Of course you’re anxious
Summary
Host Sean Illing is joined by philosopher Samir Chopra, author of Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide. The conversation begins by grappling with the definition of anxiety, distinguishing it from fear. Chopra explains that anxiety is often an ‘anticipatory fear’ or ‘fear of being fearful,’ characterized by its lack of a determinate object, whereas fear is a response to a concrete, present threat. This formless quality makes anxiety particularly disorienting and difficult to manage.
The discussion then explores whether we are living in a uniquely ‘age of anxiety.’ Chopra suggests that while every era claims this title, modern factors like opaque technological and financial systems, social contagion via connectivity, and a culture of diagnosis and medication may intensify our collective experience. The conversation then turns to philosophical traditions for wisdom, starting with Buddhism. Chopra outlines the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths and the three failures of knowledge (impermanence, interdependence, and the illusion of a fixed self) that cause suffering. The Buddhist approach is not to eliminate anxiety but to change our perception and relationship to it through acceptance.
Chopra then contrasts this with the existentialist view, which frames anxiety as arising from our freedom and responsibility in a world without predetermined essence. We are thrown into existence and must shape our lives through choices, facing an uncertain future—a recipe for anxiety. The psychoanalytic tradition, via Freud, adds that anxiety is a ‘signal’ rooted in the traumatic loss of love (initially from the mother) and the childish hope for total security we must outgrow. Finally, Chopra reflects on what philosophy can and cannot do: it won’t cure anxiety, but it can help us understand it, leading to the key insight that we don’t need to be ‘anxious about being anxious.’ His practical advice is to cultivate loving personal relationships and engage in mindful, immersive activities that anchor us in the present moment.
Bookmarks
- 00:01:16 — What is anxiety, exactly? Sean Illing introduces philosopher Samir Chopra, author of Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide. The book argues that anxiety is inseparable from the human condition — freedom, responsibility, and choice in a world without guarantees.
- 00:05:51 — Anxiety versus fear: the key distinction Chopra illustrates the difference with a mountain climbing example: the pit in your stomach on the way to the trailhead (no concrete danger yet) is anxiety, while slipping on ice mid-climb is fear. Anxiety is anticipation of undetermined threats.
- 00:07:33 — Anxiety as anticipatory fear Chopra proposes anxiety is anticipatory fear — the fear of being scared. The imagination fills the void with future scenarios, like dreading drowning before ever entering the water.
- 00:09:17 — The anxiety spiral and Tillich strategy Illing describes how anxiety feeds on itself, becoming anxiety about anxiety. Philosopher Paul Tillich suggested converting diffuse anxiety into concrete fear — giving shape to the formless in order to confront it.
- 00:17:53 — Buddhism and the Four Noble Truths on anxiety Chopra draws on the Four Noble Truths as a framework for anxiety: suffering exists, has causes (failures of knowledge), can be alleviated, and there is a path toward that relief.
- 00:31:46 — Philosophy and anxiety as inevitable companions Philosophical inquiry brings unavoidable anxiety — when you seek truth, you might not like the answers. For Chopra, anxiety is fundamental to the human condition and to intellectual life itself.
- 00:34:56 — Freud and the social origins of anxiety Two Freudian advances: the social dimension (we are anxious because we live with others) and the childhood origin (early traumatic experiences resurface as anxiety in adult life).
- 00:36:47 — Signal anxiety: the Freudian concept Freud described signal anxiety — a response to emotions previously experienced as traumatic. The urge to reply to a friend within seconds signals fear of losing something already lost before.
- 00:38:09 — What philosophy can and cannot do for anxiety Chopra distinguishes philosophy limits: it will not cure anxiety, but it deepens understanding of our relationship with it. For Freud, growing up means letting go of illusions about what the world held in store for us.
Recommendations
Books
- Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide — Samir Chopra’s book, which is the subject of the episode. It explores anxiety through various philosophical traditions including Buddhism, existentialism, and psychoanalysis, arguing that anxiety is intrinsic to the human condition.
Concepts
- The Four Noble Truths (Buddhism) — Outlined by Chopra: 1) There is suffering, 2) Suffering has a cause (failures of knowledge), 3) Suffering can be alleviated, 4) The path to alleviation (the Eightfold Path). Presented as a framework for understanding and relating to anxiety.
- Existentialist ‘Existence precedes essence’ — The idea that humans are not born with a predetermined purpose or essence, but must create themselves through choices, which is a fundamental source of anxiety.
People
- Sigmund Freud — Referenced for his concept of ‘signal anxiety’ and the idea that anxiety stems from the fear of losing love, rooted in early childhood separation.
- Paul Tillich — Mentioned as a philosopher who suggested that one way to deal with anxiety is to try to turn it into a fear—to give the formless anxiety a concrete object so it can be addressed.
- Friedrich Nietzsche — Referenced for the idea that while suffering is inevitable, we should avoid ‘moralizing’ our suffering or experiencing it pointlessly.
Topic Timeline
- 00:01:09 — Introduction to the Age of Anxiety — Sean Illing introduces the topic, noting we talk about, diagnose, and treat anxiety more than ever, yet it’s unclear if we understand it better. He poses core questions: What is anxiety? What should we do with it? He then introduces his guest, philosopher Samir Chopra, author of Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide, whose argument is that anxiety is a word for being human, tied to freedom and uncertainty.
- 00:03:47 — Defining Anxiety vs. Fear — Chopra addresses the confusion around the term ‘anxiety,’ noting different disciplines claim it. He proposes a fruitful starting distinction between anxiety and fear, tracing a line back to Freud. Fear has a specific object (e.g., a mountain lion blocking the trail), while anxiety is anticipatory and lacks a determinate object (e.g., dread of potential dangers while hiking). He describes anxiety as ‘anticipatory fear’ or ‘fear of being scared.’
- 00:11:47 — Is This a Uniquely Anxious Era? — Illing asks if the current spike in anxiety diagnoses reflects a uniquely anxious period. Chopra agrees every age calls itself the age of anxiety, but cites modern unique factors: opaque technological/financial systems that exert control, social contagion of anxiety through connectivity, engines of social comparison, and a culture of diagnosis and medication driven by pharmaceutical interests. These material circumstances may make anxiety more acute today.
- 00:18:23 — Buddhist Insights on Anxiety — The discussion turns to Buddhism. Chopra explains the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths as a physician’s diagnosis and cure. The core is three failures of knowledge that cause suffering: 1) everything is impermanent and in flux, 2) everything is interdependently arisen (connected), and 3) the illusion of a fixed, independent self. Understanding and accepting these truths changes our relationship to anxiety, alleviating rather than eliminating it.
- 00:27:49 — Existentialist Perspective on Anxiety — Chopra outlines the existentialist view, which starts from the premise that existence precedes essence; we are not born with a predetermined purpose. We are thrown into the world and must create ourselves through choices, facing a formless future. This responsibility and uncertainty is a primary source of anxiety. Illing adds that anxiety seems tied to self-consciousness—a capacity animals likely lack.
- 00:35:10 — Psychoanalytic View: Anxiety as Signal — Exploring Freudian psychoanalysis, Chopra highlights two key contributions: anxiety is deeply social, and it is fundamentally ‘signal anxiety’—the fear of losing love, rooted in the traumatic separation from the maternal object. Adult anxieties (e.g., about social acceptance) replay this early trauma. Growing up involves letting go of the childish hope for the world to provide total security and comfort.
- 00:38:46 — What Philosophy Can and Cannot Do — Chopra states philosophy cannot cure anxiety but can help us understand it and our existential conditions. The key takeaway is realizing we don’t have to be ‘anxious about being anxious.’ The goal is to avoid pointless suffering by comprehending why anxiety is part of the human condition. When asked for practical advice, he emphasizes cultivating loving personal relationships and engaging in mindful, immersive activities outdoors to stay present.
Episode Info
- Podcast: The Gray Area with Sean Illing
- Author: Vox
- Category: Society & Culture Philosophy News Politics News Commentary
- Published: 2026-03-02T09:00:00Z
- Duration: 00:41:54
References
- URL PocketCasts: https://pocketcasts.com/podcast/the-gray-area-with-sean-illing/1d3ce9a0-ae3d-0133-2e33-6dc413d6d41d/of-course-youre-anxious/7cdf5360-3b93-45de-912a-9a1e64e6356d
- Episode UUID: 7cdf5360-3b93-45de-912a-9a1e64e6356d
Podcast Info
- Name: The Gray Area with Sean Illing
- Type: episodic
- Site: https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast
- UUID: 1d3ce9a0-ae3d-0133-2e33-6dc413d6d41d
Transcript
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[00:00:57] The changing face of ADHD.
[00:01:00] That’s this week on Explain It To Me.
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[00:01:09] We seem to be talking about anxiety more than ever.
[00:01:14] We’re diagnosing it more than ever.
[00:01:16] We’re treating it more than ever.
[00:01:19] And yet, it’s not obvious that we’re handling it any better.
[00:01:23] In fact, it’s not even clear that we understand
[00:01:27] what we’re talking about.
[00:01:29] What is anxiety, exactly?
[00:01:31] What are we supposed to do with it?
[00:01:33] Embrace it?
[00:01:35] Live with it?
[00:01:36] Conquer it?
[00:01:37] Medicate it?
[00:01:38] If we really are living in an age of anxiety,
[00:01:41] I feel like we should have better answers to these questions.
[00:01:46] I’m Sean Elling, and this is The Gray Area.
[00:01:51] My guest today is Samir Chopra, a philosopher
[00:01:55] and the author of a book called
[00:01:56] Anxiety, A Philosophical Guide.
[00:01:59] His argument is basically that anxiety is another word
[00:02:03] to describe being human.
[00:02:05] It’s something that comes with freedom, responsibility,
[00:02:09] uncertainty, and the fact that we have to make choices
[00:02:11] in a world without guarantees.
[00:02:14] This is not a book about curing anxiety or explaining it away.
[00:02:20] And it’s not trying to romanticize anxiety
[00:02:22] or argue that it should never be treated.
[00:02:25] It’s really just an interpretation.
[00:02:26] An attempt to understand it philosophically
[00:02:29] and explore what anxiety tells us
[00:02:31] about ourselves and the world.
[00:02:36] Samir Chopra, welcome to the show.
[00:02:38] Thanks very much for having me on.
[00:02:40] I’m really glad you’re here.
[00:02:41] Before we get into the book,
[00:02:42] I just kind of want to ask about your interest in the topic.
[00:02:45] I mean, how did you land on anxiety
[00:02:49] as a philosophical subject?
[00:02:52] You know, it’s sometimes said,
[00:02:53] I’m not quite sure who said it,
[00:02:54] that the only things you can really, really understand about it,
[00:02:56] genuinely philosophize about,
[00:02:58] are things that are problems for you.
[00:03:00] I was anxious, I am anxious, I’m quite an anxious person.
[00:03:03] So in that sense, writing about anxiety
[00:03:06] was a natural thing for me to do.
[00:03:09] Though I wrote this late in my academic career,
[00:03:12] it had always been a topic of great,
[00:03:14] deep personal interest to me.
[00:03:17] Yeah, yeah, me too.
[00:03:21] The problem with anxiety, or the term,
[00:03:23] is that we use it to describe a lot of different things.
[00:03:26] You know, brain states, nudes, disorders, existential dread.
[00:03:35] Why is there so much confusion around this term?
[00:03:39] Is there just a deep disagreement
[00:03:42] about what anxiety actually is?
[00:03:47] I think there’s some disagreement.
[00:03:49] I think just even in the kinds of examples you gave
[00:03:51] of the definitions that people gave of anxiety,
[00:03:53] these formal definitions where we are trying to capture, you know,
[00:03:55] trying to capture a mood or an emotion.
[00:04:00] It’s also the case that there is a wide range
[00:04:03] of emotions and moods and feelings at play.
[00:04:08] In fact, if you look through the literature,
[00:04:09] the term anxiety is, you know, a relatively new one.
[00:04:13] I would say it’s a kind of an 18th or 19th century term
[00:04:17] that we’ve come to use trans-culturally.
[00:04:19] There’s so many different names given for it.
[00:04:21] And there’s also this, you know,
[00:04:22] what I would call a sort of a turf war in some ways,
[00:04:25] that different disciplines lay claim to anxiety.
[00:04:29] Philosophy does, psychology does, psychiatry does.
[00:04:32] And given its placement in our culture,
[00:04:35] given its placement in our society,
[00:04:37] it makes a difference in who gets to treat it,
[00:04:41] who gets to be authoritative about it.
[00:04:44] So there is perhaps a little bit of jockeying
[00:04:46] for a position to see who gets anxiety right.
[00:04:50] But I’m content to let anxiety be relatively, not undefined,
[00:04:55] let it be some imprecision in its edges.
[00:04:59] I think we can try and make a distinction
[00:05:00] between anxiety and fear that can be fruitful and productive.
[00:05:04] And probably that’s all we need in order to get started.
[00:05:07] So once we’ve established that,
[00:05:08] I think we can start talking about anxiety.
[00:05:11] Yeah, let’s go ahead and do that.
[00:05:12] It is, especially in the world of philosophy,
[00:05:15] it’s very often that you can define something most clearly
[00:05:19] by explaining what it isn’t.
[00:05:22] And so let’s do that here.
[00:05:24] What is the distinction?
[00:05:25] What is the distinction between anxiety and fear?
[00:05:27] They are clearly cousins of some sort,
[00:05:30] but how do you draw a line between them?
[00:05:32] So one line traces its origins back to Freud,
[00:05:37] who suggested that anxiety was a fear
[00:05:40] that didn’t have a specific object of fear.
[00:05:44] So you were scared, right?
[00:05:46] You were fearful,
[00:05:47] but you didn’t have something precisely well-defined
[00:05:50] in front of you to call it fear.
[00:05:52] So one way is, an example,
[00:05:54] would be something like,
[00:05:56] I’m on my way to the mountains to go climbing, right?
[00:06:01] As I’m driving to the trailhead,
[00:06:02] as I wake up in the morning,
[00:06:04] I feel a pit in my stomach.
[00:06:06] It’s nausea, I feel uncomfortable, I’m anxious, right?
[00:06:10] Now at that moment, nothing is happening
[00:06:13] that is concretely endangering me, right?
[00:06:19] But I can anticipate some of the situations that might arise.
[00:06:23] I might get into bad weather.
[00:06:24] I might fall down.
[00:06:25] I might get lost.
[00:06:26] All these things could happen to me.
[00:06:28] None of them have taken determinate form as yet, right?
[00:06:32] At this point, it’s anxiety.
[00:06:34] When I’m actually in the mountains,
[00:06:35] when I’m climbing and I step across a chasm
[00:06:39] and I feel the ice slide beneath my feet
[00:06:41] and I feel that I could fall at this moment,
[00:06:44] then that’s fear because there’s a very concrete object.
[00:06:48] So I’m walking through the jungle.
[00:06:50] I am apprehensive of the presence of dangerous wildlife.
[00:06:54] That I would say is anxiety.
[00:06:56] When I have the mountain lion in front of me,
[00:06:58] standing and blocking the trail,
[00:07:00] and I feel my bowels start to loosen, that’s fear, right?
[00:07:05] So anxiety lacks a determinate object.
[00:07:09] Fear has one.
[00:07:10] And I would say in later existentialist treatments,
[00:07:13] the thing that is not formed,
[00:07:15] the thing that is indeterminate is the future, right?
[00:07:18] Because the future is as yet unrealized.
[00:07:21] It’s not upon us yet.
[00:07:24] I dread what it might bring, right?
[00:07:26] So in that sense, is anxiety almost fear of fear
[00:07:32] or kind of like a preemptive fear?
[00:07:36] Yes, yes.
[00:07:37] I sometimes call it anticipatory fear.
[00:07:41] I’m scared of being scared, right?
[00:07:43] So I am walking, like just to go back
[00:07:45] to the wildlife example, the mountain lion isn’t upon me yet,
[00:07:50] but I can anticipate how I would feel
[00:07:54] if the mountain lion were to confront me,
[00:07:56] or like fear of drowning, right?
[00:07:58] I’ve never experienced drowning.
[00:07:59] I’ve come close to it a couple of times,
[00:08:01] but when I think ahead of what it would be like to drown,
[00:08:03] I feel a chill run through me
[00:08:05] because I can almost feel my lungs starting to implode,
[00:08:08] dragging the water in.
[00:08:10] So I anticipate, I imagine,
[00:08:14] I fill the space with my imagination,
[00:08:17] and I’m fully able to feel the fear
[00:08:21] that I would feel in that situation.
[00:08:23] So I think that’s a very good,
[00:08:23] that’s a very good attempt to capture the sense of anxiety.
[00:08:28] It is the fear of being fearful.
[00:08:32] Yeah, it does sort of,
[00:08:34] the experience of it subjectively,
[00:08:35] it does feel like your mind is sort of turning on itself.
[00:08:40] Yes.
[00:08:41] You become a victim of your own imagination.
[00:08:43] Right.
[00:08:44] And anyone who has felt that knows how awful it is
[00:08:49] and how hard it can be to get out of.
[00:08:52] I mean, I, anxiety, for me,
[00:08:53] and I guess I’ve sort of experienced it my whole life,
[00:08:56] but I didn’t, I never really thought of it as anxiety,
[00:08:59] maybe because I, I don’t know,
[00:09:02] didn’t want to deal with that.
[00:09:04] Yeah.
[00:09:05] But it is, it is so much worse than fear,
[00:09:09] because as you’re saying it,
[00:09:10] it often doesn’t have an identifiable cause,
[00:09:15] which is why, like, I feel like
[00:09:16] when I get into an anxious place,
[00:09:19] I then start to get anxiety about my anxiety.
[00:09:22] And it just sort of spirals.
[00:09:25] I mean, fear isn’t really like that for me, right?
[00:09:27] I mean, if the, if the, if I run into the mountain lion,
[00:09:30] I shit my pants, but then when it leaves,
[00:09:33] hopefully without taking my arm with it, it goes away.
[00:09:36] But anxiety isn’t quite like that.
[00:09:37] Is that how you experience it?
[00:09:38] Is that how most people experience it?
[00:09:41] Yeah, I would say there’s something very important
[00:09:42] going on there, which is that the fear that I have
[00:09:47] at a given moment is a response to the object in front of me.
[00:09:51] And we have resources for that. And we have resources for that. And we have resources for that. And we have resources for that. And we have resources for that.
[00:09:52] And we have resources for that. And we have resources for dealing with that, right?
[00:09:53] So for example, Paul Tillich,
[00:09:54] who’s one of the philosophers I cover in my book on anxiety,
[00:09:57] he says this, he says, when we have anxiety,
[00:10:00] rather than trying to avoid it or flee from it,
[00:10:03] we should actually turn our attention to the anxiety
[00:10:05] and try to make the anxiety into a fear.
[00:10:08] Try to think about what is it that might be causing me fear.
[00:10:12] So in some sense, to give shape to my formless anxiety,
[00:10:15] to this sort of inchoate emotion I have,
[00:10:18] to turn it into something concrete,
[00:10:19] because if I am able to turn it into something concrete,
[00:10:22] there is something I could possibly do about it.
[00:10:24] I might be able to bring rational thought to bear upon it.
[00:10:27] There might be strategies for survival, for escape,
[00:10:30] for activism that could help me with it.
[00:10:32] But till the time that it remains formless,
[00:10:35] I’m actually quite helpless.
[00:10:36] I think this is what makes anxiety quite so disorienting
[00:10:39] is we don’t know what to attach our fear to,
[00:10:42] or it flits from object to object.
[00:10:44] So I would say that we have the, as you pointed out,
[00:10:48] there’s kind of a second order level to fear,
[00:10:51] what we call the second order anxiety.
[00:10:53] And the second order is that we are fearful of being fearful.
[00:10:56] That’s anxiety.
[00:10:58] But I would also say that once we understand
[00:11:01] anxiety’s relationship with our consciousness
[00:11:04] and with our conditions of existence,
[00:11:06] we can get to a state,
[00:11:08] and this is the best that philosophy can do for us,
[00:11:10] that it can teach us how to not be anxious about being anxious.
[00:11:14] I think the punchline of my book
[00:11:16] is that you are going to be anxious
[00:11:17] just because we’re human beings.
[00:11:19] We’re constituted in a certain way.
[00:11:20] Right.
[00:11:21] about being anxious. I guess sort of in the same way, every generation seems to feel like
[00:11:26] they’re at the end of history, like the apocalypse is nigh. In the same way, it seems like every age
[00:11:33] thinks it’s the age of anxiety for all kinds of reasons, I guess. But there actually may be a
[00:11:41] good empirical claim that that’s true of this period. I mean, I’m not looking at the data right
[00:11:47] now, but my understanding is that there has been a pretty big spike in anxiety, or at least
[00:11:54] diagnoses of anxiety. How do you make sense of that? What is your theory about that? I mean,
[00:12:01] is this really a uniquely anxious period of time?
[00:12:05] Well, I do think that every age likes to appoint itself or anoint itself as the age of anxiety.
[00:12:12] But I do think there is something interesting about this particular time that we’re living in.
[00:12:17] For example,
[00:12:17] technology and finance, two of the most important forces in the world that run the world, are
[00:12:23] actually quite opaque to most people. So the sense of being surrounded by systems and objects that
[00:12:29] are not under our control, that we don’t fully understand, but which yet ironically know everything
[00:12:36] about us, which dominate our lives, which control them, which manipulate them. This sense, I think,
[00:12:42] is quite acute. I think people have been powerless before. I mean, the history of the world is
[00:12:47] the history of powerless people rising up to try and gain more power for themselves. And I think
[00:12:52] people are frequently confronted, opaque, bewildering, authoritarian power. But I think now
[00:12:58] this power is greater than we have ever known. We ourselves, individually, are reduced to being
[00:13:05] much more at their mercy than we have been. And I think in a very important sense,
[00:13:12] we are connected to each other. We are connected to each other’s,
[00:13:17] fears and insecurities. So I would say there’s also greater chances for what I might call the
[00:13:22] social contagion of anxiety. You know, we’ve known that anxious children are produced by
[00:13:28] anxious parents. You see your elders growing up anxious around you, you become anxious.
[00:13:34] So I think we see much more anxiety. We communicate much more anxiety. We are materially
[00:13:41] set up in such a way that we feel the impress of opaque power on us in our,
[00:13:47] everyday lives in a much more pronounced fashion than people might have in the past.
[00:13:52] There are also engines of comparison around that can make us feel discontent with our life because
[00:13:57] we see other people living their lives in ways that we didn’t see before. So I think there are
[00:14:01] material circumstances that might make this present moment, I think, unique in the ways in
[00:14:11] which it is able to provoke anxiety within us. And of course, let’s not forget, as you pointed
[00:14:16] out very critically in your,
[00:14:17] assessment of our modern anxiety, we diagnose anxiety much more readily and much more freely
[00:14:22] than we do now because we have treatments for anxiety, which prop up, you know, large,
[00:14:29] large pharmaceutical companies who can make money off anxiety by, by medicating us for it.
[00:14:35] So I think diagnosis of anxiety, the medication of anxiety, a public discourse about anxiety,
[00:14:40] all of these are present in our, in our modern culture in, in a much greater way. And here we are,
[00:14:46] you know, on a podcast.
[00:14:47] Talking about anxiety, about a book about anxiety.
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[00:17:10] Tuffy Tuffey
[00:17:12] 007 Hey, guys, it’s me, Tuffy, the host of Vox. TV.com.
[00:17:13] 007 007 Hey, guys, it’s me, Tuffy, the host of Tuffy Talks.
[00:17:17] 007 007 On this week’s episode,
[00:17:19] we’re doing a State of the Union, but more State of Pop Culture, 2026, from Ozempic to Tradwives.
[00:17:27] Spooky. And why the center of pop culture is in Utah now? We do a deep dive on Chloe and Lamar.
[00:17:34] 007 007 We talk Hilary Duff. You know what? Find us everywhere at Teffy Talks. Subscribe
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[00:17:43] other work bestie, and hopefully everyone you’ve ever met.
[00:18:09] 007 007 The book is really a sort of journey.
[00:18:13] through these major traditions of thought and how they engage with anxiety and explain it.
[00:18:23] And the first one you explore is Buddhism. I’ll just ask very generally, what does Buddhism
[00:18:31] have to teach us about anxiety? What is the great Buddhist insight?
[00:18:36] A good question. The great Buddhist insight into anxiety can be
[00:18:44] best described by, I think, recounting the four great truths that the Buddha
[00:18:49] offered his disciples. And it’s worth noting that when we hear these four great truths,
[00:18:56] there is something simple about them, and I think that’s where their power lies.
[00:18:59] And in the way that the Buddha presents them, he presents them much in the manner that a doctor
[00:19:04] or a physician might offer you.
[00:19:06] A cure for what ails you. So the first great truth that the Buddha offers us
[00:19:11] is that there is suffering. This is the truth about the world.
[00:19:16] The second is this suffering has a cause. He identifies the cause, and there are three great
[00:19:22] failures of knowledge that produce our suffering. The third great truth is that this suffering
[00:19:30] can be alleviated. There is a prognosis that he offers.
[00:19:35] And the fourth great
[00:19:36] truth is this is how you alleviate suffering. And this the Buddha points out the eightfold path,
[00:19:42] which is how to alleviate your suffering. I would say the heart of this is the three
[00:19:46] failures of knowledge, which the Buddha says produce our suffering. What are these three
[00:19:51] great failures of knowledge? The first failure of knowledge is that everything changes.
[00:19:58] Everything is perpetually changing. This world is not static. This world is not moving towards some
[00:20:06] end state. It is not frozen in some state of perfection. It is constantly evolving and
[00:20:13] changing. And everything that we see around us, this is not dynamic. This is not solid things,
[00:20:19] but this is a state of constant perpetual flux. I might see occasionally
[00:20:26] an object for which I will give a determinate name like this coffee mug, right? But realize
[00:20:33] that at some point, this coffee mug will decay. But at some point, this coffee mug will decay.
[00:20:36] will decompose, will fall apart.
[00:20:38] It is not guaranteed for eternity.
[00:20:40] So our names, the names that we give to objects
[00:20:44] are just sort of placeholders.
[00:20:46] They’re conveniences that we have settled upon, right?
[00:20:49] This is an important point.
[00:20:50] It seems very obvious.
[00:20:53] And yet the Buddha will point out
[00:20:54] that our failure to fully take this on board
[00:20:56] makes us unhappy.
[00:20:57] The second thing is the notion of interdependent arising.
[00:21:02] Everything is connected to everything else.
[00:21:05] So nothing has an existence that is independent
[00:21:09] and undetermined by the rest of reality in some sense, right?
[00:21:15] This plays a very important role
[00:21:16] in the Buddha suggesting universal compassion upon us
[00:21:20] because he makes it clear
[00:21:22] that our happiness cannot be an individual project.
[00:21:25] If I’m happy and reduce my suffering,
[00:21:27] but there is suffering elsewhere in the world,
[00:21:30] guess what?
[00:21:30] That suffering is going to come and affect me as well, right?
[00:21:34] What am I-
[00:21:34] This is such an interesting,
[00:21:35] um, distinction with a lot of Western religious thinking
[00:21:39] where, you know, in these Eastern traditions,
[00:21:42] they’re asking you to think of yourself
[00:21:46] as smaller and less important cosmically, right?
[00:21:49] And there’s a lot of the Western religious traditions
[00:21:51] want you to think of yourself as, you know,
[00:21:54] you are special, you are, you know,
[00:21:56] there’s a creator who has a plan for you
[00:21:58] and the human race is the center of things, you know?
[00:22:00] And this is a very different attitude about-
[00:22:04] Yes.
[00:22:05] Our place in the world.
[00:22:07] So does Buddhism then ask people to take on these truths
[00:22:11] and do what with them?
[00:22:13] Accept them and as a result of that acceptance,
[00:22:16] the anxiety goes away.
[00:22:18] You use the word alleviate, right?
[00:22:20] Which is not the same thing as eliminate.
[00:22:22] It’s not that the anxiety goes away,
[00:22:24] but is the goal to just sort of change your perception of it
[00:22:29] or your relationship to it?
[00:22:30] Very good.
[00:22:31] Exactly.
[00:22:32] To change our perception of it,
[00:22:34] to change our understanding,
[00:22:35] understanding of it,
[00:22:36] and as a result, to change our relationship to it, right?
[00:22:39] So there’s an example I use in the book
[00:22:41] of somebody who goes to see a movie, right?
[00:22:44] And the movie ends.
[00:22:46] And when the movie ends
[00:22:47] and everybody’s walking out of the theater,
[00:22:49] they’re like bawling and wailing and crying
[00:22:52] and hanging onto their seat.
[00:22:53] And we’re like, come on, dude, we got to go.
[00:22:54] The movie’s over.
[00:22:55] And he’s like, no, no, I don’t want this movie to end.
[00:22:57] I don’t want this movie to end.
[00:22:59] You’re like, dude, you don’t get it.
[00:23:01] Movies are things that run for two hours.
[00:23:03] You pay 10 bucks for them.
[00:23:05] When this movie ends,
[00:23:06] we need to vacate the theater so the next show can start.
[00:23:10] If your friend doesn’t get it, right,
[00:23:12] we would say that his unhappiness is caused by the fact
[00:23:15] that he doesn’t understand what a movie is.
[00:23:17] If he would just understand what a movie is,
[00:23:19] some of his discomfort would be alleviated, right?
[00:23:23] Now, I would say in Buddhism,
[00:23:25] the Buddha’s asking us to take these facts
[00:23:27] about existence on board, right?
[00:23:30] Now, if we take these truths on board,
[00:23:32] if we take these truths on board
[00:23:33] and we live life in accordance with them,
[00:23:35] we have some distance
[00:23:37] from the kind of conventional reality
[00:23:40] that we have erected for ourselves in our society,
[00:23:43] where we grant ourselves selfhood.
[00:23:45] We claim things as being my phone, my mug, my pain.
[00:23:51] We feel sad about things that don’t accrue to us,
[00:23:54] like I lost out on this job offer to this other person,
[00:23:58] right, a sense of competition,
[00:24:00] a sense of comparison with other human beings.
[00:24:02] We come to realize that
[00:24:04] we have some distance from the kind of conventional reality
[00:24:04] that we have in our society,
[00:24:05] and that this kind of investment we have in ourselves
[00:24:07] is slightly misguided and misplaced.
[00:24:10] Can I ask you what the difference is
[00:24:13] between acceptance, accepting these things,
[00:24:16] you know, the brute fact of our impermanence
[00:24:21] and all the rest of it?
[00:24:23] What is the difference between that and resignation?
[00:24:27] Like, there are some things in life
[00:24:29] that you have to make peace with, right?
[00:24:30] Because they’re unavoidable.
[00:24:31] But there are also things that make people,
[00:24:34] anxious, that maybe we shouldn’t accept
[00:24:37] and shouldn’t make peace with and should resist.
[00:24:39] Do you think it’s easy to know the difference?
[00:24:44] I don’t think it’s easy to know the difference.
[00:24:46] I think it’s a difference that becomes clearer
[00:24:50] once we try to think of what our attitudes might be
[00:24:56] with respect to acceptance and resignation
[00:24:58] towards a particular feature or aspect of our lives, right?
[00:25:02] For example, I would say,
[00:25:04] I am resigned at one level
[00:25:08] to certain kinds of anxiety in my life
[00:25:11] not being significantly diminished.
[00:25:14] Like, for example, I don’t think parental anxiety,
[00:25:16] the parental anxiety that I suffer from,
[00:25:19] will be significantly diminished.
[00:25:21] But I think accepting it
[00:25:22] places it slightly differently in my life.
[00:25:25] Now, I want to back up by saying,
[00:25:28] whenever we have some problem in our life,
[00:25:31] some problematic situation that we are confronted with,
[00:25:34] I put it to you,
[00:25:34] that we only really have three attitudes
[00:25:36] that are possible towards it.
[00:25:38] Either we escape, right?
[00:25:40] I don’t like this situation, so I’m going to leave, right?
[00:25:43] I’m going to leave it behind and go somewhere else, right?
[00:25:45] This is escape.
[00:25:46] Another one is activism.
[00:25:48] I don’t like the situation, so I’m going to change it.
[00:25:51] I will actively act to make it different.
[00:25:54] The third is when we cannot escape,
[00:25:58] we cannot change the problem.
[00:26:00] And at that point, we have to live with it, right?
[00:26:03] That means that I need to accept,
[00:26:06] I cannot escape from this thing.
[00:26:08] I cannot change this thing.
[00:26:10] This thing is a feature of my life.
[00:26:12] Now, I put it to you,
[00:26:13] when something is accepted as a feature of one’s life,
[00:26:17] it’s no longer a problem in the way that a problem is,
[00:26:21] that is something demanding a solution
[00:26:23] or something demanding it be changed, right?
[00:26:26] One of the examples I use frequently
[00:26:28] when I talk about anxiety is,
[00:26:29] let’s say I’m hiking through the mountains
[00:26:30] and I come upon a hut,
[00:26:32] which is going to be a hut, right?
[00:26:33] And I come upon a hut,
[00:26:33] which is going to be a hut,
[00:26:33] which is going to be my only shelter for the night, right?
[00:26:35] And this hut has a hole in its roof.
[00:26:38] I could escape.
[00:26:39] I could leave the hut.
[00:26:40] That’s not possible because there’s a storm outside.
[00:26:43] I could change the hut.
[00:26:44] I could fix the hole in the roof,
[00:26:46] but I have no materials.
[00:26:47] So I have to stay here in this hut
[00:26:50] with this hole in the roof.
[00:26:52] At that point, the hole in the roof,
[00:26:55] I put it to you that my relationship to it changes somewhat.
[00:26:58] I am resigned, but I’m accepting of it
[00:27:01] and I need to see it differently.
[00:27:03] Perhaps the hole in the roof
[00:27:04] is how I see the stars in the sky.
[00:27:06] You know, when I’m lying on my back and freezing,
[00:27:08] perhaps the hole in the roof is what allows me to see it.
[00:27:11] So at some point, that resignation changes to acceptance
[00:27:16] once I come to accept it as a feature of my life
[00:27:19] that’s not going to go away.
[00:27:21] I just want to touch as much of these as we can,
[00:27:24] as much of these schools as we can,
[00:27:26] because they all have something different to offer.
[00:27:29] And it’s very complimentary when you kind of step back.
[00:27:33] And, you know, the second school is the existentialist,
[00:27:35] of whom I am a great admirer,
[00:27:37] as anybody who listens to the show knows.
[00:27:41] And they have a different approach to anxiety than Buddhism.
[00:27:44] How would you describe the existentialist spin on anxiety?
[00:27:49] The primary difference,
[00:27:51] or I would say the primary starting point for existentialism
[00:27:53] is the notion that we are not born into this world
[00:27:57] with a predetermined essence within us as human beings
[00:28:01] that are world,
[00:28:02] that are life-changing,
[00:28:02] that are life-changing,
[00:28:02] that are life-changing,
[00:28:02] that are life-changing,
[00:28:02] that are life-changing,
[00:28:03] that life is simply going to see realized, right?
[00:28:05] There’s no determinate or fixed way that I’m supposed to be.
[00:28:10] There’s no determinate or fixed way that the world is to be.
[00:28:13] So I am born into this world,
[00:28:16] which has a history to it, right?
[00:28:18] It has a history which has brought me here,
[00:28:20] dropped me at this particular point.
[00:28:21] But my life, such as it is,
[00:28:25] lacks an essence,
[00:28:26] but I’m to bring it into being through my own choices,
[00:28:30] through my actions,
[00:28:31] through the choices I make,
[00:28:33] and of course,
[00:28:34] these actions and these choices don’t just determine my life.
[00:28:37] They don’t just determine who I am.
[00:28:39] They also make a difference to the world I’m living in, right?
[00:28:42] So the existentialist sees a world that has been created
[00:28:46] by the actions and choices of all those human beings who preceded me.
[00:28:50] When I am born into this world,
[00:28:51] I’m born into it at a particular historical location,
[00:28:54] at a particular contingent point in space, time, and history.
[00:28:57] But from that point onwards,
[00:29:00] I might have been born into a language,
[00:29:02] or I might have been born into a language,
[00:29:03] or I might have been born into a language and a culture.
[00:29:04] But what I make of that language and culture,
[00:29:07] those tools that are being provided to me,
[00:29:09] is a question of my choices,
[00:29:12] a function of my choices.
[00:29:14] So anxiety comes about
[00:29:16] because the future is as yet formless.
[00:29:20] It is unshapen.
[00:29:22] My life is unshapen and unformed,
[00:29:25] but I realize I will bring this into being through my choices, right?
[00:29:30] And realizing this is, of course,
[00:29:32] occasion for anxiety,
[00:29:33] because now I’m the one responsible for this.
[00:29:37] I am the one who’s making this happen to me and to the world.
[00:29:41] I also just think there’s just a certain amount of anxiety
[00:29:44] that comes with being a self-conscious creature.
[00:29:49] You know, it’s getting into Heidegger a little bit, I guess.
[00:29:52] But, you know, it’s hard to imagine a beetle or an alligator experiencing anxiety
[00:29:57] because I don’t think beetles and alligators are asking themselves
[00:30:00] who they are or what their purpose is.
[00:30:02] They just…
[00:30:02] They just are.
[00:30:04] I don’t think they’re wondering what happens after they die.
[00:30:07] They just are.
[00:30:09] Right.
[00:30:10] I don’t know.
[00:30:10] Am I oversimplifying that?
[00:30:12] Maybe my imagination is lacking.
[00:30:17] Maybe beetles are asking themselves those questions.
[00:30:19] No, fair enough.
[00:30:19] I mean, you know,
[00:30:21] neither you and I are well-equipped to speak authoritatively
[00:30:24] about the phenomenology of insects,
[00:30:26] but I would say,
[00:30:28] given the conditions of our existence,
[00:30:31] right, as you pointed out,
[00:30:32] and I would say there are these existential parameters.
[00:30:36] We live in time.
[00:30:37] This time is finite.
[00:30:39] I’m conscious that this time is finite.
[00:30:41] For example, I could be a creature, like an animal,
[00:30:43] that lived in finite time but didn’t know this time was finite.
[00:30:46] But I would say there are two more aspects of this.
[00:30:48] One is we know this time is finite
[00:30:51] and we are concerned about the future.
[00:30:54] We are curious.
[00:30:55] I think this is a very important thing that makes us anxious.
[00:30:58] We’re curious creatures.
[00:30:59] But we’re not omniscient.
[00:31:03] And neither are we all powerful.
[00:31:06] So we want to know, but we cannot know.
[00:31:09] Right?
[00:31:09] If you were simply like, you know, finite time, I’m good.
[00:31:13] I don’t need to know what happens in the future.
[00:31:16] Then again, we’d be fine.
[00:31:17] The problem is we are curious.
[00:31:19] We want to know.
[00:31:20] This is what I suggest in the book, that philosophy and anxiety go together.
[00:31:25] Because we are very used to thinking about philosophy as arising from wonder, right?
[00:31:29] Ah, beauty, awe, wonder and curiosity.
[00:31:33] But beauty, awe and wonder go side by side with fear and terror.
[00:31:37] When I say, what’s that beautiful light in the sky?
[00:31:41] Man, what is that hot, big ball of fire up in the sky?
[00:31:45] That feeling of awe is mixed up with fear and terror as well.
[00:31:50] Once you start asking questions and seeking truth,
[00:31:53] you might not like the answers.
[00:31:55] You might not like the answers.
[00:31:56] Exactly.
[00:31:56] Yeah.
[00:31:57] So I would say anxiety and inquiry or anxiety and philosophy in some sense go together.
[00:32:02] Yeah.
[00:32:02] Yeah.
[00:32:02] Yeah.
[00:32:02] Yeah.
[00:32:02] It’s very fundamental, right?
[00:32:05] So you’re absolutely right.
[00:32:06] It’s a very fundamental emotion to us.
[00:32:17] Hi, this is Kara Swisher.
[00:32:19] And this week on my podcast, On With Kara Swisher, I talk to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
[00:32:24] While he hasn’t officially announced a run for president yet, he’s telegraphing it all the time.
[00:32:28] It’s exhausting.
[00:32:29] He’s also got a new book out, which is what you do when you’re running for president.
[00:32:32] It’s called.
[00:32:32] Young Man in a Hurry.
[00:32:34] I recently interviewed him live in San Francisco.
[00:32:37] Have a listen.
[00:32:38] The problem with the Democratic Party so often is we appear weak.
[00:32:42] And we’ve got to be stronger and we’ve got to be more assertive.
[00:32:45] And so that’s, you know, it’s the spirit I think that is required of this moment.
[00:32:49] I’ve known Gavin Newsom since he was mayor of San Francisco a million years ago,
[00:32:52] a million hair gels ago.
[00:32:54] And he’s a really interesting and compelling politician.
[00:32:56] He’s done a lot of things in his career.
[00:32:59] And this one, this run for presidency, which is going to happen,
[00:33:02] is among the most interesting.
[00:33:04] You can find a full conversation wherever you get your podcast.
[00:33:07] And on YouTube, obviously, be sure to follow and subscribe to On with Kara Swisher for more.
[00:33:17] So everyone knows our politics are divided.
[00:33:20] There’s left versus right and dividing lines on age, gender or race.
[00:33:25] But maybe our biggest divide in our politics isn’t about identity at all.
[00:33:29] It’s insiders versus outsiders.
[00:33:31] At least that’s what Congressman Ro Khanna would say.
[00:33:35] The real issue is two tiers of justice in America.
[00:33:38] The real issue is people with power and wealth using it to be above the law
[00:33:43] and escape even investigation or prosecution.
[00:33:46] And it’s only gotten more noticeable in recent months,
[00:33:48] as issues like the Epstein files and artificial intelligence
[00:33:51] have seemed to pit the elites against everybody else.
[00:33:55] California Congressman Ro Khanna takes on the Epstein class.
[00:33:58] Today explained in your feed every weekday,
[00:34:01] and now on Saturdays, too.
[00:34:07] What are the main takeaways of the foreign policy section
[00:34:10] from Donald Trump’s State of the Union address?
[00:34:13] I do think they’ve made a decision to elevate domestic issues
[00:34:17] as we head towards the midterms.
[00:34:19] We’ll see if that sticks,
[00:34:20] because he keeps getting drawn back to the foreign policy issues.
[00:34:23] I’m John Feiner.
[00:34:25] And I’m Jake Sullivan.
[00:34:26] And we’re the hosts of The Long Game,
[00:34:27] a weekly national security podcast.
[00:34:30] This week, we’ll react to President Trump’s decision to remove the U.S. president from office.
[00:34:31] We’ll react to President Trump’s decision to remove the U.S. president from office.
[00:34:31] We’ll react to President Trump’s decision to remove the U.S. president from office.
[00:34:31] We’ll react to President Trump’s decision to remove the U.S. president from office.
[00:34:31] We’ll react to President Trump’s State of the Union address,
[00:34:33] the situation with Iran,
[00:34:34] and the eruption of violence involving cartels in Mexico.
[00:34:38] The episode’s out now.
[00:34:39] Search for and follow The Long Game wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:35:00] We’re really slingshotting.
[00:35:01] We’re really slingshotting.
[00:35:02] We’re really slingshotting.
[00:35:02] We’re really slingshotting.
[00:35:02] We’re really slingshotting.
[00:35:02] We’re really slingshotting.
[00:35:02] But, yeah, we’re just going to do it,
[00:35:04] because I want to.
[00:35:07] The great psychoanalytic tradition,
[00:35:10] which is another school in the book,
[00:35:13] Freud being the most famous psychoanalyst.
[00:35:17] What do you think they understood about anxiety
[00:35:20] that maybe the Buddhists or the existentialists didn’t?
[00:35:25] What do they add to our picture of anxiety?
[00:35:29] What do they add to our picture of anxiety?
[00:35:29] There’s two really important,
[00:35:32] I think, advances or, shall we say,
[00:35:35] differences in Freudian thought.
[00:35:36] One is that I think Freud implicates the social
[00:35:38] quite strongly,
[00:35:42] that we are anxious because we live in societies
[00:35:45] with other human beings.
[00:35:47] The other thing that I would say that Freud offers us,
[00:35:49] and this is a formulation of anxiety that he arrived at
[00:35:52] over a long period of time,
[00:35:54] which is that when we are born,
[00:35:56] when we are growing up,
[00:35:57] we have certain objects that are valuable
[00:35:59] and near and dear to us.
[00:36:00] And part of growing up is going away from those objects,
[00:36:04] right?
[00:36:04] The most famous one, of course, being the maternal object.
[00:36:07] Now, as I grow away from this,
[00:36:09] I experience a certain kind of trauma, right?
[00:36:11] Because a certain kind of love is taken away from me.
[00:36:14] So there’s a very deep and powerful insight in Freud,
[00:36:17] which is, I think, that for him,
[00:36:19] anxiety is the fear of the loss of love.
[00:36:22] I lost love once of a particular kind.
[00:36:26] And now when I’m living,
[00:36:28] when I encounter situations that make me feel,
[00:36:31] like I could lose something important in this,
[00:36:34] that older fear gets triggered
[00:36:36] and gets replayed in the theater of my mind.
[00:36:39] So one glib way of saying this
[00:36:42] is that if I’m anxious about social acceptance,
[00:36:46] if I am anxious about fame or social attainment,
[00:36:50] I’m nervous in my peer groups,
[00:36:52] in romantic relationships.
[00:36:54] For Freud, what’s underwriting this kind of deep
[00:36:56] and fundamental form of anxiety
[00:36:58] is that I’m experiencing emotions
[00:37:00] that I’ve experienced.
[00:37:00] That I’ve experienced before
[00:37:01] and which I found to be traumatic and unpleasant.
[00:37:04] So are they seeing anxiety basically as a signal?
[00:37:07] A signal of something going on?
[00:37:09] Yes, that’s right.
[00:37:10] Beneath the surface that maybe your mind
[00:37:13] doesn’t want you to see.
[00:37:15] Yeah.
[00:37:15] So that’s exactly the term that Freud used.
[00:37:18] He called it signal anxiety.
[00:37:19] When my friend sends me a text message
[00:37:21] and I rush to reply to them,
[00:37:24] thinking that if I don’t reply to them within 30 seconds,
[00:37:27] they will take me off their, you know,
[00:37:28] their it list of friends.
[00:37:30] What I’m experiencing at that time
[00:37:32] is that I’m coming close to a feeling
[00:37:34] that I’m about to lose something
[00:37:35] which I’ve experienced before
[00:37:37] and I don’t want to go near it again.
[00:37:40] But I would say Freud says quite importantly
[00:37:41] that part of growing up
[00:37:43] is coming to understand
[00:37:45] that the world is not going to give us
[00:37:48] the kind of love we had when we were children
[00:37:51] and that we need to let go
[00:37:53] of this quote unquote childish hope, right?
[00:37:58] That I will feel comforted,
[00:38:00] taken care of, secure.
[00:38:03] Not everybody’s had this right in their childhood,
[00:38:05] but those of us who are lucky enough
[00:38:07] to have had loving parents
[00:38:08] have experienced something
[00:38:09] which it would be mistaken
[00:38:13] to expect from the world when we grew up.
[00:38:16] So part of growing up for Freud
[00:38:18] is very much letting go
[00:38:20] of certain kinds of illusions that we had
[00:38:22] about what the world held in store for us.
[00:38:25] Or you can become neurotic
[00:38:27] and project all your bullshit on other people.
[00:38:29] That’s always an option.
[00:38:31] That’s always an option.
[00:38:32] Always an option.
[00:38:33] Sameer, what do you think philosophy can really do
[00:38:37] to help people deal with anxiety?
[00:38:39] What can it do for us?
[00:38:41] And maybe just as importantly,
[00:38:42] what can philosophy not do for us?
[00:38:46] Good.
[00:38:47] Let me just start with the latter.
[00:38:48] I don’t think philosophy is going to give us
[00:38:49] a cure for anxiety, right?
[00:38:52] But I think philosophy can help us
[00:38:54] understand anxiety better.
[00:38:56] It can help us understand our own conditions,
[00:38:59] our own emotions, our own emotions, our own feelings.
[00:38:59] It can help us for existence.
[00:39:00] It can bring about a greater understanding
[00:39:03] of our relationship with anxiety.
[00:39:07] And I think in doing that,
[00:39:08] like I said, the punchline of the book is
[00:39:10] you’re not going to stop being anxious.
[00:39:12] But philosophy can help you realize
[00:39:15] that you don’t have to be anxious about being anxious.
[00:39:18] Once you understand who we are,
[00:39:21] the kinds of creatures we are,
[00:39:23] and the kinds of conditions
[00:39:24] that existence places upon us,
[00:39:26] we are better placed, I think,
[00:39:28] in some way, in some way,
[00:39:29] to understand our role within the world
[00:39:31] and to not make ourselves pointlessly unhappy.
[00:39:34] I think being unhappy is one thing,
[00:39:36] but being pointlessly unhappy is worse.
[00:39:39] I think, you know,
[00:39:40] Nietzsche said it in so many different ways.
[00:39:43] You can’t get away from suffering.
[00:39:45] What you can get away from
[00:39:46] is moralizing your suffering, right?
[00:39:50] Like suffering is fine.
[00:39:52] Pointless suffering is not, right?
[00:39:54] So I think once we understand
[00:39:56] why I suffer from anxiety
[00:39:57] and why I suffer from anxiety,
[00:39:59] that I’m going to be suffering from it
[00:40:00] for the rest of my life
[00:40:01] in some shape or form,
[00:40:03] I think I have a better grip on it.
[00:40:04] I’m duty-bound as we wrap up here
[00:40:07] to ask what other practical advice
[00:40:12] you might have for people listening
[00:40:14] who are struggling with anxiety.
[00:40:19] I would say this is something
[00:40:22] that has come to me as I wrote the book.
[00:40:24] And now as I talk about it,
[00:40:26] that the single most important thing
[00:40:28] that human beings can do
[00:40:29] to live with the presence of anxiety in their lives
[00:40:34] and to alleviate it in some measure
[00:40:35] is to cultivate their personal relationships,
[00:40:38] to think about the kinds of human connections we have,
[00:40:43] the kinds of social human connections we have,
[00:40:45] to cherish the love we have in our lives,
[00:40:50] because I think it’s the single most important good
[00:40:53] that the world can send our way.
[00:40:56] So to cherish the love we have,
[00:40:57] to work on it,
[00:40:59] to maintain and treasure human connections,
[00:41:01] I’ve come to feel that the fear of death
[00:41:04] is just really the fear of the loss of love.
[00:41:06] So I think this is the single most important thing we can do.
[00:41:09] You know, there are other measures,
[00:41:11] you know, people will say things like,
[00:41:13] I think meditation,
[00:41:15] keeping oneself physically active.
[00:41:17] We are embodied beings, right?
[00:41:19] We need to move and relate to the world,
[00:41:21] to spend time in the outdoors,
[00:41:23] to put ourselves in positions
[00:41:25] where we can contemplate.
[00:41:27] Look at, observe things greater, beautiful,
[00:41:32] and more timeless than us.
[00:41:34] Because I think it places us in existence
[00:41:36] in probably a far healthier relationship
[00:41:40] than we might have.
[00:41:42] So I would say cultivate love and get outdoors.
[00:41:45] It really does seem like the trick
[00:41:46] is to find ways to be immersed in the moment,
[00:41:49] you know, to seek out activities
[00:41:50] that take our minds off ourselves
[00:41:53] and our obsessions.
[00:41:54] Mindful activities.
[00:41:55] Yeah, it’s all that.
[00:41:57] That message is cliche at this point, I know,
[00:42:01] but that doesn’t make it untrue.
[00:42:03] No, not at all.
[00:42:04] Not at all.
[00:42:04] And I think there’s a convergence
[00:42:05] along so many different cultures,
[00:42:07] so many systems of thought,
[00:42:08] staying in the moment,
[00:42:09] which takes us out of the flux of time for a second.
[00:42:13] This is in theories of the sublime,
[00:42:15] that when we look at a piece of art,
[00:42:17] I’m suspended.
[00:42:18] I’m not in the future.
[00:42:19] I’m not in the past.
[00:42:20] I’m in the moment of observation,
[00:42:22] mystical experiences,
[00:42:24] the moment of love, right?
[00:42:25] When I’m in,
[00:42:27] when I’m,
[00:42:27] with my lover,
[00:42:29] time goes away, right?
[00:42:31] In each of these instances,
[00:42:33] what we find pleasant and beautiful about them
[00:42:36] is that they fix us in the moment.
[00:42:38] They keep us there on this object.
[00:42:41] I’m not thinking about myself.
[00:42:43] Remember, in all of these,
[00:42:44] all of these things,
[00:42:46] I’m not thinking about myself.
[00:42:48] Thinking about the object
[00:42:49] that I’m in that relationship with, right?
[00:42:52] Whether it’s love, music, drugs,
[00:42:55] a beautiful view of a mountain,
[00:42:57] whatever it might be at that moment,
[00:43:00] there’s just these two things.
[00:43:02] I’m going to leave it right there.
[00:43:04] Um, once again, the book is called,
[00:43:07] um, the book is called anxiety,
[00:43:09] a philosophical guide.
[00:43:10] Um, it was a great read.
[00:43:12] Um, it was a really wonderful kind of tour through some of my favorite writers and books.
[00:43:18] So, uh, thank you for that.
[00:43:21] And, and, and thank you for this conversation.
[00:43:23] It was a real pleasure.
[00:43:24] Thanks very much for having me on.
[00:43:26] I, uh,
[00:43:26] I loved having this conversation with you.
[00:43:28] Thank you.
[00:43:36] All right.
[00:43:36] I hope you enjoyed this episode.
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[00:43:59] This episode was produced by Beth Morrissey and Thor new writer edited by Jorge just engineered by Shannon Mahoney and Christian Ayala fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch and Alex Overton wrote our theme music episodes of the gray area drop on Mondays and Fridays, listen and subscribe.
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