I think Sam has moved considerably on his original New Atheist polemic position... think about it. He now promotes meditation (with self conscious Buddhist undertones), largely agrees with the teachings of Jesus and believes that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater in religion. He is frustrating only because he is married to his old branding. He can't see any way forward without abandoning what made him famous. In some ways it's the same reason some folks find Peterson frustrating... he refuses to speak personally about God, only "from a psychological perspective". For me they both have a brand and stand to loose too much if they stray too far from it.
I think there's a lot merit to your comments. I see the conversation slightly differently. I see Peterson actually wrestling with his fundamental suppositions where for Harris it appears he may be making progress but rather his concessions are more superficial. Happy to be wrong, don't know either of them personally.
I think you never read any of Sam Harris' books or you aren't familiar with his history. He has "promoted meditation" and said "we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater" since his first book.
@@0xredrumx078 Are you saying there has been a recent switch? I don't think he ever espoused relativistic morality. And he has embraced transcendence and mystical experiences since his first mdma trip 17 years old. Spent total 2 years in silent meditation in his 20s, etc. He actually considered himself a buddhist at one point.
I made the following comment in the Harris / Peterson video itself, but keen on thoughts from viewers of this video... I was once a big fan of Harris. But something changed. It has taken me a while to put my finger on why he frustrates me, but I think its related to how dogmatic (irony not lost on me) he is with respect to positions he formed years ago - to the extent you can almost see him flat out ignore points made that don't suit his narrative. In contrast, why I think so many find Peterson so refreshing, is that he will actively engage with points he thinks are correct but don't fit his current narrative, in order to weave the point into an updated truth. Put another way, how many realistically think Harris' views would have changed in the next 10 years? Peterson on the other hand is actively building a more nuanced and multidimensional description of the truth, and working his way through that, in front of our eyes - recognizing his limitations and with a large dose of humility.
I found this video helpful. I didn't realizing how negligent Harris was in this talking session. I'm looking forward to your critical drinker story series"soft reboot".
That is the best metaphor of Sam I have heard. He certainly doesn’t want to build anything with Jordan and in most of their conversations Sam really gives off the sense that he thinks he’s better than it above Jordan intellectually. It’s really annoying.
Thanks for this video Paul. I not have the mental endurance to listen to Sam for more than 25 consecutive seconds without being astounded by his incoherence.
Paul, I think you might be misunderstanding Sam’s idea of suffering. Maybe I am misunderstanding it, but I think his and Buddhism’s idea of “no suffering” is not that suffering itself is eliminated from life, but rather that you are able to develop the skills to stop identifying with it. So something like: there is still suffering, but you don’t take it personally, so it does not rule your life. That being said, I do think there are still massive gaps in his string of logic, and his inability to listen to and engage with Peterson is frustrating
I’m not sure thats what Sam says. I think he genuinely wants to do as much as possible to rid the world of suffering itself, rather than to sacrifice yourself and embrace the suffering by not resisting it.
PVK - You are on point with Sam on this one. He is contradicting himself all over the place. Same playbook he has been using for years, except he added a little more meditation to the mix and is trying to play JBP's game. Also - noticed a lot of negative comments on this one. Don't listen. People aren't paying attention to Sam's standards and his lack of following them for his own worldview. If one's worldview fails to follow one's own standard, the whole house of cards comes down.
There's some misunderstandings here about the purpose of meditation. You're not meant to become completely dissociated from reality. It's generally more about helping you frame experience differently so you're not bogged down by the inevitable suffering life imposes on you. Existing still requires you to act, the house is still on fire. It makes more sense in the context of the traditions in which it's practiced than just plucked out of them and plugged into an app.
Exactly. That is Sam's misunderstanding though, as far as I see it. Based on my meditation experience. --> Sam seems to be not willing to step out of his "the analyst"/ "detachment" mode. What is this mode? While in this mode, it shows us that we can experience/ spend time in the realization that we as spiritual beings can be very separated from our embodiment/ action-realm, while in that mode. The analyst mode is something that deep meditation tends to introduce to a person (personal experience). It is a great "perception tool" in "the toolset". But being in that mode is not where most of Sam's/ ours "daily embodied actions" take place. It's not where our social life/ organization of our society takes place. It's not where our experience with "material reality" takes place. What I mean is, the analyst mode is not dealing with the problems of how to act in this world. That mode is pure perception. It is inherently without agency, inherently without the motivation to act. Jordan is talking about how to determine how to make ever-better embodied actions. Sam seems to not even be interested in diving into the process of how humans did/ do that, in practice. Is it just me? (My comment from this convo, on JP's site)
Good analysis. I was VERY frustrated with Peterson on this one. Of course, I was less frustrated with Harris because he he still exactly what I expected: full of nonsense and of himself. He has been mostly irrelevant for a long time now, and rightly so. He is still a card-carrying member of the Church of Atheism, and while people 10 years ago would have thought that concept was an oxymoron, thanks to Peterson (and PVK!) we now understand what that means. Of course, my frustration with Peterson is different than that of most commentators here. They want him to come out unambiguously for the Christian God, I want him to come out unambiguously against not so much the potential for such a God (I leave that open), but against the NECESSITY of that God, whether regarding morality (ought/is) or consciousness and existence. I have no idea what he is trying to achieve, it's not helpful, and leaves me baffled. And mind you, I do still admire him quite a lot, so I'm not happy about that. But hey, humans will be humans, flaws and all... Christianity has that (and many other things) right. Sam Harris is wrong, but Peterson did not do a good job showing why (partly because he is wrong about some things, too). So on we go in the usual circles, chasing our own tails. When will we learn?
The point about JBP’s orientation being towards Meaning and Sam Harris’s being away from suffering is probably the most succinct way to see the disconnect. Brilliant distillation
Have people forgotten Kant? Of course there wouldn't be a reality without our consciousness, this world is constructed by our consciousness. Even if one tried to imagine existence without our categorization of time and space and whatnot, it wouldn't be something we would define as a reality. We can't imagine a reality without time and space. Which is why they want to imagine a reality in accordance with a human mind even without us. It is a human bias. I should make a video about all of this.
Just because we cannot imagine an experience of things that which lack position, extension and duration, it does not follow that no object exists corresponding to the more general categories of reality such as pure mathematics, ethics or God Himself. This is Kant’s assumption, and we need not share it.
39:34-39:45 Peterson- "I had a vision of Heaven as a place that was perfect and everyone that was in it was striving to make it better." Harris- "...right, right. Don't care. Moving on" Paul- *throws hands up in air in exasperation and in one gesture sums up his commentary over the last 4 years on Harris 🤣
Status has its drawbacks. Harris seems concreted into the ideas that brought him to prominence, unable to move on, constantly defending these ideas no matter how washed out he has become to sound.
I watched the series of JBP and SH debates a few years ago, moderated by Bret W. and Douglas M. with great interest. Knowing the depth of suffering Jordan has faced in the period since with his health issues, he has impressive Grace and patience to endure Sam's resistance. Especially given that Sam hasn't (to my knowledge) suffered any excess of discomfortable pain as Peterson has. Let's face it, Paul. Sam Harris doesn't WANT God to be true or real. All his words are just attempts to show that there's something wrong with anyone who DOES want God to be real. You're a good pastor for wanting to see Sam find the light, my patience for that has grown thin.
My biggest fear is meaningless suffering, or suffering that does not bring about a greater good in the future. If I know why I am suffering then that meaning and purpose pushes me forward amidst the suffering towards the goal. If all I am is something that avoids pain and seeks pleasure, yet I can define those terms and experiences for myself, then where am I? What am I doing? Harris also talks about having too much chocolate mousse in his mouth and how that brings suffering, then drinking the bland water brings pleasure.
TLDR: The man plants trees in whose shade he will never dwell, whose fruit he will never eat, and whose charcoal he will never feel the heat. I'm afraid of that too. Lazarus the Beggar, little more to my life than to be the foil in a parable about suffering. And yet Abraham's children having been killing each other for thousands of years. King David's kingdom came to ruin. Solomon's diplomacy failed after his death. Saul died by Roman hands, and the church still battles its ethics and morality and so on. I think an answer, might be to say that the world isn't a story with happily ever after. That life isn't supposed to be this glorious struggle that lifts up all man kind. It may well be that we live all our days and suffer all our nightmares to give one soul a single solitary smile. And that is all. Shrug. We don't know our stories. We don't know ourselves. And we don't know where it is we are truly going or what lays at the end. Paradise? In this world of human predators and bubonic mother nature? Unlikely, and perhaps unwise to even seek. Consider the billions of forgotten souls whose hands built empires and picks shattered quarries, and feet sluiced the marsh pits for salt. We don't remember their names, we don't even really know what their lives were like. Beyond some partly imagined construction for the documentary crowd. Still, did not all those nameless hands contribute to the greater good? Even those who died drunk in a ditch, or died from lead, or suffered blind, and so on, did they not serve as the temporal foundation upon which we now exist? We are moles on the shoulder's of giants, quite a few had bum legs, and we too shall become those giants' flesh in time. And we are destined to not know how precisely our actions contribute the future. So the daily morality, the daily ethics becomes of a great importance, and the faith that being moral humans instead of animal humans would, should generate a vaguely and unspecified 'better' world in the hands of the next generation. Who may very well let it fall into corruption and nuclear winter. We don't know, we can't know, but the question and answer are still so compelling. So the farmer plants in spite of some minimum ignorance about the well-being of his family. So he tends the crops, never knowing which section will be turned to blight by some random wind. So the mother gets pregnant not knowing if it will be stillborn, or if it should claim her life. And the heroic mother lets her child loose in the world to suffer its indignities and question their being. Never knowing if her dear boy will die from a Greek pike or too much Tennessee Whisky. I could keep going, and talk about the value judgement. How one smile might be worth it for my value set. And how you might only believe that your suffering was valuable if there were two smiles. But that delves into relativism, and such bland water brings me little pleasure.
You seem to be a young person who dont understand anything. Let me enlighten you. Its only suffering when it bothers you. It is only pleasure when you crave for more. It only has meaning when you have plan. Everything is meaningless when you dont have any plan what to do with it. Wish you a wonderful day.
@@michaelhixson6939 All those examples do not take in the efect of the curse To the woman God said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” 17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Thats, why we have the, scyle of things never seeming to ever get better because they could not while under the curse of the law its why women were allways slaves and men always lost what they built! Then Jesus came on to the seen and The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. So This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.! So every time we see pepole walking in the sprit history changes thats why we are SOOOOOOO much better off. The science we have today was all made by devote Christians who walked in the the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus so we as men no longer have to work like we use too. And the same goes for women. Any were Jesus Christ is glorified women are lifted up as well and their pain in child birth is greatly diminished. The thing is you take away christ you see an immediate and drastic turn back to the curse :IE In china at this moment there is a mother of 8 chained to a wall by her neck and the husband is exalted, held up as an upstanding guy. We in a America are also starting to feel the effects of Jesus being taken away. You have to be blind not to see the insanity that I am talking about and its all because we are no longer walking in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus!
Life is suffering, suffering is meaningless so you have to inject meaning into the suffering akin Sisiphus. The process is the life you live not the goal you reach. Plus the other comments, there's several ways out of it.
You hit it exaclty on the head! I did not have all the clarity or context to communicate it to myself or others. Value your bigger context of Sam's inconsistencies. Being inconsistent isnt a major problem- this can help us become clearer
“Why bother making this video?” Because you’ve identified and articulated the “depressingly bored feeling” that sits with me after listening to Sam. I’ve never understood why. He’s paradigm is a “soft hedonism” but it lacks the reason why anyone would act on his recommendations. Meaning! He doesn’t want to stray far from his axioms in any way. His goal isn’t discovery it’s promotion. Wow. Well done!
I was like, oh no another peterson/harris thing to wade through, I don't feel up to it. Then I remembered, oh yeah! I can watch it through Paul's review!
Saw some negative comments here earlyier today. That Paul didnt understand, was all too harsh and no exersice in dialogos. Thought that mabye it was best to watch the whole thing first. Didnt have too. Just as you said it.
I think Paul is having difficulty with this idea of mindfulness / living in the moment being a legitamate source of meaning. Paul seems to be mocking Sam's perspective on this as being 'woo-woo' or precariously ill-defined. I can understand Paul's trouble with this. The problem I have with Paul's somewhat condescending / mocking attitude towards this is that this state of mindfulness can only really be known through experience. The mindful state of pure attention and awareness is incredibly meaningful. Now, before someone is tempted to mock me on this in the way Paul mocked Sam, just note that I am not 100% committed to that state as a supremely meaningful or solely valuable state, I am just saying that it is real but has to be understood through experience. I am enjoying the commentary, though. Just had to press pause and address that. I will continue watching the rest now.
16:00 I think there is some confusing here about the definition of consciousness. In the animal kingdom and in man before the fall, there is/was consciousness, but not very much memory, and self-reflective (meta-) consciousness. If the ground of reality is mental, i.e. a consciousness at large, or God. To what degree is that consciousness at large meta-conscious?? Does it stay the same, or is it evolving? Does our life somehow add something to the evolution of consciousness at large?
The sad thing about this is that people don't contemplate their personal and subjective psychological state when making claims about reality. The presupositions you carry as a scientist or even a philosopher to analyze reality will always have embeded in them your personal psychological state, the more primal your axiom for your hypothesis the more related to the early stages of your development as a human being... To give you an example, Sam says that meditation (attempting to abstract yourself from reality to supposedly see it as it is) is all you need to "get what you want" from life. Think about his Childhood and his psychological development as a human being that leads him to believe that life is about "getting what you want", also think about what makes him pursue voluntary dissociation instead of a reuniting (religious) incarnated personal and communal way of living that goes beyond the contemporary times (traditional religion). There is a psychological problem, there is a fundamental dissociation that occures in people with manichean views of the world, and gnostic like mentalities, those dissociations occur usually at preverbal stages of human development, when kids don't have a way to categorize what happened to them and less so turn those categories into concepts and words or, they can barely manifest their experience through yells, cries, or simply absorb that experience physically but dissociate psychologically, since those experiences go into their minds in a criptic manner, they interiorize voices and environments that repeat themselves when you age and develop a language but they repeat archetypally most of the time or physcally even through certain "illnesses". Those experiences will affect your perception and your presupositions about reality and you will not notice that you will take those axioms as the starting point of reality as such.
Sam Harris is a perfect example of the 3-dimensional-protagonist in the book “Flatland.” The 3D entity spends most of the book teaching a 2-D entity to understand the third dimension. Once he succeeds, the 2-D protagonist asks the 3-D entity what it was like when they were visited and taught by 4th or higher dimensional entities. The 3-D character just laughs off such an idea as obvious superstition. So much bad philosophy could be avoided by making Flatland and an introduction to Ken Wilber’s Integral model required reading.
I remember listening to Sam Harris to get the perspective of a devote hyper rationalist, yet his blind spots were too big for me to make sense of. Then Jordan Petersons interview with him showed me how ineffective Sam's robotic and literal understanding of the world works, especially compared to Jordan's human-focused storytelling. Loaded up Peterson's website right away and binged through his past work. Instantly made the world easier to navigate and still does to this day.
Sam seems to be not willing to step out of his "the analyst"/ "detachment" mode. What is this mode? While in this mode, it shows us that we can experience/ spend time in the realization that we as spiritual beings can be very separated from our embodiment/ action-realm, while in that mode. The analyst mode is something that deep meditation tends to introduce to a person (personal experience). It is a great "perception tool" in "the toolset". But being in that mode is not where most of Sam's/ ours "daily embodied actions" take place. It's not where our social life/ organization of our society takes place. It's not where our experience with "material reality" takes place. What I mean is, the analyst mode is not dealing with the problems of how to act in this world. That mode is pure perception. It is inherently without agency, inherently without the motivation to act. Jordan is talking about how to determine how to make ever-better embodied actions. Sam seems to not even be interested in diving into the process of how humans did/ do that, in practice. Is it just me? (My comment from this convo, on JP's site)
37:05 I always love the “We’re apes” argument, actually we’re reptiles, no actually we’re amphibians no actually we’re fish. Well actually we’re a collection of atoms, no well actually we’re a collection of quantum flux. Why stop at apes Sam?
at the level of ego, yes. It's egoic bumper cars. But if you relate to a *person* and create space for people to be brutally honest, maybe even with themselves... This is what a good psychoanalyst does.
@@barry.anderberg I agree. But that’s ego and arguing about semantics. If someone said, “everyone sees (salience) what they value most (hierarchy) and orients toward what they most desire.” Who would disagree? Would Sam Harris? That’s getting past the “watchful dragons” or the “Sunday School answer” which may or may not mean that someone believes it. They just may think they do.
@@WhiteStoneName Thanks, those are great points to start people like Sam on their path, to start to look at how their embodied self actually behaves & what motivates it.
In texas they would say Bless his heart, Bless Sam's heart. I did not realize how far this little group of the internet has moved away from Sam's arguments. He is frustrating and indeed does not listen. Honestly, it is so not interesting anymore. However, I support Paul and learn much every time I suffer through a Sam Harris discussion.
This clip was definitely worth watching. Because the mind makes its own associations. Mine took me to places that weren't strictly 'on topic' but connected with the clip nonetheless. I thought about things like suffering. I thought of something I heard about Dean Martin. Somebody asked him how his day was going. He responded with a list of all the terrific ways his day was going: great bowel motion, great round of golf, great lunch. What's not to like? As Fenelon says, a cross is a cross, whether it's a rustic piece of wood, or fabulously jewel-encrusted. It was certainly worth pointing out the utility or otherwise of Peterson or Harris' process.
Yes that was the expression I was searching for with Sam Harris meditation, "existential suicide". It really feels like youre trying to cheat yourself out of the existence/reality when you view the world like a soulles robot
For the @21:52 point about joggers. Prior to reaching this part in your overview and just today I was thinking about this voluntary suffering point as I was running and trying to improve my cardio. I thought “man, I wonder if Sam Harris has ever pushed his body passed its conceivable physical limit and thought that voluntary suffering was evil in the ever expanding void of nothingness of the worldview he lives”. What a coincidence.
The term you are searching for is, “eudaimonic well-being .” I am surprised it has not been brought up by Peterson. He continually describes it and it’s a major concept with philosophy and psychology. You have repeatedly articulated quite well in your commentary.
I think you're a bit unfair to Sam, he is still evolving. 😁 This convo they had was nowhere near as frustrating as the previous ones in front of the live audience.
You know you're watching too much PVK videos when you come away with the same feelings and frustrations as PVK on a podcast/interview/video before watching his commentary looool You did a good job of articulating that frustration in this commentary PVK 👏🏾 I pray in the future, Harris will be able to engage in better dia-logos with those on this side of the internet 🙏🏾
I tried meditation for a few times, but it didn't convince me. Does this detachment exist? Is it real? Is it a condition? A state of mind? Or is it just remaining inactive? When I see a group sitting and meditating, to me they are just people who are sitting and being inactive. I'm not convinced that anyone of them is detached. If I choose one of them and poke him/her with a finger and ask something, I get a response - some response. That person may not say anything, may not move, but that too is a response, but not a proof of detachment. Meditation may help restless people to feel better, to think more clearly, from time to time, but I really don't see any higher meaning in it.
@@Liisa3139 I understand the confusion because a lot of the talk surrounding meditation and its philosophical/religious background is not made easy to understand. Personally, I've never liked reading that type of material myself, though there are some books by westerners that I think explain it in a much more straightforward, intelligible manner. I think it is something that has to be experienced by someone with an open mind willing to commit a non-insignificant amount of time practicing it. As for detachment, I would say it doesn't have to mean that you are a non-sentient, unresponsive husk. For example, let's say someone cuts you off in traffic and you get pissed off. Meditation can help you learn to not identify with the feeling of anger. Or let's say you have very negative self-talk, where you get stuck in destructive thought loops, which often happens in depression. Again, you learn that you don't necessarily have to identify with those thoughts that are harmful.
@@Clearsky4916 "Meditation can help you learn to not identify with the feeling of anger..."You don't need meditation for this. Just some thinking will do the same. The special effects of meditation are just beliefs that people like to hold. Physically meditation is inactivity.
@@Liisa3139 Meditation has been extensively studied, and it definitely has effects on brain structure and brain activity that explain its purported benefits. A quick google search would let you learn more about it if you are interested.
@@Clearsky4916 There is just the problem that these brain functions can't be compared to what happens spontaneously in individuals not doing any meditation. It is impossible to monitor random people 100% of the time as to produce comparative material. A lot of mystification takes place concerning meditation. Meditation has become a darling of Western culture as it is so "pure" and free from the flaws of our culture. It is the greener grass that accumulates Western projections of a better life.
I'm happy to see Sam at least acknowledge "Is/ought" as a thing. I don't quite follow his thread from Wittgenstein to Hume though. His sort of "narrative deprivation tank" sounds a lot like the way Peterson describes pre fall humanity. "It goes away the moment I hide it behind my back" 😅😅
Sam gives it up again around 38:00, "whatever you want to call navigating in this space, moving away from unendurable, *pointless* misery." (emphasis mine) DING DING DING! Sam Harris, maybe finally meet (and hear) Jordan Peterson.
I really like these videos. Even if Sam doesn't listen and respond very well, it is still meaningful because Jordan gets to dissect some of his thoughts and counterarguments. It also bring out some good thoughts from you Paul. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Specifically the parts about sacrifice for the future, and time before consciousness.
Listening to Sam's convo wasn't pleasurable. But it is meaningful, to see practically how people can be & stay blind, unwilling to recognize their embodiment & unwilling to analyse their own behaviours & motivations for said behaviours openly.
Sam seems to be not willing to step out of his "the analyst"/ "detachment" mode. What is this mode? While in this mode, it shows us that we can experience/ spend time in the realization that we as spiritual beings can be very separated from our embodiment/ action-realm, while in that mode. The analyst mode is something that deep meditation tends to introduce to a person (personal experience). It is a great "perception tool" in "the toolset". But being in that mode is not where most of Sam's/ ours "daily embodied actions" take place. It's not where our social life/ organization of our society takes place. It's not where our experience with "material reality" takes place. What I mean is, the analyst mode is not dealing with the problems of how to act in this world. That mode is pure perception. It is inherently without agency, inherently without the motivation to act. Jordan is talking about how to determine how to make ever-better embodied actions. Sam seems to not even be interested in diving into the process of how humans did/ do that, in practice. Is it just me? (My comment from this convo, on JP's site)
@@elektrotehnik94 I don't entirely agree. Meditation is a tool as you said, but the mindfulness gained from meditation can change how a person acts throughout the day. Being mindful means you stop and things about a choice before just doing something. Being mindful means you might stop and think twice about having that donut instead of just doing it out of habit. I think Sam's arguments are always going to be hypocritical as he wants to cling to Buddhist philosophies and discard Christian philosophies when a great deal of them aren't even different in meaning, they are just stated differently. He just seems to ignore when someone points to a flaw in his reasoning. I like Sam. I think he is good at getting people to think more deeply. In every conversation between him and JBP though, I have been in agreement with JBP the vast majority of points.
@@123darkdeal I agree fully with you regarding mindfulness coming from meditation, not sure how what I've said disagrees with your view. Not doing unconscious/ habitual/ automatic desire-pleasing, through mindfulness, is only a start, of course... All of it is much more complex than simple generalizations, as people & reality are complex things
Paul, I’m only halfway through. So, take this with a grain of salt. But you’re Kathy Newman-ing Sam. It’s high-level, apologetics, zero-sum (non)dialogos. Island Rules, Paul. To me, Sam is articulating a dynamic materialism/monistic Oneness. Which…whatever, is fine. I might try and organize a talk. Kal and I were really going back and forth about your critiques of Sam this morning in the vox. I actually think that what Harris is speaking about is the suffering that comes from what I call ego or Divided Man. And he’s right! And when atheists speak about Nothingness, they’re not wrong. Even his Mr. Nothingness is trying to personify the dynamic Oneness behind all things. Idk. Seems like you’re not steelmanning or agape-ing his articulations into being. Pretend he’s Vervaeke. You can’t hear who you don’t love. Conversational hospitality.
@@sarrok85 kinda. It’s being overly masculine in your language and not allowing space to set the table for one’s interlocutor to make their best case. Obviously this is harder when not speaking directly to someone. But Paul can do it. I’ve seen him do it a bunch.
I see what you’re saying, Luke. It’s tough having such conversations in which one of the interlocutors is explicitly anti-religion, which signals a certain lack of charity and open-mindedness. To engage with that (assuming one is not anti-religion) often sends one more towards the strawman end of the spectrum than the steelman end.
@@SageStudiesGunnarFooth yes. But even at that. Is Sam Harris really anti-religion? Using our Little Corner vernacular, I would say that he’s anti-credo ideology-building & tribal dogmatism which religions have definitely done in the past and continue to do. (As does scientism). But Sam would not be opposed to what Vervaeke describe “religio”-the mystical subterranean magic that binds persons and communities. Who would be?! Which is kinda my whole point. To divide over semantics & words or to poke fun is not helpful. It’s very Douglas Wilson-y or Chestertonian. Both those men thought that there were times to use sardonic language in order to illuminate absurdity. Idk. That may only “work” at scale, and ultimately isn’t person-making.
I sometimes think this is a model of a High Functioning NPC. It's also one of the clearest examples of categories are used to limit imagination and the range of topics that can be discussed (which isn't to say they are not necessary to make order out of the world, but any tool and be misused). By simply declaring some things as "religious" and therefore outside the category of "rational", those topics can simply be excluded from the discussion by declaring you will only address "rational" things. There is also so much about the relationship between language and culture we don't yet understand. Language is both rigid and fluid. Does a change in language reflect a change in culture? Or can you actually change culture by changing the language? When we start to talk about "spiritual" as a category, separate from the category of "religious" are we really creating a new category to bring topics back into the discussion, or are we merely working around the categorical boundaries others have set that we find limiting?
Not to get too political, but there is great effort currently in changing words to manipulate culture. Sometimes it seems to work, other times it seems the people opposed to the idea push back hard enough to stop it. Even the word "woman" is highly volatile among some groups now.
@@123darkdeal It's not political in the sense that it's not limited to our current situation. The French Revolution attempted to completely transform French society through changing language, renaming all the months, for example. But those who think they have the power to shape language often discover that they can't control how people actually use it in their daily lives.
A great commentary of Peterson and Harris represent two contrasting archetypes or world views of our time. Harris argues that the truths of Religion are so full of human flaws that they therefore are not useful truths at all. Instead, Harris believes that ritual meditation reveals truths that are virtues somehow immune from human flaws... yeah, right... Peterson acknowledges that the truths of Religion are full of human flaws, but also full of human virtues. Any subjective moral intuition only results in a subjective moral relativity that is also full of human flaws. That is why the Grand Narratives reveal objective truths as morality with both virtues and flaws despite its many precursor moral intuitions with human flaws.
"All alone, or in twos The ones who really love you Walk up and down, outside the wall Some hand in hand And some gathered together in bands The bleeding hearts and the artists make their stand And when they've given you their all Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall" Pink Floyd, "Outside the Wall" from --- "Zombies are familiar characters in philosophical thought experiments. They are like people in every way except that they have no internal experience... There has been much debate about whether a true zombie could exist, or if internal subjective experience inevitably colors either outward behavior or measurable events in the brain in some way. I claim that there is one measurable difference between a zombie and a person: a zombie has a different philosophy. Therefore, zombies can only be detected if they happen to be professional philosophers. A philosopher like Daniel Dennett is obviously a zombie." Lanier, Jaron. You Are Not a Gadget (pp. 76-77). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. My favorite part of this conversation is that it throws into sharp relief how JP has actually grown since their last conversation, while Sam apparently has not. My favorite part of the commentary was the choice of the Count as an avatar of Sam Harris! I don't know if I have anything else to add to these quotes, except that I'm very much looking forward to Paul's return to the JP-JR conversation!
Sams conversation with Jordan was frustrating, one wonders if Sam is listening or if Sam just doesn’t know what to do with Peterson‘s comments. I could only get halfway through the conversation
Meditation for me is a discipline that helps to bring reality into focus. Just to sit and be calm and aware of my body and my thoughts and to remind myself that I am a part of this happening, this being or this god. Sam is praying and doesn't know it.
Come on now. You are better than this. And it becomes a bit silly when you criticize Sam for not listening, while you yourself doesn't listen. Sam seems to want to describe where meaning comes from. From our evolutionary strive towards good stuff and away from bad stuff. It sounds just like what Peterson is saying. Honestly. To me it sounds like Harris is pretty much arguing for the same thing as Peterson has been going on about for years. I wouldn't be surprised if he started talking about Hero's Journey later on.
@@WhiteStoneName Yeah, the discussion and the comment of the discussion is in itself an example of how meaning is structuring ones reality by making certain things salient and hiding others.
The internal experience of Ayahuasca would bolster the point you’re making more than the external vomiting; on large doses there is a near universal experience of being torn apart. How this manifests is different for everyone (sometimes it’s being eaten by something, sometimes is thorns ripping their flesh off little by little). Even if there were no vomiting, psychedelics often overwhelm you in painful ways before the “insight” comes. My own large mushroom dose was, among other things, a series of glimpsing something high and transcendent, then immediately “falling” and seeing where I was failing my wife, children, and other loved ones. Akin to showing a dog a piece of bacon and as soon as the drool starts to form shoving their face in the pee on the carpet.
Hi Paul. Not enough charity shown in this video. First time I've strongly disagreed with your take on the matter. This was "Why can't Harris see the world my way?!" type of commentary. Not "How does Sam view the world and what are the common points of our worldviews?". Video is conflict not estuary. Both sides need to listen more and understand before speaking. To much speaking. I'm trying to learn this myself. Oh the frustration because we cannot Love the other! Harris would make an excellent bride for the Bridegroom.
Exactly. The most baffling part for me is that Harris is arguing for the same things Peterson used to argue for, but they still some how was able to be in disagreement.
@@jeremybridges6015 Well I too have listened to Sam. More than PVK probably since I was an agnostic at one time and even did Sam's meditation app. I simply disagree that PVK is being charitable to Sam and his position. The mocking didn't help.
@@sarrok85 Maybe I do not see something, but what is there to be charitable about when Sam obviously disregards every counterpoint made? Tell him of a contradiction he has made and his response is "yeah" and then he just continues on his way as if reading a script. I also used to be big into Harris (all of the 4 to be honest) and very much an atheist. I have moved substantially. Sams arguments just seem dated. The debate has progressed much and I don't think Sam has bothered to take any of it into consideration. My assertion is that he thinks he has had it figured out for years. JBP and Paul could be completely wrong. Don't know. But Sam is also wrong, and that has been shown by the way culture and society is moving. Sam needs to update his positions or he will just continue to grow more irrelevant. It would be nice to see Sam actually take a counter argument and work through it instead of ignoring it.
Well and 13 billion years. Just the unit of measurement “years” is completely contingent on our experience of the earth revolving around the sun. What would be the most relevant unit of time for cosmological purposes? We probably can’t even conceive of it, but I imagine it must be substantially larger than a year. Even a light-year (which obviously is a measure of distance not time) is defined by a year. Is there some common cosmological time unit that I’ve never heard of because of my limited knowledge of astronomy? If you know please comment
Sam Harris' philosophy is one that genuinely annoys me. Of all the ancient wisdom traditions that are so rich in their understanding, all of them require some supreme notion of value, distinct yet not stripped from the phenomenological. Haris' philosophy of life is like if all the beneficial, wise, and important aspects of Buddhism were described by those Nestorian Christians who didn't understand it and took it to be nihilistic. When the Buddhist speaks of Absolute Nothingness they do not mean the sort of absent zero concept Sam Harris describes. Absolute Nothingness is so phenomenologically rich because its "No thingness." Much like God is to the mystics the Absolute to the Buddhist is so perfect, so ultimate that it is beyond every category and can only be described by what it is not (Negative Theology) The Buddhist conception of the absolute is not absence, but rather not finite or limited in value like the human person. The Buddhist (just like the Christians and everyone else) still has to appeal to this greater unknown absolute reality. In fairness, harris isn't explicitly trying to be Buddhist yet my critique is that he just spews a worse more nihilistic version of it. Harris' idea of nothingness is oblivion. "Mediation and psychedelics" give no hope to a 17-year-old kid who gets murked by an oncoming bus on his way to his first yoga class. In some sense, Harris' idea strikes me almost as suicidal if one is unable to meditate for lack of knowledge and attention, and unable to do psychedelics for lack of resources the next best thing they have is this nothingness that apparently Harris says we need not worry about. Furthermore, how can one simultaneously say there are things we humans ultimately value in life which are achievable through meditation and psychedelics while simultaneously saying that we shouldn't fear the demise of those goods. Further furthermore, the Buddhist Japanese inquisitor meditated quite a bit as Christians were hung on crosses on beaches and then drowned by the oncoming waves. Some took multiple days to die. Meditation has led to spiritual dryness and depravity just as much as Christianity has. A philosophy of life must be extremely dynamic. That's why religions are so successful where secular theories tend to fail. One needs the mythological, metaphysical, historical, ethical, and existential all compounding into a unified picture of what life should be. And lastly who justified Harris' metaphysics? The modern faith in nihilism is completely unwarranted. Platonism is just as plausible today as it was in its conception, if not more so with the advent of neo-platonism and greater philosophical tools to utilize. Why should we take a leap of faith in Harris' nihilism when it offers significantly less meaning, and shows to have little results? I apologize if this is a bit too spirited or even If I'm confusing at some junctures jumping from one thing to the next, but as an individual who's struggled for meaning and with a particularly existential kind of depression Harris bugs me. When I looked to solutions like Haris' they simply said to me to just accept all of the horrible terrible sufferings I endured at the hand of my own psychology and to just accept the dread of oncoming demise. It does nothing for most people, it really only services a wealthy elite who can satisfy themselves by means of worldly goods. I do not believe Harris' beliefs would survive a war for a soldier, or give solace to the child whose parents are divorcing. It does little for anybody except an elite few who are free from outward imposition.
Paul coming in hot with the same collar pop as Harris! On a less serious note, Sam has to be one of the most frustratingly unselfaware thinkers I've ever come across. I grew past him at 21, and that's not to say I'm a genious, but rather that he is stuck in an inconsistent framework that disallows growth.
Yea I agree with you when I listened to this almost everything Sam Harris said did not seem logically coherent :( He all so never shut up or listened to JP he just spewed his logically incoherent stuff. And as such the discussion was just bla
Unless you’re trying to learn that God is Dead and life has no meaning and you should have no principles except upholding a satanic neoliberal order, you have nothing to learn from San.
Sam seems to be not willing to step out of his "the analyst"/ "detachment" mode. What is this mode? While in this mode, it shows us that we can experience/ spend time in the realization that we as spiritual beings can be very separated from our embodiment/ action-realm, while in that mode. The analyst mode is something that deep meditation tends to introduce to a person (personal experience). It is a great "perception tool" in "the toolset". But being in that mode is not where most of Sam's/ ours "daily embodied actions" take place. It's not where our social life/ organization of our society takes place. It's not where our experience with "material reality" takes place. What I mean is, the analyst mode is not dealing with the problems of how to act in this world. That mode is pure perception. It is inherently without agency, inherently without the motivation to act. Jordan is talking about how to determine how to make ever-better embodied actions. Sam seems to not even be interested in diving into the process of how humans did/ do that, in practice. Is it just me? (My comment from this convo, on JP's site)
This is probably projection, but I think the reason you may find this sort of thing meaningful is that figuring out how to get someone to have a meaningful conversation is integral to having them become a genuine human being. Believing that every person has a redeemable soul means you aren't allowed to give up on them, even if they don't listen or don't understand. But how do you actually help someone to see things that they refuse to see? I think it's an open question, and a lot of people hope that conversations and commentaries like this one will help to find some solution to such an intractable problem.
Can something that is not "conscious" act as an observer? If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to see it, doesn't the ground it falls on, "notice" to some degree?
Yeah it wasn't a very fruitful discussion. Kinda disappointed because I was looking forward to it dropping. Felt so sad for Sam as he described being a mind trapped in a body...I mean probably most people feel something like that at times but something about the way he talked about it broke my heart for the guy.
For me worth your doing IMO because it sharpens my sense of Sam not listening at all. What I can add is that Sam's description of what happens in meditation fits my experience of both Christian Centring Prayer and Theravada Buddhist meditation. But without being limited by his very modern view of religion. Also helpful because different aspects of his 'waterproof' world view stand out for you and me. Particularly liked the Wittgenstein point and the tabula rasa foundation of his views. The one that grabbed me was dreams being psychotic. Having spent an adult lifetime working with my own and the dreams of others in the Jungian manner I was sharply reminded of how a modern person can explore inner awareness extensively, even skilfully, but then reject large portions of human experience as irrelevant or delusional.
Listened to the Peterson Harris video last night and my main take away was Thank God for John Vervaeke. Vervaeke is so careful about his language and citing his sources that it initially got on my nerves but now I so appreciate the care he takes to be correct and consistent. I can follow him much better. Also, Vervaeke truly listens and responds to what is said. I think his project of demonstrating dia logos is training us to have higher expectations for other discussions in this corner of the internet.
Sam doesn't have the advantage of breadth of experience in Depth Psychology that Jordan has. And Jodan passes over Sam's meditative practice of loosing the "self!"
Does Sam Harris believe he's describing the kingdom of God? Would he be offended at your comment? Harris is just replaying his greatest hits here. He's not engaging.
@@PaulVanderKlay It doesn't actually matter whether he understands it with the language I would use to describe it. I have in mind here the point where Sam is describing pure awareness and you mock him as if what he's talking about is absurd. That state of pure awareness is where you encounter God. Sam doesn't have to use my words to describe it. The experience is the same regardless of how you try and relate it in words. You mocked with the Wisdom of the world.
@@grailcountry Thank you. I feel frustrated towards PVK and everyone else not listing to Sam. Alot of people still have scales on their eyes and cannot perceive Christ in the unrecognizable resurrected.
Sam could be describing pure state of awareness and at the same time completely be missing an opportunity to play Dialogos with JP, as what happened with JV. Good mystic, bad at Dialogos. I think PVK is showing we dont move forward with out the other (very much Christian). This is him advancing Christian project. SAM Now he has beef with Rogan, and Weinstein Brothers. He talks about pure awareness this gets pulled back down to reality and cant reconcile upper and lower registers. Where your project Grail country channel beautify shows how God makes Himself/Sophia a self thru humans playing in pure awareness with others. Lost in love with us as we are lost in love with God and in others Your project/channel is a beautiful example testament to where Sam Harris could go.
@@thevulgarhegelian4676 Again, my comment is directed at PVK's reaction to the part where Sam was describing the state of pure awareness. As far as Paul's contention that Sam wasn't engaging, in dialogue, I don't see that at all from the examples he showed. I thought Sam's responses were fine. As far as playing greatest hits goes, Jordan does that all the time too. We all do, it's part of figuring out what ideas connect to each other.
If morality is based on pleasure and pain, then would we not end up becoming Lilith, and drinking the blood of our children? Or maybe we already do that, in big ways and small ways. Raising a child seems to be one of the highest forms of self-sacrifice and suffering, albeit the most fulfilling and meaningful.
"The reification of the unconscious was fallacious" Well, as a unified something, it probably is fallacious. If the intuition / unconscious of biological neural networks is at all comparable to how information is embedded in artificial neural networks, then the "unconscious" is probably NOT any one "thing".
In this material world, things can't get better. No matter how "good" things seem at a given moment, we are always lacking. We always want more than we can possibly have. We cannot be satisfied, and as such, things cannot get better than they are. Things can get worse, and things can get less bad, but that isn't the same as good. In the forum for action, we can get better through cooperation, as Jordan mentioned in his vision, but we can't generally cooperate sufficiently to actually make things better. Prosperity nudges the needle a little, and the arc does bend toward justice, but it is all in fits and starts, and no realistic set of assumptions makes it significantly better within ions, and cycles of ups and downs and perhaps unimaginable suffering are in store, and one could suppose it will be so as long as time passes.
Haha, stop being nice and people get triggered. I noticed someone mentioning that you approached the video with “the ways of the world”. If we make a quick glance at the gospels, I think there’s precedent for being exasperated at people who don’t seem to be able to see.
Sam never moves beyond his stock responses to what he believes are common tropes from the "religious" side. Peterson just serves as an impulse to continue talking. Let the great enlightened Sam disperse his supreme wisdom down to the masses, Jordan included. Peterson said this conversation was better than the other talks. Did he just mean it was less confrontational? Because he kind of just let Sam ignore him this time around, rather than attempt to make him argue on equal footing.
I feel like many of Sam Harris's points here could be undermined by simply being a smart-ass. He tells you to forget everything about science and religion and then ask you to address the navigation problem. Well, of course I have a problem, I just forgot everything I know about science and religion. He says You can choose to use moral language like a good and evil, or not. Then, he suggests an agreeable proposition that hypothetical versions of experienced reality are better than the one he has determined to be at the bottom. I can't understand what he's saying anymore because I have opted, as he has allowed, to not use terms or concepts of moral valuation. Instead, I only use terms of pure nominal reality and in his base level hell, matter is still neither created nor destroyed and energy is conserved. So they're all the same.
Sam Harris seems to be more attached to his script than ever before. His inability to even hear what is being said before he goes into his take was worse than ever. For a conversation between them to be productive , a moderator seems almost necessary. Bret was good but I wish Vervaeke would moderate a conversation for them.
I think Sam has moved considerably on his original New Atheist polemic position... think about it. He now promotes meditation (with self conscious Buddhist undertones), largely agrees with the teachings of Jesus and believes that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater in religion.
He is frustrating only because he is married to his old branding. He can't see any way forward without abandoning what made him famous. In some ways it's the same reason some folks find Peterson frustrating... he refuses to speak personally about God, only "from a psychological perspective". For me they both have a brand and stand to loose too much if they stray too far from it.
I agree.
I think there's a lot merit to your comments. I see the conversation slightly differently. I see Peterson actually wrestling with his fundamental suppositions where for Harris it appears he may be making progress but rather his concessions are more superficial. Happy to be wrong, don't know either of them personally.
I think you never read any of Sam Harris' books or you aren't familiar with his history. He has "promoted meditation" and said "we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater" since his first book.
@@Rookie11
But he has moved away from relativistic morality and has embraced transcendence and mysticism more.
@@0xredrumx078 Are you saying there has been a recent switch? I don't think he ever espoused relativistic morality. And he has embraced transcendence and mystical experiences since his first mdma trip 17 years old. Spent total 2 years in silent meditation in his 20s, etc. He actually considered himself a buddhist at one point.
I made the following comment in the Harris / Peterson video itself, but keen on thoughts from viewers of this video...
I was once a big fan of Harris. But something changed. It has taken me a while to put my finger on why he frustrates me, but I think its related to how dogmatic (irony not lost on me) he is with respect to positions he formed years ago - to the extent you can almost see him flat out ignore points made that don't suit his narrative. In contrast, why I think so many find Peterson so refreshing, is that he will actively engage with points he thinks are correct but don't fit his current narrative, in order to weave the point into an updated truth. Put another way, how many realistically think Harris' views would have changed in the next 10 years? Peterson on the other hand is actively building a more nuanced and multidimensional description of the truth, and working his way through that, in front of our eyes - recognizing his limitations and with a large dose of humility.
Seriously, these commentaries are great. I find your insight on them more valuable than the podcasts themselves honestly.
I found this video helpful. I didn't realizing how negligent Harris was in this talking session. I'm looking forward to your critical drinker story series"soft reboot".
That is the best metaphor of Sam I have heard. He certainly doesn’t want to build anything with Jordan and in most of their conversations Sam really gives off the sense that he thinks he’s better than it above Jordan intellectually. It’s really annoying.
Thanks for this video Paul. I not have the mental endurance to listen to Sam for more than 25 consecutive seconds without being astounded by his incoherence.
Paul, I think you might be misunderstanding Sam’s idea of suffering. Maybe I am misunderstanding it, but I think his and Buddhism’s idea of “no suffering” is not that suffering itself is eliminated from life, but rather that you are able to develop the skills to stop identifying with it. So something like: there is still suffering, but you don’t take it personally, so it does not rule your life.
That being said, I do think there are still massive gaps in his string of logic, and his inability to listen to and engage with Peterson is frustrating
Pain x Resistance = Suffering. Reduce the resistance and you suffer far less, might be what he is getting at?
and then you light yourself on fire for the cameraman
That's far too dismissive and simplistic of the concept of suffering if that is what he/Buddhism believes.
I’m not sure thats what Sam says. I think he genuinely wants to do as much as possible to rid the world of suffering itself, rather than to sacrifice yourself and embrace the suffering by not resisting it.
@@06rtm “Some beliefs are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them.” - Sam Harris
PVK - You are on point with Sam on this one. He is contradicting himself all over the place. Same playbook he has been using for years, except he added a little more meditation to the mix and is trying to play JBP's game.
Also - noticed a lot of negative comments on this one. Don't listen. People aren't paying attention to Sam's standards and his lack of following them for his own worldview. If one's worldview fails to follow one's own standard, the whole house of cards comes down.
There's some misunderstandings here about the purpose of meditation. You're not meant to become completely dissociated from reality. It's generally more about helping you frame experience differently so you're not bogged down by the inevitable suffering life imposes on you. Existing still requires you to act, the house is still on fire. It makes more sense in the context of the traditions in which it's practiced than just plucked out of them and plugged into an app.
Exactly. That is Sam's misunderstanding though, as far as I see it. Based on my meditation experience. -->
Sam seems to be not willing to step out of his "the analyst"/ "detachment" mode.
What is this mode? While in this mode, it shows us that we can experience/ spend time in the realization that we as spiritual beings can be very separated from our embodiment/ action-realm, while in that mode.
The analyst mode is something that deep meditation tends to introduce to a person (personal experience). It is a great "perception tool" in "the toolset".
But being in that mode is not where most of Sam's/ ours "daily embodied actions" take place. It's not where our social life/ organization of our society takes place. It's not where our experience with "material reality" takes place.
What I mean is, the analyst mode is not dealing with the problems of how to act in this world. That mode is pure perception. It is inherently without agency, inherently without the motivation to act.
Jordan is talking about how to determine how to make ever-better embodied actions. Sam seems to not even be interested in diving into the process of how humans did/ do that, in practice. Is it just me? (My comment from this convo, on JP's site)
I agree. Meditation Also allows you to calm your mind like prayer and allows for some deep self reflecting on your self.
I agree with what you wrote, but I don’t think it’s a legitimate criticism of Sam as much as it is a reflection of Paul’s caricaturization of Sam.
Good analysis. I was VERY frustrated with Peterson on this one. Of course, I was less frustrated with Harris because he he still exactly what I expected: full of nonsense and of himself. He has been mostly irrelevant for a long time now, and rightly so. He is still a card-carrying member of the Church of Atheism, and while people 10 years ago would have thought that concept was an oxymoron, thanks to Peterson (and PVK!) we now understand what that means.
Of course, my frustration with Peterson is different than that of most commentators here. They want him to come out unambiguously for the Christian God, I want him to come out unambiguously against not so much the potential for such a God (I leave that open), but against the NECESSITY of that God, whether regarding morality (ought/is) or consciousness and existence. I have no idea what he is trying to achieve, it's not helpful, and leaves me baffled. And mind you, I do still admire him quite a lot, so I'm not happy about that. But hey, humans will be humans, flaws and all... Christianity has that (and many other things) right.
Sam Harris is wrong, but Peterson did not do a good job showing why (partly because he is wrong about some things, too). So on we go in the usual circles, chasing our own tails. When will we learn?
The point about JBP’s orientation being towards Meaning and Sam Harris’s being away from suffering is probably the most succinct way to see the disconnect. Brilliant distillation
“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something”
- Wesley, The Princess Bride
I didn’t think I’d need commentary being a fan of both of them for years but this was elucidating thank you
Have people forgotten Kant?
Of course there wouldn't be a reality without our consciousness, this world is constructed by our consciousness. Even if one tried to imagine existence without our categorization of time and space and whatnot, it wouldn't be something we would define as a reality. We can't imagine a reality without time and space. Which is why they want to imagine a reality in accordance with a human mind even without us. It is a human bias.
I should make a video about all of this.
👍
yes, you should.
Just because we cannot imagine an experience of things that which lack position, extension and duration, it does not follow that no object exists corresponding to the more general categories of reality such as pure mathematics, ethics or God Himself. This is Kant’s assumption, and we need not share it.
@@tsuich00i I meant that they still imagine an universe such as ours even without a human observer. There are no categories without an observer.
39:34-39:45
Peterson- "I had a vision of Heaven as a place that was perfect and everyone that was in it was striving to make it better."
Harris- "...right, right. Don't care. Moving on"
Paul- *throws hands up in air in exasperation and in one gesture sums up his commentary over the last 4 years on Harris 🤣
Status has its drawbacks. Harris seems concreted into the ideas that brought him to prominence, unable to move on, constantly defending these ideas no matter how washed out he has become to sound.
I watched the series of JBP and SH debates a few years ago, moderated by Bret W. and Douglas M. with great interest. Knowing the depth of suffering Jordan has faced in the period since with his health issues, he has impressive Grace and patience to endure Sam's resistance. Especially given that Sam hasn't (to my knowledge) suffered any excess of discomfortable pain as Peterson has.
Let's face it, Paul. Sam Harris doesn't WANT God to be true or real. All his words are just attempts to show that there's something wrong with anyone who DOES want God to be real. You're a good pastor for wanting to see Sam find the light, my patience for that has grown thin.
My biggest fear is meaningless suffering, or suffering that does not bring about a greater good in the future. If I know why I am suffering then that meaning and purpose pushes me forward amidst the suffering towards the goal. If all I am is something that avoids pain and seeks pleasure, yet I can define those terms and experiences for myself, then where am I? What am I doing?
Harris also talks about having too much chocolate mousse in his mouth and how that brings suffering, then drinking the bland water brings pleasure.
TLDR: The man plants trees in whose shade he will never dwell, whose fruit he will never eat, and whose charcoal he will never feel the heat.
I'm afraid of that too. Lazarus the Beggar, little more to my life than to be the foil in a parable about suffering.
And yet Abraham's children having been killing each other for thousands of years.
King David's kingdom came to ruin. Solomon's diplomacy failed after his death. Saul died by Roman hands, and the church still battles its ethics and morality and so on.
I think an answer, might be to say that the world isn't a story with happily ever after. That life isn't supposed to be this glorious struggle that lifts up all man kind. It may well be that we live all our days and suffer all our nightmares to give one soul a single solitary smile. And that is all.
Shrug.
We don't know our stories. We don't know ourselves. And we don't know where it is we are truly going or what lays at the end. Paradise? In this world of human predators and bubonic mother nature? Unlikely, and perhaps unwise to even seek.
Consider the billions of forgotten souls whose hands built empires and picks shattered quarries, and feet sluiced the marsh pits for salt. We don't remember their names, we don't even really know what their lives were like. Beyond some partly imagined construction for the documentary crowd.
Still, did not all those nameless hands contribute to the greater good? Even those who died drunk in a ditch, or died from lead, or suffered blind, and so on, did they not serve as the temporal foundation upon which we now exist? We are moles on the shoulder's of giants, quite a few had bum legs, and we too shall become those giants' flesh in time.
And we are destined to not know how precisely our actions contribute the future. So the daily morality, the daily ethics becomes of a great importance, and the faith that being moral humans instead of animal humans would, should generate a vaguely and unspecified 'better' world in the hands of the next generation. Who may very well let it fall into corruption and nuclear winter.
We don't know, we can't know, but the question and answer are still so compelling. So the farmer plants in spite of some minimum ignorance about the well-being of his family. So he tends the crops, never knowing which section will be turned to blight by some random wind. So the mother gets pregnant not knowing if it will be stillborn, or if it should claim her life. And the heroic mother lets her child loose in the world to suffer its indignities and question their being. Never knowing if her dear boy will die from a Greek pike or too much Tennessee Whisky.
I could keep going, and talk about the value judgement. How one smile might be worth it for my value set. And how you might only believe that your suffering was valuable if there were two smiles. But that delves into relativism, and such bland water brings me little pleasure.
You seem to be a young person who dont understand anything. Let me enlighten you. Its only suffering when it bothers you. It is only pleasure when you crave for more. It only has meaning when you have plan. Everything is meaningless when you dont have any plan what to do with it. Wish you a wonderful day.
@@michaelhixson6939
All those examples do not take in the efect of the curse
To the woman God said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
Thats, why we have the, scyle of things never seeming to ever get better because they could not while under the curse of the law its why women were allways slaves and men always lost what they built!
Then Jesus came on to the seen and
The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
So This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.!
So every time we see pepole walking in the sprit history changes thats why we are SOOOOOOO much better off.
The science we have today was all made by devote Christians who walked in the the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus so we as men no longer have to work like we use too.
And the same goes for women.
Any were Jesus Christ is glorified women are lifted up as well and their pain in child birth is greatly diminished.
The thing is you take away christ you see an immediate and drastic turn back to the curse :IE In china at this moment there is a mother of 8 chained to a wall by her neck and the husband is exalted, held up as an upstanding guy.
We in a America are also starting to feel the effects of Jesus being taken away. You have to be blind not to see the insanity that I am talking about and its all because we are no longer walking in the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus!
@@misterprogressive8730 you should re-read my original comment, I think you would understand better
Life is suffering, suffering is meaningless so you have to inject meaning into the suffering akin Sisiphus. The process is the life you live not the goal you reach.
Plus the other comments, there's several ways out of it.
I didn’t bother to watch the original discussion, but was quite eager to listen to your commentary, Paul.
You hit it exaclty on the head! I did not have all the clarity or context to communicate it to myself or others. Value your bigger context of Sam's inconsistencies. Being inconsistent isnt a major problem- this can help us become clearer
“Why bother making this video?” Because you’ve identified and articulated the “depressingly bored feeling” that sits with me after listening to Sam. I’ve never understood why.
He’s paradigm is a “soft hedonism” but it lacks the reason why anyone would act on his recommendations. Meaning!
He doesn’t want to stray far from his axioms in any way. His goal isn’t discovery it’s promotion. Wow. Well done!
I gave up on Sam a while ago. He's possessed by his ideology he can't see anything outside.
I was like, oh no another peterson/harris thing to wade through, I don't feel up to it. Then I remembered, oh yeah! I can watch it through Paul's review!
Saw some negative comments here earlyier today. That Paul didnt understand, was all too harsh and no exersice in dialogos. Thought that mabye it was best to watch the whole thing first.
Didnt have too. Just as you said it.
Thanks Paul!
I think Paul is having difficulty with this idea of mindfulness / living in the moment being a legitamate source of meaning. Paul seems to be mocking Sam's perspective on this as being 'woo-woo' or precariously ill-defined. I can understand Paul's trouble with this. The problem I have with Paul's somewhat condescending / mocking attitude towards this is that this state of mindfulness can only really be known through experience. The mindful state of pure attention and awareness is incredibly meaningful. Now, before someone is tempted to mock me on this in the way Paul mocked Sam, just note that I am not 100% committed to that state as a supremely meaningful or solely valuable state, I am just saying that it is real but has to be understood through experience.
I am enjoying the commentary, though. Just had to press pause and address that. I will continue watching the rest now.
Coming over from podcast land to say I am thoroughly enjoying your commentary on this one 👍
Thank you
16:00 I think there is some confusing here about the definition of consciousness. In the animal kingdom and in man before the fall, there is/was consciousness, but not very much memory, and self-reflective (meta-) consciousness. If the ground of reality is mental, i.e. a consciousness at large, or God. To what degree is that consciousness at large meta-conscious?? Does it stay the same, or is it evolving? Does our life somehow add something to the evolution of consciousness at large?
The sad thing about this is that people don't contemplate their personal and subjective psychological state when making claims about reality. The presupositions you carry as a scientist or even a philosopher to analyze reality will always have embeded in them your personal psychological state, the more primal your axiom for your hypothesis the more related to the early stages of your development as a human being... To give you an example, Sam says that meditation (attempting to abstract yourself from reality to supposedly see it as it is) is all you need to "get what you want" from life. Think about his Childhood and his psychological development as a human being that leads him to believe that life is about "getting what you want", also think about what makes him pursue voluntary dissociation instead of a reuniting (religious) incarnated personal and communal way of living that goes beyond the contemporary times (traditional religion). There is a psychological problem, there is a fundamental dissociation that occures in people with manichean views of the world, and gnostic like mentalities, those dissociations occur usually at preverbal stages of human development, when kids don't have a way to categorize what happened to them and less so turn those categories into concepts and words or, they can barely manifest their experience through yells, cries, or simply absorb that experience physically but dissociate psychologically, since those experiences go into their minds in a criptic manner, they interiorize voices and environments that repeat themselves when you age and develop a language but they repeat archetypally most of the time or physcally even through certain "illnesses". Those experiences will affect your perception and your presupositions about reality and you will not notice that you will take those axioms as the starting point of reality as such.
“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” G.K. Chesterton.
Just loved being distracted by Kermit's legs dangling below the video!
Sam Harris is a perfect example of the 3-dimensional-protagonist in the book “Flatland.”
The 3D entity spends most of the book teaching a 2-D entity to understand the third dimension. Once he succeeds, the 2-D protagonist asks the 3-D entity what it was like when they were visited and taught by 4th or higher dimensional entities. The 3-D character just laughs off such an idea as obvious superstition.
So much bad philosophy could be avoided by making Flatland and an introduction to Ken Wilber’s Integral model required reading.
I remember listening to Sam Harris to get the perspective of a devote hyper rationalist, yet his blind spots were too big for me to make sense of.
Then Jordan Petersons interview with him showed me how ineffective Sam's robotic and literal understanding of the world works, especially compared to Jordan's human-focused storytelling.
Loaded up Peterson's website right away and binged through his past work. Instantly made the world easier to navigate and still does to this day.
Well put lord biscuit.
Sam seems to be not willing to step out of his "the analyst"/ "detachment" mode.
What is this mode? While in this mode, it shows us that we can experience/ spend time in the realization that we as spiritual beings can be very separated from our embodiment/ action-realm, while in that mode.
The analyst mode is something that deep meditation tends to introduce to a person (personal experience). It is a great "perception tool" in "the toolset".
But being in that mode is not where most of Sam's/ ours "daily embodied actions" take place. It's not where our social life/ organization of our society takes place. It's not where our experience with "material reality" takes place.
What I mean is, the analyst mode is not dealing with the problems of how to act in this world. That mode is pure perception. It is inherently without agency, inherently without the motivation to act.
Jordan is talking about how to determine how to make ever-better embodied actions. Sam seems to not even be interested in diving into the process of how humans did/ do that, in practice. Is it just me? (My comment from this convo, on JP's site)
my take away from pual on sam is that he is the worlds smartest NPC
37:05 I always love the “We’re apes” argument, actually we’re reptiles, no actually we’re amphibians no actually we’re fish. Well actually we’re a collection of atoms, no well actually we’re a collection of quantum flux. Why stop at apes Sam?
Was sooo looking forward to this!
Love your commentary. It helps so much
Sam Harris seems to ignore / pretend to agree with Peterson when he substantially disagrees with Harris. . . (21:27)
It’s hard to have a real conversation with religious people who deny they are religious.
at the level of ego, yes. It's egoic bumper cars. But if you relate to a *person* and create space for people to be brutally honest, maybe even with themselves...
This is what a good psychoanalyst does.
100% of people who deny they are religious are religious.
@@barry.anderberg I agree. But that’s ego and arguing about semantics. If someone said, “everyone sees (salience) what they value most (hierarchy) and orients toward what they most desire.”
Who would disagree? Would Sam Harris? That’s getting past the “watchful dragons” or the “Sunday School answer” which may or may not mean that someone believes it. They just may think they do.
People are religous.
@@WhiteStoneName Thanks, those are great points to start people like Sam on their path, to start to look at how their embodied self actually behaves & what motivates it.
In texas they would say Bless his heart, Bless Sam's heart. I did not realize how far this little group of the internet has moved away from Sam's arguments. He is frustrating and indeed does not listen. Honestly, it is so not interesting anymore. However, I support Paul and learn much every time I suffer through a Sam Harris discussion.
Watching this so I don't have to watch the JBP/SH conversation. Sam is so frustrating
This clip was definitely worth watching. Because the mind makes its own associations. Mine took me to places that weren't strictly 'on topic' but connected with the clip nonetheless. I thought about things like suffering. I thought of something I heard about Dean Martin. Somebody asked him how his day was going. He responded with a list of all the terrific ways his day was going: great bowel motion, great round of golf, great lunch. What's not to like? As Fenelon says, a cross is a cross, whether it's a rustic piece of wood, or fabulously jewel-encrusted. It was certainly worth pointing out the utility or otherwise of Peterson or Harris' process.
That's his "default mode" kicking in 😄
(29:13)
Wow I come back to the channel for the first time in a long while and man, I love the new OBS setup!
The fool says in his heart, “there is no god”
Yes that was the expression I was searching for with Sam Harris meditation, "existential suicide". It really feels like youre trying to cheat yourself out of the existence/reality when you view the world like a soulles robot
For the @21:52 point about joggers. Prior to reaching this part in your overview and just today I was thinking about this voluntary suffering point as I was running and trying to improve my cardio. I thought “man, I wonder if Sam Harris has ever pushed his body passed its conceivable physical limit and thought that voluntary suffering was evil in the ever expanding void of nothingness of the worldview he lives”. What a coincidence.
Thanks for watching the Sammy Jordan video so I don't have to. 👍
The term you are searching for is, “eudaimonic well-being .” I am surprised it has not been brought up by Peterson. He continually describes it and it’s a major concept with philosophy and psychology. You have repeatedly articulated quite well in your commentary.
Be careful Paul. Some of the comments I think are just trolls or bots or whatever you call it.
LOL when Paul announced which puppet would be Sam Harris. Perfect.
Thank you for the enjoyable video.
Though Sam unable to see and engage JP and you unable to do the same for Sam is pretty frustrating
I think you're a bit unfair to Sam, he is still evolving. 😁
This convo they had was nowhere near as frustrating as the previous ones in front of the live audience.
You know you're watching too much PVK videos when you come away with the same feelings and frustrations as PVK on a podcast/interview/video before watching his commentary looool
You did a good job of articulating that frustration in this commentary PVK 👏🏾
I pray in the future, Harris will be able to engage in better dia-logos with those on this side of the internet 🙏🏾
27:00, absolutely brilliant, Paul. "Detachment" as a goal of meditation is, ironically enough, so illusory a goal.
I tried meditation for a few times, but it didn't convince me. Does this detachment exist? Is it real? Is it a condition? A state of mind? Or is it just remaining inactive? When I see a group sitting and meditating, to me they are just people who are sitting and being inactive. I'm not convinced that anyone of them is detached. If I choose one of them and poke him/her with a finger and ask something, I get a response - some response. That person may not say anything, may not move, but that too is a response, but not a proof of detachment. Meditation may help restless people to feel better, to think more clearly, from time to time, but I really don't see any higher meaning in it.
@@Liisa3139 I understand the confusion because a lot of the talk surrounding meditation and its philosophical/religious background is not made easy to understand. Personally, I've never liked reading that type of material myself, though there are some books by westerners that I think explain it in a much more straightforward, intelligible manner. I think it is something that has to be experienced by someone with an open mind willing to commit a non-insignificant amount of time practicing it. As for detachment, I would say it doesn't have to mean that you are a non-sentient, unresponsive husk. For example, let's say someone cuts you off in traffic and you get pissed off. Meditation can help you learn to not identify with the feeling of anger. Or let's say you have very negative self-talk, where you get stuck in destructive thought loops, which often happens in depression. Again, you learn that you don't necessarily have to identify with those thoughts that are harmful.
@@Clearsky4916 "Meditation can help you learn to not identify with the feeling of anger..."You don't need meditation for this. Just some thinking will do the same. The special effects of meditation are just beliefs that people like to hold. Physically meditation is inactivity.
@@Liisa3139 Meditation has been extensively studied, and it definitely has effects on brain structure and brain activity that explain its purported benefits. A quick google search would let you learn more about it if you are interested.
@@Clearsky4916 There is just the problem that these brain functions can't be compared to what happens spontaneously in individuals not doing any meditation. It is impossible to monitor random people 100% of the time as to produce comparative material. A lot of mystification takes place concerning meditation. Meditation has become a darling of Western culture as it is so "pure" and free from the flaws of our culture. It is the greener grass that accumulates Western projections of a better life.
I'm happy to see Sam at least acknowledge "Is/ought" as a thing. I don't quite follow his thread from Wittgenstein to Hume though.
His sort of "narrative deprivation tank" sounds a lot like the way Peterson describes pre fall humanity.
"It goes away the moment I hide it behind my back" 😅😅
Sam gives it up again around 38:00, "whatever you want to call navigating in this space, moving away from unendurable, *pointless* misery." (emphasis mine)
DING DING DING! Sam Harris, maybe finally meet (and hear) Jordan Peterson.
Sam Harris does not look like he’s flourishing.
I really like these videos. Even if Sam doesn't listen and respond very well, it is still meaningful because Jordan gets to dissect some of his thoughts and counterarguments. It also bring out some good thoughts from you Paul. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Specifically the parts about sacrifice for the future, and time before consciousness.
Listening to Sam's convo wasn't pleasurable. But it is meaningful, to see practically how people can be & stay blind, unwilling to recognize their embodiment & unwilling to analyse their own behaviours & motivations for said behaviours openly.
Sam seems to be not willing to step out of his "the analyst"/ "detachment" mode.
What is this mode? While in this mode, it shows us that we can experience/ spend time in the realization that we as spiritual beings can be very separated from our embodiment/ action-realm, while in that mode.
The analyst mode is something that deep meditation tends to introduce to a person (personal experience). It is a great "perception tool" in "the toolset".
But being in that mode is not where most of Sam's/ ours "daily embodied actions" take place. It's not where our social life/ organization of our society takes place. It's not where our experience with "material reality" takes place.
What I mean is, the analyst mode is not dealing with the problems of how to act in this world. That mode is pure perception. It is inherently without agency, inherently without the motivation to act.
Jordan is talking about how to determine how to make ever-better embodied actions. Sam seems to not even be interested in diving into the process of how humans did/ do that, in practice. Is it just me? (My comment from this convo, on JP's site)
@@elektrotehnik94 I don't entirely agree. Meditation is a tool as you said, but the mindfulness gained from meditation can change how a person acts throughout the day. Being mindful means you stop and things about a choice before just doing something. Being mindful means you might stop and think twice about having that donut instead of just doing it out of habit.
I think Sam's arguments are always going to be hypocritical as he wants to cling to Buddhist philosophies and discard Christian philosophies when a great deal of them aren't even different in meaning, they are just stated differently.
He just seems to ignore when someone points to a flaw in his reasoning. I like Sam. I think he is good at getting people to think more deeply. In every conversation between him and JBP though, I have been in agreement with JBP the vast majority of points.
@@123darkdeal I agree fully with you regarding mindfulness coming from meditation, not sure how what I've said disagrees with your view.
Not doing unconscious/ habitual/ automatic desire-pleasing, through mindfulness, is only a start, of course... All of it is much more complex than simple generalizations, as people & reality are complex things
Paul, I’m only halfway through. So, take this with a grain of salt. But you’re Kathy Newman-ing Sam. It’s high-level, apologetics, zero-sum (non)dialogos. Island Rules, Paul.
To me, Sam is articulating a dynamic materialism/monistic Oneness. Which…whatever, is fine.
I might try and organize a talk. Kal and I were really going back and forth about your critiques of Sam this morning in the vox. I actually think that what Harris is speaking about is the suffering that comes from what I call ego or Divided Man. And he’s right! And when atheists speak about Nothingness, they’re not wrong. Even his Mr. Nothingness is trying to personify the dynamic Oneness behind all things.
Idk. Seems like you’re not steelmanning or agape-ing his articulations into being. Pretend he’s Vervaeke. You can’t hear who you don’t love. Conversational hospitality.
Kathy Newman-ing=strawman fallacy?
@@sarrok85 kinda. It’s being overly masculine in your language and not allowing space to set the table for one’s interlocutor to make their best case.
Obviously this is harder when not speaking directly to someone. But Paul can do it. I’ve seen him do it a bunch.
I see what you’re saying, Luke. It’s tough having such conversations in which one of the interlocutors is explicitly anti-religion, which signals a certain lack of charity and open-mindedness. To engage with that (assuming one is not anti-religion) often sends one more towards the strawman end of the spectrum than the steelman end.
hahahaha maybe Paul can be benefitted from Sam Harris's idea of losing memory and start over from zero to analyze his stuff. Jk
@@SageStudiesGunnarFooth yes. But even at that. Is Sam Harris really anti-religion? Using our Little Corner vernacular, I would say that he’s anti-credo ideology-building & tribal dogmatism which religions have definitely done in the past and continue to do. (As does scientism). But Sam would not be opposed to what Vervaeke describe “religio”-the mystical subterranean magic that binds persons and communities.
Who would be?! Which is kinda my whole point. To divide over semantics & words or to poke fun is not helpful.
It’s very Douglas Wilson-y or Chestertonian. Both those men thought that there were times to use sardonic language in order to illuminate absurdity. Idk. That may only “work” at scale, and ultimately isn’t person-making.
I sometimes think this is a model of a High Functioning NPC. It's also one of the clearest examples of categories are used to limit imagination and the range of topics that can be discussed (which isn't to say they are not necessary to make order out of the world, but any tool and be misused). By simply declaring some things as "religious" and therefore outside the category of "rational", those topics can simply be excluded from the discussion by declaring you will only address "rational" things. There is also so much about the relationship between language and culture we don't yet understand. Language is both rigid and fluid. Does a change in language reflect a change in culture? Or can you actually change culture by changing the language? When we start to talk about "spiritual" as a category, separate from the category of "religious" are we really creating a new category to bring topics back into the discussion, or are we merely working around the categorical boundaries others have set that we find limiting?
Not to get too political, but there is great effort currently in changing words to manipulate culture. Sometimes it seems to work, other times it seems the people opposed to the idea push back hard enough to stop it. Even the word "woman" is highly volatile among some groups now.
@@123darkdeal It's not political in the sense that it's not limited to our current situation. The French Revolution attempted to completely transform French society through changing language, renaming all the months, for example. But those who think they have the power to shape language often discover that they can't control how people actually use it in their daily lives.
A great commentary of Peterson and Harris represent two contrasting archetypes or world views of our time. Harris argues that the truths of Religion are so full of human flaws that they therefore are not useful truths at all. Instead, Harris believes that ritual meditation reveals truths that are virtues somehow immune from human flaws... yeah, right...
Peterson acknowledges that the truths of Religion are full of human flaws, but also full of human virtues. Any subjective moral intuition only results in a subjective moral relativity that is also full of human flaws. That is why the Grand Narratives reveal objective truths as morality with both virtues and flaws despite its many precursor moral intuitions with human flaws.
"All alone, or in twos
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down, outside the wall
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and the artists make their stand
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall"
Pink Floyd, "Outside the Wall" from
---
"Zombies are familiar characters in philosophical thought experiments. They are like people in every way except that they have no internal experience... There has been much debate about whether a true zombie could exist, or if internal subjective experience inevitably colors either outward behavior or measurable events in the brain in some way. I claim that there is one measurable difference between a zombie and a person: a zombie has a different philosophy. Therefore, zombies can only be detected if they happen to be professional philosophers. A philosopher like Daniel Dennett is obviously a zombie."
Lanier, Jaron. You Are Not a Gadget (pp. 76-77). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
My favorite part of this conversation is that it throws into sharp relief how JP has actually grown since their last conversation, while Sam apparently has not. My favorite part of the commentary was the choice of the Count as an avatar of Sam Harris! I don't know if I have anything else to add to these quotes, except that I'm very much looking forward to Paul's return to the JP-JR conversation!
Sams conversation with Jordan was frustrating, one wonders if Sam is listening or if Sam just doesn’t know what to do with Peterson‘s comments.
I could only get halfway through the conversation
Meditation for me is a discipline that helps to bring reality into focus. Just to sit and be calm and aware of my body and my thoughts and to remind myself that I am a part of this happening, this being or this god.
Sam is praying and doesn't know it.
Come on now. You are better than this. And it becomes a bit silly when you criticize Sam for not listening, while you yourself doesn't listen.
Sam seems to want to describe where meaning comes from. From our evolutionary strive towards good stuff and away from bad stuff. It sounds just like what Peterson is saying.
Honestly. To me it sounds like Harris is pretty much arguing for the same thing as Peterson has been going on about for years. I wouldn't be surprised if he started talking about Hero's Journey later on.
It’s more like what are we focusing on, the commonalities with grace, or his errors. Salience.
We see what we want to see.
@@WhiteStoneName Yeah, the discussion and the comment of the discussion is in itself an example of how meaning is structuring ones reality by making certain things salient and hiding others.
The internal experience of Ayahuasca would bolster the point you’re making more than the external vomiting; on large doses there is a near universal experience of being torn apart. How this manifests is different for everyone (sometimes it’s being eaten by something, sometimes is thorns ripping their flesh off little by little). Even if there were no vomiting, psychedelics often overwhelm you in painful ways before the “insight” comes. My own large mushroom dose was, among other things, a series of glimpsing something high and transcendent, then immediately “falling” and seeing where I was failing my wife, children, and other loved ones. Akin to showing a dog a piece of bacon and as soon as the drool starts to form shoving their face in the pee on the carpet.
very bad and pandering video.. u arent engaged in sensemaking here..
shocked by both ur tone and many of the comments here.. a far cry from both JBP's attitude and the reaction to this convo on his channel..
There was A LOT of funny stuff in this video.
Hi Paul. Not enough charity shown in this video. First time I've strongly disagreed with your take on the matter.
This was "Why can't Harris see the world my way?!" type of commentary.
Not "How does Sam view the world and what are the common points of our worldviews?".
Video is conflict not estuary.
Both sides need to listen more and understand before speaking. To much speaking. I'm trying to learn this myself.
Oh the frustration because we cannot Love the other! Harris would make an excellent bride for the Bridegroom.
Exactly.
The most baffling part for me is that Harris is arguing for the same things Peterson used to argue for, but they still some how was able to be in disagreement.
To be fair, this isn’t the first time he’s heard Harris. A point I hear Paul making is: “We’ve heard this before “
I could b wrong
@@jeremybridges6015 Well I too have listened to Sam. More than PVK probably since I was an agnostic at one time and even did Sam's meditation app. I simply disagree that PVK is being charitable to Sam and his position. The mocking didn't help.
@@sarrok85 Maybe I do not see something, but what is there to be charitable about when Sam obviously disregards every counterpoint made? Tell him of a contradiction he has made and his response is "yeah" and then he just continues on his way as if reading a script. I also used to be big into Harris (all of the 4 to be honest) and very much an atheist. I have moved substantially. Sams arguments just seem dated. The debate has progressed much and I don't think Sam has bothered to take any of it into consideration. My assertion is that he thinks he has had it figured out for years.
JBP and Paul could be completely wrong. Don't know. But Sam is also wrong, and that has been shown by the way culture and society is moving. Sam needs to update his positions or he will just continue to grow more irrelevant. It would be nice to see Sam actually take a counter argument and work through it instead of ignoring it.
Well and 13 billion years. Just the unit of measurement “years” is completely contingent on our experience of the earth revolving around the sun. What would be the most relevant unit of time for cosmological purposes? We probably can’t even conceive of it, but I imagine it must be substantially larger than a year. Even a light-year (which obviously is a measure of distance not time) is defined by a year. Is there some common cosmological time unit that I’ve never heard of because of my limited knowledge of astronomy? If you know please comment
Sam Harris' philosophy is one that genuinely annoys me. Of all the ancient wisdom traditions that are so rich in their understanding, all of them require some supreme notion of value, distinct yet not stripped from the phenomenological. Haris' philosophy of life is like if all the beneficial, wise, and important aspects of Buddhism were described by those Nestorian Christians who didn't understand it and took it to be nihilistic. When the Buddhist speaks of Absolute Nothingness they do not mean the sort of absent zero concept Sam Harris describes. Absolute Nothingness is so phenomenologically rich because its "No thingness." Much like God is to the mystics the Absolute to the Buddhist is so perfect, so ultimate that it is beyond every category and can only be described by what it is not (Negative Theology) The Buddhist conception of the absolute is not absence, but rather not finite or limited in value like the human person. The Buddhist (just like the Christians and everyone else) still has to appeal to this greater unknown absolute reality. In fairness, harris isn't explicitly trying to be Buddhist yet my critique is that he just spews a worse more nihilistic version of it. Harris' idea of nothingness is oblivion. "Mediation and psychedelics" give no hope to a 17-year-old kid who gets murked by an oncoming bus on his way to his first yoga class. In some sense, Harris' idea strikes me almost as suicidal if one is unable to meditate for lack of knowledge and attention, and unable to do psychedelics for lack of resources the next best thing they have is this nothingness that apparently Harris says we need not worry about. Furthermore, how can one simultaneously say there are things we humans ultimately value in life which are achievable through meditation and psychedelics while simultaneously saying that we shouldn't fear the demise of those goods. Further furthermore, the Buddhist Japanese inquisitor meditated quite a bit as Christians were hung on crosses on beaches and then drowned by the oncoming waves. Some took multiple days to die. Meditation has led to spiritual dryness and depravity just as much as Christianity has. A philosophy of life must be extremely dynamic. That's why religions are so successful where secular theories tend to fail. One needs the mythological, metaphysical, historical, ethical, and existential all compounding into a unified picture of what life should be. And lastly who justified Harris' metaphysics? The modern faith in nihilism is completely unwarranted. Platonism is just as plausible today as it was in its conception, if not more so with the advent of neo-platonism and greater philosophical tools to utilize. Why should we take a leap of faith in Harris' nihilism when it offers significantly less meaning, and shows to have little results?
I apologize if this is a bit too spirited or even If I'm confusing at some junctures jumping from one thing to the next, but as an individual who's struggled for meaning and with a particularly existential kind of depression Harris bugs me. When I looked to solutions like Haris' they simply said to me to just accept all of the horrible terrible sufferings I endured at the hand of my own psychology and to just accept the dread of oncoming demise. It does nothing for most people, it really only services a wealthy elite who can satisfy themselves by means of worldly goods. I do not believe Harris' beliefs would survive a war for a soldier, or give solace to the child whose parents are divorcing. It does little for anybody except an elite few who are free from outward imposition.
"Sam doesn't listen" = perfunctory agreement. (41:28)
Paul coming in hot with the same collar pop as Harris!
On a less serious note, Sam has to be one of the most frustratingly unselfaware thinkers I've ever come across. I grew past him at 21, and that's not to say I'm a genious, but rather that he is stuck in an inconsistent framework that disallows growth.
Yea I agree with you when I listened to this almost everything Sam Harris said did not seem logically coherent :(
He all so never shut up or listened to JP he just spewed his logically incoherent stuff.
And as such the discussion was just bla
Looking forward to this Paul. Sam Harris is one guy I struggle to learn from. Many say they do so I'm here hoping you can help me.
Unless you’re trying to learn that God is Dead and life has no meaning and you should have no principles except upholding a satanic neoliberal order, you have nothing to learn from San.
@@klolwut TRUTH BOMB!!!!!!!!!!!! Nicely put!
Sam seems to be not willing to step out of his "the analyst"/ "detachment" mode.
What is this mode? While in this mode, it shows us that we can experience/ spend time in the realization that we as spiritual beings can be very separated from our embodiment/ action-realm, while in that mode.
The analyst mode is something that deep meditation tends to introduce to a person (personal experience). It is a great "perception tool" in "the toolset".
But being in that mode is not where most of Sam's/ ours "daily embodied actions" take place. It's not where our social life/ organization of our society takes place. It's not where our experience with "material reality" takes place.
What I mean is, the analyst mode is not dealing with the problems of how to act in this world. That mode is pure perception. It is inherently without agency, inherently without the motivation to act.
Jordan is talking about how to determine how to make ever-better embodied actions. Sam seems to not even be interested in diving into the process of how humans did/ do that, in practice. Is it just me? (My comment from this convo, on JP's site)
@@klolwut I dont think u belong on this channel..
I love your videos
This is probably projection, but I think the reason you may find this sort of thing meaningful is that figuring out how to get someone to have a meaningful conversation is integral to having them become a genuine human being. Believing that every person has a redeemable soul means you aren't allowed to give up on them, even if they don't listen or don't understand.
But how do you actually help someone to see things that they refuse to see? I think it's an open question, and a lot of people hope that conversations and commentaries like this one will help to find some solution to such an intractable problem.
I like it when Paul gets worked up, makes him sharper I think
Can something that is not "conscious" act as an observer?
If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to see it, doesn't the ground it falls on, "notice" to some degree?
Yeah it wasn't a very fruitful discussion. Kinda disappointed because I was looking forward to it dropping. Felt so sad for Sam as he described being a mind trapped in a body...I mean probably most people feel something like that at times but something about the way he talked about it broke my heart for the guy.
For me worth your doing IMO because it sharpens my sense of Sam not listening at all. What I can add is that Sam's description of what happens in meditation fits my experience of both Christian Centring Prayer and Theravada Buddhist meditation. But without being limited by his very modern view of religion. Also helpful because different aspects of his 'waterproof' world view stand out for you and me. Particularly liked the Wittgenstein point and the tabula rasa foundation of his views. The one that grabbed me was dreams being psychotic. Having spent an adult lifetime working with my own and the dreams of others in the Jungian manner I was sharply reminded of how a modern person can explore inner awareness extensively, even skilfully, but then reject large portions of human experience as irrelevant or delusional.
Listened to the Peterson Harris video last night and my main take away was Thank God for John Vervaeke. Vervaeke is so careful about his language and citing his sources that it initially got on my nerves but now I so appreciate the care he takes to be correct and consistent. I can follow him much better. Also, Vervaeke truly listens and responds to what is said. I think his project of demonstrating dia logos is training us to have higher expectations for other discussions in this corner of the internet.
This is the epic PVK I first knew.
I have deleted my comment as to what I really think of SH. Finding it difficult to put into words without being rude.
I so feel you on that 😅. He’s not a bad guy, but his ideas aren’t as fleshed out as he thinks they are for sure.
I guess impoverished would be generous. Pitiful? Yes, I understand what you mean. A waste of time.
Sam doesn't have the advantage of breadth of experience in Depth Psychology that Jordan has.
And Jodan passes over Sam's meditative practice of loosing the "self!"
Your concluding statements are on point, I had to stop watching the main video because it was too frustrating to listen to
You were way off target in this one, I don't think you understood Sam at all. You are mocking him when he is describing the Kingdom of God, not good.
Does Sam Harris believe he's describing the kingdom of God? Would he be offended at your comment? Harris is just replaying his greatest hits here. He's not engaging.
@@PaulVanderKlay It doesn't actually matter whether he understands it with the language I would use to describe it. I have in mind here the point where Sam is describing pure awareness and you mock him as if what he's talking about is absurd. That state of pure awareness is where you encounter God. Sam doesn't have to use my words to describe it. The experience is the same regardless of how you try and relate it in words. You mocked with the Wisdom of the world.
@@grailcountry Thank you. I feel frustrated towards PVK and everyone else not listing to Sam. Alot of people still have scales on their eyes and cannot perceive Christ in the unrecognizable resurrected.
Sam could be describing pure state of awareness and at the same time completely be missing an opportunity to play Dialogos with JP, as what happened with JV. Good mystic, bad at Dialogos. I think PVK is showing we dont move forward with out the other (very much Christian). This is him advancing Christian project. SAM Now he has beef with Rogan, and Weinstein Brothers.
He talks about pure awareness this gets pulled back down to reality and cant reconcile upper and lower registers.
Where your project Grail country channel beautify shows how God makes Himself/Sophia a self thru humans playing in pure awareness with others. Lost in love with us as we are lost in love with God and in others
Your project/channel is a beautiful example testament to where Sam Harris could go.
@@thevulgarhegelian4676 Again, my comment is directed at PVK's reaction to the part where Sam was describing the state of pure awareness. As far as Paul's contention that Sam wasn't engaging, in dialogue, I don't see that at all from the examples he showed. I thought Sam's responses were fine. As far as playing greatest hits goes, Jordan does that all the time too. We all do, it's part of figuring out what ideas connect to each other.
If morality is based on pleasure and pain, then would we not end up becoming Lilith, and drinking the blood of our children? Or maybe we already do that, in big ways and small ways.
Raising a child seems to be one of the highest forms of self-sacrifice and suffering, albeit the most fulfilling and meaningful.
"The reification of the unconscious was fallacious"
Well, as a unified something, it probably is fallacious. If the intuition / unconscious of biological neural networks is at all comparable to how information is embedded in artificial neural networks, then the "unconscious" is probably NOT any one "thing".
In this material world, things can't get better. No matter how "good" things seem at a given moment, we are always lacking. We always want more than we can possibly have. We cannot be satisfied, and as such, things cannot get better than they are. Things can get worse, and things can get less bad, but that isn't the same as good. In the forum for action, we can get better through cooperation, as Jordan mentioned in his vision, but we can't generally cooperate sufficiently to actually make things better. Prosperity nudges the needle a little, and the arc does bend toward justice, but it is all in fits and starts, and no realistic set of assumptions makes it significantly better within ions, and cycles of ups and downs and perhaps unimaginable suffering are in store, and one could suppose it will be so as long as time passes.
26:53 "DADDY DADDY THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE"
"Noooo not for meee"
I died😂😂😂😂😂 that was the funniest thing ive heard this week
Haha, stop being nice and people get triggered. I noticed someone mentioning that you approached the video with “the ways of the world”. If we make a quick glance at the gospels, I think there’s precedent for being exasperated at people who don’t seem to be able to see.
Sam Harris is the Homer Simpson of intellectuals, doh
To achieve "the whole project" ! 🤣
(28:35)
Sam never moves beyond his stock responses to what he believes are common tropes from the "religious" side. Peterson just serves as an impulse to continue talking. Let the great enlightened Sam disperse his supreme wisdom down to the masses, Jordan included.
Peterson said this conversation was better than the other talks. Did he just mean it was less confrontational? Because he kind of just let Sam ignore him this time around, rather than attempt to make him argue on equal footing.
The lack of genuine exchange of ideas/ engagement/ dialogos was problematic, for sure
I feel like many of Sam Harris's points here could be undermined by simply being a smart-ass.
He tells you to forget everything about science and religion and then ask you to address the navigation problem. Well, of course I have a problem, I just forgot everything I know about science and religion.
He says You can choose to use moral language like a good and evil, or not. Then, he suggests an agreeable proposition that hypothetical versions of experienced reality are better than the one he has determined to be at the bottom. I can't understand what he's saying anymore because I have opted, as he has allowed, to not use terms or concepts of moral valuation. Instead, I only use terms of pure nominal reality and in his base level hell, matter is still neither created nor destroyed and energy is conserved. So they're all the same.
It gives you an insight into how the mind of meaningless works
And if you can get an ALF plushie..... that would be John Vervaeke.....'>.....
Sam Harris seems to be more attached to his script than ever before. His inability to even hear what is being said before he goes into his take was worse than ever. For a conversation between them to be productive , a moderator seems almost necessary. Bret was good but I wish Vervaeke would moderate a conversation for them.
Verveake hopefully would lay bare the lack of dialogos of their convo right at their feet.