Escaping Death: A Conversation with Sebastian Junger (Episode
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- Опубліковано 29 тра 2024
- Sam Harris speaks with Sebastian Junger about danger and death. They discuss Sebastian's career as a journalist in war zones, the connection between danger and meaning, his experience of nearly dying from a burst aneurysm in his abdomen, his lingering trauma, the concept of "awe," psychedelics, near-death experiences, atheism, psychic phenomena, consciousness and the brain, and other topics.
Sebastian Junger is the New York Times bestselling author of Tribe, War, Freedom, A Death in Belmont, Fire, and The Perfect Storm, and co-director of the documentary film Restrepo, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is also the winner of a Peabody Award and the National Magazine Award for Reporting. His most recent book is In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife.
Website: www.sebastianjunger.com/
Twitter: @sebastianjunger
May 30, 2024
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The free account option is quite a beautiful thing. Thank you.
It is. I had one and somehow lost it. Feel kinda shitty asking again but idk. I keep missing out
It is actually not free, but subsidized by all the other members who are lucky enough to afford to pay.
@@justins.5222
I think that the free scholarship expires after three months.
@@pacosamoWell said. To all those who kindly subsidize, well done.
@@blakesleyk.7166 Well said indeed- thank you to those who help sponsor the ‘free’ tier.
Amazing interview. A much welcome break from politics and war
I love your calm voice.
I suspect the afterlife will be eerily similar to the before life.
there is no death. your life is a small block inside of an eternal block universe
"before life" implies there's a life after it _before_ life. Sam covers this in his episode "The Paradox of Death".
The crux of the episode is on here. Just search "Generic Subjective Continuity Sam Harris".
I agree. Seems obvious to me.
@Wingedmagician
Don't be sure
We could be living in a simulation in which afterlife exists
In this simulation, being run by whomever, you could be transported to heaven or hell ( also a simulation)
In fact since it's more probable we are in a simulation, the probability of the simulation having an after life may even be higher than us not being in a simulation.
Probability you are in a simulation where an afterlife exits >>> Probability you are not in a simulation
I love this guy, ever since I read his book "Tribe". So much angst and dissatisfaction in our society is explained well by his ideas I believe. One statistic he brought up really made me think, that babies in the west get 17% of the skin to skin contact with their mother as a baby compared to other poorer countries. Thinking of what that does to a developing brain was interesting and that's just one small bit of interesting stuff in "Tribe". As a combat veteran ex infantryman who has lost more than a few friends and acquaintances to suicide that book was so cathartic to read and rang so true. It Just clicked.
Fuck dude what a place to end the free part
Sam's religion dictates that fans can sign up for free if broke, because the autistic Atheist God above loves all His human creations equally.
Wow, your comment evaded YT algorithm. My comments are instantly removed by using any word starting with an "eff".
He knows exactly where to end so you want to subscribe but I never do
@@Bat_Boy It's totally random now, man, on all the big sites (this, Facebook, Yahoo, etc.). Just the other day Yahoo rejected my reply--the word "yes"--to someone's hypothetical question, and then rejected it again on appeal. I would say one in five of my comments on this site disappears for no reason. And yet, people's usual vulgar and racist comments are still up for all the world to see. (And yeah, that was the worst place to end the free part ever.)
@billscannell93 - Thanks man. I was thinking it was just me.
I thought I was going crazy until I saw your videos
Thank you for being you bro
We Humans cannot escape death... EVER... It's part of life...❤
100% Agree👍
That’s actually just an inductive observation! There’s nothing necessary about death! In other words, just because everyone in the past has died, doesn’t mean therefore everyone is going to die one day! We could invent some immortality to allow cells to live forever or we can exist and implant our consciousness in a virtual reality ! With all this being said, it’s more likely than not we arent the immortal generation, but it’ll probably come 🤷🏾♂️
@@Itsnickcherry Yeah..., the JW Faith says soon Paradise will be established and Humans will live forever... 🤪🤪🤪... Comical 😅... WE WILL ALL DIE...
@@DY2784 i agree we all will probably die, but im saying that death isn’t a guaranteed thing ! It’s not a deductive fact about life that you will one day die. It’s like saying, since people have been born before, therefore people will continue to be born in the future. Or, to take it more simply, one could say “i’ve only ever seen white swans (people dying in the past), therefore all swans are white (everyone will die in the future)!” But a quick trip to Australia, and boom! A black swan! Death, like life, are inductive arguments in logic! 😄 nevertheless, we in this generation aren’t the immortal age, and perhaps it will never happen 🤷🏾♂️ but that’s for the future, which is an inductive approach to figuring out future events! 😄
Its not part of life. Its litterally the opposite of life.
Excellent guest. Thank you for bringing this interview to us. My late husband was a big fan of Sebastian Junger's work. 🤍
Thank you Sam!
Thanks Sam🐸
Life is communication, and its purpose is to keep connected and communicating.
The science of "mortality salience" is super interesting.
This, in my opinion, is one of the most important discussions held. I cannot listen to the end, but i am sure it will surface. Thank you for your continued value add to this confused world. Xxx
I'm skeptical of Hameroff and Penrose's theory of consciousness, but that could be an awesome episode.
Junger lost two-thirds of his blood then started hallucinating his dead father and a pit of death. To his credit, he remains an atheist. The visions someone has going in and out of consciousness due to blood loss are not something worth taking seriously.
thanks, gentleman !
Sebastian is a special guy!
Hello Mr. Sam Harris. I look forward to this.
I hope you discussed _Generic Subjective Continuity_ again, like you did in your episode "The Paradox of Death".
Sam your a bright light in grim dark world
That was a Lucid dream he had as he came in and out of conscious. The mind ,in a sleep state, created everything he notes during his medical procedure. We can track Lucid dreams in the mind from analyzing electrical activity and biochemical changes. The frontal cortex quiets down during sleep state, while the emotion/imagination centers churn with electrical activity. In fact, old dreams can be remembered by peeling back the skullcap and stimulating parts of the brain with electrical impulses while the patient is awake. Their feedback is quite amazing and documented in thousands of cases.
As per the existential singularity, (I just assume there's a real world out there like everyone else does, however) related to how everyone presumably has a theory of mind regarding everyone else, everyone also projects their own self, and expectations onto others, all the time. This goes deeper, because you can infer from this observation, that another person (this can extend to things, and the whole world,) is like a 'character' you're interacting with, in your own 'interface'.
What exactly is your significant other, going to do or say next? Presumably there's reasonable consistency, but what if they randomly started speaking French or something, doing something unexpected? The reason most ppl trip out when unexpected things happen, is because we're all rly interacting with our expectations/projections of the world, it's usually too chaotic to interact with our more immediate sense experience of what's ACTUALLY going on, at any given moment. To do so would be more like a PTSD state for most ppl.
However, as Sam has studied, if you do that on purpose, it can also involve a type of meditative state, with neutral or positive connotations. (The experience of novelty involves gamma waves, they don't show up often, pretty much only with duration for seizure patients or meditators).
Getting back to the way we usually operate, by projecting 'characters' and 'experiences' all the time to be able to interact with the world without extreme neuroticism, even someone like a deceased loved one, (as per your experience,) was experienced through your 'lens' as a character in your mind with 'preloaded,' and also incrementally updated, associated attributes and characteristic behaviors. It doesn't diminish anything to recognize, that your loved one was always, and remains fundamentally your own 'character,' you still have that 'rendering' that 'replays' in your experiential frame after that person dies.
So, what's our experience of death? How does it relate to this recognition of the 'frame rendering?'
It seems the best way to wrap our heads around this, is to say: when you can step back, and get perspective to recognize that this 'framing' process is usually going on (perhaps as a result of reading something like this, not tryna trigger anyone, not tryna enlighten anyone,) then it's almost like a kind of 'death'.
Really, our 'lives' are defined by this 'story' that we're telling ourselves, that we're always living in. When your mind goes to this place, where it shows you this 'glitch in the matrix,' like showing you an interaction with a deceased loved one, it's basically showing you something that explains what's going on, and breaks the frame. This is the personal experience of the idea of 'death,' seems that way to me.
You can therefore 'die' right now, by reading this and thinking abt it slightly, it's no big deal ultimately, y'all feel me?
Clearly, I stand around and sell ice cream koans, in the summertime.
Restrepo was an amazing documentary, definitely check it out if you can
Thx Sam
In this context Its worth mentioning
Man's Search for Meaning the 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose to each person's life through one of three ways: the completion of tasks, caring for another person, or finding meaning by facing suffering with dignity.
I had a psychedelic trip once which felt in many ways like a NDE, with some minor differences, notably no seeing family members. It was terrifying, felt like being ushered to the otherside, in a similar way that Sebastian explained. I was definitely not ready to 'die'. Thankfully acid is 'safe' and I soon regained normal state of consciousness, but I had a similar PTSD, fear of slipping back at any moment etc. I'm all good now, processed it, talked it out with my friends and family, fascinating experience. Not for the faint of heart though. Came back a better person, not wanting to waste this precious life, and be the best human being I can possibly be.
The experience tells you what is deep in your mind, what you want, what you would expect, how it interprets dying. No magic. but trippy!
Great Led Zeppelin song, that book title. I'm a little disappointed they didn't mention it.
Damn, ive been wanting to hear sam talk to him since i heard him on Rogan years ago.
Yeah. If your dead father tells you to "come with me, I will protect you," do not go. He's dead.
In the society that we live in, by default, the topic of Death or letting go is always psycho/socio-relevant.
The delusion or hallucination of a black pit and the appearance of a deceased loved one - in this case, his father - is the mind generating symbolic imagery to cope with the shock, distress, and fear, both physically and mentally.
No, there was not an actual pit and the deceased father was not actually communicating with him.
As s non religious Korean Californian lol, i had an encounter with an "angel"...
"visits" from my late little brother, his late cat... shortly after they passed away.
I've never heard someone heard someone say "sort of" so much in my life
It was never explained why most people who have dreams about deceased parents never allude to a correlation between an afterlife and the appearance of a parent within a dream.
Also, what types of apparitions, during near death, occur to those whose parents (and grandparents, for that matter) are still alive?
I once came out of surgery seeing my home freezer packed full of wrapped meat. It wasn't until I asked my family what all that meat was for (and them laughing) that the illusion vanished. 😄
Let’s make a deal you get to fill your god-shaped hole with every fairy tale your little heart desires about the life after this one, and in exchange we work together to make THIS life the best possible.
This meaning-mania has ruined so many lives.
Why do you have to cut it off at that point.
Shouldn't this be on the Waking Up app, too? Given the matter of the topic
Watch this show The OA. It’s a lot like this conversation.
Watch this show The OA. It’s a lot like this conversation.
19:30 to 21:45 - Interesting remark from a Native American.
Sam no! You can't cliffhang me on the climax of the story! Noooo!
when humans aren't surviving they are competing and comparing
Surely when they're not surviving then they're just dead? Competition and comparison is not inevitable human behaviour, it's a defect oft brought about by 'civilised' society. The kinds of society that stripped the meaning and social purpose out of modern life. Not saying it's impossible to find those things in modern society but the odds are stacked against us all, it's still there to take back if you so desire, but you'll need to turn your back on the false promises we're bombarded with.
@@vexy1987 Competition and comparison are innate, and to some extent, necessary. Consider the latter first. Even monkeys posses a precursory morality that has something to do with fairness; if you reward one monkey with a candy bar and then his friend with a piece of vegetable, the 'loser' will become visibly annoyed, sometimes to the point of tantrum.
As for competition, this one's even easier. Since the fact is a prerequisite to survival in every case where resources are limited, competition is not only favored by natural selection, but also by every single survival impulse we survive to possess, as well. Eventually, every appetite encourages competition: from a simple stomach growl to the intense desire to find a mate, opportunities are finite, and thus establishes _the_ game.
@@vexy1987 Is competition like a pretend and safe version of survival ha. Like survival 2.0 with no death but some of the feelings of.
That's genius
Yo, Machine Gun Preacher, underrated movie.
(Spoiler alert, he stops being an adrenaline junkie, and just becomes a decent person at the end).
Where is the tech / drug that gives us a several hundred year experience in a few minutes of earth time?
I can hear leather apron get angrier with every podcast upload
it's sad what political indoctrination on any side does to youth.
Escaping death with Sam Harris.
Oh no the comment disappeared 😂 it was so funny though.
@@REALdavidmiscarriage Aw yeah that was mine, here you go:
Escaping Sam Harris, with Death.
@@Jules-Is-a-Guy Haha thank you! Maybe this time it slips under the Radar 😂
Skeptics are great at explaining NDEs. But they are almost useless at explaining the experiences that NDErs actually describe.
Huh. Cool how he can afford his quirky lower east side community. I’d love that. Maybe someday.
The punk rock Alphabet City is gone, before my time, and it's never coming back. It woulda been cool, but also too edgy.
Omg thank you. I was thinking the same thing - I WISH I could afford to live in the lower east side nyc. I wouldn’t - but I wish I had that amount of money.
Im sorta stuck on the fact that this guy, nevermind the fact that he like every yokel under the sun, moves to nyc and is over exuberant about how city life functions. No, hurricane Sandy was not like that. Maybe to you who's moved from nomansland. Then he moves to Massachusetts to escape covid and his wife and him hire babysitters while they hide from their own kids in the woods. Something kinds irks me about people like this.
I would love to hear the rest I am not joining another goddamn thing.
What does Sam think about this athiest having a mystical vision at death ?
Why would I want to escape death. I live in hell
I pressed "like" then thought, "like" is not even close. I need an "I get it" button.
It's disappointing from Sam that he didn't push back harder on this guy. . Sam barely spoke the whole time, although he knows the subject matter well. Very similar story to adterlife aficionado Eben Alexander.. .
Either everything we know that physics is wrong or people hallucinate when they are nearly dead.
No doubt this podcast will help sell his book .
Actual NDE accounts from people who have had a cardiac arrest have been researched now for over 45 years. There are over 200 scientific research studies on the topic with many being peer reviewed in top medical journals. The data, when put together is irrefutable to a logical thinking person if they actually research the data. There is life after biological death. Our consciousness continues after the physical body dies and it continues not just intact but beyond what we experience with it now. Sam, like so many atheists like Dawkins, Shermer, etc., simply have not looked hardly at ALL at the actual research studies.
Sam Harris's colloquium with Sebastian Junger on escaping death unveils a tapestry of erudition, delving into the labyrinthine depths of mortality's vicissitudes. Their discourse, replete with perspicacious insights, navigates the existential conundrum, prompting profound introspection on the enigma of human transience and the quest for existential redemption.
ChatGPT?
@@Re3iRtH yup
I am a huge fan of Sam Harris, but this episode of his podcast was very disappointing.
Righ,,t, musicians, professors, mechanics, programmers, etc. all lack meaning due to lack of danger. 10/10.
You really should replay that part if you are actually interested and not just looking for a reason to be mad at someone.
They never said that
@@Chris-fn4df Projection, and I listened to over an hour before turning it off. His talk was full of contradictions. If you found it useful, good for you.
Fascinating conversation but I don't see how it ties in with Sam's current intelectual endeavor namely to bring support to the efforts which deny even the slightest chance of Palestinian children to somehow escape death.
Anyone who needs to make every convo about Gaza should go there and help out instead of screaming at people you disagree with. (Though I don't think you understand Sams perspective. )
@@elypearl826How about no. I won't leave my home and family behind just to risk being masacred only to prove a point. But I reserve my right to criticize those who actively support and encourage atrocities and crimes against fellow humans.
*"Why are Gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why Gentiles were created. Gentiles were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world - only to serve the People of Israel"* -- Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in October 2010 sermon
In 1970, Yosef was awarded the Israel Prize for Rabbinical literature.
I'm a subscriber to the podcast, so I really do like most of the stuff, but this was one of the least interesting pods I've listened to the last year or so.
More Rogan type of product. Gorilla chest banging style.
destiny wants to talk to you, talk to him Sam.
I've got a little story that is scientifically inexplicable that I'd love to tell you. It involves a Andes candies wrapper and myself sitting in a chair. What happened next made me a knower that something else or more exists beyond what is known to exist. I like to tell the story as writing it is tedious and I believe less impactful.
Wish my sanity can be verified and my story wholly true but at end of day it's a lonely place to be to know that something else truly exists
Not my favorite episode. Basically some random guy’s near death experience.
One of my least favourite episode. The whole thing was centered around a dream. When you're in an hospital & you think you might be dying, there's a high probability that you'd dream about a close dead relative. What's so mystical about that??
Quran says: “Allah:there is no deity worthy of worship except he”:The Neccessary life/consciousness,sustainer of life/consciousness.” Wire like neuronal structures that conduct electricity via ions/neurotransmitters in the CNS/PNS possess no attribute of thinking/life and yet that has “randomly” led to life. Consciousness/thinking is an innate idea(“Fitra”)that is distinct from carbon skeleton and yet the materialist scientist believes that chemistry turned into biology via “god of randomness”/”Emergent property”/”law of nature”. Consciousness can only stem from Necessary Consciousness (Allah-one/indivisible/loving/self-sufficient/infinite perfection).
People still listen to this guy?
keep hating and commentating. It just gives him more visibility.
@@PinchePeloSpiderman
Olla Kalla.
@@rumpill4skin Thanks, keep going please. This only helps Sam every time you reply.
@@PinchePeloSpiderman
How so, Spiderman?
@@rumpill4skin keep adding to the algorithms
Sam is a World Champion Pseudo intellectual.
Sammy The Pseudo Harris.
Nope.
Funny. You say exactly the same thing every week. Bot maybe? Yes
I dunno why, but each time you post this same inane comment, I picture a 50 y.o. neckbeard with a fedora in their parents' basement waiting for Sam to post so he can copy/paste this for the 900th time as quickly as he can, going, "hur hur hur... i showed Sam hur hur"
I could be wrong, but I don't think that I am🤷🏼♂️
@@bubbafowpend9943 Is he wrong though? He's completely deranged and off-base re: Trump
@@Re3iRtH how does calling trump out on his numerous failings lend credence to someone being a "world champion pesudo intellectual"?