Are You Awake?

You are obviously physiologically awake—otherwise you wouldn’t be reading these words—but are you truly awake? In particular, are you fully present in the world? Do you have a relationship with the present moment, or do you habitually spend it thinking about past and future events? Are you seeing things as they are, or how you wish them to be? And are you aware not only that your mind has a mind of its own, but also that this deeper mind can subvert your attempts to reason your way through life? If you find these questions unsettling and want to wake up in a deeper, non-literal sense of the term, you will likely have an interest in Sam Harris’s popular Waking Up app. I’ll have more to say about this app in a moment, but first let me explain my connection with Sam. In the early 2000s, I became aware of evolutionary psychology, a field that barely existed when I went to college. I embarked on a program of self-education and was deeply impressed by the extent to which evolutionary psychology could explain many of the most baffling aspects of human nature. This research led to my publication of On Desire: Why We Want What We Want (Oxford University Press, 2006). In the course of doing this research, I encountered mindfulness and meditation practices, including the zazen meditation that I described in an early Substack. The three minutes it takes to do this meditation, I explained, could give you important insights into the extent to which your mind has a mind of its own. I also encountered Stoic philosophy. This wasn’t my first encounter; that had been in college logic classes, where I was informed that the Stoics had “discovered” propositional logic. (This is the logic of and, or, not, and if-then—the kind of logic that plays a key role in computer programming.) I learned that when they weren’t thinking about logic, the Stoics were thinking about how to have a good life—something my philosophy professors had neglected to mention. What impressed me most about the Stoic philosophy of life was the strategies the Stoics had developed for retaining their equanimity in the face of life’s many challenges. I described these strategies in my Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (Oxford University Press, 2009). I subsequently published another Stoic book, Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher’s Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient (W.W. Norton, 2019), and my timing turned out, for once, to be exceptionally lucky. With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, people started experiencing an unprecedented stream of setbacks. As a result, Stoic philosophy suddenly became relevant in their lives, and I was deluged with interview requests. One such request came from Sam Harris. He asked me to do an interview for his Waking Up app—not to be confused with his Making Sense podcast, which, you might remember, is one of the “Thinker podcasts” I recommended in an earlier post. He subsequently asked me to create a “Stoic Path” series of talks for Waking Up. This is only one of dozens of series that can be found on the app. Among them are guided meditations, as well as conversations and lessons on consciousness, mindfulness, and neuroscience. If you are interested in this sort of content, you are in luck. Sam has agreed to offer my subscribers a 30-day free trial of Waking Up. Click here to take advantage of this offer. Enjoy! Need more food for thought? Click here for my past essays, listed by title.