SANITY

last night i had the pleasure of attending sam harris’s talk “truth & consequences” in boston with my dear friend matthew. the unspoken camaraderie of attending an IRL event with like minded people was so refreshing and nostalgic.

i appreciate the clarity sam brings to our world and the way his ideas cut so cleanly through the divide between ideology and reality. he addressed topics one would expect: politics, religion, consciousness - basically every topic not safe for a bar. he kept me on the edge of my seat, awaiting a call to action, not unlike the feeling i would have in church as a kid listening to a pastor go through the dark arc of his sermon hoping there was a light at the end.

his talk spotlit the major issues in our society so it felt like it could go anywhere. maybe he was setting up an announcement of an intention to run for office or the creation of a new secular activist movement. the room was charged with the energy of a revolution waiting for someone to fire the first shot.

his real aim was thankfully far from collective radicalization.

he underscored the issues with identitarian politics in the extreme right and left. both sides received scathing treatment. just to name a few, he went after the left’s obsession with relativism, intersectionality, oppression, and tolerance of islam- the right’s christian nationalism, anti-semitism, and destructive attacks on scientific thought and institutions. he highlighted how all of this is kindling in one big fire stoked by the algorithms thrusting outrage into our faces 24/7 through the tiny glass rectangles we all carry and tech giants profit from.

the result of the extremism we experience on the internet leads to compounded effects as we bounce off each other like neutrons in an exploding reactor.

it all boiled down to this: if we are not careful, our information landscape infects us with ideology, outrage, and insanity.

his call to action was a return to sanity, reason, and secular liberalism.

the goal was not to convince us to agree with him on every detail. he was not out to make converts, but to highlight how much of the insanity of our world is an optional condition of our minds and that we can only be responsible for our own- and just barely. the training and safeguarding of our minds through meditation was his suggestion as a starting point to answer the question, “what do i do about the madness in front of me?”

waiting for the front page of the new york times to share good news is a recipe for disappointment. it won’t happen. you cannot become happy and peaceful and sane. you can only be happy and peaceful and sane now.

“’i will be happy when _____’ is a ransom note written by the LLM in your head.”

happiness and sanity are available to us at all times by dropping the ransom notes, not by fulfilling their every request. this is not to say we shouldn’t take action but to lay a foundation of clarity by ridding ourselves of the delusions our brains enjoy creating.

our minds construct our conscious experience out of sensory data. everything, in a way, is an illusion produced by the filters of our brains as we try to parse out which pieces of our environments we must pay attention to.

my main takeaway is a renewal of my commitment to meditation.

i am responsible for making every attempt i can to be as SANE as possible so i may show up peacefully and lovingly.

i don’t need my brother to agree the earth is round. i don’t need my parents to realize trump’s careless and outright destruction of our nation. i don’t need elon musk to become responsible. i don’t need the left or right to come to center. i don’t need the world and everyone in my life to be at peace to cultivate my own.

my aim is to be one person who isn’t swept up in the sea of outrage if i can help it. i can work on being SANE TODAY, peaceful in chaos, loving in disagreement and, from that clarity, intolerant of dishonesty and attacks on free society.

the call to sanity was not a call to passivity but pluralism and the ideals of secular liberalism. striving for free and peaceful society means defending against ideological and physical attacks on it. we are in no better position to point out insanity than when we are standing on it’s shore, watching it come and go like the breath, our thoughts, and these fickle feelings.

i’m reminded of the ACA serenity prayer as a mantra for navigating the world now more than ever.

grant me the serenity to accept the people i cannot change
the courage to change the one i can
and the wisdom to know that one is me

ps. i’m grateful for and aware of the rare privilege i have as a human who is not under direct threat of physical attack or oppression for my beliefs or my mere existence. from this incredibly lucky position i feel an even greater sense of responsibility to show up for the people around me with sanity and peace.

i’m curious to know what that means to those of you who may read this. what does showing up lovingly for the people in your direct realm of influence look like to you?