Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Chittheads podcast. Today,
Speaker 1: i'd like to share an interview with you that I
Speaker 1: initially live streamed on YouTube a couple of months ago. Now,
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard, Embodied Philosophy has its own YouTube channel. Actually,
Speaker 1: we've had a channel for several years now, but only
Speaker 1: recently started putting a bit more time and attention into it.
Speaker 1: So I'm doing some live Chithhead's interviews on our YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: I've also brought back one of Embodied Philosophy's original experiments
Speaker 1: called Chalkboard Yoga Studies, where I dive deep in each
Speaker 1: episode into a different topic of yoga philosophy. And we're
Speaker 1: also releasing short twenty to thirty minute teachings that are
Speaker 1: extracts from our course archive. So it's a great way
Speaker 1: to get a bit of Embodied Philosophies education without having
Speaker 1: to pay anything since YouTube is free. So if you
Speaker 1: want to join the party, just type Embodied Philosophy in
Speaker 1: the YouTube search bar and you should easily find us.
Speaker 1: So today I'm delighted to introduce you to Samir Chopra,
Speaker 1: a philosophical counselor and professor emeritus of philosophy at Brooklyn
Speaker 1: College and the Graduate Center of the City University of
Speaker 1: New York. I talked to Samir about ideas from his
Speaker 1: recent book, Anxiety, A Philosophical Guide. I ran into Samir
Speaker 1: by happenstance while I was in Boulder, Colorado, in April
Speaker 1: this year. I was there doing a sequence of guided
Speaker 1: psychedelic psychotherapy sessions at the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness. In
Speaker 1: between sessions, I went to the Boulder bookstore and saw
Speaker 1: that there was a discussion happening about Anxiety from a
Speaker 1: philosophical perspective. Samir was being interviewed at the bookstore about
Speaker 1: his new book, which we're talking about today. I had
Speaker 1: a hunch this might be a good candidate for a
Speaker 1: Chithhead's interview, so I bought the book, paid the small
Speaker 1: attendance fee, and sat down in the audience for the
Speaker 1: interview with Samir. And I'm really happy I did. There's
Speaker 1: a lot in Samir's beautifully written book that resonated with me.
Speaker 1: For example, Samir approaches philosophy not merely as a hyper
Speaker 1: intellectualized academic practice, but rather as a form of therapy.
Speaker 1: Another thing I loved about the book is the way
Speaker 1: in which Samir engages with a number of different traditions
Speaker 1: without attempting to argue about which one is the best. Instead,
Speaker 1: he takes a pluralistic approach, assuming that we can learn
Speaker 1: something helpful and therapeutic about anxiety when we look at
Speaker 1: different traditions. In that spirit, he explores anxiety from the
Speaker 1: perspective of the existentialists, psychoanalysis, and critical theory, and then
Speaker 1: he explores an important understanding we get about anxiety from
Speaker 1: the Buddhists. As someone who studied Western philosophy before I
Speaker 1: became a student of Indian and Yoga traditions, I found
Speaker 1: it extremely refreshing to see someone thinking cross culturally and
Speaker 1: cross traditionally. It also seems to be a perfect application
Speaker 1: of the principle of Una contevada. The Jane principle of
Speaker 1: many sidedness. Prince, which we explored with Tree Nahata a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes ago, teaches that we get a greater
Speaker 1: grasp of the truth not by dogmatically asserting the dominance
Speaker 1: of one truth, but by bringing together multiple truths. All
Speaker 1: philosophical systems are partially true, and we don't get to
Speaker 1: truth by rejecting forms of truth that we think aren't compatible.
Speaker 1: We get to truth by bringing many truths into conversation.
Speaker 1: So this reflects, I think, a fundamental principle behind the
Speaker 1: work that we do at embodied philosophy. That philosophy, no
Speaker 1: matter where it's from, whether it derives from India, China, Africa,
Speaker 1: the Americas, Europe, or elsewhere, whether it's from ancient times
Speaker 1: or modern times, has something to teach us. Each tradition
Speaker 1: can illuminate a unique dimension of understanding in my experience.
Speaker 1: There's another aspect to this, something also happens to the
Speaker 1: body when we inhabit new knowledges, new philosophies. Each tradition
Speaker 1: corresponds to a unique kind of somatic quality, inspired by
Speaker 1: its ideas and embodied through its contemplative practices. By discovering
Speaker 1: a greater range of somatic or contemplative possibilities within ourselves,
Speaker 1: we discover a greater freedom within. As a result, what
Speaker 1: once may have been a reactive disposition transforms into something
Speaker 1: more flexible. Within that flexibility, sometimes anxiety's potency can begin
Speaker 1: to feel less sinister. So studying different traditions isn't then
Speaker 1: just an intellectual exercise grounded in academic curiosity. At least
Speaker 1: it isn't that alone. It can also shift the way
Speaker 1: you relate to personal challenges, challenges that you may have
Speaker 1: perceived differently before your adventure with philosophy. So obviously I
Speaker 1: highly recommend Simir's book for anyone who is looking for
Speaker 1: some philosophical perspectives on anxiety. If you feel like philosophy
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly help with your anxiety. Samir really is an
Speaker 1: excellent advocate for pointing out how philosophy might help. But
Speaker 1: this book is more than just a review of different
Speaker 1: traditions and their perspectives on anxiety. It is also a
Speaker 1: deeply personal and intimate glimpse into the life of someone,
Speaker 1: namely Samir, who has been able to understand his anxiety
Speaker 1: more through a long process of exploration. I found reading
Speaker 1: his book very comforting and really a great example in
Speaker 1: demonstrating how philosophy can have a deep therapeutic impact on
Speaker 1: one's life. Before we get into the episode, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about a very special new program that we're
Speaker 1: launching at Embodied Philosophy called Sodena School. Sodena School is
Speaker 1: a year long program in which we'll explore the philosophies
Speaker 1: and spiritual technologies of the yoga tradition. In the first
Speaker 1: eight week Sodna, which begins on October twenty ninth, we'll
Speaker 1: be exploring the entire range of traditions that fall under
Speaker 1: that general category of yoga philosophy. We'll talk about the
Speaker 1: Vedic roots, the Upunishads, the Yoga sutras, and Bagavadgita. We'll
Speaker 1: discover the distinction between dualistic and non dualistic traditions Shaivashakta,
Speaker 1: Tantra and Weishna Abakhdi, Buddhist influences on yoga, as well
Speaker 1: as of course modern applications of these various ancient traditions.
Speaker 1: You can enroll in that as its own unique standalone
Speaker 1: experience as at single Sodna this fall, or you can
Speaker 1: also enroll in the entire year of Sadna school. So
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a little bit about what's coming. In
Speaker 1: the second Sodna, starting in January, we'll be exploring the
Speaker 1: recognition school of philosophy from Kashmir Shaivism. In the spring,
Speaker 1: we'll be looking at rasa theory and esthetics and discover
Speaker 1: how central the imagination is to contemplative study and practice.
Speaker 1: Then in the summer we'll meet for a seven day
Speaker 1: virtual retreat and explore the Kundalini Shakti and different yogic
Speaker 1: templates of embodiment. We're going to be exploring these seven
Speaker 1: days really in the spirit of a retreat. So I'll
Speaker 1: be inviting you over that seventy period to create the
Speaker 1: container to go very deep in meditative pacte. In addition
Speaker 1: to our periods of study and practice throughout the year,
Speaker 1: these these eight weeks Sodena's that happened three times a year.
Speaker 1: In this seven day retreat, there will also be ongoing
Speaker 1: occasional weekend workshops on topics such as building an altar,
Speaker 1: the philosophy of tontic images and iconography, how to build
Speaker 1: a home contemplative practice and sustain that practice, and other
Speaker 1: topics that relate to the integration of contemplative teachings into
Speaker 1: our everyday lives. So this is a comprehensive course of
Speaker 1: study that can be done in this full twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four to twenty twenty five experience. It can also be
Speaker 1: done one Sodna at a time if you don't want
Speaker 1: to make that year long commitment, but if you choose
Speaker 1: to join Sodna School, it also can ladder up to
Speaker 1: a full yoga teacher training the yoga teacher training portion
Speaker 1: where you would learn asanas and physiology and teaching methodology
Speaker 1: and pedagogy. All of that begins in January, and all
Speaker 1: of that information is also on the Sudna School landing page.
Speaker 1: And while I'll be your primary teacher and facilitator for
Speaker 1: Soudenna School, will be joined by folks like Tis Little,
Speaker 1: Tova Olsen, and other past faculty members of Embodied Philosophy.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more information on the landing page, which
Speaker 1: of course you can find by going to Embodied philosophy
Speaker 1: dot com. Just head head there and you'll see a
Speaker 1: banner for Saddnaw School at the top of the page.
Speaker 1: As a thank you for being a Chitthead's listener, you
Speaker 1: can use the coupon code Chittheads two fifty so all
Speaker 1: caps C H I, T H E A D S
Speaker 1: two five zero to get a significant two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars discount off the tuition cost. If you're not
Speaker 1: sure you can commit to the entire year, but you
Speaker 1: are interested in at least trying, you can just join
Speaker 1: us on one of the available payment plans, and if
Speaker 1: you need to let go of that commitment. You can
Speaker 1: release that commitment with the thirty day notice again. To
Speaker 1: learn more about the Sadnaw School or the whole Yoga
Speaker 1: teacher training curriculum that Soadnaw School is also a part of,
Speaker 1: head to Embodied Philosophy dot com and click on the
Speaker 1: banner at the top of the home page which will
Speaker 1: take you to the Somna School landing page. So, without
Speaker 1: any further ado, let's go ahead and get into today's
Speaker 1: interview with Samirraria, Thomas Omagalty Coria, richeal Coma, Shunty Shunty Shy.
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Chitheads Podcast and
Speaker 1: this very special edition of the Chiheads Podcast. Normally we
Speaker 1: record these behind closed doors as it were, but today
Speaker 1: I thought it would be lovely to interview Samir Chopra
Speaker 1: about his book Anxiety, Anxiety a Philosophical Guide. So Hello, Samir,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much for having me on. Jacob, it's great
Speaker 2: to be here.
Speaker 1: It's a real pleasure to get to meet you and
Speaker 1: to talk to you about your book. I actually saw
Speaker 1: you in person once before. It's a little bit different
Speaker 1: than usual. Usually I discover. You know folks that I
Speaker 1: interview through various kinds of online research. But I was
Speaker 1: actually in Boulder, Colorado, in this past April, actually on
Speaker 1: a retreat to cope with some of my own anxiety symptoms.
Speaker 1: I was doing a psychedelic therapy retreat at the Center
Speaker 1: for Medicinal Mindfulness. I think I had done maybe two
Speaker 1: psilocybin journeys when I had made my way into downtown
Speaker 1: Boulder gone to the I think it's the Bolder Bookstore.
Speaker 1: Is that what it is? Such bookstore, wonderful bookstore. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, like my kind of bookstore, great mixture of
Speaker 1: sort of you know, traditional bookstore meets spirituality and everything
Speaker 1: in between. Such an amazing bookstore. But I got there
Speaker 1: maybe ten minutes before your interview, which I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about. I saw that they were having this event,
Speaker 1: and I saw your book, and I mean the cover
Speaker 1: itself is very attractive, perfect kind of like seventies sort
Speaker 1: of seemingly retrofusion, very much my aesthetic. So I saw
Speaker 1: the book, I also felt anxiety Philosophers. And then I
Speaker 1: also noticed, by leafing through the book that you explored
Speaker 1: anxiety from a number of different perspectives number of different traditions,
Speaker 1: including Western ones and ones from contemplative traditions, particularly Buddhism,
Speaker 1: and so it was right up my alley, so I
Speaker 1: decided to join for that interview. It was a wonderful conversation,
Speaker 1: and I knew after picking up the book that I
Speaker 1: had to get you on the podcast. So here we are,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, so let's talk. Let's start at the beginning,
Speaker 1: I guess, or rather at the origin of your own
Speaker 1: philosophical journey, which it seems to you is the beginning
Speaker 1: of philosophy is anxiety for you. So I'd kind of
Speaker 1: love to talk a little bit about the experience of
Speaker 1: your anxiety prior to your kind of philosophical exploration and
Speaker 1: how you connected philosophy to anxiety. So what was that,
Speaker 1: what was that experience like prior to kind of your
Speaker 1: philosophical healing as it were.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much for that really rich introduction, Jacob, And
Speaker 2: you know, thank you too for connecting the contents of
Speaker 2: the book or the discussions of the book to my
Speaker 2: personal relationship with anxiety. The book grew out of an
Speaker 2: essay that I wrote started working on almost ten years ago,
Speaker 2: which was to describe my personal relationship to anxiety. I'd
Speaker 2: been in therapy for five years. Before that, I'd been
Speaker 2: studying philosophy for you know, at the doctor level, been
Speaker 2: a professor for a while, and a lifelong sufferer of anxiety.
Speaker 2: And when I thought about what I took to be
Speaker 2: the foundational events in my life, in the way that
Speaker 2: I first conceived it, these were a pair of personal believements.
Speaker 2: I lost my parents early in my life life and
Speaker 2: in you know, radically different fashion. I lost my father
Speaker 2: when I was twelve. I lost my mother when I
Speaker 2: was twenty six. I lost my father to a sudden
Speaker 2: heart attack at home. I lost my mother to a
Speaker 2: protracted illness to breast cancer. So these were sort of
Speaker 2: radically different depths. One was sudden of one. I had
Speaker 2: fear warning, and I was given all the warning I
Speaker 2: needed in some sense, but it was still unexpected in
Speaker 2: its own in its own particular way. And I think
Speaker 2: the way I connected that to my personal anxiety was
Speaker 2: that it made the world a kind of threatening place
Speaker 2: in some ways, the portals of fatal possibility, as I
Speaker 2: described it, had been opened. In some ways, anything was possible.
Speaker 2: Now I understood that in some way there was a
Speaker 2: kind of there was a kind of a reasonableness demand
Speaker 2: that I had placed on the universe. There was some
Speaker 2: limit of cruelty or indifference that the universe couldn't cross, right,
Speaker 2: There was this mentally imposed barrier had imposed in the universe.
Speaker 2: You're not just going to do these kinds of things
Speaker 2: to me. And actually I found out that the universe can,
Speaker 2: it can do just about anything it once. And I
Speaker 2: think that was a shocking revelation, one that sort of
Speaker 2: you know, use whatever metaphor you want, pull the rug
Speaker 2: out from under my feet, open the trap doors, made
Speaker 2: me aware of the depths that lurked below, of the
Speaker 2: abysiness going. You know, we can go on with these descriptions.
Speaker 2: The idea is that I became extremely fearful and anxious.
Speaker 2: Anything was possible after all, right, which, of course is
Speaker 2: the paradigmatic state of anxiety. That you are scared, you
Speaker 2: are fearful, you know, not quite of what your mind
Speaker 2: can turn itself to any eventuality. So the world looks
Speaker 2: with dangers in some ways. And of course anxiety doesn't
Speaker 2: always manifest itself as fear of the unknown. It bubbles
Speaker 2: up in different ways. It can restrict us from participating
Speaker 2: fully in life. It can make us anger, It can
Speaker 2: make us sedate ourselves through a variety of substances. It
Speaker 2: can manifest itself in a host of what, you know,
Speaker 2: psychiatrists might call mental disorders. So and then, of course,
Speaker 2: you know, when I started to turn to philosophy, it
Speaker 2: was because I found myself brought there, pushed there by
Speaker 2: finding out that philosophical text offered relief of some sort, temporary,
Speaker 2: because after all, when you close the book, you went
Speaker 2: back to being anxious again. But sometimes they changed your perspective,
Speaker 2: the vantage points from which you could stand and take in,
Speaker 2: you know, the world's offerings, and give you different perspectives
Speaker 2: on what all of this meant. When I went to therapy,
Speaker 2: I found out that I hadn't just become anxious. I
Speaker 2: had always been anxious. And the more I thought about anxiety,
Speaker 2: the more I studied philosophy, the more it seemed to
Speaker 2: me that my being anxious was neither particularly bizarre or
Speaker 2: exceptional or weird. It almost was the way that we
Speaker 2: human beings were constituted. And when I further reflected upon
Speaker 2: it philosophically, using the resources that I now had, it
Speaker 2: seemed to me that in fact, the existential conditions of
Speaker 2: our life, of our existence, the so called existential trifecta
Speaker 2: right that we live in finite time, that we are mortal,
Speaker 2: and that we are conscious of these two parameters. That
Speaker 2: we are mortal and live in finite time, This guarantees anxiety.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'll probably add a fourth condition in there,
Speaker 2: that we're concerned about the future. If we weren't concerned
Speaker 2: about the future, we wouldn't be anxious. But we are
Speaker 2: concerned about the future, and we have incomplete epistemic capacities,
Speaker 2: the ability to acquire knowledge about the future. Now we're
Speaker 2: in a bind. Time is running out. I'm conscious of
Speaker 2: this fact. I want to know what's going to happen,
Speaker 2: but I really cannot find out with perfect certainty. So
Speaker 2: I'm concerned, fearful, I'm anxious. So I think in some ways,
Speaker 2: I I think philosophy brought me to these various passages
Speaker 2: of reflecting upon my state. But I'd come to it
Speaker 2: because events in my life had turned me away from
Speaker 2: a complacent attitude towards existence and made me realize that,
Speaker 2: you know, this is all of it. It's all a
Speaker 2: bit contingent, right, It's a bit it's a bit put together,
Speaker 2: and it could fall apart in all these ways, right,
Speaker 2: And I think it's that possibility which is always sort
Speaker 2: of lurking at the edge of our minds, which I
Speaker 2: think is the hallmark of a certain kind of anxiety.
Speaker 2: In my book, of course, there's you know, there's all
Speaker 2: these different traditions that I go through, and we can
Speaker 2: talk about those, but I think the passageway for me was,
Speaker 2: as you put it, was to be scared out of
Speaker 2: my mind by what had just happened to an aspect
Speaker 2: of the universe that I thought was involve my parents.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, they're like folks that brought me
Speaker 2: into this universe. I imagine them solid.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah. I mean you're the first part of your
Speaker 1: book when you're kind of reflecting on these personal this
Speaker 1: personal story. I mean, you know, even though the specifics
Speaker 1: of your story with regards to the tragedy of your
Speaker 1: parents' loss is you know, probably unique for a lot
Speaker 1: of us. Many of us are lucky enough to have
Speaker 1: parents that survive into to at least a little bit
Speaker 1: of our later years, our mid age years, middle aged years.
Speaker 1: But the way in which you kind of craft that
Speaker 1: narrative it just it really resonates and I'm sure anybody
Speaker 1: who reads it will feel that just how you know,
Speaker 1: universal this experience is. And and that can be really
Speaker 1: comforting in a way, because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people are kind of i don't know, inculturated or because
Speaker 1: of the pressure of their ansiet these feel kind of
Speaker 1: alone in that in that experience. And so what your
Speaker 1: book did for me was really, you know, pointed to
Speaker 1: kind of the universality of this experience. And obviously, depending
Speaker 1: on the tradition and we'll talk about those, you know,
Speaker 1: how that anxiety, that existential you know, condition is situated
Speaker 1: is different depending on from which tradition you look at
Speaker 1: it from. But there is this kind of thread throughout
Speaker 1: that this is sort of a pervasive and universal condition
Speaker 1: that we all can relate to differently. Right, It isn't
Speaker 1: this sort of well maybe we want to talk about
Speaker 1: that next. It's not necessarily or at least you push
Speaker 1: back against this idea that that anxiety is purely sort
Speaker 1: of a kind of mechanistic you know, brain chemistry imbalance,
Speaker 1: and that is it is purely something that can be
Speaker 1: sort of ameliorated by various you know, psychiatric substances, but
Speaker 1: rather that there's you know, it's it's not simply that,
Speaker 1: but there's this deeper meaning to anxiety, or rather there
Speaker 1: are multiple kind of meanings. That's really what I took
Speaker 1: away as well from your book, that there's this kind
Speaker 1: of multidimensionality to the exploration of meaning when it comes
Speaker 1: to anxiety. And and those those variable kind of approaches
Speaker 1: to anxiety don't necessarily always don't. They sometimes contradict each other,
Speaker 1: and yet there's still something valuable in that, in that
Speaker 1: variable expiration. So I want to ask you about that,
Speaker 1: but I do want to just mention, you know, because
Speaker 1: for those that are interested in getting the book, and
Speaker 1: if you're not able to stay with us for the
Speaker 1: full interview, this is the book Anxiety, A Philosophical Guide
Speaker 1: by Samir Chopra. It is I also wanted to mention
Speaker 1: at the beginning. It is one of the most beautiful
Speaker 1: books that I've read recently. It's it's very with a
Speaker 1: lot of the types of books that I read for
Speaker 1: this podcast or from my own study. It's a lot of,
Speaker 1: you know, fact, very academic, kind of abstruse, dry stuff.
Speaker 1: But you're not only is the book so rich with ideas,
Speaker 1: but it's also just very beautifully written, and that's such
Speaker 1: a pleasure. So it's also just a very pleasure book book.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to mention.
Speaker 2: That thank you.
Speaker 1: Yes, so tell us about this, you know, I guess
Speaker 1: let's just start from this idea the current kind of
Speaker 1: cultural assumptions that we have about anxiety and kind of
Speaker 1: what is that fundamental obstacle that kind of is socialized
Speaker 1: into us about anxiety that we kind of need to
Speaker 1: overcome and or will overcome through this kind of philosophical
Speaker 1: adventure or search.
Speaker 2: So there's you know, you mentioned the conflicts between the
Speaker 2: different traditions that I that I cover in the book,
Speaker 2: and I think that's one way to think about the
Speaker 2: way in which we as a culture think about anxiety.
Speaker 2: And I think part of my motivation for writing the
Speaker 2: book was to definitely, as it were, change some of
Speaker 2: the ways in which we think about anxiety. Right, So
Speaker 2: there are a couple of broad based cultural assumptions that
Speaker 2: I think out there. One of them, of course, is
Speaker 2: what I would call them medicalized assumption, right that anxiety
Speaker 2: is a psychiatric condition and this is to be treated
Speaker 2: with psychiatric medications. Right, anti anxiety medications are very common,
Speaker 2: and in fact, precisely because anti anxiety medications have not
Speaker 2: just one effect but a variety of effects, we often
Speaker 2: see people taking anti anxiety medications for afflictions are not anxiety,
Speaker 2: for example, there are people who are taking anxiety medications
Speaker 2: to help them sleep, for instance. Right. So, okay, so
Speaker 2: that's one. There's anxiety that's kind of understood as a
Speaker 2: medical condition. Right. Then there's another way in which anxiety
Speaker 2: is at some level understood, implicitly or explicitly, that it
Speaker 2: has something to do with the way that we have
Speaker 2: organized our world. I think people do have some inkling
Speaker 2: that this is a cultural issue, this is a political issue,
Speaker 2: if we may want to go that far, that in
Speaker 2: some ways, the ways in which we have chosen to
Speaker 2: organize the world, to relate to each other, to live
Speaker 2: with each other, this is making us anxious, right, And
Speaker 2: I think social theorists have been beaten on this drum
Speaker 2: for a couple hundred years now, like, look around you,
Speaker 2: what do you expect You're bound to be anxious? Right?
Speaker 2: That's true. And at the same time, I think this
Speaker 2: other cultural assumption goes along with it, which is that, well,
Speaker 2: it's a medical condition, and so if we were to
Speaker 2: treat this medical condition well, we would bring relief and
Speaker 2: an end to the suffering and misery of anxiety. And
Speaker 2: guess what that would make all of us functional and
Speaker 2: happier than ever before. Right. So, there's a suspicions, I
Speaker 2: think floating around in the minds of many, which is
Speaker 2: expressed in a lot of the critical literature and theory
Speaker 2: and philosophy and political theorizing in this domain, you know,
Speaker 2: lots of other psychological theorizing as well, that in fact
Speaker 2: we might be medicating something which is you know, which
Speaker 2: is a matter of perhaps personal and political reflection. Perhaps
Speaker 2: there's something suspicious about the fact that anxiety makes us
Speaker 2: dysfunctional in a society in which we are needed to
Speaker 2: be functional and highly productive, right, which has always been
Speaker 2: the worry with antidepressants. Like one of the things that
Speaker 2: antidepressants will do, even if they leave you with a
Speaker 2: diminished libido, is that they will get you off the
Speaker 2: couch and back to work. Right. And you'll hear a
Speaker 2: lot of people anxious people say they just want to
Speaker 2: be functional, and a lot of people who are around
Speaker 2: anxious people want them to be functional. So anxiety is
Speaker 2: a massive topic in our in our day and age,
Speaker 2: and we often do suspect that the material conditions of
Speaker 2: our day and age are often making us anxious. You know,
Speaker 2: these very technological aids that are facilitating our conversation today
Speaker 2: are sometimes held to make us more anxious. Right, There's
Speaker 2: something about being trapped in this gigantic surveillance machine that's
Speaker 2: constantly harvesting our data for financial gain that just that
Speaker 2: description just seems to make me anxious. Right. So there
Speaker 2: is this, I think understanding amongst us that we are
Speaker 2: being made anxious by the world, that the solutions to
Speaker 2: it are needed and critical, if not just for our
Speaker 2: own happiness, because we need to keep the world taking
Speaker 2: along as it were. Right. So there's medication, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of self help, and there's often a lot of
Speaker 2: relief promised from anxiety that you can be anxiety free.
Speaker 2: So I think the intervention that my book makes in
Speaker 2: this entire sort of febrile space, so to speak, is
Speaker 2: that it points out that anxiety is sort of as
Speaker 2: old as the hills, because it finds its expression in philosophy.
Speaker 2: Philosophers have been thinking about this, that've been concerned about it.
Speaker 2: We might not be using the word anxiety. But when
Speaker 2: you describe the phenomenology of the states that we are
Speaker 2: talking about, yeah, we're talking about people who are pretty
Speaker 2: anxious out here in many different ways. And so some
Speaker 2: of the interventions I would say are one is that
Speaker 2: anxiety might that anxiety is in some ways, as I
Speaker 2: put it, constitutive of existence. Here's a little punchline. To
Speaker 2: be is to be anxious. So in some ways, perhaps
Speaker 2: we need to reconceptualize anxiety. After all, of anxiety is
Speaker 2: a feature of existence, and it seems a mistake to
Speaker 2: classify it as a pathology, something that we need to
Speaker 2: try and medicate out of existence. Maybe if it's the
Speaker 2: kind of thing that just is the case with us,
Speaker 2: and we are bound to be anxious, then we should
Speaker 2: understand its place in our life a little bit differently.
Speaker 2: So part of what the book is trying to do
Speaker 2: is to help us understand anxiety differently, reconceptualize it, think
Speaker 2: about it differently. And I say the beginning of the book,
Speaker 2: I can't promise you a cure for anxiety. There is none.
Speaker 2: I hate to tell you this. You are going to
Speaker 2: be anxious, but you don't have to suffer from a
Speaker 2: kind of a pernicious meta anxiety, which is that you
Speaker 2: don't have to be anxious about being anxious. You just
Speaker 2: accept the fact that you are going to be anxious.
Speaker 2: You're going to live with anxiety. Well, we need to
Speaker 2: think about our strategies for living with anxiety, coping with it,
Speaker 2: ameliorating it, perhaps to some extent. We don't have to
Speaker 2: make our anxiety worse by the way we live, by
Speaker 2: the way we organize our societies, by the way we
Speaker 2: treat each other. So that intuition is correct. We are
Speaker 2: making ourselves anxious, but we're making ourselves anxious, more anxious
Speaker 2: than we need to be. There's a certain quanta of
Speaker 2: anxiety that we've been dealt, and that's quite enough, thank
Speaker 2: you very much. You know, Freud once said, the purpose
Speaker 2: of misery are the purpose of therapy. Sorry, quite a
Speaker 2: fraudient slip there. The purpose of therapy was to get
Speaker 2: us from hysterical misery to common unhappiness. Common unhappiness is
Speaker 2: just the human condition. Right, We're dissatisfied, things aren't quite right,
Speaker 2: we know we're going to die, and so on and
Speaker 2: so forth. Life is hard, But we don't have to
Speaker 2: make it worse by constructing our world in such a
Speaker 2: way that we are made even more anxious because no
Speaker 2: matter which bend we turn, no matter which corner we take,
Speaker 2: our basic existential anxiety is always there waiting for us.
Speaker 2: That's the basement dweller. It's always there. Even people who
Speaker 2: are medicated, right, they might relieve themselves of some kinds
Speaker 2: of anxiety, like perhaps the economic anxiety of losing a
Speaker 2: job or other things, or you know, that crippling anxiety
Speaker 2: that renders them dysfunctional, but they're not going to free
Speaker 2: themselves of fundamental existential anxiety. And I would say, actually,
Speaker 2: as I wrote the book, I came to understand anxiety
Speaker 2: a little bit differently myself. As I've come to understand
Speaker 2: it over a period of time, as I've come to
Speaker 2: become more of a father, and you know, someone who
Speaker 2: lives at home with my wife, my daughter, come to
Speaker 2: understand the role that love has in our lives. I've
Speaker 2: come to think that anxiety, in its fundamental forms is
Speaker 2: the fear of death or the consciousness of our finite existence,
Speaker 2: if I was to be more precise. And the second
Speaker 2: one is something that I think freud bloned onto. Anxiety
Speaker 2: is the fear of the loss of love, and so
Speaker 2: so many forms of behavior become comprehensible when we trace
Speaker 2: them to a fear of the loss of love underwriting
Speaker 2: them right. And I think this is quite a deep
Speaker 2: insight by Freud, that there's a kind of we lost
Speaker 2: love once and we're scared to lose it again, and
Speaker 2: we might have symbolized it in different ways. You know,
Speaker 2: could be my high school teacher, my friend who doesn't
Speaker 2: return my text message in time, my boss who doesn't
Speaker 2: praise me enough, for all these anonymous people in social
Speaker 2: media who don't give me as many retweets and likes
Speaker 2: as I would like for myself. These all become, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of like manifestations of the lack of love that
Speaker 2: the universe has for me. And you know, when we
Speaker 2: speak about you know, we glibly assign the term anxiety
Speaker 2: to these various insecurities and fears that we have. I
Speaker 2: think fear of the loss of love makes those more
Speaker 2: comprehensible as well. So I think the diversity of traditions
Speaker 2: that I talk about in the book, they sometimes point
Speaker 2: you know, much like the you know, much like the
Speaker 2: mythical elephant who's approached by the you know, by the
Speaker 2: men who are incapacitated in different ways. Sometimes there's that
Speaker 2: partial perspective, but I think they just point out that
Speaker 2: we respe bomb to the fact of existence, to the
Speaker 2: beer facts of existence in different ways. So the anxiety
Speaker 2: that you find in Buddhism and the anxiety that you
Speaker 2: find in existential treatments is a little bit different, but
Speaker 2: it's also deeply related as well.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, let's let's let's dive into each one of
Speaker 1: these a little bit. But you kind of brought up
Speaker 1: a very I didn't realize how how appropriate it kind
Speaker 1: of is that following the last episode of this podcast
Speaker 1: we're having this conversation because it seems like maybe you
Speaker 1: knew that we did an episode on Jainism with uh
Speaker 1: and if you didn't, then that's very auspicious because we
Speaker 1: were speaking actually about Anakantavada and about the the many
Speaker 1: sidedness of reality and how these different traditions can have
Speaker 1: you know, they're each they're equally true, they're partially true,
Speaker 1: and together we can combine them to kind of a
Speaker 1: pro coach, you know, a larger and more and a
Speaker 1: broader sense of what the truth is. And so how
Speaker 1: appropriate then that this conversation is now exploring kind of
Speaker 1: you know, putting that, applying that in some way to
Speaker 1: actually the topic of anxiety. So let's you know, let's
Speaker 1: proceed through as you did in your book and and
Speaker 1: start with Buddhism. I think that's where you started, which
Speaker 1: seems appropriate since it's kind of the most metaphysical. Well
Speaker 1: you could say they were all kind of metaphysical in
Speaker 1: a way. But you know, since Buddhism says, you know,
Speaker 1: there is duka, right, there is this word that's often
Speaker 1: translated as suffering, although I think you don't necessarily think
Speaker 1: that's the right. You don't like that interpretation. Is that
Speaker 1: is that correct?
Speaker 2: No? I would say misapprentilation. But you know, any examination
Speaker 2: of Buddhist literagyre will show you that there's actually a
Speaker 2: variety of meanings and connotations that can be attached to
Speaker 2: the word. Because you know, there's there's this, there is dissatisfaction,
Speaker 2: there's fear, there's sad. These are all forms of duck right,
Speaker 2: there are forms of suffering because each one of them
Speaker 2: involves a certain kind of suffering. So many of these
Speaker 2: many of these terms then are packaged in what I
Speaker 2: would call a general dissatisfaction or unease with the existence, right,
Speaker 2: And so to locate anxiety in here is not to
Speaker 2: say that the Buddha specifically says that you know, after all,
Speaker 2: there's no term for anxiety in that sense, but that
Speaker 2: sense that we have that there is my fear, and
Speaker 2: you know sometimes and I think it's the kind of
Speaker 2: what I call anticipatory fear. For example, I do not
Speaker 2: know anything about how I will die, right, but if
Speaker 2: I do know, if I do experience my death in
Speaker 2: its full phenomenology, with all its discomforts and so on
Speaker 2: and so forth, there's unease I have now about how
Speaker 2: I will be reacting at that moment. Right. So, built
Speaker 2: into this state of trepidation that I have about my future,
Speaker 2: states about old age, about death, about infirmity, is what
Speaker 2: I would call anticipatory fear. And that's a kind of
Speaker 2: anxiety because I don't quite know what it will be like,
Speaker 2: but I shrink from it now. Right. Secondly, there is
Speaker 2: what I call the sort of the gray lining on
Speaker 2: the silver cloud. Even when everything is okay, I have
Speaker 2: a sense that this could end, that this could run out,
Speaker 2: And the universe has brutally reminded me of and others
Speaker 2: of this factness in a variety of ways, Like children
Speaker 2: find out the ice cream runs out at the bottom
Speaker 2: of the cone. It was all great up to then,
Speaker 2: and then you hit the bottom of the cone and
Speaker 2: there's no more ice cream. Right. The fact that good
Speaker 2: things come to an end, and in fact, it doesn't
Speaker 2: really matter how good it is, it will come to
Speaker 2: an end. And in fact, if it stays good for
Speaker 2: too long, you'll be stated. So there's this kind of like,
Speaker 2: even if I get the good thing, it's not all
Speaker 2: that great, right, So that's the dissatisfaction aspect of it. Now.
Speaker 2: Of course, what's crucial about the Buddhist approach to understanding
Speaker 2: anxiety is that anxiety is rooted in a kind of
Speaker 2: confusion about who and what we are. It's rooted in
Speaker 2: certain kinds of failures of knowledge, in certain kinds of
Speaker 2: failures of realization. You don't understand what you are, and
Speaker 2: you don't understand the nature of the universe, and you
Speaker 2: need to come to realize this. You're not going to
Speaker 2: find this truth hidden underneath the walk. You need to
Speaker 2: come to this realization by yourself, through a series of
Speaker 2: disciplined intellectual and philosophical adventures of the mind, perhaps, But
Speaker 2: there are failures of knowledge. First, you have not paid
Speaker 2: attention to the fact that the world is eternally changing.
Speaker 2: It is dynamic and transient. Nothing endures, nothing abides. Secondly,
Speaker 2: everything is dependent upon everything else. That is, quite literally,
Speaker 2: nothing that is independent of everything else. That is the
Speaker 2: notion of interdependent arising. So for me to imagine that
Speaker 2: my happiness, my existence can be free of everything that
Speaker 2: is around me is a kind of failure of knowledge.
Speaker 2: It is a profound failure of knowledge. Right. There is
Speaker 2: also a failure for me to understand, which is probably
Speaker 2: the most and the deepest Buddhist lesson of all that
Speaker 2: the enduring self that I ascribe to myself, the eye,
Speaker 2: the ego, the it Jacob Samir, this enduring identity that
Speaker 2: you imagine, this thing is not to be found. But
Speaker 2: notice how much of my how many of my anxieties,
Speaker 2: stem from the fact that I ascribe to myself an
Speaker 2: identity that is isolated from the rest of all of reality,
Speaker 2: which has a separate, independent end and beginning, which has
Speaker 2: its own ambitions, its own memories, its own future, its
Speaker 2: own past, which is quite frankly speaking, selfish, because that's
Speaker 2: what selves do. Selves are selfish, They are self centered.
Speaker 2: They claim things for themselves. They get worried when they
Speaker 2: lose things. They're concerned about the end of their lives.
Speaker 2: They're worried about their children, their cars. They get upset
Speaker 2: when people don't review their books as favorably as other
Speaker 2: philosophers books. Right, that's my selfish spelled self speaking up here. Right.
Speaker 2: But this is precisely what makes us anxious, because it
Speaker 2: is all these things that are mine, whose decay, degradation,
Speaker 2: and destruction I am especially anxious about. So the more
Speaker 2: I enmesh myself in this belief that I I am
Speaker 2: an enduring self, the more I enmesh myself in these
Speaker 2: various ensnearments of desire and attachment. Well, I'm making myself anxious.
Speaker 2: I make myself angry, right because when I lose things,
Speaker 2: I think something precious has been taken away from me. Right.
Speaker 2: So Buddhism is dedicated to, in some ways, opening our eyes.
Speaker 2: Look around you, pay attention. Do you think anything in
Speaker 2: this world can endure? Do you think anything is actually
Speaker 2: dependent of anything else? So there's a sense in which
Speaker 2: the Buddha's really asking us to a kind of intellectual,
Speaker 2: deep philosophical realization of who and what we are and
Speaker 2: what the nature and condition of the universe is. If
Speaker 2: we really were to get it, would we really behave
Speaker 2: the way we are? That's why I use the example
Speaker 2: in the book. You know, the surgeon who's done the
Speaker 2: surgery on someone's eyes, right, and you take the bandage
Speaker 2: off and you ask the patient can you see? The
Speaker 2: patient says, yeah, I can see, and then they walk
Speaker 2: right into a table. Aleen na, dude, you can't see
Speaker 2: it all because you show down behave like someone who
Speaker 2: has a pair of eyes. So people say that the
Speaker 2: stuff that Buddhism says is obvious. It's obvious. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: get it. Stuff doesn't endure, Yeah I get it. Everything
Speaker 2: is independent. Yeah wooh cosmic holeness. Man, But you're not
Speaker 2: behaving like you really get it, or you think you
Speaker 2: can inure yourself from the blows that the Buddha is
Speaker 2: the most concerned about, or you think that this, this
Speaker 2: duke of yours, this dissatisfaction of yours, will not manifest
Speaker 2: itself in the various kinds of pathologies that we call
Speaker 2: death war hatred. Right. I think this is why you know,
Speaker 2: the various Buddhist traditions over the years have sought not
Speaker 2: just individual betterment, but in some ways kind of a
Speaker 2: you know, a global or a community wide development in
Speaker 2: some ways, right, because our happiness is in some ways
Speaker 2: independent upon the happiness of all other living souls. Right.
Speaker 2: And so hence the Eightfold Path, because it puts us
Speaker 2: towards the only kinds of actions and ways of thinking
Speaker 2: that can deliver us from Look, the path is long
Speaker 2: and arduous. It might take us an entire lifetime. The
Speaker 2: Buddha was quite aware of the fact that not everybody
Speaker 2: was going to become a monk, right. The folks who
Speaker 2: came to his sermons, they didn't go home and say, sweetheart,
Speaker 2: I'm off to the retreats, I'm going to become a
Speaker 2: Buddhist monk. No, they it was understood that people were
Speaker 2: going to take care of their lives, so Buddhist practices
Speaker 2: had to be integrated into people's lives as well, right.
Speaker 2: And I think that's I think has been it's appeal
Speaker 2: over the years that people feel they can try to
Speaker 2: come to the realizations that the Buddha was concerned with, right,
Speaker 2: which hopefully will reconcile us to the fact that we
Speaker 2: are model our lives are limited, right, and that we
Speaker 2: are mistaken in expecting certain kinds of solidity from the
Speaker 2: world that it simply cannot give us. Right, there's a
Speaker 2: kind of magical thinking we are engaging in. If we
Speaker 2: haven't delivered ourselves from those delusions in the way that
Speaker 2: Buddhism understands them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we certainly haven't. So let's let's let's talk about existentialism. Now.
Speaker 1: I am having a little trouble that the sound is
Speaker 1: quite low, and so if that is the case for
Speaker 1: everybody that's listening or watching, just know that in post
Speaker 1: where I'm going to be able to am up the
Speaker 1: volume on on Samir's end, if if it's if it's
Speaker 1: or Samir side. So if you you know, if you
Speaker 1: come back to this, you know, again listen to the
Speaker 1: actual audio episode and even the future video episode will
Speaker 1: fix the audio so it will be it will be
Speaker 1: a little more elevated in the volume in case that's
Speaker 1: and that's hard for some of you to hear. All right,
Speaker 1: So existentialism, So we don't really have time to go
Speaker 1: through all of the existentialists, but maybe you could choose,
Speaker 1: you know, one who you think to be the kind
Speaker 1: of paradigmatic existentialist thinker who encapsulates kind of the heart
Speaker 1: of the existentialist view of anxiety. Ah.
Speaker 2: Great, you know that's a hard call, but I'll try
Speaker 2: to be quick in this description, because I think there
Speaker 2: are one way that you could do this is that
Speaker 2: you could start with a kind of chronological phoebear, someone
Speaker 2: like you know, careke Guard within the nineteenth century European tradition,
Speaker 2: who is concerned with understanding and anxiety as a kind
Speaker 2: of signal to us that we are, that we're kind
Speaker 2: of a mixture of the spiritual and physical. Right, if
Speaker 2: we were spiritual creatures, you know, we would be like angels, gods,
Speaker 2: we would exist in heavenly domains. If we were entirely
Speaker 2: physical creatures, then we wouldn't have this sense that I
Speaker 2: can make choices, that I have certain kinds of capacities
Speaker 2: that I do not fully understand, and that I in
Speaker 2: some ways bring myself into being through my choices as
Speaker 2: I make of myself. Right, So, kicker Guard understands anxiety
Speaker 2: as it's a fear of an unspecified thing right, the
Speaker 2: future in some ways, which is, as it were, unwritten,
Speaker 2: unspecified waiting to be defined or made by who, not
Speaker 2: because there's some predetermined script laid out right, which is
Speaker 2: the kind of understanding that Sarter also takes some cack
Speaker 2: of guard, but as the sense that I will be
Speaker 2: stepping into this domain, choose myself in the process, and
Speaker 2: as a result determining my future. So this is very
Speaker 2: dynamic sense in which as I take each step into
Speaker 2: the future, it's those choices and actions of mind that
Speaker 2: are determining not just in the world as it is,
Speaker 2: but myself. I'm bringing myself into being, and in some
Speaker 2: ways this is my existential responsibility, right. And if I'm
Speaker 2: unwilling to accept this freedom, if I know that the
Speaker 2: freedom or the boldness or the braveness to make choices
Speaker 2: is not being exercised by me, then I sink into despair. Right.
Speaker 2: Hence you have this Guardian book, right, the classic sickness
Speaker 2: under despair, which is that I'm aware of my existential responsibilities,
Speaker 2: but I'm not acting on them. Right. Anxiety is the
Speaker 2: feeling that this heavy responsibility for the making of myself,
Speaker 2: for the determination of my future, this rests upon me.
Speaker 2: The reason this is quite as shocking and appalling as
Speaker 2: it is is because it exists within a cultural context
Speaker 2: which believe that, in some sense, there was a kind
Speaker 2: of historical understanding of our place in the universe. There
Speaker 2: was an unrolling of the script, so to speak, right,
Speaker 2: that we were born into this world with certain kinds
Speaker 2: of capacities or essences, and our task was to just
Speaker 2: kind of bring them to being right, there was some
Speaker 2: way that we were and to find out who we
Speaker 2: were was a matter of discovery, right, And I think
Speaker 2: the existential is what they did is in its broadest sense,
Speaker 2: if I was to attach a slogan to them, is
Speaker 2: that they changed the notion of who we are from
Speaker 2: being a matter of discovery to being a matter of invention.
Speaker 2: You're not going to find out who you are, You're
Speaker 2: going to make yourself into who you are. Right. So,
Speaker 2: now there's something quite scary about this because I'm just
Speaker 2: going to find out who I am. Then I can
Speaker 2: just sort of expect the film, or the script or
Speaker 2: the real to kind of unfold. Right. Let me just
Speaker 2: kind of sit back, can watch this movie play out.
Speaker 2: But if I have to make myself, well, then I
Speaker 2: can't really rest at any given moment. There's always a
Speaker 2: choice to be made. There's always the unspecified future that
Speaker 2: has to be clarified. You find this in Cake of Guard,
Speaker 2: you find this in Nietzsure, in different ways, you find
Speaker 2: this Ensatra, right. I think this is one tradition within
Speaker 2: existential image, and I think it's the one that people
Speaker 2: mostly think about. Is that existentialism says we're free. We're
Speaker 2: scared of our freedom. When we're scared of our freedom, well,
Speaker 2: we sometimes flee into the arms of those things that
Speaker 2: will guarantee us solidity. Here's the book. This tells you
Speaker 2: what to do. This tells you what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: This tells you what you need to do, starting in
Speaker 2: the mornings, going all the way till the evening, follow
Speaker 2: this path and all will be good. Right. This is
Speaker 2: the way in which we sometimes understand the flight to,
Speaker 2: for example, organized religion. Nietzsche also saw in this a
Speaker 2: flight to totalitarianism, into nationalism, into what he called the
Speaker 2: new idols. You just want to be able to stand
Speaker 2: with your hand over your heart and promise allegiance to
Speaker 2: something which will guarantee the future for you. If it's
Speaker 2: not God, well then then it's your nation. Right. So
Speaker 2: I think you know it's ironic when people think about
Speaker 2: Nietzsche sometimes they think, you know, he's sort of the
Speaker 2: patron saint of fascism, But in some sense he was
Speaker 2: warning us against the kind of nihilism that leads to
Speaker 2: fascism and totalitarianism that makes us seek refuge in nationalism,
Speaker 2: this anxiety that I have something secured the future for
Speaker 2: me right. And I think by a similar token, I
Speaker 2: think the other existentialist tradition in people like Tillich and Heidiger,
Speaker 2: who I talk about in the book, the fear of
Speaker 2: death is a very powerful regulator of my life, in
Speaker 2: the sense that my failure to realize that my life
Speaker 2: has a certain kind of termination of possibility written into
Speaker 2: it is making me live inauthentically. I live as if
Speaker 2: I've got forever to make over, to do things right,
Speaker 2: to live properly, to live truthfully. Nope, there's and I
Speaker 2: think this is where the urgency sometimes that people associate
Speaker 2: with these kinds of you know, leave each day as
Speaker 2: if it's your last. This is kind of a bumper
Speaker 2: sticker version of the notion that if you really thought
Speaker 2: about what the end of your life entailed in some
Speaker 2: ways right, which the Stoics also ask us to do
Speaker 2: to reflect on this, you would live your life differently.
Speaker 2: There's also inher a failure of realization. You're not really
Speaker 2: thought through what it really entails. And if you combine
Speaker 2: that with the possibilities right which care of Guards says
Speaker 2: we should let ourselves become educated by, then you really
Speaker 2: find yourself in a bind that there's a sense in
Speaker 2: which it places. It places a certain sort of urgency
Speaker 2: upon the need to start thinking about what we want
Speaker 2: out of existence, this one shot we've been given, and whether,
Speaker 2: as Niature would say, whether we need to really live
Speaker 2: our lives bound by the models of the world that
Speaker 2: others have constructed before us. Those were ways in which
Speaker 2: other people assuage their anxieties. Why are you making your
Speaker 2: life miserable because of its failure to follow the script
Speaker 2: written by others before you? Right, this is the kind
Speaker 2: of radical independence that Niature promises us, free yourself of
Speaker 2: these shackles. And I think this is and I think
Speaker 2: there is something quite deep about this, because one extreme
Speaker 2: of this is of course the sociopath, the person who
Speaker 2: doesn't care what others think about him. But I think
Speaker 2: there's a way in which we are made deeply socially
Speaker 2: anxious by the fear of disapproval, by the fear of
Speaker 2: not meeting cultural ideals of success or performance, or the
Speaker 2: number of romantic partners we have, or how much money
Speaker 2: we make. And I think social media has driven this
Speaker 2: anxiety to almost unbearable levels from most people, to the
Speaker 2: extent that we want to shut off our phones. Right. So,
Speaker 2: I think the existentialists have a rich tradition. There's quite
Speaker 2: quite diverse. They make us think about the strangeness of life, right,
Speaker 2: that all of this is covered up with a certain
Speaker 2: kind of meaning that we have ascribed to things. But
Speaker 2: there are times when we step back and we notice
Speaker 2: there's something quite strange about this because we could have
Speaker 2: done it in many different ways. And that makes us
Speaker 2: anxious too, because we sense there is a lack of
Speaker 2: a solidity to the way in which we have formed
Speaker 2: and organized our world.
Speaker 1: As well, it seems like there's a lot of kind
Speaker 1: of insights that are sort of fruitful in kind of
Speaker 1: understanding a little bit of the reactive politics that we're
Speaker 1: experiencing right now. Yes, and and as you were, as
Speaker 1: you were speaking, also, it's just it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: ironic and sort of tragic, right, that it seems we're
Speaker 1: either stuck between the anxiety of not being able to
Speaker 1: fit the framework and kind of all the various social
Speaker 1: sanctions that are accompanied by not properly fitting in. And
Speaker 1: then on the other side of it, if we we
Speaker 1: when we get too free, we're also anxious about our
Speaker 1: you know, seem you know, endless free, endless freedom, and
Speaker 1: kind of the exactly overwhelming kind of abyss of that.
Speaker 1: And here we are straddled between two poles of anxiety.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I think and I think it points
Speaker 2: out the the the difficulties in ever finding a state
Speaker 2: where we'll be free of anxiety. So I would say actually,
Speaker 2: part of our task in some ways in living with
Speaker 2: anxiety is is knowing the triggers for various kinds of
Speaker 2: anxiety to hopefully inspire us to, you know, treat others
Speaker 2: in ways that reflect our need and they're deeply felt
Speaker 2: need for love and respect right and the importance of
Speaker 2: deep and abiding connections with other human beings. Because if
Speaker 2: we can assure ourselves of love in this world, it
Speaker 2: does move or it does help ameliorate one of our
Speaker 2: deepest fears. I think there's a reason why the deepest
Speaker 2: religious traditions have stressed the universality of brotherhood and love
Speaker 2: because it is understood what kinds of anxieties underwrite our
Speaker 2: sense that we are all alone in this world. Right,
Speaker 2: So I think there is that there is that notion.
Speaker 2: And there is also a sense in which if we
Speaker 2: are aware of the fact that our existential conditions are
Speaker 2: not going to change, if we're not going to make
Speaker 2: our time infinite, right, if those basic parameters cannot change,
Speaker 2: then we need to reinterpret them. Right. There's a sense
Speaker 2: in which the unalterable conditions of existence to deny their reality,
Speaker 2: to attempt to run away from them. That's a kind
Speaker 2: of recipe for neurosis. And I think in that sense,
Speaker 2: to you know, when someone when sometimes people speak of
Speaker 2: taking a philosophical attitude towards it, they sometimes seem to
Speaker 2: have in mind the kind of a resigned or a
Speaker 2: fatalistic attitude. Right, philosophical means being resigned or fatalistic about it.
Speaker 2: But I think it's being philosophical about something is to
Speaker 2: understand that if I'm in an undesirable situation, I really
Speaker 2: only have three options. I can either escape that situation,
Speaker 2: I can change it, or I can understand it differently.
Speaker 2: If I cannot do either of these two things, and
Speaker 2: existence is like that, if I cannot escape existence. And
Speaker 2: you know, there are people who decide that they will
Speaker 2: escape existence when it becomes unbearable. Right, And that's a
Speaker 2: fraught topic in itself, when people decide to end their lives.
Speaker 2: Chemus said it was the most important question of all, right,
Speaker 2: and sometimes we choose to change it. Right, We become prophets, teachers, activists,
Speaker 2: We modify the world. Right, we acquire with science. Right,
Speaker 2: we engage in eros with the world, We interact with
Speaker 2: it in an attempt to change it. But we also
Speaker 2: attempt to change how we understand those things that we
Speaker 2: cannot change. I will if there is a you know,
Speaker 2: there's a leak in the roof and I am stuck
Speaker 2: with it through the night. It's there's a reconceptualization of
Speaker 2: what that unchanging reality is going to be like, Right,
Speaker 2: And I think that's I think where hopefully thinking about
Speaker 2: anxiety philosophically it does that is that it helps us
Speaker 2: understand it's this thing, it's this perennial thing. It has
Speaker 2: underwritten even wonder right when I say the root of
Speaker 2: philosophy is, you know, Hoff says this in the in
Speaker 2: the Leviathan, that anxiety into the causes of things makes
Speaker 2: us dispose, disposes us to inquire into their origins. Right.
Speaker 2: So you know, if I see strange phenomena in the sky,
Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, man, what's that bright light? What's this
Speaker 2: thing that comes up over the eastern horizon every day?
Speaker 2: It's beautiful? There's wonderment. Yeah, philosophy rises in wonder, but
Speaker 2: it also rises from a sense of like, I need
Speaker 2: to understand this quickly. I'm scared. I don't know what
Speaker 2: this means. Right, So that mingling of terror and awe,
Speaker 2: I think it's part of philosophical wonder. What is this thing?
Speaker 2: It frightens me. Think about how we deal with the dark.
Speaker 2: If I step into a dark room, I sort of
Speaker 2: tentatively push my hands out. I'm terrified that something wet
Speaker 2: and slimy might encounter it, or something might bite my
Speaker 2: hands off. But I know that's the only way forward,
Speaker 2: So I move on, tentatively thrusting into the dark, hoping
Speaker 2: to find out where I am right. That attitude is
Speaker 2: tinged with curiosity, but fear or anxiety of the unknown
Speaker 2: also underwrites in a sense and if you look at
Speaker 2: the obsession with certainty in modern philosophy, and by this
Speaker 2: I mean Enlightenment era philosophy in the European tradition, it
Speaker 2: is obsessed with certainty. Right. We need some way of
Speaker 2: securing certain kinds of beliefs. We need to have something
Speaker 2: that tells us that certain things we know are absolutely secure,
Speaker 2: whether this was moral beliefs, religious beliefs. Right. And if
Speaker 2: you look at the history of that period of philosophy,
Speaker 2: there is I would say, kind of a palpable almost
Speaker 2: anxiety which is centered around the drive to find certainty. Right.
Speaker 2: So I think, thinking about these ways in which it
Speaker 2: has been around ever present, but we could be making
Speaker 2: it worse. I think that gives us a nice little
Speaker 2: balancing act because it says, yeah, we should do something
Speaker 2: about this. We should also be humble acknowledge the limits
Speaker 2: of how far we can go with our anxiety treatment.
Speaker 1: So to speak, right, Yeah, I'd love to speak a
Speaker 1: little bit about you know, because you're also in your
Speaker 1: bio you know, it says that you are a philosophical
Speaker 1: counselor in addition to being professor emeritus of a couple
Speaker 1: of universities, And so I want to speak about this
Speaker 1: idea of philosophical therapy, but I also want to just
Speaker 1: interject here about questions we are getting towards the end
Speaker 1: of the interview. So if you do have some questions,
Speaker 1: then please put them in the chat so that I
Speaker 1: can look to the chat and see if there's anything
Speaker 1: you'd like to ask Samir. This is a very rare
Speaker 1: opportunity to actually help me with the questions. So if
Speaker 1: you have some questions for Samir based on anything we've
Speaker 1: been discussing, then please do go ahead and put those
Speaker 1: questions into the chat box now, and then after this
Speaker 1: next question, I will I'll check to see if there's
Speaker 1: any there. So yeah, and so yes. So basically this
Speaker 1: notion of philosophical therapy, I'm just curious about the technicalities
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, obviously we know of most people
Speaker 1: know of, you know, various forms of talk therapy, and
Speaker 1: I've I've looked into philosophical therapy before. But I I
Speaker 1: and I guess where I, you know, struggled, was kind
Speaker 1: of thinking that, you know, reasoning alone is sufficient to
Speaker 1: sort of resolve resolve our you know, various anxieties. Right,
Speaker 1: we see kind of in some some traditions especially, you know,
Speaker 1: that have something to say about the contemplative the effects
Speaker 1: on the nervous system of contemplative practices like meditation and
Speaker 1: breath work, that there are sort of like layers of
Speaker 1: our of our kind of subtle self that can be
Speaker 1: attended to more below the threshold of our conscious mind
Speaker 1: with these kinds of techniques. And so if we're just
Speaker 1: working on you know, that kind of just philosophical kind
Speaker 1: of discursive reasoning register that one could argue that we're
Speaker 1: not kind of getting to those lower I don't know,
Speaker 1: homes of anxiety, like the traumas that are living kind
Speaker 1: of in these below the threshold of cognition types of areas.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious. I imagine you have kind of a
Speaker 1: response for that in terms of how philosophical counseling can
Speaker 1: actually hold space for that that level of anxiety below
Speaker 1: simply our ideas about anxiety in the world.
Speaker 2: So, first of all, that's a really rich question, and
Speaker 2: I find myself wanting to answer along three different axes. So, first,
Speaker 2: is the relationship between what people call psychotherapy and philosophical counseling,
Speaker 2: So quick etymology listen. Psychotherapy comes from the Greek psyche
Speaker 2: and therapy. Psyche means soul therapy, it means healing, psychotherapy
Speaker 2: in sole healers and surprise, surprise or perhaps not surprise.
Speaker 2: In the early writings of the different philosophical traditions, and
Speaker 2: this is true of both Eastern and Western, the variants
Speaker 2: of this kind of term are used to apply to
Speaker 2: philosophers and to the notion of philosophical reflection. In fact,
Speaker 2: the Buddha is explicitly called the Great Healer. This is
Speaker 2: pression present in the ancient Greek tradition as well. And
Speaker 2: so that's one just sort of point that in a
Speaker 2: sense philosophy has always been understood even by the folks
Speaker 2: who philosophized as a way of bringing, as I think
Speaker 2: of it, are bringing our souls and minds into harmony
Speaker 2: with our lived lives, our existence, and you know, and
Speaker 2: I think through reflection is one way of thinking about it.
Speaker 2: But I would say just as there are more, I
Speaker 2: would say, arrows in the philosophical quiver than just reflection,
Speaker 2: because I think my conception of philosophy is also a
Speaker 2: little bit, perhaps broader than what academic departments might have
Speaker 2: us believe. And I think that's reflected in my choice
Speaker 2: of traditions, and you know I have psychoanalysis, critical theory, theology,
Speaker 2: and Buddhism in there. So these are philosophical for different reasons.
Speaker 2: They ask us to approach anxiety in different ways, and
Speaker 2: philosophical counseling, similarly, I would say, is committed to the
Speaker 2: notion first of all, that philosophy is supposed to help
Speaker 2: us live a better life by helping us understand ourselves,
Speaker 2: our place and existence, helping us answer some of the
Speaker 2: problems that are vexing. You know, one of these frustrations
Speaker 2: that people have with the philosophy is that it doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to answer any questions. Well, that's because all the
Speaker 2: easier questions have been taken over by the other disciplines. Right,
Speaker 2: I mean the question of what's that right?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's such a good, good thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, that question of what's that bright
Speaker 2: light in the sky? Admitst of a fairly definite answer,
Speaker 2: And we have an academic feeling that will answer that
Speaker 2: question for you. Right, if you want to know how
Speaker 2: to save up money for retirement, we have an academic
Speaker 2: field dedicated to that. Now, take all your unanswered questions
Speaker 2: that are left over by all these academic disciplines. Well,
Speaker 2: that's what philosophy is concerned with, right So it's a
Speaker 2: you know, it's a kind of evolutionary history. Philosophy is
Speaker 2: just being left with all the unanswered questions right now.
Speaker 2: Why do I mention this Because the most perplexing questions
Speaker 2: about how to live our life, questions having to do
Speaker 2: with value, questions having to do with who we take
Speaker 2: ourselves to be and how we expect to be treated,
Speaker 2: and how we think our life should we live. These
Speaker 2: are philosophical ones, and in fact what we call mental disorders,
Speaker 2: and at least in some of their forms, in very
Speaker 2: often inquire what I would call crises in the kinds
Speaker 2: of resolutions of these philosophical questions that we find in
Speaker 2: our life. I'm married to the wrong person, I have
Speaker 2: a terrible relationship with my children. I have anxiety about
Speaker 2: my prospects in life. If we were to engage in
Speaker 2: what I would call a sense of what kinds of
Speaker 2: fundamental questions might lie at the root of our confusions
Speaker 2: in these, then there's a sense in which we become
Speaker 2: transparent to ourselves wholly partially right, we acquire a better
Speaker 2: understanding of our beliefs and values and motivations. All of
Speaker 2: this sounds a lot like psychotherapy, and that's not surprising
Speaker 2: all psychotherapeutic traditions. Psychoanalysis, of course, is the best example
Speaker 2: of this, but all the other traditions that grew out
Speaker 2: of psycho analysis and many other independent ones, they all
Speaker 2: have a couple of things in common. They have a
Speaker 2: conception of the human person that they're working with. They
Speaker 2: have a conception of the human mind. They have theory
Speaker 2: about war where the person is located with respect to
Speaker 2: the rest of the world. They pay importance to history.
Speaker 2: They stress self transparency, inquiry into ourselves, and the methods
Speaker 2: in varying across different traditions, you know, from psychoanalysis couch
Speaker 2: sort of unending stream of consciousness discourse in the way
Speaker 2: that Freud originally conceived of it, to something like Socratic
Speaker 2: dialogues where we question assumptions make transparent chains of reasoning.
Speaker 2: So something like cognitive behavioral therapy right, which is quite
Speaker 2: widely accepted as a kind of practical psychotherapeutic modality. This
Speaker 2: is quite transparently borrowed from various kinds of Stoic and
Speaker 2: Buddhist techniques. Right, what happens when you get angry? What
Speaker 2: thoughts do you find going through your mind when you
Speaker 2: think that your mother in law hates you? What do
Speaker 2: you do next? You isolate the chain of reasoning. You
Speaker 2: pick the point of intervention at which that chain of
Speaker 2: reasoning can be interrupted, and then you work on it
Speaker 2: as a kind of an Aristotilian skill. You practice getting
Speaker 2: this and you behave yourself into better moods. So there
Speaker 2: are I would say, there are similar theoretical commitments in
Speaker 2: philosophical counseling. There is a model of the human mind
Speaker 2: that you're working with, there's a model of the human person.
Speaker 2: There is a theoretical commitment to the idea that there
Speaker 2: is a relationship between beliefs and emotions. So if I
Speaker 2: believe that there is a snake in the room, I
Speaker 2: will be scared and I will take defense in measures.
Speaker 2: When I switch on the light and find out that
Speaker 2: it's just a coild rope, I will relax and my
Speaker 2: temperature will return to normal and I will stop being
Speaker 2: so frantic. Right, nothing has changed in the world, but
Speaker 2: my beliefs about it have, so my emotions have changed
Speaker 2: in correspondence. So in some ways, to be a philosophical
Speaker 2: counselor is to be engaged in a dialogue with someone,
Speaker 2: and you can tell me what the similarities to psychotherapy
Speaker 2: are You engagement dialogue with someone. Someone has given you
Speaker 2: a certain presentation of a problem, and you want to
Speaker 2: know more, and you want to know more about what
Speaker 2: sorts of beliefs and values underwrite these kinds of situations
Speaker 2: that you find ourselves in. You want the person to
Speaker 2: understand themselves who they are in some ways this lofty
Speaker 2: ideal of self transparency, right. And of course, you know,
Speaker 2: we have theoretical resources at our disposal in the sense
Speaker 2: of you can bring explicit philosophical commentary into a session,
Speaker 2: but it could just be something implicit that's guiding you.
Speaker 2: For example, in you know, the four years of practice
Speaker 2: that I've worked as a counselor, it's become clear to
Speaker 2: me that when people come to me where they have
Speaker 2: unresolved conflicts in their lives, I should help them resolve
Speaker 2: those through exercising agency and choice, because I have a
Speaker 2: commitment to viewing persons as agents, right who are trying
Speaker 2: to find themselves and to do justice to their uniqueness.
Speaker 2: So I think there's a kind of there's extreme specificity
Speaker 2: to the work I do, because you know, I am
Speaker 2: who I am with the particular backgrounds that I have.
Speaker 2: And I think this is another really interesting feature about psychotherapy,
Speaker 2: which is some of the most detailed studies that have
Speaker 2: been done on the various psychotherapeutic modalities about why they
Speaker 2: work and how they work. We're not surprised, perhaps to
Speaker 2: find out that it doesn't quite matter that in some
Speaker 2: ways the theoretical background or the practitioner is not as
Speaker 2: important as what I think sometimes practitioners like to call
Speaker 2: the space that gets created between the client and the practitioner,
Speaker 2: and I think that's typically when you are able to
Speaker 2: reconcile visions. You were able to help people find ways
Speaker 2: forward because you have heard them seen them. Right. I
Speaker 2: think if I was to truly get as close to
Speaker 2: religious as I was, as I would ever be, I
Speaker 2: would say something like, someone that is seeking counseling or
Speaker 2: someone that is seeking psychotherapy, they made certain important movers already.
Speaker 2: They've decided to perhaps seek help. They made themselves the
Speaker 2: agent of that change. Right, So you can think of
Speaker 2: yourself as a facilitator or a guide as well. Right.
Speaker 2: Sometimes folk need resources pointed out to them. I think
Speaker 2: the differences in the people that come to counselors seeking help.
Speaker 2: They determine the kinds of philosophical resources that you bring
Speaker 2: to bear upon that particular, that particular encounter.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, but I guess are you are you? Are
Speaker 1: you like providing readings? Are you like prescribing like meditation practices?
Speaker 1: Like what is an actual What does a session look like? Is?
Speaker 1: What is? What are the components? Right?
Speaker 2: So I would say the components of a session, you know,
Speaker 2: to provide readings would be if in some ways there
Speaker 2: is a relevance of that approach where you think that
Speaker 2: someone would actually, you know, benefit from engaging with a
Speaker 2: text in a particular way, because that's not for everybody.
Speaker 2: So that is in some ways coming to know whether
Speaker 2: somebody could really benefit from that kind of engagement. I've
Speaker 2: had a couple of, you know, clients, people who with
Speaker 2: whom I worked with, you know, whom I've directed to
Speaker 2: sometimes just a poem or a short story. Right. I
Speaker 2: taught a class for many years at Brooklyn College where
Speaker 2: we dealt in philosophical issues through literature, and I do
Speaker 2: tend to believe that model theory can often be taught
Speaker 2: better through literary treatments because they have philosophical content. But
Speaker 2: sometimes it can be that sometimes a client sees something
Speaker 2: which makes you think that a theoretical encounter would be useful.
Speaker 2: And at that point, you know, you might quote unquote
Speaker 2: prescribe a text, so to speak, or you might say,
Speaker 2: this is something relevant to think about, or here is
Speaker 2: a line, what do you think follows from this? Right?
Speaker 2: You know, I think of poets. Poets make us look
Speaker 2: at the world in a particular way. Right. Philosophers do
Speaker 2: that too. They can suddenly make you think about something
Speaker 2: in a particular way, and sometimes introducing that can be
Speaker 2: I think all psychotherapists will tell you the two most
Speaker 2: important things that happen in any psychotherapeutic encounter are in
Speaker 2: sight and interpretation, and both of those are available to
Speaker 2: us from the philosophical tradition, right, And so my task
Speaker 2: is to engage in a dialogue, and of course what
Speaker 2: people tell me can prompt further questioning from my set.
Speaker 2: So I would say there is one perhaps, you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes I would say a difference of style. I am
Speaker 2: I'm engaged, I interact, I ask questions. I'm curious because
Speaker 2: I think in my asking people questions about the kinds
Speaker 2: of things I might be interested in. Knowing about them
Speaker 2: is also an opportunity for them to be able to
Speaker 2: examine those things with me, Right, and to make certain
Speaker 2: kinds of beliefs and values transparent is to also to
Speaker 2: be able to question them, right. You know, That's where
Speaker 2: sometimes there's this pragmatic approach to life. Right. The beliefs
Speaker 2: we have are our rules for action. Right, there are
Speaker 2: tools for manipulating the world, And so there's a sense
Speaker 2: in which you can ask ourselves whether the lives we
Speaker 2: want to live are going to follow from the kinds
Speaker 2: of beliefs and values that we have adopted. Have you
Speaker 2: chosen the right tools for this task? So to speak? Right,
Speaker 2: how's that working out for you? Right? That can also
Speaker 2: be part of the realization that someone might come to,
Speaker 2: And that's I think a very I think that's a
Speaker 2: very fundamental task. Right, given that I've believe in these things,
Speaker 2: can I really live the life I want to live? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you know, I appreciate so much
Speaker 1: about what you're saying, and I mean it really resonates
Speaker 1: a lot with my experience, I think, just I mean,
Speaker 1: I also am under my my graduate training was in
Speaker 1: Western philosophy originally before I kind of turned to Indian traditions,
Speaker 1: and I now in retrospect, I turned true to philosophy.
Speaker 1: I think because of a spiritual crisis, like losing my
Speaker 1: faith in God at a young age and kind of
Speaker 1: seeking sort of the fulfillment of that void and thinking
Speaker 1: that some sort of like philosophical fulfillment would kind of
Speaker 1: satiate that that felt need that I had, And in
Speaker 1: some ways it did. Right. There was by there was
Speaker 1: something utterly therapeutic about understanding the world, and I think
Speaker 1: through philosophy, and I think, I think that's an underappreciated strategy,
Speaker 1: you know, by means of which to kind of ameliorate,
Speaker 1: and it's not the only one, right, And this is
Speaker 1: what I think touches on a question that was asked
Speaker 1: by Joan, who mentions that as a psycho psychiatrist psychoanalyst,
Speaker 1: what you say is kajent and fascinating. But regardless of
Speaker 1: why the anxiety, if it's bad, really bad. If it's
Speaker 1: bad really bad, some medicine are now some plant medicine
Speaker 1: can help. I think I know what your what your
Speaker 1: view is, but I feel like just by way of
Speaker 1: asking the question, I'll mention that I think the what
Speaker 1: what What came to me just reading your book, and
Speaker 1: what kind of comes to me now is just the
Speaker 1: sense of that we're by over kind of contracting kind
Speaker 1: of how we look at anxiety purely to this this
Speaker 1: kind of medical view, let's call it. We we miss
Speaker 1: the various components where it's connected essentially to a search
Speaker 1: for meaning, our lives right and and understanding kind of
Speaker 1: the whether it's you know, ontological pictures of the way
Speaker 1: things work, or it's kind of almost I don't know,
Speaker 1: literary philosophical adventure. There's these other ways in which we
Speaker 1: can enter into a relationship with and our with our anxiety.
Speaker 1: So so, yeah, perhaps you want.
Speaker 2: To speak, Yeah, I did want to, you know, I
Speaker 2: have I have a section in my book where I am,
Speaker 2: you know, where I engage in what I would call
Speaker 2: a species of psych critical writing right the and I
Speaker 2: think it's a it's a it's a it's a quite
Speaker 2: a common strand and psych critical writing to be critical
Speaker 2: of the medication regime, the medicalization of mental illness. These
Speaker 2: are common critiques that are out there, and perhaps in
Speaker 2: some sense i'm sort of chiming in, so to speak.
Speaker 2: But the two or three points in response to Joan's question.
Speaker 2: First of all, I think there are species of anxiety
Speaker 2: that are crippling, that will render us dysfunctional, and in
Speaker 2: some cases I would say, you know, when I say functional,
Speaker 2: I don't mean to be glib about it. If I
Speaker 2: am being unable to discharge my parental responsibilities because I'm
Speaker 2: incapable of doing certain things, then I think medication is
Speaker 2: a good thing. Right, there's a way in which it
Speaker 2: has spun out of control. What I think is what
Speaker 2: I think is the relevant note of caution to be
Speaker 2: struck in this domain is first of all, we should,
Speaker 2: as if we said, broaden our vision to include an
Speaker 2: existential understanding of anxiety, so that we can understand why
Speaker 2: people will remain anxious even if they are the most
Speaker 2: successful people in the world. Like I said, Jeff Bezos
Speaker 2: cannot protect himself against the fear of death. Neither is
Speaker 2: he is he going to be able to prevent a
Speaker 2: steady stream of messages over the next twenty years informing
Speaker 2: him that various people he loves are dying. Neither of
Speaker 2: these two things will his seventy billion dollars protect him from.
Speaker 2: So there's a way in which we need to come
Speaker 2: to renting with our existential condition. And I think philosophy
Speaker 2: can help. Medication will perhaps free our mind up to
Speaker 2: do philosophy. And I'll be very happy if psychiatric medication
Speaker 2: makes it possible for me to sit down and read
Speaker 2: a book. Right, That's great because then I'll be able
Speaker 2: to reflect in my condition. So I'm not anti medication.
Speaker 2: What I am against, and I think this sounds like
Speaker 2: common sense to me, is anti glib. Medication is a
Speaker 2: fundamental understanding of anxiety as a medical condition. Right. And Thirdly,
Speaker 2: what I would think, in some ways is actually the
Speaker 2: flip side of this. Take these so called attention deficit
Speaker 2: disorders that seem to be so rampant in our society.
Speaker 2: If we'd really thought about what these people might be experiencing, well,
Speaker 2: these sufferers of add might be experiencing, we might find
Speaker 2: anxiety in there somewhere. I was a very distracted reader
Speaker 2: for many years following my parents' deaths. Right, And I
Speaker 2: used to be a phenomenal reader of books, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden I I couldn't read books anymore, Right,
Speaker 2: I just couldn't concentrate on anymore. Whenever I would take
Speaker 2: a test for add I was like, yeah, I have
Speaker 2: add I have all the symptoms, But why do I
Speaker 2: have add.
Speaker 1: AM?
Speaker 2: I always distracted in freaked out because I'm anxious. Perhaps
Speaker 2: why am I anxious? Now this calls for greater investigations
Speaker 2: than just medicating me in some ways, right, And I
Speaker 2: think within the field of psychiatry, there's you know, there's
Speaker 2: an effort to make the treatment of people broader cultural, religious, social, political,
Speaker 2: that our medical histories need to be far richer narratives
Speaker 2: than just some story of you know, lab results. That's
Speaker 2: not my medical history, right, there's something broader within it.
Speaker 2: Right as far as and you know, as far as
Speaker 2: medications are concerned. Look, I've taken plenty of medications. I mean,
Speaker 2: I used to drink a lot. I've smoked a lot
Speaker 2: of weed in my life, right, you know, we medicate
Speaker 2: ourselves in various ways to calm our nerves. I like
Speaker 2: with cigarettes about fifteen twenty years ago. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: I've sort of run the gambit plant medicine. Yes, I
Speaker 2: mean I've taken you know, I've investigated, you know, like
Speaker 2: I like to say, investigated academically recreationally research research. I
Speaker 2: was doing research on psychedelics, yes, but most seriously, I
Speaker 2: think psychedelics have a very important role to play in
Speaker 2: the treatment of anxiety and depression, precisely because of the
Speaker 2: fact that, like philosophy, psychedelics offer us new advantage perspectives
Speaker 2: from which to view our place in this world. They change,
Speaker 2: and they do so in a way which marries emotions
Speaker 2: and rationality. I have a paper out on this which
Speaker 2: is forthcoming in a collection on philosophical Perspectives on Psychedelic Psychiatry,
Speaker 2: and I hope Joan will look at that volume. It
Speaker 2: should be out with Oxford University Press, in which I
Speaker 2: mentioned the importance of psychedelics in facilitating things like forgiveness. Right.
Speaker 2: Because I'm able to view people in my psychedelic experience
Speaker 2: in a kinder light, I am able to view them
Speaker 2: under different descriptions. This is not just my mother in
Speaker 2: law who upsets me. This is a seventy year old
Speaker 2: woman who's concerned about her daughter. Right, There's a very
Speaker 2: different way of viewing her that makes it possible for
Speaker 2: me to be empathetic with my mother in law and
Speaker 2: forgive her. And you know, all these kinds of complex
Speaker 2: emotional states that we undergo, and sometimes I think psychedelic
Speaker 2: treatments can help bring together certain kinds of realizations that
Speaker 2: can remove certain kinds of fears we have. You know,
Speaker 2: when I think psychedelics have a very important role to
Speaker 2: play in the treatment of anxiety, because they can remind
Speaker 2: us of how important certain relationships are. They can remind
Speaker 2: us of the value of love, They can remind us
Speaker 2: of the greatest kinds of goods that we have. I've
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think this is you know, I
Speaker 2: don't think there's anything deep in my saying that the
Speaker 2: best kinds of goods that are available to us in
Speaker 2: this existence are that we are able to spend time
Speaker 2: with folks we love, doing things we enjoy. Right. That's
Speaker 2: about That's about as good as it gets, right, And
Speaker 2: so I think anything that brings us to that state
Speaker 2: can be a treatment for anxiety in some ways. So, actually,
Speaker 2: you know, to answer your question, Jacob, when you were
Speaker 2: asking about getting to those deeper levels, we're embodied beings, right.
Speaker 2: I think this is partly why in my work I
Speaker 2: would ask people to not just reflect. I you know,
Speaker 2: I if you wanted to have a glib slogan. I
Speaker 2: would say, you know, everybody should move, everybody should meditate,
Speaker 2: everybody should be mindful. Right, we should we should bring
Speaker 2: ourselves into encounters with the transcendent, right to remove our
Speaker 2: cells from the human sphere. So we should go out
Speaker 2: on hikes. We should stand at the edges of waterfalls,
Speaker 2: and we should go into forests. We should go to
Speaker 2: the tops and mountains. Human beings have known this, They've
Speaker 2: known this that at some level, to seek out the
Speaker 2: transcendent is to deliver ourselves from this world and its
Speaker 2: demands upon us. I rock climb, and when I'm climbing
Speaker 2: and I'm on the rock, it's like, all right, all
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about now is this thing in front of me,
Speaker 2: this little nubbin that I need to get my two
Speaker 2: fingers on. Right. So, these moments, and I think at
Speaker 2: some level we know them, we're seeking deliverance from this
Speaker 2: world's demands upon us. Right. So you know when you say,
Speaker 2: is it just reasoning that's going to help me?
Speaker 1: Know?
Speaker 2: But I think philosophical counseling can make me reflect upon
Speaker 2: my mind and my state of being in this world,
Speaker 2: and it might make me seek out psychedelic treatments right,
Speaker 2: there's a sense in which these things, I think, the
Speaker 2: various ways in which we take care of each other
Speaker 2: exists in harmony. I don't think anybody's going to come
Speaker 2: to me do an hour of philosophical counseling a we
Speaker 2: can have their problem solved. But I can tell them
Speaker 2: that I think it would be really good if you
Speaker 2: took yourself out into nature more often, if you ran
Speaker 2: or moved in these ways, if you did justice to
Speaker 2: the fact that you are an embodied creature that needs,
Speaker 2: you know, sleep and good food and needs to move. Right,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a this is a reflection all
Speaker 2: the kinds of things we are, the kinds of creatures
Speaker 2: we are, that reminds us of how we should be
Speaker 2: taking care of ourselves as well. Right. Sorry, that was
Speaker 2: a really long answer to a perfectly reasonable question.
Speaker 1: But that's okay. That's beatiful. Lots of good nuggets and
Speaker 1: nuggets of insight in there. So I we should probably
Speaker 1: wrap up, so I'll but I have one more question
Speaker 1: that is one that I'm very curious about, and it
Speaker 1: actually came up as a result of or during the
Speaker 1: conversation in Boulder. Someone asked you about climate change, and
Speaker 1: you had a very interesting response, and it it really
Speaker 1: was probably the most the thing that I took away
Speaker 1: and really kind of contemplated, because the kind of one
Speaker 1: of the things that I took from what you said
Speaker 1: was or someone asked basically about the anxiety of climate change,
Speaker 1: and I guess the difference there is that with it
Speaker 1: with regards to certain circumstances, whether they're political or environmental,
Speaker 1: there's this sense that we have a responsibility to be
Speaker 1: anxious about this, that actually to not be anxious about
Speaker 1: this is actually some kind of moral failure. And actually
Speaker 1: that came from you, that that that response that there's
Speaker 1: we have some kind of weird moral relationship with with
Speaker 1: what's going on that is kind of unique to the
Speaker 1: circumstance of of of environmental kind of devastation. But it
Speaker 1: did feel like this, this in this individual who was
Speaker 1: asking this question, was like there was something just metaphysically
Speaker 1: true about the anxiety of the inevitable destruction of the planet,
Speaker 1: that there was actually no kind of like space, you know,
Speaker 1: in which one could inhabit a space outside of you know,
Speaker 1: or at least reconcile themselves with that anxiety in a
Speaker 1: way that was helpful for them. So I was just,
Speaker 1: you know, curious about this, this sense of anxiety not
Speaker 1: as something that we're looking to kind of relate to differently,
Speaker 1: to kind of ameliorate it, or to reconcile ourselves to
Speaker 1: various aspects of it, or to you know, to soften it,
Speaker 1: to make it more gentle, to relate to it in
Speaker 1: this more I don't know, empowering way or more illuminating way,
Speaker 1: but actually, this this sense that we have now where
Speaker 1: you need you have a political obligation to be anxious
Speaker 1: about these things that are rising and that are happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's interesting the word we want to
Speaker 2: use for that could be anxiety. It could be a
Speaker 2: certain kind of urgency. It could be that we have
Speaker 2: a duty to respond in certain ways to a kind
Speaker 2: of emergency that is at hand. And I think, what
Speaker 2: is I think really underwriting that question is an acknowledgment
Speaker 2: of I think one of the sometimes or not often
Speaker 2: enough acknowledge positive aspects of anxiety, right, for example, that
Speaker 2: anxiety in this case produces a kind of urgency that
Speaker 2: makes me respond to the emergency at hand. So in
Speaker 2: this case, being fearful about what might happen if some
Speaker 2: of the worst effects of climate change were to start
Speaker 2: kicking in. Is actually a good thing in this case? Right,
Speaker 2: I would say, parental anxiety is unpleasant, but I'm sure
Speaker 2: it has a great deal. It has some adaptive value
Speaker 2: in helping us, you know, anticipate all the various possibilities
Speaker 2: that might befall our child. You know, for example, I said,
Speaker 2: once my daughter was born, I was like, my god,
Speaker 2: this world is full of death traps, right, I mean
Speaker 2: death and you know, immediate harm to my child looks
Speaker 2: at every step. Then you know, it made me vigilant.
Speaker 2: It made me into a better parent in some ways.
Speaker 2: So I think there's a sense in which this animating
Speaker 2: aspect of anxiety, because it produces disturbance, restlessness, makes me inquire,
Speaker 2: makes me get up to see what that knocking on
Speaker 2: the roof is, right, because I'm alarmed. These are in
Speaker 2: some ways I think we know them. Fear makes us
Speaker 2: respond in ways that keeps us alive, that keeps our
Speaker 2: families alive, that responds to emergencies and anxiety also, like
Speaker 2: I point out, is a valuable source of self knowledge
Speaker 2: as well. So maybe in some ways, and you know,
Speaker 2: this is a kind of an esoteric point perhaps to
Speaker 2: make that if and this is you know, Kickerguard's point
Speaker 2: in a way that if I don't listen to my anxiety,
Speaker 2: if I don't pay enough attention to it, I might
Speaker 2: not find out enough about myself. Right, there's a sense
Speaker 2: in which my anxieties tell me something about who or
Speaker 2: what I am, because not everybody has the same anxieties.
Speaker 2: So there's a sense in which an investigation into that
Speaker 2: can proceed by an examination of what makes me particularly
Speaker 2: anxious or fearful. It reminds me of what my values
Speaker 2: are in some ways. Right, So I think this is
Speaker 2: getting at what I would consider a kind of value
Speaker 2: that anxiety might have for us, and a kind of
Speaker 2: loss that we might suffer were we to get rid
Speaker 2: of anxiety if it was possible, right, if you could
Speaker 2: completely medicate it out of existence, for instance, we might
Speaker 2: be losing out on something, right, because all these attempts
Speaker 2: to assuage our existence can often be very creative, right.
Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, Yeah, that was kind of the other. The
Speaker 1: other thing that I wanted to kind of bring up
Speaker 1: is just I mean, in so far as I label
Speaker 1: what is the motivating agitation of my life anxiety, it
Speaker 1: is also the source of my creativity, and I think
Speaker 1: the source of so many people's creativity. I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: what caused you to write you know so beautifully in
Speaker 1: your book, right, And and you know that seems to
Speaker 1: be one way of just understanding kind of the gift
Speaker 1: of of of our states, our various states of anxiety,
Speaker 1: in so far as you know, they're not ruling our
Speaker 1: lives and making it so unpleasant that you know, we're
Speaker 1: kind of limited in ways that we don't want to be. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: this has been such a fantastic conversation, and you know,
Speaker 1: there were so many other things to talk about. It's
Speaker 1: such a rich topic and and a couple of the
Speaker 1: the traditions that you explore in your book, Anxiety A
Speaker 1: Philosophical Guide, including the chapter on psychoanalysis and freud Fredian psychoanalysis.
Speaker 1: There's also a lot of exploration of the work of
Speaker 1: Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse and and just so much insight,
Speaker 1: So many different directions we could have gone on, but
Speaker 1: I feel so if anybody feels like they want more,
Speaker 1: definitely get a Samir's book, Anxiety Philosophical Guide, available a bookstore,
Speaker 1: ner You, or Amazon and it really is a wonderful book.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful read, not too long so you can
Speaker 1: you can get through it probably fairly quickly, but it's
Speaker 1: the perfect size in my opinion, and and really just
Speaker 1: like a treasure trove of insight and beautiful, thoughtful exploration
Speaker 1: of this concept of anxiety from a variety of perspectives. So,
Speaker 1: Samir to close, is there anything that you'd like to
Speaker 1: kind of end on, anything related to sort of what
Speaker 1: we've spoken about that you feel like we could tie
Speaker 1: up in a certain way, or any closing remarks.
Speaker 2: You know, I just wanted to say thanks for having
Speaker 2: me on. I think every time I talk about anxiety
Speaker 2: and philosophy, I think, you know, there are dimensions of
Speaker 2: it that sort of come to light even as I
Speaker 2: talk about it. So I always appreciate these moments. I
Speaker 2: think one thing that has happened in my speaking of
Speaker 2: anxiety is that I've become more and more concerned about
Speaker 2: the centrality of you know, of our needful love. I
Speaker 2: think there is a It's an often ignored aspect, but
Speaker 2: it seems to me to be popping up more. There's
Speaker 2: been discussions about, you know, loneliness and alienation, So I
Speaker 2: do think that is you know, I think there's something
Speaker 2: I'd really want people to take away from this book
Speaker 2: is to reflect on our ontological conditions, to reflect on
Speaker 2: our existential condition, to be combescant of it, to accept it,
Speaker 2: and then work to make our lives be such so that,
Speaker 2: you know, from that Buddhist sense, we acknowledge the rawness
Speaker 2: of the need of love that we all have and
Speaker 2: be frank about it and really try try to understand
Speaker 2: how it underwrites so much of the suffering that we
Speaker 2: see today. Right, you know, there are, like I said,
Speaker 2: there's no deliverance from anxiety, there's a living with it.
Speaker 2: And I think in that living, you know, we have resources.
Speaker 2: The world is beautiful, we have love, we have great
Speaker 2: books to read, you know, words of wisdom. There's nature
Speaker 2: out there that if we can get out and you know,
Speaker 2: take a look at it and put ourselves into contact
Speaker 2: with the sublime. So, you know, there's a sense in
Speaker 2: which I'm like, there's no cure, but there is reason
Speaker 2: for hope. Right. So I think that's the best place
Speaker 2: to close this on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you for ending on love. I think that's
Speaker 1: the best.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I always know all my clients, like
Speaker 2: it's I'm going to lay my theoretical cards on the table.
Speaker 2: We need to knowledge our need for love.
Speaker 1: It's so important, right, absolutely. And also, you know, I
Speaker 1: appreciated so much what you said about expanding kind of
Speaker 1: the conception of philosophy. That is definitely something that is
Speaker 1: an idea really important to me. And I remember speaking
Speaker 1: to someone about you know, being able to incorporate almost
Speaker 1: like contemplative practices as under sort of the banner of
Speaker 1: the philosophical thought experiment, right, so that we can kind
Speaker 1: of because to me, what is interesting is this capacity,
Speaker 1: this a possibility of actually using what i'd call like
Speaker 1: embodied epistemologies in order to cultivate you know, within ourselves below. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so it's it's nice to hear of other
Speaker 1: people who actually did work within the academic philosophical environment
Speaker 1: having those those aspirations for a philosophy that might be
Speaker 1: a little more expansive.
Speaker 2: And embody, you know, we should we should talk about this. Uh,
Speaker 2: there's a yeah, there's there's a couple of topics I
Speaker 2: have running through my mind about stuff we can do
Speaker 2: if you ever talk again. And yeah, that would fantagicists
Speaker 2: and the stuff on a broader conception of what it
Speaker 2: means to be philosophizing, and I think how it relates
Speaker 2: to something that would be connect to the concept of
Speaker 2: actually living a philosophical life or philosophically informed life. I
Speaker 2: think those could be you know, yeah, topics for a
Speaker 2: conversation somewhere down the.
Speaker 1: I love that, sir. That sounds like a great lecture
Speaker 1: plus Q and A. I mean, let me write like
Speaker 1: I said, let's do it all right?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds fantastic. I will definitely I'm going to
Speaker 1: reach out to you after this and get you on
Speaker 1: the books. So besides that, besides your future talk that
Speaker 1: you're giving on living a philosophical life, what else can
Speaker 1: would you like to share with the the listeners the
Speaker 1: viewers about what's coming up for you? I know you're
Speaker 1: mentioned the book. Is there anything like to point people
Speaker 1: in the direct.
Speaker 2: Have I'll be speaking at at a Smithsonian Online event
Speaker 2: in in in November. I'll be speaking at the University
Speaker 2: of Dayton in November. I'll be doing a couple of
Speaker 2: podcasts in you know, the next couple of months. I'm
Speaker 2: online at samir Chopera dot com, which is my you know,
Speaker 2: my side for anyone that wants to get in touch
Speaker 2: with me. And I hope to be doing more podcasts
Speaker 2: on this topic and especially you know, connecting the topic
Speaker 2: of anxiety to large political and cultural issues. And I
Speaker 2: think that's a topic of some interest to me and
Speaker 2: so and I think hopefully, yeah, some of those more
Speaker 2: discussions down the line, uh, will come about my you know,
Speaker 2: my my books out there. As you mentioned, there's a
Speaker 2: few essays on mine. Some of the essays that underwrote
Speaker 2: this book are out there. If you just search for
Speaker 2: for Samir Chopper Anxiety, you'll find those. Uh yeah, and
Speaker 2: I would love to hear from there.
Speaker 1: A website you'd like to share, it's just.
Speaker 2: You know, Samir Chopra dot com. Yeah, that's that's my
Speaker 2: sort of my my my shingle on the net, and
Speaker 2: they'll they'll find me at Amazon as well, and you
Speaker 2: can sort of you know, google Semir Chopra Anxiety to
Speaker 2: find my various writings. I would love to hear from people.
Speaker 2: If you know people are here today, they would, you know,
Speaker 2: want to send me emails. I would love to hear
Speaker 2: from folks. Yeah, so thank you very much.
Speaker 1: What email should they send? It to us and then
Speaker 1: off forward it to here.
Speaker 2: I could give you an email, is there please, I'm
Speaker 2: just going to put it into my chat. I can
Speaker 2: see the chat this is so that's the website and
Speaker 2: I'm going to type in my Gmail addresses. Well great, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think, and I think, you know, people should read
Speaker 2: more philosophy.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I believe, I agree.
Speaker 2: I think it's just you know, it's it's other human
Speaker 2: beings like you and me, you know, thinking through life's
Speaker 2: problems and give it there, giving it a go. And
Speaker 2: we're all philosophers in one way or the other. So
Speaker 2: I think we should participate in this tradition of philosophizing
Speaker 2: that has been ours. Right, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I absolutely agree, and I'm glad you're representing that. Thanks
Speaker 1: that campaign first of all to read more philosophy. All right,
Speaker 1: Thank you all so much for joining us on this
Speaker 1: live edition of the chid Haads podcast. It was such
Speaker 1: a delight to see so many of you out there.
Speaker 1: I think at some point it was close to sixty
Speaker 1: maybe even more. I wasn't looking all the time, but
Speaker 1: I did see it one time it was about fifty five.
Speaker 1: So thank you very much for joining us. It really
Speaker 1: is so fun to have a live audience and we
Speaker 1: can feel all of your energy, all your anxiety coalescing
Speaker 1: into a beautiful fever pitch of wonder and love. So
Speaker 1: thank you all so much for coming and joining us.
Speaker 1: I have been speaking once again to Samir Chopra, the
Speaker 1: author of Anxiety, a Philosophical Guide. Samir, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for.
Speaker 2: Joining us, Thanks very much for having me on Jacob,
Speaker 2: and thanks very much to everybody for their feedback and
Speaker 2: their questions. Thank you bye for now and.
Speaker 1: Such a pleasure. Bye bye, everybody.