers to that. You know, people have, I actually really liked Peter Hitchens' answer about cars and how they've come to dominate modern cities. That's fascinating because, you know, that's something that people don't tend to notice. But something like factory farming generally doesn't even enter into the equation.

If you ask people, the moral or political issues that they care about on the street, they'd name a hundred before they got to anything involving the plight of animals. And that's because I guess it's, at the moment, at least, seen as a strictly moral issue rather than a political one. Well, the thing is, I don't know that it is because I actually think it's a market problem that can be solved with the market. Like, I am as concerned about factory farm, probably not quite as much as you are, but I don't like it. I think it's wrong. And I try to buy meat that isn't sourced in that way. In the UK, actually quite difficult.

In America, not that difficult. You can order stuff very, very easily from all sorts of different suppliers. But I think if there was a company in this country that wanted to mass, mass sell, grass-fed, organically bred, free range, whatever meat, there'd be a big demand for it. And people would pay a lot more than they're paying in the supermarket for it. I think that's true of people who are in a position to pay more money. It's certainly the case that people are moralized in suspending more money in a great many

areas. It happens all the time with environmentally friendly goods, for example. People are happy to pay more. But if you can't afford, if you don't have the money, if you're struggling to eat any food, let alone, you know, quality sourced meat, then of course you're going to buy the cheapest thing in the supermarket. So I understand that position, but I have to say that I've grown a lot more convinced that the way to solve this problem has to be top-down regulation.

I mean, it's all well and good saying we're going to boycott animal products. And, you know, great, awesome, boycott factory farming, why not? But with, I don't know, like veganism can grow, but meat consumption can grow at the same time. Like, it's great. Like, there are less people eating these products and buying these products than otherwise would be. But the industry is still massive. And I don't think it's going to go away just because people are making different purchasing decisions. That has a huge effect. But that can't be the only way to solve this problem, especially because if it's the case that people aren't going to be vegan, right? Because the vegan movement says the problem is just that we don't

have enough people on board yet. And one day, there's going to be a critical mass and then suddenly everyone's going to be vegan. And we won't even need to worry about regulation of the animal you know, farming industry because it just won't exist anymore. I'm not so optimistic that that's the case. However, what that means, or I shouldn't say however, what that means is that we're going to need to solve the problem in another way. And I think there has to be top-down regulation. I don't know how you feel about that, but I think that's...

Well, for instance, I know you want to jump in, but since we're on this, you top-down regulation, you basically, you're going to make meat very, very expensive. That's what's going to happen. Perhaps, yes, yes, yes, you are. There may be ways that we can solve that problem through subsidies, but also maybe the answer is to say, yes, it's going to be more expensive and people are already eating too much in the way of animal products and just need to be eating less. I don't know.

That's when you start getting into sort of governmental tyranny, telling people what they're allowed to eat. But I don't think it's quite the same. You have this image in your head of the government coming in and saying, you're not allowed to eat red meat. I think that is different in principle to the government introducing legislations based on moral principles about the treatment of animals and animal cruelty that make it such that some products are more expensive so people have to eat less.

I understand that that feels like the government is coming along and saying you're not allowed to eat meat, but that's not what it's doing. It's saying, look, a lot of the products that we consume in this country would be made a lot more cheaply if we just got rid of health and safety regulations in our factories, for example. They'd be so much cheaper, right? But the fact that the government is saying, you know, your jacket is going to be more expensive if you buy it from a UK source because the people working in those factories are sort of

beholden or the people organizing the workers are beholden to certain regulatory practices. That's not the government coming in and saying you're not allowed to wear a nice suit. It may be that the suit is more expensive and that's kind of the government's fault, but what the government's doing there is prioritizing the well-being of workers over a cheap suit. And I suppose in this instance what the government will be doing is prioritizing the well-being being of animals over a cheap meal. That is, as long as cheap meals are still available for those who need them, you know. I'm actually quite convinced by your argument purely because the British love animals so much and they care so desperately about their welfare that actually,

I think if someone came along to make that argument in a coherent fashion, I actually think a lot of people in this country would be okay with that. Yeah, well, people in this country love pets. To say that they love animals, I mean, I should be fair, most people maybe don't quite know what's going on in factory farming or they do, but they figure, well, someone's surely doing something about it. It's not exactly their fault, but I mean, for example, the RSPCA, I've always talked about how I think the RSPCA will be looked back upon with sort of, probably ridicule in the sense that you have a royal society for the protection of animals that's just like totally

fine with some of the most abominable practices imaginable. The pig industry is the I think pigs get the worst of it. If you're a piglet that's too sick to be profitable, if you're not going to make any money, you know, if you're not going to make it into adulthood, then you're killed. And the way this is done, colloquially known as thumping, blunt force trauma, they're taken by their hind legs and they're smashed into the concrete in the skull until they die. There was a high welfare farm. I think I know where, but I won't say just in case I get it wrong, that was discovered,

a so-called high welfare farm that was discovered to be thumping piglets to death by smashing their skulls against the cages that their own mothers were being kept in, right?

This is a horrible practice. Now, thumping as a practice, is officially approved by the RSPCA as a way of euthanizing these pigs. Now, do you remember when Kurt Zuma, the West Ham footballer

was caught on Snapchat kicking his, I say, somebody posted a video of him kicking his cat across the... I think he actually uploaded it himself. Yeah, I think he You might have done an extraordinary event, but also, you know, it's almost like he was doing a social experiment because the RSPCA eventually confiscated that cat.

The same RSPCA that's fine with taking piglets by the hind legs and smashing their skulls into the concrete because they're not going to make enough money. And if they were going to make enough money, would be killed most likely in a gas chamber choking on their own breath. But you kick your cat across the kitchen and not only do you get a media furor. I think even the mayor of London was on Good Morning Britain or something, condemning, Kurt Zuma. But the mayor of London virtue signaling, no. Can you believe it? No.

Can you believe it? Yeah. And the RSPCA took away the cat. The same RSPCA that's totally fine with it. Look, I just think that there is, shall we say, an element of cognitive dissonance. Yeah. I actually liked it a couple of days later.

I think when they played, when West Ham played Watford, someone kicked him particularly hard and he fell on the floor screaming. And the entire stadium started singing, now you know how your cat feels. That's quite right. And I wonder how that stadium would feel if if they saw any human being in front of them go through what the animals go through, that they kill to eat their food, you know.

It would look like a horror show. But it's funny, isn't it? Because, you know, they were, yeah, the chance were quite funny. But they were also a little bit, I don't know, it's cause for reflection. Because if I saw somebody leaving that stadium who got mugged, somebody came up to them and slashed their throat open, watched them, lead out on the concrete so that they could, you know, steal a little bit of their money for some added convenience getting home. And I started chanting them, you know, now you know how you're

allowed cow feels. I don't think it would be looked upon with such comedic effect. But that is an experiment I would like to see none. Yes, absolutely. Well, people do this all the time. People do these kinds of social experiments where they mimic animal conditions on humans and they do it in shop windows. And I sort of have a strange relationship with these things. You know, you see people walking in supermarkets and throwing fake blood all over the place. And it's hard to know. I think the question there is whether they're just effective or not. But a lot of people just think they're sort of stupid or immoral or disruptive

or whatever. But that this is an accurate representation of what we're doing to animals. And people say, you know, well, I'm against animal cruelty. I care about animal welfare. I try to buy, But it's like, I don't think we understand just how, just how unimaginable the suffering is and how unfathomable the numbers are. It's amazing. I mean, we kill millions of fish every minute. Millions. Not to mention the environmental effects. I mean, the whole industry just needs a complete shakeup.

And that's not the kind of thing that can happen by just people, you know, refusing to buy. a particular kind of product. I don't think that that's the only way this is going to happen. It's got to be governmental regulation. And also, veganism simply isn't sustainable for the vast majority of people. It's going to sound like a hack joke. It's rare I meet a vegan who looks well. Yeah, you do look a lot better, Alex, I have to say. You've got flushed cheeks, your eyes are spiked. You're nice and pink. You're going full gammon. Yep. That's just because I'm blushing because you're being so nice. I think, look, I can't speak to this. I've seen many vegans who look healthy. I've seen many vegans that look unhealthy. I've seen many non-vegans

who look very unhealthy. It's certainly harder and I don't doubt that it's possible to be healthy on a vegan diet if you do it properly. The fact of the matter is that if you don't eat, I won't say perfect, but you know, an optimal diet, then if you're eating animal products, if you're not eating an optimal diet, you know, you're going to have some problems. If you're eating a vegan diet and you're not eating an optimal diet, you're going to have some problems. you're just probably going to have more problems. And so I can understand why that might be the case. I mean, if it were proved, for example,

if you could show me a study that showed actually, yes, like, let's say the majority of people with nutritional deficiencies were vegan, I don't think that's true, but let's say it were true. My answer to that would not be to say, that's because veganism is unhealthy, but because being healthy as a vegan is harder than being healthy as non-vegan. And that's something I said, you know, since 2019 or whenever it was. Do you think veganism in certain instances when you see it at the way that it manifests within certain sections of society?

Do you think it's almost akin to a religion? Well, people say this about all kinds of things. They say it about wokeism. They say it about anything that becomes a philosophy that people care about, let's say. No, but people mean something else too on all the examples you're giving. What they mean, when people say that wokeness is a religion or that, I've never heard anyone say veganism is a religion, I certainly wouldn't argue that. However, what people mean is that it is a set of beliefs that it causes people to behave

in a way that is impractical and irrational, and they do it in the service of an idea that has almost mythical power over them. What I would say is a religion is the doomerism of climate change. There's absolutely, it has every element of religion, including people acting irrationally. I know what you mean, but would you say, for example, that, I mean, you've probably had people on the show talking about the threats of artificial intelligence. Yes. And how there's potentially sort of calamitous world ending implications.

Would you call that a religion? I wouldn't call that a religion because they don't behave in the same way about it. They're not going out and throwing soup on things. We say that, but then I don't think there's, like, if people start taking seriously the idea that we seriously need to slow down or stop artificial intelligence. Look at the environmental movement where people start raising awareness that climate change is the thing. And then a decade, a couple of decades later, people start taking it very seriously and

start protesting in the streets. And then the arguments are sort of like, well, look, I get what you're saying? It's probably right, but your methods aren't effective. And you know, what about China? Why should I care about what we do? The same thing can happen here with artificial intelligence. It's already happening when people say, hey, let's just slow down, let's put a pause on this technology and people are saying what you think that other countries are going to put a pause on

this? No, there's nothing we can do, right? And it's also apocalyptic, the world's going to end. All of the elements that you're identifying is potentially religious here based on this, this, I mean, you call it mythical, but it's always grounded in some kind of reality, right? Like the climate change stuff is grounded in the science. The veganism stuff is grounded in the very real animal cruelty. The artificial intelligence stuff is grounded in the actual technology of AI. But it's still, you know, I could describe it as an apocalyptic, epileptic death cult. And I could say that the effective altruists are saying that we should stop taking money that we're currently giving to try and fix malaria and buy malaria nets. We should be

taking that money away from that kind of suffering and investing it into AI safety because that's a more important issue long term. If they're correct, then maybe that is what we should be doing. But it seems ludicrous and irrational to stop giving money to people in need to try and lift people out of poverty. We haven't had anyone like that on the show. So that we can build better computers, But people are doing that, right? And so I could point to people like that and say, see, this AI thing, it's just an apocalyptic death cult. And I feel like that's kind of what people do

when they point to veganism, wokeism, environmentalism, and say, it's a religion. No, I disagree. And here's why. I think the reason I disagree is people who are warning about AI, the people who are at the forefront of that, the people who are being talked up as the warning necessarily about these issues.

There are people who are otherwise sensible and who are advocating fairly sensible things like this is a new technology, we don't know how powerful it's going to be, let's slow it down, let's make sure that we're not overusing it, let's make sure it's regulated, etc. Right. The people who are advocating on the environmental issue, for example, there are people who are demanding that we essentially suicide us, our economies to, in order, by the way, to make very, very little impact on the problem. There's a very big difference between those two things. So it's kind of like people say this about the BBC.

people say, well, the BBC, you know, you've got left-wing critics and right-wing critics, therefore the BBC is in the middle. And by the way, some departments are in the middle. But actually, if you look at who the critics are who say it's two left-wing versus two-right-wing, it's a very different picture. The mainstream centre-right thinks the BBC is incredibly left-wing. The people who think the BBC is right-wing are people on the very, very extremes of the left. So just because people are criticizing an issue or there's that parallel doesn't mean,

it's the same thing. And I think AI is not the best example for those reasons. And also as well, one of the core components of any religion is a moral framework. So if you look at wokeism, for example, that has a very clear delineated moral framework, which the AI example doesn't, in my opinion. Yes. I think I see what you're saying and will agree with elements as you do with any conversation like this. The idea that the people at the forefront are not Going a bit crazy. I would say just wait. I mean Elon Musk is not Greta Thumburg is what I'm saying. Sure, but but you understand that like I I don't know where you consider yourself politically. I know that you were named in the new statesman's list of you know the top 50 most powerful conservatives

Congratulations. 46 four four positions above the former prime minister list for us. Yeah, imagine how high up I would be if I were actually conservative when you were on my when you were on my show and I asked you about being a conservative and I I posted that clip when that was announced because there was this clip of you saying I'm not a conservative. And when I gave the context that the new statesman had labeled you as the 46 most powerful conservative, I didn't mean for that to course this, but people were sort of, they began attacking the new statesmen saying, you know, are the new statesmen there, they're lying about Constantin, they're attacking him as a conservative. I don't think they were doing that.

I think they just genuinely saw you that way. But what I was going to say is, you know, suppose you are a conservative, you're going to look at Greta Thunberg and think, you know, she's insane, she's crazy, she's, you know, mental. Okay, fine, right? If you're on the left, you might look at her and say, well, look, sometimes I think that she says something a bit silly, but she's not like crazy like they're making her out to be. Now, you compared her to Elon Musk a second ago. Look at what left wingers say about Elon Musk all the time. Look at the way they describe him. Look at how they say that he's one of the most dangerous people on planet Earth, that he's insane, that he's immoral, that he's evil. I would wager that you don't agree with that. But clearly, this is being thrown at, like in both directions. This is the point that I think we're disagreeing over. The fact that people say the same thing about different people is not necessarily a reflection of the fact that those people are equivalent. Of course. You have to look at who it is that is saying it and why they're saying it. I might, what I say about Greta Thumburg is not based on some kind of personal antipathy towards her.

It's based on the fact that what she's advocating for is impractical and irrational and would be very damaging to the very people on whose behalf she's advocating. Yes. What people say about Elon Musk is essentially a guy who's not one of us has taken over one of the means of communication and we don't like it. That's a big difference. I would say, and I suppose the only point I'm making here is that if you were speaking to somebody who was like a Greta fan and somebody who hated Elon Musk, if they were sat in this chair and they were able to articulate it. What would they say? I don't know what they would say because I'm not really in that position, but they would probably say something like what you've just said. But what is it?

They'd say, you know, my dislike for Elon Musk is not some... I don't think he's just like, oh, it's because he's not one of us, because he's this billionaire and I just hate people like that. No, it's based on the things that he does. It's based on his Twitter podcast. I don't know because I'm wrong. But you have to say this other bit. Otherwise, this conversation doesn't make any sense.

What is the rational critique of Elon Musk? And I can give you one. It's just not going to be the one from these people. Sure. Well, maybe Elon Musk is the wrong example for me to be talking about. Okay, give another example. Or is it potentially with Musk? what they would say is that his views aren't consistent and they're dishonest because he claims

to be in favour of freedom of speech. Yes. But then he bans the account. But that isn't their critique, though. That isn't their critique. That's a critique that I can give and you can give and Alice can give because we recognize these, you know, no. But this is what I said, free speech absolutism doesn't exist.

Nobody who says their free speech, free speech is something you can maintain when you're sitting in your basement. Yeah. Or your mother's basement, more likely. Right. Once you get into the real world and you start to have to make decisions about how to administer content on a platform, free speech absolutism is impossible. So that's a valid critique. He's not consistent. But that is not what the equivalent of the Greta critics might be saying about Elon, right? So let's have another example, because this is an interesting point you're making. That's also not equivalent to what the critics of Greta are often. Because you sit there in the chair and say, well, I think, I don't like what Greta is saying because I think that what she's saying is fundamentally self-tebrate. destructive or something like that, right? But surely you know that there are people who do just say she's an annoying teenager, why we listen to a kid. Oh, she's definitely that too. You know,

this, this kind, like. But she is that too. It doesn't matter where you look, right? Like, like, you're going to get both. You're going to have people looking at Elon Musk and saying, I think that he claims to be pro free speech, but he's banning people on Twitter and this is, this is sort of going to have a knock on negative effect onto the sort of cultural social media, right? And then you're also going to get people who say he's a billionaire asshole, right? And the Same thing's going to happen with Greta Thumbina. But my point is the people who are making the critique that Francis just made are not on the left. It's more people like us who are in the heterodox center or whatever who are going to go.

Because the right will love him for, you know, opening up the Overton window or whatever. But people who are objective will say, look, I think it's, I think it's incredible that he's bought Twitter. Just because it's the one place where there's less censorship now. And that means everyone else, there's no point for them censoring on Facebook and elsewhere because you're still going to get the information from Twitter. So I think it's great, but the critique still applies, which is he claimed he was a free speech absoluteist. I just think it was a mis... Sorry, Elon wants me assassinated. I just think it was a mistake to do so.

It's an interesting example because free speech has kind of become a bit of a right-wing issue, which kind of complicates this particular example. But do you think that there aren't any left-wing critiques of Elon Musk to be taken seriously? You give me one and we can talk about it. Well, again, this, Elon Musk is probably the right. I can't remember who first mentioned him. Let's pick a different person. But before we do as well, because we were talking about this in the context of the AI thing, and you were saying, you know, people aren't, as Greta is, in your view, going out

and telling people to do things which are essentially suicidal. Wait until artificial intelligence becomes, as it's already becoming, integral to our sort of workforce and economy. and wait until while that's the case, people begin to take really seriously the idea that it's incredibly dangerous and start saying we need to put an end to this and people start protesting in the streets. It's coming down the road and when that happens, what are people going to say? They're going to point to the protesters of artificial intelligence and they're saying they're essentially telling us to suicide our own society because it will destroy our economy. And I'll be one of the people making that critique. And that's why I think, although you might be right that right now, they're disanalogous because people aren't doing that yet.

I don't think we're far off that. Okay, fine. So at some point you believe it will become cultish or religious in nature, certainly according to the definition of Francis Gave. To the same extent that you would, because we began, you were asking about whether vegan is changed into religion. I think if yes, then only to the same extent that's something like in more obvious cases, environmentalism, wokeism, you know, but also because especially I think listeners to the show will happily think, yeah, that's a bit religious. But when you think about something like AI, you think it'd be really weird to call that like. a religion, but you can see how just having a sort of moral position on an important issue and becoming basically the focal point of your campaigning can very easily be described in religious terms. No, but to me, see, this is the difference though, because your moral position is one

thing, it's what you then do based on your moral position. Sure. I might think, I'm not saying I do think this, but hypothetically speaking, I might think, I don't know, sex before marriage is wrong, right? But you would never, I'm not going to be in your bedroom going, no, no, no, no, Like, I, my moral position is for me. Do you see what I mean? Yes, but that's... It takes a religious element to be like, you need to do this. Not always.

Not always, but it can be. Because, look, like, the thing about sex before marriage and the reason it's such an easy argument to make is because there's no victim involved, right? That's completely untrue. Yeah. Completely untrue. Where's the victim in... Look at our society.

Maybe like children. Maybe children in this country. Okay, no, no, no, there's, it's important. Half the children in this country grow up without a stable two-parent family, right? Why do you think all the social dis-ease that we have? This ease is the consequence of that. So the victim is not just the child involved, or by the way, the people themselves. It's also potentially the entire society and someone getting stabbed 20 years later once that kid's grown up without a father is also the victim.

Yes, no, I think I... So there is a victim. I misspoke when I put it too simply. You're quite right. But the point that I'm trying to make is that there are a certain... where, let's say the harm is so immediate and obviously, and obviously sort of directly caused, because the longer the causal chain gets, the more difficult it is to place, let's say, specific blame.

So, for example, I don't know, if you have a moral antipathy towards abortion, let's say you're pro-life because you think that, you know, we shouldn't be able to kill human beings in the womb. Now, I could say to you, as pro-choice activists do all the time, they say, well, hey, if you don't like abortions, don't get one, you know, stay out of my body. And what did the pro-life activists say? They say, look, I totally understand the intuition that you've got of sort of like, well, my morals are for me and I can't force them on you.

But because the moral position that you're holding is killing another human being, as they see it, that that justification just doesn't fly and shows that you're not actually understanding a word of what I'm saying about the importance of the issue. same as this happens all the time in the vegan debate when people say, look, you know, I don't tell you not to eat your lettuce, so you can't come and tell me not to eat my hamburger. And it's like, do you really not see why that's different? Do you really not see why eating letters doesn't have a victim, but eating a hamburger does? And you could say, well, actually eating letters does have a victim because it means that maybe you're going to be nutritionally deficient, which means that,

you know, you're going to perform worse at your job, and then your kids are going to have less money you go to worse school, like that's true, but it's far less direct. And when you have a situation where somebody is quite obviously causing direct harm, or risk of direct harm to somebody, then somebody's stepping in and saying, you're not allowed to do this. I think everybody intuitively knows this justified. And the sort of line of like, well, I have this moral view,

but I'm not going to sort of step into your world and enforce that upon you. Well, the moment that there's a direct victim, I think that you'll do so and you'll do so with an intuitive force of how obviously correct that is. But the problem is, Alex, is when you start looking for victims, you're going to find victims everywhere. So you look at the lettuce farmer. And then you're looking at the effect that their farm is having on the environment, the use of pesticides, the killing of birds, a killing how it's absolutely decimating the local ecology, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And you could argue, you could make a pretty coherent argument that actually maybe the lettuce farm is doing far more damage than the cattle farm.

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Visit Botox Chronic Migraine.com or call 1-800-44 Botox to learn more. Yeah, you always can. I mean, I'm not sure... Keep your hands off my lettuce. I'm not sure if that quite works with the letters thing. I mean, there's always that bit. Or avocados or whatever. But sure, yeah. I mean, the reason I'm speaking carefully here is because I know when people listening and they hear somebody say, because, you know, Joe Rogan says this occasionally,

one of his guests say, you know, well, if you don't want to harm, if you want to harm the the most animals, then be vegan because think of all the animals that are getting died. And vegans just cringe because that's sort of so not true, at least in the case of factory farming. But that granted for, you know, the people at home, as it were, sure, yeah, maybe that causes more harm. Yeah, but I mean, I can't remember why we go. I can't remember what issue it was you were talking about. We started on religion. And actually, I think we should probably move on to religion because what you asked was a question about religion and veganism. But actually, what I think we're dancing around is something we

wanted to talk about. Yeah. Anyway, which is, I think we both have had Richard Dawkins on the show. Yes. And one of the thread. of conversation, particularly in this space that we all kind of semi-inhabit from different sides with different feet, et cetera, is essentially that while some people can be new atheists and have a great life and Richard Dawkins is clearly someone who enjoys his life and is not devoid of meaning and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. human beings are religious animal and in the absence of actual religion we will begin to seek others

which is one of the reasons to put it crudely our society is so fucked up right now the death of God is why we are we are and it's all you and richard's fault yeah maybe it is I mean look there there's some compelling evidence to show that uh religious communities like I saw a study recently that religious communities coped better with the COVID pandemic, for example. And there's evidence to show that people feel more fulfilled. I think even like in their sex life, if they're religious. There's so many reasons why there might be utility in being religious.

And I suppose my answer to that is to say, well, of course, because if I don't believe that this is true, I have to account for why it exists. It wouldn't, if you've got this thing that isn't true and is unambiguously harmful for society, then why the hell would it evolve? Of course, it must be doing something, right? And of course, the corollary of that is that by murdering God, yeah, we sort of, you know, the streets are covered in blood and people are sort of trying to erect false idols out of the DNA

and they end up with, you know, as you would probably see it, wokeism, as some would see it, you know, Christian nationalism. Sorry, not Christian nationalism, because that's a form of religion, but nationalism, let's say secular nationalism. And that's true. Yeah, of course that's the case. Human beings seek transcendence, they seek the divine. My position is that I just don't think this is true. And I don't have much more to say on this apart from asking, what do you want me to do here? And I'm not exactly asking you, because I don't think either of you are religious. I'm not sure. or maybe you're agnostic or Christian. I don't know.

But somebody says, well, look, you know, if we remove religion from our society, things go downhill. Okay, what do you want me to do? I don't think this is true. Do I just sort of just lie to my children? I just bring them up to believe something that I don't think is the case because I think it's going to be beneficial for society. Like maybe, but what does that look like?

You know? And people say, well, why don't you just sort of act as if you're religious? You know? And Jordan Peterson says that people do this all. time. I don't think that's true. I think, sure, you can act like your religious in the sense that you can go to church on Christmas. Cool, you can sort of, I don't know, take part in your local religious community affairs and stuff. But when it comes to actually having to make an essentially religious sacrifice, like a real sacrifice, if you have to sort

of put your life on the line for essentially a religious principle, I'd say you were just sort of pretending to be a Christian, you're just acting like a Christian. And suddenly there's a, there's a political invasion, a different religion sort of is taking over the country and they come to you, they hold a gun to your head and they say, say that Jesus is not God or I'll shoot you. In that moment, you're not going to pretend to be a Christian for the social utility. You're just going to throw it out immediately. Yeah, but that's not what people mean when they say act like you're a Christian. I don't think going to church is actually what they mean either.

What they mean, so for example, we hear every time we have a meal here at the studio, we say grace, right? No, I don't think anyone here is religious. Well, no one who eats here is religious. The woman editing this is religious, so she's upset with all three of us. Now, so what I think they mean is there are certain practices around religion that will make your life better. Yes. And I think that's definitely true.

The constant practicing of gratitude, the appreciation of the fact that you're not the center of the universe, the connection with the transcendent or the divine, the recognition that other people are as equal. and equally important in the world as you are, the serving of others, all of these things are practices that most religions have developed in one way or another that a secular person is unlikely to get themselves into because they're not natural to human beings. It's not natural to put other people ahead of yourself.

It's not natural to practice gratitude. Most people, particularly in our society, don't, right? So I think what people mean when they say act as if you are religious is adopt some of the kind of the best things about religion. And it is an interim answer, by the way, because you mention children. Once you have children, it becomes very difficult. It's hard to explain to a five-year-old why they should do something

without, you know, the bearded man in the sky, which I know religious people will get upset with me about because it's an unfair character, but I use it exactly for that purpose. Not to mention talking about things like death. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't have children. I know that you do.

if you think, as you seem to be implying, being religious might have some societal benefit and some personal benefit, and that being an atheist might lead to being, you know, more self-serving and less sacrificial and this kind of thing. I mean, are you going to raise your child as a the atheist? Are you going to teach them that God exists? Are you going to take them to Sunday school? I don't think I'm going to teach them either, actually. I think I'm going to, I'm going to let them discover their own way of relating to that thing that does exist. It's not that it's God that exists, but there is a connection that binds all people,

all human beings together in some way, and we all feel it, and the spiritual within us is part of that. Now, do you code that as the bearded man in the sky caricature, or do you code that as spirituality or whatever is up to you? But that thing exists. There's not pretending otherwise. But notice that's essentially what,

secular society does on a societal level. A secular society is not like an atheist society. It's not like, it's not like communist Russia that's actively persecuting religious ideology. It just says, hands off. We say, look, I'm just going to leave it up to you. You can explore this religion, that religion. You know, we just hope that there's some kind of unifying spirit that we're all just going to come together and get along, even though we're all exploring our own ideas. And that's the thing that people are pointing to and are saying it's disastrous. No, no, no, no. They're pointing to Christopher Hitchens

and Richard Dawkins and all these other people who continually attacked religion as a thing that should exist, right? God is not gray and all of this other stuff, Hitchens book, et cetera. They were people who, this is my issue with new atheists and it's one I lost

interest, I wrote a whole thing about it called The Atheist's Delusion on my substack. Yes. It's not that people shouldn't question religion. the denigration of religion, has that been beneficial? And that's where I started to lose my faith in atheism. The other thing that ties in with the new atheist movement, which I think a lot of people forget, is it also came about

because of the excesses of the church and the Roman Catholic Church and the way that it covered up abuses. And so when people were criticizing religion at that time, that was still very fresh in the mind. But the power of the church, and especially the Catholic Church, has been utterly decimated. So they have gone from being this institution which had real power to being something that most of us don't really think about. That's true. I mean, New atheism is traditionally thought of as springing up in the wake of 9-11.

And you can imagine. I mean, it's difficult to imagine. I can't remember time before 9-11. the idea of The idea of It was such a great time It was such a great 9-11 was such a great time

9-11 It was before Yeah The 90 were brilliant I sort of can't Any time I'm in an airport I mean I obviously didn't experience it But I tried to think of what it must have been like

I mean I can't I mean get it going Getting on a plane without sort of You know being Thoroughly having my civil liberty It's just like frisked on the spot It would feel unnatural to me You used to be able to smoke on a plane.

Within my lifetime, I used to smoke on a plane. I remember this. I don't smoke anymore, but it was still great. And when I was a kid, I remember flying. I mean, admittedly, this was the Soviet Union, so it was a different environment. But flying from Uzbekistan to Moscow, there were no seats left on the plane. So they were, oh, yeah, just come in the cockpit. Yeah.

That's what it was like. Yeah. You still can smoke on a plane, of course. You'll just be punished for it. But it's nice to remind oneself that there is still the freedom to do as you please. If you're an atheist after all, you know, everything is permitted. Anyway, you're talking about new atheism post-9-1. I don't remember a time.

The thing that I can't imagine is people not really knowing anything about Islam. People not, that not being really part of the political conversation. You know, there's like the Muslim world over there and there are Muslims living among us. And maybe there's a bit of sort of cultural antipathy or whatever. But now it's like huge political issue. I can't imagine that not being the case. And you can imagine why an event like this. this instantly thrusts it into the national conversation because people want to say this isn't

what Islam is about and other people want to say this is what Islam will allow and it becomes this huge political conversation. So you can see why a book like God is not great is going to be extraordinarily successful in that moment. And that's what's the new and new atheism. I mean there's nothing new about atheism, right? Yeah, I mean, okay, so it's like it's a moment and that moment arguably has passed. Catholic Church isn't probably like a seriously, I mean it's still a seriously powerful

organization, but like its cultural power in the UK for example is basically next to nothing. People complain about bishops having reserved seats in the House of Lords. That is a bit weird. That's probably not great. You know, why do we reserve seats in our parliament for bishops of the Church of England? But does it really matter? Like really? Does it matter more than the fact that there are still any hereditary peers in our legislature?

Like maybe not. So yeah, it's just sort of not got. this cultural force anymore. That's why it's sort of not cool to be an atheist anymore. People like to be countercultural. And in 2006, being an atheist was edgy, it was cool. You could be the guy to say, well, actually. Whereas now, well, actually, technically, that's not true, is coming from the religious side, I think. Well, I would push back on this slightly in that we've, it's now very edgy to be atheist if you're going to criticize Islam. That's true. I mean, then it's incredible.

edgy and actually, let's be honest about it, downright dangerous. For sure, yeah. But I don't think that the edginess there is the atheism. It's not saying God doesn't exist. It's saying Islam is bad for society, which is it was just a totally different claim, you know. And, okay, actually, maybe that was still the case with Christianity in New Atheism. It was like in America, people would say that Christianity is bad for society. You know, evangelicals are ruining our society and that was edgy. But it wasn't dangerous. It wasn't dangerous. I mean, sure, going through the Bible Belt, on, like Christopher Hitchens famously did a tour through the Bible Belt of America promoting

God is not great. And like, you know, that's kind of funny, you know, how dangerous. I mean, sure, maybe he could have got shot or something, fine. But you can't really imagine him doing the same thing through the Muslim world. I mean, he's been to the Muslim world as a political reporter, but he didn't do a book tour. God is not great. I mean, it's just, it's a sort of, it's a different category, but it's also a different category of edginess.

That's not new atheism anymore. That's sort of, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's its own breed. of politics and philosophy. And looking at the younger generation, do you think they're suffering for a lack of spirituality, or are they replacing it with something else? We've spoken about wokeism,

but is there something else that's bubbling under the surface? Well, people are suffering from a lack of meaning. Meaning is, people always ask about meaning and purpose, and there's that really tired joke about what meaning means. But it's not a joke. What are we talking about here?

Like, it's such an intuitive question that people ask all the time, what's the meaning of life? What the hell are you looking for? Like, what do you mean by meaning? And the best I can come up with is something like a non-contingent reason to act. So like a reason to act or to be

that isn't dependent on something else. Right, like in order to do anything, you need like a reason to do it. Like why are we sat here to film a conversation? Why are we filming a conversation? Well, to put it on YouTube. If we weren't going to put it on YouTube, we wouldn't be sat here with all these cameras. It would be ridiculous.

You need the thing before it in order to justify why you've set the camera up, right? And so you can keep going back and back and back. And the meaning, the purpose of life in your life is the stopping point, is the first thing. And bear in mind, some people say, well, I just don't have any purpose. Probably they mean like no objective purpose that should be prescribed. But you must have something that is ultimately motivating you. otherwise you wouldn't be doing anything. And so what the religious will often do is say that whatever that thing is, that's God.

And so Peterson defines God as whatever's at the top of your value hierarchy. That's just his definition of divine. He says, you know, you're writing an essay, why to get a good grade, why to get a good job, why to provide for your family, why? And if you keep going down, whatever you bottom out in is God. Now, the point that he makes, I think the reason he then says, you know, famously, oh, you think you're an atheist, where you don't act like one. not really an atheist kind of thing, is because he correctly identifies that everybody has

to have the sumum bonum, everybody has that first motivating reason. So everyone's going to have one no matter what. And I think that the sort of nihilism and confusion that people experience is that before they were told what it was. They were told, even if you don't recognize it, the thing motivating you is God. Whereas now it's unclear. And people who are struggling with meaning, I think, are sort of going to be. going on a journey of trying to discover what that thing is.

And sometimes they find that they don't like it because if you're an atheist materialist, you realize that ultimately the thing that's motivating me is my genetics and my crude bodily desires. And you can explain morality, the reason that morals exist is because of reciprocal altruism or because we share genes with each other and that's why I developed. But ultimately you break it down, well, what's the ultimate motivation? Well, because I've got genes inside me that are dictating that I do particular things. is the sum and bonum. We've replaced, you know, the Imago Day, being made in the image of God,

being created with a telos and a natural purpose, which is communion with the Almighty, to you're an animal. And that's not a nice realization. And I think that's probably at the basis of people getting a little bit thirsty for something with a bit more narrative, let's say. I think as well, what people find is that when they start to do something which is more in service of others, which is, for example, have a family, or you see it in Alcoholics Anonymous, people who were once hopeless addicts, but now their mission in life is to help others and to help others who are suffering from addiction, they become a different human being, almost overnight as a result of that purpose and drive. And I think that's one of the things that we're lacking,

which is what is your life's mission? What do you want to do? What do you want to achieve? Yes, you need purpose. And that purpose, As I say, everybody has a purpose, but if you recognize that the purpose is something essentially trivial and something that's outside of your control, then I suppose the motivation starts to fade away, which is why God was a good one, because God, you know, God being the same thing as love and the same thing as beauty entails that you can do things like helping other people, and you can say that it's in the service of God, whereas now you have to sort of rationalize it as, yes, ultimately the reason I'm doing it is in the service of my own genes and my own self.

That just doesn't have the same sort of romance. Yeah, but that's because you don't have to stop at that particular point. So once you've got to the point where you go, well, I'm here to reproduce, that's all I'm here, that's all my purpose that I have, then you're free, actually. And then you can create whatever purpose you want. The purpose can be to serve other people. You know, I've reproduced, right? Now my job is to raise my son so he can reproduce.

Okay, cool, I'll do that. But in the meantime, I can create a show that other people will enjoy. I can give meaning to people by articulating things that they struggle to articulate. I can advocate on behalf of people who are not able to advocate on their own behalf. I can create a business with Francis in which other people work who otherwise wouldn't have a job that fulfilled them. I can mentor the young guys coming through. There are things, there is meaning you can create for yourself, even if the realization you have is the ultimate meaning is to reproduce your genes. I'm not sure that you can create your own meaning in a fundamental sense.

I'm always suspicious of this concept. I think everything you've just said already presupposes an underlying value judgment. And I'll tell you why, right? So you say, well, I've decided that, you know, I'm going to have a child and raise that child. And I've just sort of created that. I've just decided. No, no, no. I'm saying I have fulfilled my biological function.

Oh, sure. And it's my biological function to get him to adulthood so he can reproduce. So that's the biology aside. And also, at the same time, there is other areas of my life. where I can create meaning, whether that's growing a garden or helping my neighbor, whatever it is. Yeah, but you know, supposing one person, let's say we can just choose our own meaning. We just create meaning in our lives.

Okay, so one person decides to create meaning in their life by raising as much money as they can for Oxfam and lifting thousands of people out of poverty. Another person decides that their meaning in life is to count the blades of grass in Hyde Park. They just want to count how many blazer graphs there are. And sometimes, you know, someone comes along and moses the lawn and they have to start again. And that's, they just decide and you say to them, well, what's meaningful about that? And they say, well, what do you mean? You just get to choose that it's meaningful.

I've just decided that it is. You'd be committed to the view that both of those lives are as meaningful as each other. No, I didn't say that. They're not as meaningful. But how can they not be if there's no sort of exterior prescription as to what meaning ought to be and you just get to create it for yourself? That's what I mean by the underlying value judgment, because if you want to say that that person's life is more meaningful than the other. But who said that that's what we're doing? The comparison was introduced by you for reasons that are...

Is one of those lives more meaningful than the other, do you think? Based on my own personal value set, yes, but it's my value set. So that value set is already dictating what you would consider meaningful and not meaningful. For me. And for other people, because you're saying based on your value set, that person's life is more meaningful than another. Again, we come back to this. I have no intention of going to that person and telling them this value set is not as good as my value set. A better example would be not counting blades of grass by becoming a serial killer.

Yes, I was going to say that that's sort of the next step, right? The question is really, I'm not trying to judge whether that way of life is more meaningful or not. There's clearly some people in human history who were mass murderers who got a lot of meaning from it. I can give you lots of names that we all know. Right. However, the issue is, is their behavior acceptable to the rest of society as we reflect in our laws and customs, etc., right? Sure, but those are two separate questions, right? I mean, somebody's life could be flooded with meaning, could be the most meaningful life that anyone's ever lived. And yet, because it's really bad for the rest of us, we still sort of put them in prison, right? But their life is still much more meaningful than anybody else.

Do you think Genghis Khan had more meaning than you? I think you probably did. Exactly, right? Right. But like what we commit ourselves to by saying that you can just create your own meaning is that however one decides to create their own meaning, as long as they feel that meaning, their life just is meaningful. And that's fine. Maybe that's what meaning is.

But it just rings a little bit hollow to me. When you start to recognize that if somebody is just able to decide that spending their entire life, counting blades of grass is meaningful, there you go. That's the meaningful life. As long as they feel that it gives them meaning, that's the key point. It's creating, meaning seems to be something like, or purpose seems to be sort of something to do. It's a reason to do something. So it's sort of a task to fulfill or an objective to attain or to strive for.

And so to create your own meaning is to create a task just for the sake of fulfilling the task. No, it's an expression of who you truly are. I don't know what that means. I know. What do you mean by that? The meaning that you choose to create is an expression of who you truly are as a human being. Sure, yeah. But do you see what I'm saying when I, I mean, that's why I like the word purpose.

Yes. Because I think it more... The point is, you are not creating it necessarily. You're not sitting down with a piece of paper. It's not an invention. It's an expression of who you already are. Well, meaning is either something that you invent or that you discover for your Exactly.

And I suppose the position of the atheist materialist has to be that it's something you invent. Because there's nowhere from which you can discover it. If there's nothing more than, you know, if there's nothing more to the mind than just human beings and biology, where else can an idea like that come from? It has to come from themselves. They have to invent it. Of course, if you're religious, you can discover the meaning that's sort of embedded

into your very creation. But if you don't have that, you have to invent your own meaning. And I don't know if you see what I'm saying here about this, this purpose task thing, right? Like if I, it's kind of like if you're bored, you know, like the, if you're really bored, you might just sort of like knock over a glass of water so that you can go and mop it up just to give you something to do. And that's kind of what I feel like is going on with people creating their own purpose. Because the purpose is to have a reason to do something. It's a reason, it's a, it's something to strive for.

I'm going to sound religiously, right? And if you create that for its own mistake. You will know when you find your purpose, you will know what. When you create that for its own sake, I think that's what you're doing, right? But also as well, I mean... But maybe you're also right. You're not creating it for the purpose of fulfilling it. But notice what you just said. You said when you find your own meaning. Did you say find?

Yes. So now we're talking... If one day I find meaning, if I discover meaning, then not only will I suddenly have a much more meaningful life, but I'll also be rid of the conviction that we do create our own meaning, because it'd be something that I've discovered that's been set upon me. Yeah, because what's what's why I'm saying, it's an expression of who you truly are. I totally agree that if it is something you discover, if it's something that's set upon you from the outside, then that's absolutely something. I didn't say that.

I didn't say it's from the outside. I said it's an expression of who you already are inside. So it's something you discover about your own self. That's fine too. And what that means is that you're discovering what you most fundamentally value. Yes. And that's fine, but some people will find that the thing they most fundamentally value is something that I think you would look upon and think is bad or wrong or immoral.

Agreed. But you wouldn't think that affects how meaningful their life is. No, but it clearly doesn't. There are people who advocate for things in the public space that I think are abhorrent and wrong. But it clearly, their activism, quote, unquote, gives them meaning and purpose. I suppose people might intuitively want to say that, well, that it makes sense. Do you think it makes sense ever to say that while somebody feels like their life is really meaningful, it's actually not? Do you think that can ever be true?

Well, people sometimes lie, but that's not the same thing. Okay, discounting lying, right? But like if somebody thinks their life is meaningful, can they be incorrect? Because the view that you're putting forward here, and maybe it's true, means that they can't be incorrect. I think that people sometimes will delude themselves about, they will do things that make them feel good, and they will get confused, and they will think, well, you know, advocate, throwing soup on the Mona Lisa is the purpose of my life. And my meaning is to go out there and advocate for climate change, awareness or whatever. And then they grew up and they realized maybe that wasn't the purpose of meaning of the life.

However, I do believe there is a meaning and a purpose to be discovered by that person at some point. And they may, in the right conditions, do that. So that's interesting. If they think that the meaning of their life is climate activism and then one day they grow out of it, as you say, the question is, once they've grown out of it and they look back, is it is, is it the case that their life was meaningful at the time. Yes, absolutely. Well, obviously. Then fine. But I think, I suppose, the objection that I'm driving in is that it just,

seems to make it all a bit arbitrary. And meaning is supposed to be the big foundational human thing. So it makes us human. You know, it's it's it's having that reason to get out of bed in the morning. It's it's having a reason to act and if that grand thing is reduced to something as arbitrary is just like you know, whatever you sort of happen to want. That's not what I said though. I didn't say it's whatever you happen to want. What it's discovering a most fundamental value, which is whatever you happen to want most fundamentally. To value something is for me rooted in desire.

Want is I desire this. Is value not? No. No, no. Value to me is something completely different. Value to me is what is important to you and the way that you see the world and the way that you move within the world. It's important to you, right? Yes. But it's, but a desire is something that I don't think is of importance, I can desire something, but it's not actually of importance. I don't think you can desire something that you don't value. Let's put it that way. Yeah. Well, I disagree. You can desire to buy, you can desire material possessions. They're not actually of importance. You may believe they are of importance, but they're actually

not. I know what you mean. This is where I think it gets a bit complicated because I think that when you desire a material object, you don't desire the material object. You desire the joy that you're promised from the material object. So when you buy the material object and it turns out not to be what you wanted, it's not that you desired the material object and you were wrong. It's that you desired the joy and you didn't get it. So you still, like, when I say you can't desire something you don't value, there seem to be really obvious counter examples. You know, I can desire material goods, but actually I don't value them. The thing is what you really desire from that material good is joy and you do value the joy.

Do you see what I'm saying? Yes. But so I'll use an example for, like, let's say a comedian or, you know, or somebody who is in the performing arts, they say they desire success. But you talk to enough successful people, comedians, whoever it is, and they will actually say to you,

once they've reached a certain level, that actually the adulation is empty. The true joy comes in the creating. And the creating, the reason that they love it so much is because it's an expression of who they are. And I'm not going to sound religious when I say this, but art is an expression of the soul. Yeah.

Okay. And so that's where the joy comes from. It doesn't come from a million Twitter followers. It doesn't come from playing out huge venues. It comes from doing what you love and making a connection with another person. Yeah, but notice of the thing that's desired there is the joy. Yes. So like you say, somebody desires success.

Well, if we're going to be pedantic about it, which I think we have to be when we're having this kind of discussion about essentially definitions, right? You don't desire the, let's say, success or the fame or the audience. What you desire, strictly speaking, is the sort of positive mental state, the joy, as you put it, that comes from having that. If I told you, for example, if somebody said, well, I really desire to play in front of 5,000 people, and I said, well, look, how about this? I can grant this to you, but I will just make it so I'll go into your brain chemistry and make it so that you hate it. it. I promise you that you can do it, but you will hate it. You'll have a terrible time. You'll be in pain. You'll be embarrassed. You'll hate the whole experience. You'd probably be

like, well, actually, I don't want to do that. Because you didn't desire to be in front of 5,000 people. You desired this joy and you're using the phrase, you know, selling out a venue as a proxy for that thing that you desire, right? And so the thing that's actually desired in and of itself is that thing which you value, which is joy. And that's why I think that desire and value are essentially the same thing. Thus, when you say that finding meaning is about essentially discovering what your fundamental value is, it's about discovering what your fundamental desire is, and that seems arbitrary to me. But it's also about the expression of the self. That's what it goes down. So, for instance, I know a comedian. He's very good. He's very skillful. He's built this

huge online following. He's now achieving his dream. I know for a fact that he doesn't particularly like his audience. His material isn't actually honest to what he thinks and believes. He's essentially traps now. And that is a very, very quick way to make yourself miserable because you're living a life and you're producing an art that is completely inauthentic to who you are. Yeah. Yeah. Because, yeah, I know what you mean. So I suppose the desire element there is this, is this desire to express yourself. But I never. But that's not a desire. This is the difference. I think, and to be honest, I think we're maybe getting sort of lost in the weeds here.

And I'm not entirely sure exactly what it is that we're arguing about. But this is the problem with, when you start talking about meaning and purpose and spirituality and this kind of thing, you end up watching these discussions and people think, what are you even talking about anymore? We were talking about, like, you know, whether desire is intricately linked to value. Like, okay, that's an interesting conversation, but it sounds like something out of a bloody platonic dialogue or something, you know what I mean? Well, that's what I was about to say. Desire, not desire, expression of your true self is a lot like love. You can only be experienced. It can't be explained. Like, we could sit here and have this exact same conversation that we've just had about the word meaning or the word purpose about the word love. There is no way to communicate it through language. There isn't. That's true. Other than it's irrational brain chemistry that makes you feel certain feelings. What those feelings are, you cannot possibly explain. That's true, yes. So what I'm trying to tell you is,

The thing we're talking about in terms of meaning and purpose is not something that actually can be communicated through words to somebody who hasn't yet experienced it. I can understand that. I understand that there are things in the world which can only be known through experience, let's say. And I suppose I think a good example of this is probably parenthood. I can sort of take a guess at what it's like to sort of have a kid and really care about your kid. find meaning and bringing them up, but I imagine that it's like you just don't even come close to getting it until you have a kid if you're own, right? And maybe there's something like that going on. That's totally positive. But yet, if you ask me to define, you know, what does it

mean to have a child or what does it mean to, you know, value their upbringing, I think I could still take a pretty good crack at saying what that is. And I do think that this definition of meaning, if not essentially being linked to desire and value, but value being desire. I don't know what meaning is, in other words, but if you have a better definition or can land on one, then you let me know, I suppose. All right.

If you're watching this, you need to get pregnant by Alex so you can have a child and realize everything you just said doesn't make sense. Anyway, Alex, it's been great having you back. Yeah, it's always a joy. I hope it's not gotten a bit too wordy and abstract. At least you didn't walk out like Peter H. Yeah, actually, you know, if you're going to make this whole interview about meaning and value, then good luck. Frankly, I'm sick of the subject and I'm sick to death of the people who promote it.

Yeah. And that's when I saw it. Just don't rip the microphone as you leash. Before we go over to our local supporters who get to ask questions to Alex, our final question is always the same. And you've actually mentioned it at the start, ruining the reveal, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about ads as a society? that we really should be. Okay, well, so there's that, but because I'll, you know, I want to give you something else. I think the extent to which emotions are at play in what we think is rational decision making,

everybody recognizes this to some degree, everybody recognizes that, oh, you're actually, you know, being more emotional than you realize. But I mean, like, really specifically. I recently spoke to Robert Sapolsky. I don't know if you've had him on the show. So he just wrote a book about why there's no free will, which I agree with that. I don't think there is. And as part of discussing that, he talked about this so-called hungry judge phenomenon.

I don't know if you've come across this. There was this large-scale study done about parole boards. And they were trying to figure out what's the biggest predictive factor as to whether a judge grants parole or not. And they found that the biggest predictive factor is how long it had been since the judge had eaten a meal. Now that's really like cool and funny and like oh what an interesting anecdote people go to prison or get their freedom based on whether or not a judge is hungry

and I think it's my contention that this happens all the time that we are essentially emotive creatures that things we think are plain simple propositional truths are not people recognize this to some degree oh I was hungry oh you need to sleep on it they recognize that sometimes you know the way that your emotive status can affect how your reasoning, I think it's like emotion through and through. I think so much of what we think is emotion. Moralizing is emotion. Ethics is expression of emotion. Even like, you know, when you consider your basic philosophical premises, I've sometimes argued in the past that we can emotivize all of philosophy. I mean, why can't P be true and false at the same time? Why is the law of non-contradiction, fundamental logical law?

Why does it hold? Well, because when you try to consider P being true and false at the same time, your brain just goes, no, just goes, boo, just goes, I don't like it. I think that so much of our thinking is a motive and there's nothing we can do about that. People bring it up to say, well, why don't we fix it? You know, the hungry judge phenomenon, if we all recognize that, then we can start trying to make judges act in accordance with reason and said, no, we can't. It's not going to go away, but we have to be aware of it so that we can mitigate the

fact of its inevitability. It's a great answer. There's a lot I disagree with and find out what that is on locals. Cosmic Skeptic, as far as I've seen, you have avoided the trans debate. What are your views on the whole situation? Who cares about your poops? Ali does. That's why Ali's science-backed gut health lineup helps support your family's regularity.

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