Great article! Such interesting concepts and lots to think about. I was devastated by our covid response but hadn’t had the clarity of mind to think about it as a moral failure . I kept hoping evidence and facts would get leaders and others to calm down and come back to reality . But this has given me a different way to look at our tragic response. Thank you for taking the time to put together such an enlightening piece!
Thanks for the kind comment. I, like many, got caught up in arguing the minutiae for the first few months of COVID, but had a deep sense that the dismantling of our fundamental freedoms was just wrong - period. It took me a while to realize that all the talk about numbers was mainly a distraction from what really matters.
The first time I heard stories of people left to die in hospital rooms, with loved ones banned from visiting ... we already knew that this was seemingly much more deadly for old people than young. And we know that viruses tend to evolve to become less deadly even as they become more infectious. The cruelty involved in banning familial contact was a clear moral failure from the outset. As was the insistence that attempting to treat dying people with experimental uses of drugs like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine was verboten. No, your loved one is dying, you can't be allowed in the same ward as them, and we can't give them unproven medical treatment because it might harm them. Clearly not decisions made by anyone with a good moral foundation. But apparently quite natural if you are an "effective altruist".
He will eventually get a spotlight prime time on CNN. This man has lost all incredibility and hopefully his followers are going to become aware of his own lack of morality.
Very interesting read, I shall now need to do more research about Harris, I have become a fan of Dr Peterson, I myself was saddened by how “my own faith” was called in to question because I chose not to go along with the Vax protocol-thank you for an interesting article
In my humble opinion, this is a really important and relevant essay in these severely distorted times. The mindset that Harris and others like him (Dawkins come to mind) embody goes to the root of the heartless and willful blindness we have seen on display from supposedly 'rational' people during these last three years. This kind of mindset, so much in fashion these days, labours under the assumption, it seems, that the purpose of debate and dialogue is Victory, when in fact it ought to be clarity.
There is an essay I remember reading years ago, which deeply affected me, by the writer Wendell Berry. It dealt with this mental schism in much of modern, rational and reductionist thinking. The title is simply 'Two Minds'. Here is an excerpt which gets to the heart of the issue:
"Obviously we need to use our intelligence. But how much intelligence have we got? And what sort of intelligence is it that we have? And how, at its best, does human intelligence work?
In order to try to answer these questions I am going to suppose for a while that there are two different kinds of human mind: the Rational Mind and another which, for want of a better term, I will call the Sympathetic Mind. I will say now, and try to keep myself reminded, that these terms are going to appear to be allegorical, too neat and too separate – though I need to say also that their separation was not invented by me.
The Rational Mind, without being anywhere perfectly embodied, is the mind we all are supposed to be trying to have. It is the mind that the most powerful and influential people think they have. Our schools exist mainly to educate and propagate and authorize the Rational Mind. The Rational Mind is objective, analytical, and empirical; it makes itself up only by considering facts; it pursues truth by experimentation; it is uncorrupted by preconception, received authority, religious belief, or feeling. Its ideal products are the proven fact, the accurate prediction, and the “informed decision.” It is, you might say, the official mind of science, industry, and government.
The Sympathetic Mind differs from the Rational Mind, not by being unreasonable, but by refusing to limit knowledge or reality to the scope of reason or factuality or experimentation, and by making reason the servant of things it considers precedent and higher.
The Rational Mind is motivated by the fear of being misled, of being wrong. Its purpose is to exclude everything that cannot empirically or experimentally be proven to be a fact.
The Sympathetic Mind is motivated by fear of error of a very different kind: the error of carelessness, of being unloving. Its purpose is to be considerate of whatever is present, to leave nothing out."
I highly recommend the essay, which fleshes out more fully and contextually the brief excerpt I've included here.
Thank you for that very thoughtful comment. (Julie the psychiatrist here, commenting on Chris's article!) We will certainly have a look at that article. Right off the hop, it strikes me that Mr. Berry is describing almost perfectly the "divided brain" hypothesis that forms the basis of Dr. Iain McGilchrist's work. He talks about the differences between left and right brain thinking, and how we have allowed the analytical left brain to become dominant in our culture at the expense of the wiser and more wholistic right brain. McGilchrist starts off talking about neurophysiology but when you follow where he is going long enough, it verges into the metaphysical or even "religious." A good introduction to his thinking can be found in this 2 part interview with Stephen Blackwood, or on his own web page:
Thanks Julie. I always have trouble discerning whether it was you or Chris who wrote any given article on your substack! Perhaps that's for the better!
I'm somewhat familiar with McGilchrist's work, but not deeply so. When I get an opportunity, I'll look at those two links you kindly left. I should mention, however tangentially, that there is an assumption nowadays (generally speaking) in 'The Year Of Our Lord' 2023 that everyone has unlimited access to the internet and therefore can stream video at will. I live in a digitally under served rural hinterland of La Belle Province, and any trend that has achieved 'normative' status in the rest of Canada or the world takes like a decade or two to finally reach here. I suspect there is a silver lining to this liability (optimist that I am!). At any rate, my circuitous 'workaround' is to collect video links (url's or MP4 files) and every now and then, when I'm in the city and proximate to a public Wi-fi signal , to download hard copies of said videos.
Anyhow, enough of tangents. Back to McGilchrist and the crux of your article, which among other things examines the role of pure intellect and rationality vs. the role of morality and ethics (transcendent or otherwise) in attaining individual and societal well-being.
While it may seem that McGilchrist and Berry are in the same wheelhouse in terms of their apparent convergence, Berry is approaching the issue from an entirely different direction. McGilchrist, I think, is suggesting that 'the brain' as stand alone mechanism, is the root of the 'divided' thinking that so ails our modern world, and everything follows from that deterministic proposition. (Correct me if I'm wrong here please!)
Berry is approaching this 'division' from a somewhat more traditional or perhaps holistic perspective. If I understand his approach, Berry is trying to say that this division that we sense is as much cultural, political, economic and historical as it is merely biological.
As much as I respect McGilchrist's approach, and think it offers a valuable contribution to clarity, the trouble I have with reducing this apparent 'division' of thinking to the merely biological is that sooner or later, someone in some high place (Yuval Harari? Elon Musk?) will get the bright idea that we can rectify or "de-bug" this unfortunate situation with the usual hare-brained 'intervention' that seems to be so glamorous and profitable these days.
The 'rational' and reductive paradigms of our time actually change the language we use to describe ourselves and our world and what happens to us. Whereas we might once have said "the life of the mind" without embarrassment, we are more likely now to utter "cognitive optimization" or "cognitive productivity" in its stead. Similarly, we are more likely now to say "termination of a fetus" than we are to say "the death of a child". And never mind that "matters of the heart" have somehow been replaced by "myocarditis" or "thrombocytopenia"! That's a whole other story, isn't it?
We are being frog-marched into a dystopian realm of rationalized, globalized, technologized and utterly secularized dehumanization, and far too many aren't even noticing.
By the way, in the spirit of substack being a forum for the sharing and exchange of unapproved ideas, there is another essay related to the subject of yours that I highly recommend and that you may find edifying. Called 'Soul & Shadow' by William Ophuls.
Any psychiatrist worth their salt ought to enjoy this! And I'm sure you're more than worth your salt! You can find it here:
Thank you again for your insightful comments. You should write your own Substack! I have downloaded this latest article and, although I haven't read it yet, I note the opening quote is from Carl Jung, who I am a big fan of. That bodes well.
As for McGilchrist, though, I think you will be surprised if you listen to him. His whole point in his latest book -- which is called "The Matter With Things" is that the reductionist materialist way of thinking is destroying us. In his view, the primary building block of the Universe is NOT things, but something like "meaning" or perhaps "consciousness." These are much too complicated ideas to elucidate here, but I think it's safe to say that McGilchrist is one of those scientists who has, to paraphrase the Heisenberg quote Chris used at the end of this post, "drunk down to the bottom of the glass and found God again."
Harris is correct to critique the authoritarian nature of much religion, but he fails to see that his "New Atheism" is itself largely just another authoritarian ideology; ironically, it shares many of the features of religion and the Woke religion that he has also critiqued.
On just about every comments section of videos related to Harris we have the same take: "I was always a fan of Harris and I've read all his books and watched all his stuff, but what just happened?" I was going to write an article in response, but you have done it so well there is now little point. As always, thanks for all the time and energy spent addressing some important issues and moments in our development as a species.
If you haven't already, watch JBP's latest conversation on the Joe Rogan Experience (Spotify). In that 3 hours we have about 2 hours of the best stuff JBP has ever put out. However, like Bret, he is still holding out hope that Harris will see reason. Not a chance. As you say, he "revved his IQ, gunned the engine, and drove his car off an intellectual cliff".
Thanks so much Matt. I will definitely listen to him on Rogan. Julie said it was well worthwhile as well. It is sad to see what Harris has become, as I think he had important things to say. Now he just appears to me as a caricature of elite/managerialist society.
Great read, thank you. After all I think you were very... kind to Sam Harris. :) As Patricia Sutherland noted CNN, and I think other dark forces will provide him with spotlight soon. I haven't been really fun of him and you clearly re-enforced that.
There are deep and very powerful truths, beyond all understanding, that cannot be captured in words. Real understanding, understanding that resonates in our core, is irrational. Words actually make it so much more difficult to know. Krishnamurti captured this when he pointed out the impossibility of looking at something––a tree for example––without first going through the word "tree" which then completely distorts that thing seen.
Very interesting. It was his saying that struck me as so true during these strange COVIDian times: "It is no measure of good health to be well adapted to a profoundly sick society".
If I remember correctly, the tree example is in his book The Awakening of Intelligence which I discovered around 1980. For me, reading him was like discovering a spring in a desert.
Yes, the distorting power of language... I wonder how much of our supposed "culture wars" are based on this.
Eckhart Tolle says something similar: a word is just a sign pointing the way towards something, not the thing itself. Imagine looking at a breathtaking mountain. Now imagine a sign saying "mountain this way" a thousand miles away in the middle of the desert. Not the same mental experience at all. Someone who has never seen a mountain will not know what the sign means, and perhaps even take "mountain" to mean "flat, arid land". And yet, despite the vast minefield of potential misunderstandings, humans obsess over words as though they're ultimate truths, and will even go to war and commit violence over them.
Thank you for such a measured and calm deconstruction of what passes for "rationalism" in our ever more fractured society. You demonstrate how any dogma can take on the feeling and fervor of any maligned religion when put forth as The Truth and The Answer. Spirit and faith can coexist with any religion, but not when its truest believers fall prey to their own hubris.
The communist/fascist regimes you mentioned were indeed religious make no mistake as they operated under the banner of the STATE! Sam is a religious adherent of the state & the scientific establishment otherwise known as SCIENTISM!
Sam strikes me as a "fundamentalist atheist". There is definitely a religious fervour to his beliefs, minus the wisdom of 2000+ years of tradition that underpins genuine religious systems. As David Foster Wallace said "we all worship something." --Julie
Great summary of Sam's meltdown. Chalk up another former hero--a supposed champion of reason--who, blinded by ideology or fear, lost their grip on truth. I don't agree 100% with Bret Weinstein either, but at least the man is willing to consider and admit the places he went wrong, which I consider a virtue: https://thefreethinker.substack.com/p/be-strong-be-wrong
Sam, on the other hand, uses his considerable intellect to rationalize. It is painful to watch.
If there's one thing that should be obvious to us all by now, intellect is no guarantee of truth. If you have the wrong premises, your intellect just gets you to the wrong conclusions FASTER.
PS: I should have said this is Chris here, as Julie is already a subscriber. I have read a couple of your pieces previously and really thought highly of them.
Thanks so much for the comment. I'll check out your Substack link, as I was very interested to see Scott Adams go down some illogical and unreasonable paths. I'm a HUGE Dilbert fan, and (like with Harris) enjoy and agree with a lot of what Scott says, so it was a disappointment for sure.
perhaps it could more accurately be called, "the UNVEILING OF SAM HARRIS". Like so many leftists I know, their reaction goes w the territory of a narcissistic, mentally unstable, mind.
Great point - I struggled with the title. I do think he is far more off the rails now than he was pre-Trump, and definitely pre-COVID. So I agree it's partly that he was always morally ungrounded, but as society has become more polarized, he has taken more extreme and immoral positions. So I think he is unravelling and being unveiled all at once.
Always interesting to examine motive (in MICE terms, is it "Money", "Ideology", "Coercion", or "Ego"?) He's truly an egotistic leftist ideologue, and they always resort to terror in order to reign/retain power. I love your writing btw, ty for your insightful wisdom!
I listened to him as well,until his TDS got so terrible I couldn't stand it anymore. He stopped thinking, and instead decided right and wrong based on "What is the opposite of what Trump says?"
Great article! Such interesting concepts and lots to think about. I was devastated by our covid response but hadn’t had the clarity of mind to think about it as a moral failure . I kept hoping evidence and facts would get leaders and others to calm down and come back to reality . But this has given me a different way to look at our tragic response. Thank you for taking the time to put together such an enlightening piece!
Thanks for the kind comment. I, like many, got caught up in arguing the minutiae for the first few months of COVID, but had a deep sense that the dismantling of our fundamental freedoms was just wrong - period. It took me a while to realize that all the talk about numbers was mainly a distraction from what really matters.
The first time I heard stories of people left to die in hospital rooms, with loved ones banned from visiting ... we already knew that this was seemingly much more deadly for old people than young. And we know that viruses tend to evolve to become less deadly even as they become more infectious. The cruelty involved in banning familial contact was a clear moral failure from the outset. As was the insistence that attempting to treat dying people with experimental uses of drugs like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine was verboten. No, your loved one is dying, you can't be allowed in the same ward as them, and we can't give them unproven medical treatment because it might harm them. Clearly not decisions made by anyone with a good moral foundation. But apparently quite natural if you are an "effective altruist".
He will eventually get a spotlight prime time on CNN. This man has lost all incredibility and hopefully his followers are going to become aware of his own lack of morality.
Jesus can't come back soon enough for me.
Very interesting read, I shall now need to do more research about Harris, I have become a fan of Dr Peterson, I myself was saddened by how “my own faith” was called in to question because I chose not to go along with the Vax protocol-thank you for an interesting article
In my humble opinion, this is a really important and relevant essay in these severely distorted times. The mindset that Harris and others like him (Dawkins come to mind) embody goes to the root of the heartless and willful blindness we have seen on display from supposedly 'rational' people during these last three years. This kind of mindset, so much in fashion these days, labours under the assumption, it seems, that the purpose of debate and dialogue is Victory, when in fact it ought to be clarity.
There is an essay I remember reading years ago, which deeply affected me, by the writer Wendell Berry. It dealt with this mental schism in much of modern, rational and reductionist thinking. The title is simply 'Two Minds'. Here is an excerpt which gets to the heart of the issue:
"Obviously we need to use our intelligence. But how much intelligence have we got? And what sort of intelligence is it that we have? And how, at its best, does human intelligence work?
In order to try to answer these questions I am going to suppose for a while that there are two different kinds of human mind: the Rational Mind and another which, for want of a better term, I will call the Sympathetic Mind. I will say now, and try to keep myself reminded, that these terms are going to appear to be allegorical, too neat and too separate – though I need to say also that their separation was not invented by me.
The Rational Mind, without being anywhere perfectly embodied, is the mind we all are supposed to be trying to have. It is the mind that the most powerful and influential people think they have. Our schools exist mainly to educate and propagate and authorize the Rational Mind. The Rational Mind is objective, analytical, and empirical; it makes itself up only by considering facts; it pursues truth by experimentation; it is uncorrupted by preconception, received authority, religious belief, or feeling. Its ideal products are the proven fact, the accurate prediction, and the “informed decision.” It is, you might say, the official mind of science, industry, and government.
The Sympathetic Mind differs from the Rational Mind, not by being unreasonable, but by refusing to limit knowledge or reality to the scope of reason or factuality or experimentation, and by making reason the servant of things it considers precedent and higher.
The Rational Mind is motivated by the fear of being misled, of being wrong. Its purpose is to exclude everything that cannot empirically or experimentally be proven to be a fact.
The Sympathetic Mind is motivated by fear of error of a very different kind: the error of carelessness, of being unloving. Its purpose is to be considerate of whatever is present, to leave nothing out."
I highly recommend the essay, which fleshes out more fully and contextually the brief excerpt I've included here.
https://www.clarionreview.org/2015/02/two-minds/
Thank you for that very thoughtful comment. (Julie the psychiatrist here, commenting on Chris's article!) We will certainly have a look at that article. Right off the hop, it strikes me that Mr. Berry is describing almost perfectly the "divided brain" hypothesis that forms the basis of Dr. Iain McGilchrist's work. He talks about the differences between left and right brain thinking, and how we have allowed the analytical left brain to become dominant in our culture at the expense of the wiser and more wholistic right brain. McGilchrist starts off talking about neurophysiology but when you follow where he is going long enough, it verges into the metaphysical or even "religious." A good introduction to his thinking can be found in this 2 part interview with Stephen Blackwood, or on his own web page:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMiosUAiexY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyGitPDscqQ
Thanks Julie. I always have trouble discerning whether it was you or Chris who wrote any given article on your substack! Perhaps that's for the better!
I'm somewhat familiar with McGilchrist's work, but not deeply so. When I get an opportunity, I'll look at those two links you kindly left. I should mention, however tangentially, that there is an assumption nowadays (generally speaking) in 'The Year Of Our Lord' 2023 that everyone has unlimited access to the internet and therefore can stream video at will. I live in a digitally under served rural hinterland of La Belle Province, and any trend that has achieved 'normative' status in the rest of Canada or the world takes like a decade or two to finally reach here. I suspect there is a silver lining to this liability (optimist that I am!). At any rate, my circuitous 'workaround' is to collect video links (url's or MP4 files) and every now and then, when I'm in the city and proximate to a public Wi-fi signal , to download hard copies of said videos.
Anyhow, enough of tangents. Back to McGilchrist and the crux of your article, which among other things examines the role of pure intellect and rationality vs. the role of morality and ethics (transcendent or otherwise) in attaining individual and societal well-being.
While it may seem that McGilchrist and Berry are in the same wheelhouse in terms of their apparent convergence, Berry is approaching the issue from an entirely different direction. McGilchrist, I think, is suggesting that 'the brain' as stand alone mechanism, is the root of the 'divided' thinking that so ails our modern world, and everything follows from that deterministic proposition. (Correct me if I'm wrong here please!)
Berry is approaching this 'division' from a somewhat more traditional or perhaps holistic perspective. If I understand his approach, Berry is trying to say that this division that we sense is as much cultural, political, economic and historical as it is merely biological.
As much as I respect McGilchrist's approach, and think it offers a valuable contribution to clarity, the trouble I have with reducing this apparent 'division' of thinking to the merely biological is that sooner or later, someone in some high place (Yuval Harari? Elon Musk?) will get the bright idea that we can rectify or "de-bug" this unfortunate situation with the usual hare-brained 'intervention' that seems to be so glamorous and profitable these days.
(See here for example:
https://joebot.substack.com/p/hardwired-for-control-the-brain-computer
https://horizons.gc.ca/en/2020/02/11/exploring-biodigital-convergence/)
The 'rational' and reductive paradigms of our time actually change the language we use to describe ourselves and our world and what happens to us. Whereas we might once have said "the life of the mind" without embarrassment, we are more likely now to utter "cognitive optimization" or "cognitive productivity" in its stead. Similarly, we are more likely now to say "termination of a fetus" than we are to say "the death of a child". And never mind that "matters of the heart" have somehow been replaced by "myocarditis" or "thrombocytopenia"! That's a whole other story, isn't it?
We are being frog-marched into a dystopian realm of rationalized, globalized, technologized and utterly secularized dehumanization, and far too many aren't even noticing.
By the way, in the spirit of substack being a forum for the sharing and exchange of unapproved ideas, there is another essay related to the subject of yours that I highly recommend and that you may find edifying. Called 'Soul & Shadow' by William Ophuls.
Any psychiatrist worth their salt ought to enjoy this! And I'm sure you're more than worth your salt! You can find it here:
https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/74b08727-45f3-470a-a2d5-5ee8efdc0403/downloads/1cbuvsba8_136080.pdf
Cheers and please keep writing!
Thank you again for your insightful comments. You should write your own Substack! I have downloaded this latest article and, although I haven't read it yet, I note the opening quote is from Carl Jung, who I am a big fan of. That bodes well.
As for McGilchrist, though, I think you will be surprised if you listen to him. His whole point in his latest book -- which is called "The Matter With Things" is that the reductionist materialist way of thinking is destroying us. In his view, the primary building block of the Universe is NOT things, but something like "meaning" or perhaps "consciousness." These are much too complicated ideas to elucidate here, but I think it's safe to say that McGilchrist is one of those scientists who has, to paraphrase the Heisenberg quote Chris used at the end of this post, "drunk down to the bottom of the glass and found God again."
Thanks Julie. You've piqued my interest in discovering more of McGilchrist's ideas. Thanks, and take care you both!
Harris is correct to critique the authoritarian nature of much religion, but he fails to see that his "New Atheism" is itself largely just another authoritarian ideology; ironically, it shares many of the features of religion and the Woke religion that he has also critiqued.
On just about every comments section of videos related to Harris we have the same take: "I was always a fan of Harris and I've read all his books and watched all his stuff, but what just happened?" I was going to write an article in response, but you have done it so well there is now little point. As always, thanks for all the time and energy spent addressing some important issues and moments in our development as a species.
If you haven't already, watch JBP's latest conversation on the Joe Rogan Experience (Spotify). In that 3 hours we have about 2 hours of the best stuff JBP has ever put out. However, like Bret, he is still holding out hope that Harris will see reason. Not a chance. As you say, he "revved his IQ, gunned the engine, and drove his car off an intellectual cliff".
Thanks so much Matt. I will definitely listen to him on Rogan. Julie said it was well worthwhile as well. It is sad to see what Harris has become, as I think he had important things to say. Now he just appears to me as a caricature of elite/managerialist society.
Great read, thank you. After all I think you were very... kind to Sam Harris. :) As Patricia Sutherland noted CNN, and I think other dark forces will provide him with spotlight soon. I haven't been really fun of him and you clearly re-enforced that.
Thank you for sharing, and for putting your very important energy out there. Your voices are needed now, more than ever. #WithMuchGratitude
One of the best pieces I've read in ages. Bravo.
There are deep and very powerful truths, beyond all understanding, that cannot be captured in words. Real understanding, understanding that resonates in our core, is irrational. Words actually make it so much more difficult to know. Krishnamurti captured this when he pointed out the impossibility of looking at something––a tree for example––without first going through the word "tree" which then completely distorts that thing seen.
Very interesting. It was his saying that struck me as so true during these strange COVIDian times: "It is no measure of good health to be well adapted to a profoundly sick society".
If I remember correctly, the tree example is in his book The Awakening of Intelligence which I discovered around 1980. For me, reading him was like discovering a spring in a desert.
A great quote.
Yes, the distorting power of language... I wonder how much of our supposed "culture wars" are based on this.
Eckhart Tolle says something similar: a word is just a sign pointing the way towards something, not the thing itself. Imagine looking at a breathtaking mountain. Now imagine a sign saying "mountain this way" a thousand miles away in the middle of the desert. Not the same mental experience at all. Someone who has never seen a mountain will not know what the sign means, and perhaps even take "mountain" to mean "flat, arid land". And yet, despite the vast minefield of potential misunderstandings, humans obsess over words as though they're ultimate truths, and will even go to war and commit violence over them.
Thank you for such a measured and calm deconstruction of what passes for "rationalism" in our ever more fractured society. You demonstrate how any dogma can take on the feeling and fervor of any maligned religion when put forth as The Truth and The Answer. Spirit and faith can coexist with any religion, but not when its truest believers fall prey to their own hubris.
The communist/fascist regimes you mentioned were indeed religious make no mistake as they operated under the banner of the STATE! Sam is a religious adherent of the state & the scientific establishment otherwise known as SCIENTISM!
Sam strikes me as a "fundamentalist atheist". There is definitely a religious fervour to his beliefs, minus the wisdom of 2000+ years of tradition that underpins genuine religious systems. As David Foster Wallace said "we all worship something." --Julie
Great summary of Sam's meltdown. Chalk up another former hero--a supposed champion of reason--who, blinded by ideology or fear, lost their grip on truth. I don't agree 100% with Bret Weinstein either, but at least the man is willing to consider and admit the places he went wrong, which I consider a virtue: https://thefreethinker.substack.com/p/be-strong-be-wrong
Sam, on the other hand, uses his considerable intellect to rationalize. It is painful to watch.
If there's one thing that should be obvious to us all by now, intellect is no guarantee of truth. If you have the wrong premises, your intellect just gets you to the wrong conclusions FASTER.
PS: I should have said this is Chris here, as Julie is already a subscriber. I have read a couple of your pieces previously and really thought highly of them.
Thanks, Chris. The high thoughts are mutual. Your series on masks was excellent, nail-in-the-coffin level stuff.
Thanks so much for the comment. I'll check out your Substack link, as I was very interested to see Scott Adams go down some illogical and unreasonable paths. I'm a HUGE Dilbert fan, and (like with Harris) enjoy and agree with a lot of what Scott says, so it was a disappointment for sure.
Harris is naive in his failure to understand that humans are, by nature, 'predictably irrational'.
Harris believes in his own religion. In my dictionary, it's called 'cultish behaviour'.
perhaps it could more accurately be called, "the UNVEILING OF SAM HARRIS". Like so many leftists I know, their reaction goes w the territory of a narcissistic, mentally unstable, mind.
Great point - I struggled with the title. I do think he is far more off the rails now than he was pre-Trump, and definitely pre-COVID. So I agree it's partly that he was always morally ungrounded, but as society has become more polarized, he has taken more extreme and immoral positions. So I think he is unravelling and being unveiled all at once.
Always interesting to examine motive (in MICE terms, is it "Money", "Ideology", "Coercion", or "Ego"?) He's truly an egotistic leftist ideologue, and they always resort to terror in order to reign/retain power. I love your writing btw, ty for your insightful wisdom!
Bravo. I used to listen to Harris on his podcast, but now see him as a complete charlatan. You lay out the case so well.
I listened to him as well,until his TDS got so terrible I couldn't stand it anymore. He stopped thinking, and instead decided right and wrong based on "What is the opposite of what Trump says?"