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I recently appeared on several other podcasts and was asked what I thought about a few prominent people in our culture.
Summer prominent only at The Fringe or should only be there but of course The Fringe is now everywhere. Courtesy of social media, every part of culture science, Public Health War economics. The lives of famous people conspiracy theories about everything and nothing. All information is in the process of being macerated by billions of tiny mouths and then spit back.
Again and lapped up by others. So what is in fact, mostly digital vomit at this point is being spread everywhere and celebrated as some new form of nutrition. So there are people who we probably shouldn't know about, but do and they're people who should have no influence at all, but their influence has enormous. One of these people is Andrew Tate and another is Donald Trump. Both of these men are assholes and I said as much on these
Podcasts, however, many people appear confused about what it means to be an asshole. The fact that many of these confused people are themselves, assholes is perhaps, unsurprising. Many people believe that calling someone like Tate or Trump. An asshole says very little about them. And all too much about the person making the allegation such a person is believe just doesn't like Tate or Trump's style. He finds their brashness defensive and taking a
Pensive brashness is just a sign of weakness. Only someone who doesn't feel strong himself could find another's, arrogance or bombast threatening. There's a word for such a person waiting deep into the vomitorium. Now, right of Center where Tate and Trump or truly Kings. Such a person is very likely to be called a cuck if this word is unknown to you. Well, then congratulations, but this rests on a fundamental misunderstanding,
In an asshole is not just a matter of style, it's a matter of substance because to be an asshole, is to care about the wrong things, it is to not have ones. Priorities straight of course, many of us don't have our priorities quite straight but only an asshole is inclined to celebrate this failure in public to be an asshole is to mistake one's vices for virtues. It is to fundamentally misunderstand what it means to live a good life and to encourage this misunderstanding and
others is to mistake shamelessness for integrity. In a furious, self-absorption for strength. And asshole is not just someone who lacks civility or tacked. In fact assholes, can be superficially charming and probably must be to succeed. The problem is never just on the surface. Whatever can be seen there, it's at the core.
The problem with assholes is that though they might occasionally appear to care about other things and other people, the only truly care about themselves. Whatever causes they attach to just inflate the self whatever. Love they express is instrumental. Of course we are all assholes. Some of the time we all have our moments of pettiness and vanity and duplicity and callousness but the task of living an examined life
Is to notice these moral failures as failures and to transcend their logic, the purpose of becoming a student of human wisdom and an honest, Observer of one's own mind, is to become less of an asshole more of the time. So I'm reserving, the term asshole for the sort of person who simply doesn't care that this project exists the committed asshole the unrepentant, one, the one who wears his lack of wisdom like a crown. This is the sort of asshole.
I'm talking about.
It seems strange to say it but even the worst assholes never seem to lack for admirers. What do people admire about them Above All Is there? Shamelessness many people struggle with feelings of Shame. Shame is among the least Pleasant of human emotions and it might be the most disempowering. Shame is generally surmounted not by growing insensitive to it, but by living in such a way that it has few causes to arise,
But assholes are proof that another strategy is possible, one can simply declare the offending, organ vestigial, and tear it out. And then one can live, however, one wants and never feel shame. Again, the gospel of the asshole is simple. There is nothing in your selfishness that you need to overcome. There's nothing to judge and no place from which to be judged by others. No one is better than you and those who pretend to be better.
Actually worse. Everyone is a selfish asshole. It's just that. Some of us are courageous enough to be honest about it. You can hear the cynicism at the core of this self worship and assholes. Who become the center of a movement, managed to communicate this quasi-religious Absolution of Shame and the celebration of cynicism more or less continuously by their living example.
In his way every asshole, beckons us to return to Childhood, or any appeal to the ongoing project of moral Improvement, can be shirked and derided as mere pretence. Again, Trump is the asshole Avatar of our age, say, whatever you want about him. The man is simply impossible to shame. He cannot be held to any standard of decency or moral seriousness because he holds himself to none. Anything that can be noticed about him.
We have noticed about another person would destroy their reputation within the hour can be neatly parried by the childish phrase. So what? Imagine discovering the Trump had plagiarized one of his speeches. So what orde committed a long string of business frauds. So what or was friendly with members of organized crime,
Again. So what absolutely no one who admires him would care. There is no. Disconfirming instance of his being a good person that matters because he's not even pretending to be a good person, he's a total asshole and everybody knows it. His fans don't love him in spite of the fact that he's an asshole, but because he is Trump, gives his fans permission to go on a moral holiday and to live there.
I choose whatever else he may communicate, hatred of Elites casual bigotry. Scientific ignorance disdained for norms and institutions. The subtext is always the same delivering a thrill to everyone. Sensitive to its frequency and the subtext is this, it's okay. And in fact, far more honest, even Noble, really to just be an asshole, Body and Soul.
And there's almost a kernel of truth to this because whatever their faults, there is one common moral failing of which all true assholes are perpetually. Innocent hypocrisy, you can't be a hypocrite. If you have no standards by, which you can be discovered to have fallen short, if you are content to be selfish and dishonest and uncharitable and to be seen to be this way by others, you achieve a kind of malignant
buddhahood
You are free in some deep sense, to just be who you are and that degree of comfort. In one's own skin, is Darkly charismatic. Again, The crucial thing to understand. If you'd like, to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe and Sam Harris dot-org. Once you do you'll get access to all full length episodes of The Making Sense podcast along with other subscriber, only content including bonus episodes and a Mas. And the conversations I've been having on
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