The underlying psychology and evolution of “us and them” drives tribalism. Mindfulness can help address this problem by helping us see ourselves and the world clearly. By overcoming confirmation bias, cultivating objectivity, practicing empathy and compassion, and more, we can overcome these biases and see ourselves and the world more clearly.
Robert Wright, a best-selling author, presents a deeply informative and practical audio workshop called “How Mindfulness Can Heal the World: Evolving Beyond Tribalism”. This workshop provides insights and guided practices to help us evolve beyond tribal thinking. Wright argues that most people are part of the problem of tribalism, as natural selection engineered the human mind to be susceptible to certain behaviors.
Wright’s book, “How Mindfulness Can Heal the World: Evolving Beyond Tribalism”, is available on Amazon.com.au and can be purchased on Indigo. The audio CD of “How Mindfulness Can Heal the World: Evolving Beyond Tribalism” by Robert Wright is available for purchase on Indigo.
The workshop deepens our understanding of mindfulness as a powerful tool for making us happier, less reactive, and less prone to antisocial anger and rage. By practicing mindfulness, we can overcome confirmation bias, cultivate objectivity, practice empathy, and compassion, ultimately helping us see ourselves and the world more clearly.
📹 Overcoming Tribalism
October 10, 2021 at 10:00 am Rev. Jim Coakley Tribalism is an accurate name for the animosity we are experiencing right now.
📹 Sam Harris ON: The MEANING OF LIFE & Finding Wisdom Through MEDITATION | Jay Shetty
Today, I sit down with Sam Harris to talk about dealing with extreme emotions and pursuing your purpose. We discuss our …
Uh super exciting guest choice. I’ve been stepping away from “On Purpose” the last couple of months, nearly years as I felt the guests and topics got very broad, generic and a bit too mass-appealing for my taste. Sam is a breath of fresh air and brings a very different, interesting and insightful perspective to the topics of mindfulness, meditation and spirituality. Always loved his way of thinking and expressing himself so power to you Jay for making this happen.
I will listen to this again and again. Love Sam’s answers to the 5 questions. Last night and once in a blue moon I feel I’m a peanut floating into a galaxy. I like what Sam said about dying and going to sleep. I slept by my mom’s bedside in palliative care for a week and heard her last breathe. I feel at peace and not afraid of dying.
This article was so insightful and inspiring! I love how Sam explains the difference between being and becoming, and how we can find peace in the present moment without giving up on our goals and values. He also makes a great point about the role of luck in our lives, and how we should be compassionate and responsible towards others who are less fortunate. I think this is a very important message for our 21st century world, where we face so many challenges and opportunities. Thank you Jay for hosting this amazing conversation with one of my favorite thinkers! 🙏👏👍
Begin this evening with a deep breath. Note the colors of the sky. Did you notice when day turned to night? One follows the other without fail. There is comfort in that reliability. After a while, your new habits will become as reliable as night following day. And when that occurs, take heart, there is always another path to explore. Your capacity for change will have grown, and life will begin to reflect your design.
“I think we have to view people on some level as equivalent to forces of nature. We dont get angry at hurricanes. But if we coule lock hurricanes in prison we would. We never take that extra step of actually hating them.” truly an enlightened person with profound ideas and with the ability to articulate them so well
One of the better Sam Harris interviews, and it was good to see Sam so at ease and seemingly enjoying the conversation as well. This was one of those Sam Harris interviews that brought me a great deal of peace while listening, there’s something so calming about his perspective, his meditation advice, just his overall presence.
THANK YOU SAM HARRIS for your wonderful contributions! Your many supporters cheer you on as you wage a war on two fronts, inner and outer. An equanimous monk and yet a political combatant always prepared to enter the arena of ideas, Mr. HARRIS’ prowess is unmatched! HARRIS proves that you can have your cake and eat it; total intellectual clarity without the loss of any truly important spiritual content. From Taiwan I commend your efforts! I spread your teachings to my friends and their anxiety is totally reduced.
Because Sam was trying his hardest to summarize the aspects, I got lost a couple of times. But with every rewind to listen again to the new information my mind was acquiring, I got to a level of understanding what he’s teaching/sharing. Life is indeed a journey of lessons, never-ending, daily if not hourly, in all forms possible. How we absorb, react, and learn from the JOURNEY makes a might difference in our journey on (although sometimes it feels like journey paused due to stagnation 😅).
The end part of the conversation on IDENTITY was mind-blowing! and how detached he is from all the greatest things he has done through his career and the way he describes it is just truthfully factful, and learned a lot from how honestly he could describe it with words we can actually understand 👏🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻Surreally real conversation
The frequency of Sam’s voice and the sentences constructed are brutally truthful, yet in that divine process, I am being unshackled by a predominant perspective that didn’t serve me to live the life for itself… this article is so great …. Sam and Jay’s conversation is so great…. beyond greatness
Hello Jay and Sam Was wondering since you have a platform of almost 2,000,000 subscribers and Sam has a big potential why don’t you set something up where someone can go and vote, where is then you can tweet Elon musk and say look 80% of my subscribers have voted or voice, their opinion that they think you need to find a way to either source cobalt ethically or find a better technology. How is the Elon musk must be aware of this, but God most people think what a great guy Elon is. Otherwise, thousands of children will probably die in the next couple of years as this horrible practice continues. Thank you. PS Sam should also try and do some research to wake up that global warming is not just happening because we are still driving in cars Also perhaps you should be initiatives if they are trying to ban gas cars by 2030 perhaps there should be a ban on private jet planes for personal use Thank you
I owe this person the courage he gave me to start my YouTube website 2 months ago about self development and now have 61 subs and almost 40 hours watch time. I know it’s not comparable with others but I’m still proud I started because I’ve been learning so much lessons that I couldn’t have learned without getting started in the 1st place
✨✨Purification✨✨ That really hit me in the core. You took this message to the NEXT level. There is such depth on this subject. I found this very helpful. You both left me with a much better understanding of living out the process of emotions such as anger & fear, Etc. I agree, we need to discuss this on a greater scale. Emotional balance and freedom is the goal. I appreciate your heart & dedication to your work. It’s changing lives out here…Fact! Blessed
I loved listening to your Podcast on Spotify and I always enjoyed hearing it while I was eating, cleaning or cooking. But recently there are so many Ads between one Episode that it became very stressful to listen to. Hopefully it will change so I can enjoy the Podcast again. Thank you and despite it I wish nothing but the best.
I am so glad I discovered Sam a few months ago! I’ve been studying him deeply ever since. The most surprising thing I have discovered about him is his Twitter experience and how long it took him to get out of it. If Sam with all his life experience, fell for the “Twitter trap” what hope do we have?:-)
Dear Jay, PLEASE release us of manipulative and exploitative tendencies, as in really rude obnoxious advertising every FIVE minutes, interrupting the middle of sentences in this brilliant discourse that you are having with your excellent guests. There are many, such as Tara Brach, Brene Brown, joe Dispeza and more who never subject us to such offenses. Love the content, but try getting through just one of your own interviews without a YouTube subscription that some of us cannot afford in these times. PLEASE change your settings, you WILL get more subscribers.
Sam always articulates complex ideas well, but in this interview my attention was also drawn to the interviewer, Jay Shetty. I’ve never seen this interviewer before, but he was modestly and sincerely acting in good faith, drawing answers out of Sam rather than trying to act cleverly or try out gotcha questions.
I appreciate this style of interviewing. I have watched Sam Harris getting interviewed by people who seemed more interested in interrupting and interjecting their own views and it’s refreshing to see a conversation like this one where there is such an obvious air of mutual respect. Both voices sound like they come from a place of honest wisdom.
I loved his point about being ethical and solving problems we face on systemic levels. The problem we have in every element it seems today is we end up a lot of the time with unethical people in positions of decision where they are more interested in making themself money in the short term than the betterment of mankind in the long run. We need to have a system of getting the right people in positions of leadership and that on the basis of betterment of everyone and not money being the driver. Loved this podcast please put on here more people who care about people coz I’m here for it 🙌🏻💖🙌🏻💖🙌🏻💖
@41:12 IMO, something Sam needs to tease out is some independent variable that predestines luck. He is not advocating that luck is 50:50; rather, that it increasingly correlates w/ wealth. He also does not wonder “what if luck is correlated w/ irrational, impulsive, intuitive action, actions outside the box, definitionally risky.” That cannot be redistributed. In the end, I would guess he means wealth will be redistributed. That said, I always thought Trump (business/law savvy, The Apprentice mentality) should (have) run on a message of “Make Americans great at entrepreneurship (MAGAE) pronounced “Maggie” 😊, and started sucking funding away from military, big corp, and ivory towers (and the fake ones, like ASU in AZ) and started “betting on” citizens. That program should (have) focused on, among other very important things, adjusting the risk-o-meter 🆙 several notches for everyone willing. Plus education acronyms get yet another letter, E: a STEAME (pronounced ‘steamy’) curriculum!
@14:16 IMO, Sam has not thought deeply enough about the major problem w/ so-called golden rule (& variations), especially if considering the conflicts outside of family, between neighbors/properties, essentially multicultural disagreements. (I would even argue between family members, as one can never judge another’s needs w/o explicit agreements or piecemeal statements.) Doing unto others while relying on personal tastes as guidance … is childish, and leads to much conflict between adults. Analogous to endless history of governmental leaders, ivory tower elitists, and many other minute, daily examples in our day-to-day where the arrogant person righteously “knows” that which is good for others. When confronted, the arrogant may not be willing to acknowledge differences in taste, values, goals of others, rather claiming “it’s obvious!” or “I did it with best/pure intentions … you know, The Golden Rule!”
NO REPLY 💁♂️ 4 been about four days later Concerning my comment about either you, Jay or Sam Harris, actually doing something proactive with your platform and contacting Elon musk, and calling him out on this practice that is using slave, labor, and children for his batteries in the Tesla Not only did you not reply seems like none of your listeners care either because they didn’t make a comment or even liked.
This reminds me of my Buddhist days in the 1970’s. Unfortunately, it didn’t help me to find peace in suffering, which is why I progressed to God, or more correctly,God bestowed his Grace upon me, unexpectedly. This is fine for relaxation and clearing one’s head of thoughts and just being in the moment, but personally, I need to make sense out of the intrinsic suffering in the world, not just find a little space inside my head which is peaceful.
This battery is not made by men’s hands! What other hands besides men’s own understanding, demise, nor calls themselves high standards nor religious! Students and Hosts will say many will WONDER. Including science, technology, mathematicians, nor men molding iron nor elements. Is like none of these will exist without the Footstool. Heirs will say thy feet resting upon.
I’m addressing your comments made about trying to correct / clarify the deliberate twisting of things said while being engaged with people on line. I loved the way Elon Musk handled this sort of thing. I just watched a recent interview of him. He briefly tried to clarify a statement he made about the situation in Israel. His statement was misinterpreted. People were threatening to try to destroy Tesla by giving Tesla a bad name in order to retaliate for his supposedly anti Israeli statement. His response to the people who were twisting his statements ? He turned to the camera and directed this comment to those people. He twice said “Fuck you”. He was asked ” what if they are successful at destroying Tesla”. He said “let the chips fall where they may. They’ll have to answer to the earth if they’re successful” referring to the damage to the earth caused by impeding progress in electric cars. I found Musk’s atypical way of handling this to be humorous and uplifting.
One last comment or it seems to me that Sam Harris, definition of spirituality is different than mine, and perhaps many people in the world. I think he is saying spirituality is living consciously so that you are aware of your negative thoughts so that you can proactively be aware of them, and not be affected by them. So basically, he is an Atheist just like his pal Richard Dawkins he seems to be of the opinion that once you die, that is final, there is no energy or conscious higher being or soul that goes onwards I’m a bit disappointed Jay that you did not question him about this With you being a monk do you not believe that there was some sort of ultimate creator that created our universe and everything around us?🙏
Dear Sam I have found that there are two types of “pride”. 1st type (of pride) is born out of ego/arrogance. This one is abrasive and really unattractive. It’s bragging and generally just showing off for “likes” in whatever form that takes. The second type (of pride) is born out of humility. This is the kind of pride that is wholesome and good. It’s the kind of pride that I want to feel all the time. Thank you for sharing your gifts with the world – Helping so many people should make you the right kind of proud❤
My question is how can Sam actually believe that human behavior is determined just as he described. He likened human beings and their behavior as analagous to a bear living in the wild. He’s saying a bear, a wild animal can’t help behaving the way it does and that humans are just like that. My view is that a wild animal is very different than a human being who has a developed cerebral cortex and has a moral sense of what is right or wrong behavior. Would Sam excuse Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot because they couldn’t behave differently akin to a wild animal? If they could have behaved differently then they were responsible for the grave atrocities they committed. Also I disagree with Sam’s view on sleep being analogous to death. Yes we do sleep every night and the important point is that we know that normally we expect to wake up at some point and continue our lives. Death is permanent loss. Unlike sleep we will never wake up and we will never see or communicate with our loved ones ever again. So sleep and death are two very different things.
Meditation: Closing your eyes and having a conversation with yourself. I used to do this under warm water in the shower where the sound of the water would cover other sounds. My family used to watch movies next to my room so I could never go to sleep as a movie was playing. The shower was where I meditated. Any other belief as to what meditation is… just goes against you Becoming something more than just an animal. “Yes yes I sit and think”. No. Closing your eyes and having a back and forth with arguments in your mind. Literally weighing pros and cons as if there were external judgement, but.. it is you that learns how to manage the possibilities. While this is not the only necessity of the mind, its a start.
I find Sam’s views to have a lot of reductionist baggage, and I don’t think his counsel is any more beneficial than the advice of say, Mr Rogers’ “What do you do with the mad that you feel?”. Sam seems to argue that you need to adopt a reductionist view of the world in order to “break the spell” of being lost in thought, poor self-control, negative thought patterns, etc. He suggests that you need to adopt a view of the world where what seems to be the case is “just” x, y, and z. For example, it seems like you are something like an integrated self, but you’re really just a stream of experience, it seems like you are the “center” or “hub” of various inputs, but there really is no center and there is just some sort of nebulous consciousness and its contents, it seems like anger is a real state of mind caused by certain events, but it’s just a hot feeling of the face, and so on. I’m not saying that what Sam is pitching here isn’t beneficial. I’m sure that if you take his advice, you will have better self-awareness, better emotional regulation, a more steady demeanor, and so on. I just don’t think his reductionist philosophy is necessary to achieve those things. There are millions of people who have high self-awareness, who are very emotionally mature, who can enjoy living peacefully in the moment, etc, but who also believe that the self is not an illusion, that they are not just x, y, and z. I also think that Sam sometimes ironically implicitly endorses a sort of dualism. For example, he says that if you have no mindfulness and can’t “break the spell” of being lost in thought and emotion, then you are a hostage to your own endless inner monologue and emotions.
Really interesting and great episode. I find it annoying and frustrating though, at 47:12 when a brief description of a system “batteries soaked in blood” “no good option” has just put most average people off ever buying an EV. Not all electric vehicles fall into this category, the individual person should ask at the dealership for more information or do their own research into what is being used for the battery of the car they want to buy.
Life has the character of randomness. Not everything is random because we have some agency. Even so, the nature of life has no inherent meaning. It is in this context that life is quite absurd. We live life trying to create meaning, but life’s response is silence. Accepting this brings us to reality. Evolution makes life random, and entropy makes life short. Meaning is a hope and creation of our own mind. It does not actually exist. Live with this truth and be virtuous. Be kind and gentle and enjoy the experience of being alive now. Sam makes things so much more difficult than necessary.
Reading scripture critically and aware of the context in which it is written, is important. Jesus, I have found, is the way, truth and life. He united divinity and humanity; we were bound to this finite life until this “goldilocks” moment in the universe. He draws close to us still in the comforting presence of God with us in the Holy Spirit. That’s what I believe. Thank you for you insightful discussion.
“As we grow wealthier and wealthier and and can take advantage of good luck over here, we should want to engineer a tide where all boats rise”. Sorry mate…..have you had a look at the mass disparity in wealth ‘over here’? Have you had a look at the people that pay your wages? Have you taken off your rose-tinted specs and had a look at the people who hold the purse strings? Perhaps have a read of Gabor Maté’s very well researched, honest book ‘The Myth of Normal’ and then let’s have a chat about that boat rising ….because right now, I believe people like yourself, with your knowledge, influence and wealth, could be prodding a few more people up on Capitol Hill?
To the question difference between Sprituality and Religion Sam’s answers were vague. In Religion one has to accept some absolute things like concept of creator God, Heaven Hell or Enlightenment or Nirvana. In Sprituality once can just practise compassion, tolerance patience generosity without accepting next life past life and god or Hell and Devil.
It’s fine to be a critic of organised religion. But if we can understand the importance of organising things and the process of organisation being integral, we can at least have understanding and depth of perspective and empathy for how we have attempted to organise ideas. We can criticise the organisational process, the ideas that are being used as pillars for that process of organisation. That’s all fine. But to detach for a moment from the ‘religion is wrong and bad’ framing, so we understand this process of organisation we can glean from our heritage wonderful and important and practical tools that can help us reorganise into the future. Like Sam has done with meditation. I still think there is room within all of this conversation for the imagination and curiosity to wonder about the truth.
Since there is no need to become to “get to”awareness since awareness always IS yet that level of reality often is applied wrongly to our ethics or values. Maybe our “ignorance” mentioned in certain useful texts is nothing more than a “mix up”… confusing levels of reality. Both gotta be gauged properly and thus avoid as much unnecessary sorrow as possible. So, I can only see the “knowledge” mentioned for many years also has to be about what do I have and need not stress the experience of the possession of and what is needed to attain? Thanks for this discussion bros!
Forever grateful for this discussion. Bringing up to the surface today’s society issues I can relate to having an outburst in corporate institutions where there is still present abuse at at work and people in power using their position to harm others instead of protecting them. I am a whistle blower at my work place and I can say I had to suffer when I did the right thing or said the truth, however standing up for a cause bears with it meaning and can have the impact of change which I am willing to strive for.
You set off on a quest the moment you opened this app. You have already begun that journey. Every day you are learning, practicing, returning, evolving. It’s important that you give yourself credit for every bit of effort you make, no matter the outcome. You are in the process of redesigning your life.
He is right! I am so sad and feel like crying about Congo and I did know that! If we want to all live simply as long as we have proper nutrition, healthy mind and compassionate to each and everyone of us the world would be better to live, I can’t do anything just helping my recycles my garbage but for all those who can do more not to share their wealth if they don’t want too, but have compassionate to human being, we can’t take all these materials things it’s only temporary acquisition but we should think all about it.
Thank you for sharing this interesting conversation – much wisdom spoken. I agree that anyone with enough time to listen is already privileged and probably within the wealthiest 10%. I am very fortunate. I do not agree that there is ‘spirituality in wealth’. Or at least not in the western definition of wealth. Our insatiable desire to accumulate possessions is the single biggest contributor to environmental destruction and the existential crisis that we have created. I do agree that there are other types of wealth that are spiritual ( such as kindness, humility, gentleness) – but none of these appear in the Oxford dictionary. So might be worth caveating before trying to tie spirituality to wealth in the future. We have enough problems without feeding narcissistic billionaires egos with the false belief that what they are doing is in anyway spiritual. Other than that I found the podcast to be really positive. Thx.
Sam is brilliant, but this is my disagreement with much Buddhist based meditation – you don’t get angry at the lion because he’s being a lion, you don’t get angry at the brick that falls in your head because it’s an inanimate object, but you do get angry at the felon who breaks in your house because s/he has a much bigger brain capable of higher thought and that brain has made a choice…this is why we have a criminal Justice system – we hold criminals responsible.
📌Friends, I hope this helps someone who needs to hear it💜 According to many Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), we come here to learn about love experientially and to apply what we learn. A soul cannot do that in the ethereal realm because everything is perfect there. To understand the light (love), one must experience darkness; one cannot truly know what a thing is until it has been contrasted with its opposite. I believe we choose to come here, and sometimes not just to learn, but to help others (to teach). Heaven is home, but once we’ve enjoyed basking for eons in perfect heavenly bliss, we might look forward to a new challenge/adventure in this amazing universe. I think the soul takes on these ‘lives’ just as we opt to read books or watch movies — sometimes a comedy, other times a drama or thriller etc., — but all for the sole purpose of learning to love. So please don’t fear the process; God knows what He’s doing. Don’t be a backseat driver! 😊 However, I do believe that it’s imperative that we learn to love (mercy, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, fortitude, equanimity, etc.), otherwise, experiences and even lives may repeat until we do so. Understandably, God always gives precedence to the soul over the body. Once we’ve overcome all our challenges, I doubt we’ll come here too often, if at all. I believe that an important thing to remember is the ‘golden thread’ that seems to run through most NDEs; namely, we are a part of God (His children), we’re eternal, we’re loved beyond measure, and we come here to learn to love.
I don’t think he’s on solid ground in denying that conscience influences decisions and that we don’t have free will. I also think he is politically wrong about reducing inequalities instead of encouraging only poverty reduction and no limit to the best of human beings. Other than that I think he’s pretty good
Everything that this man says seems wise. It is however meaningless and incoherent in contrast with physicalism. This man endorses the idea that first where the particles and neural chemistry is what we are reduce to. You can’t get meaning and well-being or even consciousness from mass, charge, spin… etc This man has a cognitive dissonant intellect
By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. (1 Co 15:3-4 ) Jesus is coming rescuing/snatching believers up to Heaven! 🛈see Playlist.