Video summary
In this discussion, Sam Harris addresses the public perception of his split from Jordan Peterson, clarifying that while their relationship has been strained by external events, he does not believe it is fundamentally broken despite a lack of recent dialogue. The two have debated religion extensively over several years and remain happy to converse with one another. However, they hold fundamental disagreements regarding spirituality; Harris argues that Peterson's approach often relies on traditional religious thinking and literal belief in stories that cannot be justified by modern science. In contrast, Harris advocates for a non-sectarian way of finding meaning through ethics and spiritual experiences derived from human consciousness rather than specific dogmas or supernatural claims about angels or deities. Harris elaborates on the distinct audiences each thinker has influenced, noting that Peterson often helps individuals who are traumatized by religious fear but drawn to Enlightenment values find a path toward secular rationality. For Harris, this is only part of the story; he believes true spirituality involves recognizing the illusion of the ego and experiencing unconditional love for all sentient beings. He suggests these transformative states can be accessed through meditation or psychedelics like MDMA without requiring belief in empirical falsehoods, offering a profound consolation that mere amazement at nature cannot provide when facing life's darkest moments. The conversation also touches on how their differing worldviews have shaped their public personas and careers, particularly regarding the recent controversies Harris faced online involving his comments on the Hunter Biden laptop situation. While these events devastated Peterson's perception of Harris as someone who had "gone off the rails," Harris views them from a different perspective where nothing significant occurred in terms of truth or ethics. He acknowledges that Peterson may view him through an echo chamber filled with half-truths about free speech, vaccines, and political polarization, which creates a disconnect between their realities even if they personally still hold mutual respect for each other's intellectual journeys. Ultimately, Harris emphasizes the importance of rebuilding trust in institutions and media channels after events like COVID-19, arguing that simply proliferating podcasts is insufficient to navigate current societal challenges. He expresses hope that despite these crosswinds and ideological differences, there remains a hunger among people for both thinkers to speak again given their formative roles in many lives. While he recognizes the potential breach caused by political polarization and misinformation environments, Harris maintains his stance on maintaining intellectual integrity without compromising core values or succumbing to contrarian narratives that distort reality.
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I think there's an awful lot of people
who want to see that public relationship
between you and him rekindled well it
hasn't I mean to my eye it is not uh
been broken I mean I like Jordan I mean
I think this is just this is what I
imagined because I have not had any
dialogue with him in in a couple years
but
um I mean Jordan and I disagree
fundamentally about religion I think and
we've debated that you know Ad nauseam
and we've probably got like 12 hours you
know on the mic in various venues
debating that um and that was fun and
I'm always happy to talk to him
um and I think he while we disagree I
think he has really helped millions of
people I mean I think he's there's no
question I've I I know what it's like to
be with him at an event and to hear from
the people who who are you know hear
from his fans and my fans side by side
sitting at a table for an hour after an
event where we you know had a debate in
front of 8 000 people
um
and there's a slightly different flavor
to the people whose lives we've changed
right he's he's intersected with a with
a different group of people at a
different point in their lives than I
have for the most how do you categorize
that difference
well I mean to a significant degree is
people moving in two opposite directions
I mean like they're they're the people
who
were stuck with a religious worldview
stuck I mean literally in many cases
traumatized by a fear of hell that had
been inculcated into them by their
religious parents but
were
enamored enough of Enlightenment values
and secular rationality and science so
as to have the
this the spell break to some significant
degree and they needed some language to
to help kind of Midwife their delivery
into a into the clear light of of reason
right and they also needed so and this
is where Richard and I have kind of have
had different jobs I mean Richard is
just
critiquing religion and counterposing it
with
all that's wonderful about science right
and so for him the the spiritual
attitude that is on offer when you once
you leave religion behind and you know
you know close the church doors behind
you is
are the beauty of Nature and just
amazement at you know everything we are
learning and may yet learn about the way
the world works and the way that the
mind works and
um I mean we are
nothing to use Newton's image I mean
it's like we are children on a seashore
playing with shells and the vast ocean
of of ignorance and potential knowledge
it just awaits our our inspection
um
for me that's not good enough right what
I mean by spirituality
has in fact nothing to do with the
amazement that you feel when you look up
at the Milky Way right it's like that
that's that's great but that's just not
that's just not the
the real opportunity on offer and that's
not what's going to prepare us to die
you know and that's not what's going to
really console you at four in the
morning when you wake up
feeling bad about your life and not sure
how you can be happy in this world right
um
so I'm much more so I I'm convinced that
at the core of every religion there was
there were real transformative and and
Transcendent human experiences that are
attested to by the literature and
traditions that have grown up around
that religion so there really was you
know presumably there really was a
person you know in history by the name
of Jesus who had this effect on the
people around him and said you know
something like what he has purported to
have said in the Bible
and I can I can understand all of that
as
a a absolutely predictable result of
certain ways of of paying attention that
are available to every human being now
you know then now then and now
um which allow you to recognize that
that this ego you take yourself to be is
an illusion and it allows you to
recognize that unconditional love is
actually a possibility right like you
can it's possible to
just feel
Shattered by your love for all sentient
beings and to just to bask in the
profundity of that way of being and
that's on the menu and whether you have
to just whether you have to go into a
cave and meditate for a month to find
that or you take MDMA or you have there
are ways to perturb your nervous system
such that
the testimony of Someone Like Jesus or
Buddha is not
is obviously not a fraud it's obviously
not a confession of Psychopathology it's
obviously not a delusion about
you know belief-based illusion about
what happens after death or about
invisible parts of the universe and you
know populated by Angels or deities you
don't have to believe in anything
on empirical in order to experience that
range of of positive experience you just
have to learn to use your attention in
the right ways and and if you can't do
that you know there are you know
psychedelics offer a
an imperfect method
yeah I mean it's definitely reliable
it's a reliable glimpse of something
that is different enough
uh assuming you have a positive
experience I mean you can have a
different enough negative experience
that will convince you of something else
but if you have a different enough
extraordinarily positive experience
you'll be convinced that okay what
whatever
the possibilities of sustaining that may
or may not be
it is just clear that this experience is
possible because I just had it right I
just had it for four hours and
I can no longer imagine that human
consciousness is is in principle
confined to
and the the mediocre bandwidth I tend to
experience when I'm just checking my
email and then checking Twitter and then
worrying about my future all right I
actually I actually don't think I I
actually closed the loop on what um
I want to say about Jordan there though
so
Jordan
Jordan and I differ in
he wants to support a much more
traditional picture of the utility and
even necessity of religious thinking and
religious identity and and that way of
giving meaning to one's life through
traditional stories and stories which I
think
true a literal belief in can't be
justified based on what we have come to
understand about science and
um
I just think that
the burden is on us at this point in
history to find a truly non-sectarian
way of telling herself a story about
what we value and what is possible right
and and so and we do that in other areas
of our lives and the science is one very
clear place we do that where there's
just there is no to say that you know
there's American Science versus Chinese
science and it's just that's just not
science like so science is at a layer
more fundamental than those cultural
differences
um
and so it has to be with a with
something like ethics and spirituality
you can't talk in the end you can't you
shouldn't be able to talk about
Christian ethics or Christian spiritual
insight and Jordan's not convinced of
that or he's apparently not convinced of
that and so you know that that's what we
still disagree about but I think the
final I think the thing the thing I
wanted to say was that
so you you will seem to allude to some
sort of breach between us which I
certainly don't feel and have an
experience I can only imagine though
that in his world given given what was
happening to me on Twitter when I left
he perceives me as somebody who has just
um
gone off the rails in some way right
because like he he in his world and this
is this is what
was so amazing to see
um when I was looking at Twitter when I
when I made this to if anyone doesn't
know what I'm talking about there was
this whole Hunter Biden laptop situation
where I commented on the hunter Biden
laptop thing uh on a podcast
a clip from that podcast got exported to
you know apparently every
planet in the solar system and
um it had an enormous effect right of
center right so so right of Center I had
just destroyed my career right I'm
hearing from people like
oh my God are you okay right and in my
world and in every channel I care about
literally nothing had happened right and
so but in but Jordan lives in the world
where I just kind of torched everything
so I can only imagine that he has some
view of my I mean he the truth is I
would expect him to be
genuinely confused about what I believe
about things like free speech or you
know any of the relevant variables there
unless he happens to listen to my
podcast which you know I don't know
whether or not he does I think the uh
potential breach that I was talking
about was more just that there is a
hunger for you and him to speak I think
that you've both been formative to a lot
of people's intellectual Journeys in one
form or another and uh I I think people
are hoping that there is uh yet more
juice to squeeze from your conjoined
lemons and however way yeah that happens
well I'm always happy to talk to him I
think you know I think the thing that
got into my head is someone sent me a
clip from
Joe Rogan's podcast where he and Joe
were talking about me and
Jordan seemed to be talking about me as
like a cautionary tale like look what
can happen to somebody and and Joe said
something like oh I still have hope for
Sam and they're in my view they are in
this contrarian Echo chamber right where
you know mRNA vaccines are terrifying
covet was no big deal January 6 was
maybe a non-event right
um the libtards are trying to ruin
everything and there's a whole picture
of sort of audience capture and and
information skewing there which I
understand I mean that's sort of how
like if I look to my left I can see all
that uh but if you're only there
there's just a lot of half truths you
know kind of ricocheting around that
Echo chamber which um
yeah it is I'm happy to talk to both
those guys but it's just they're not
in the in
the lane I'm in and trying to maintain
You know despite the Crosswinds trying
to maintain a straight course in
there's that's only half the story right
so it's um and I just think people are
genuinely confused now because
two things are true
we have lost trust in the the normal
channels of information and in normal
institutions postcode you know during
coven and post covid
um for obvious reasons but we
desperately need institutions and a
media that we can trust right and we're
not going to navigate This Moment by
just proliferating podcasts and
newsletters right it's just not good
enough but we might try yeah in other
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