From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We now have religion based not on theology but on sociology. In principle, that's not a bad thing, but when your sociology has decided that the point of studying society is to change it (which was Marx's dictem), you've got a problem.
Our capacity to reason is recursive, combinatorial – we can reason about our reason – we can argue, criticise and develop tools that enhance our reason thanks to language and communication. We have the power to build on our reason, to enhance it.
Quantum mechanics is a whole new way of thinking– it says that the world is all by itself as a wave function of the universe, but you can never observe that. You can never observe a wave function directly. There is a complex relationship between what the world is and what you see when you look at it, and that relationship involves the idea that you can never predict precisely what you will see, but you can simply say the probability of what you will see.
Our ability to do philosophy is one of the things that distinguishes us from other animals- in some ways, it is that which makes us sapiens, 'wise monkeys'. Only humans seem to have developed this capacity for higher order questioning…. asking 'to what end are we doing this?' – 'why are we doing this at all?'
Art is a vocation for me, not a career, not a job… you wouldn't say to a nun. 'so, how did you get into God?'
You're basically trying to be predictive text for the ocean. You could be sitting out there – you've warmed up – you've mapped the line-up – and you've mentally prepared for where waves are going to break – you could have all that knowledge, but when you paddle out – everything could be completely different.
Those cycles don't exist – that's not what history is like. Disasters keep coming along at random intervals, they are not normally distributed... That's hard for our brains to deal with… we don't like the idea that history is just a lot of random shocks without any predictable features.
No one chooses their level of creativity. Understanding the neurological underpinnings of our reactions to art doesn't detract from the beauty and awe these creations inspire.
Despite our huge scientific advances, we're still very-much at the early stages of discovery. Many of our great questions are also stepping into the realms of philosophy. Do we all see the same way? Do we all perceive the same way? It's a hidden frontier.
If I say to you 41, it's data. If I tell you 41 is the temperature in centigrade, that's information. If I tell you 41 is the temperature, in centigrade, of a human patient, that really is information – in fact, it's in danger of becoming knowledge because of the contextualisation it gives you.
We come from mammals, we are mammals… we're just mammals that wear clothes. We're destimulated – we don't feel the cold, the heat, everything in our environment – even though our physiology is built for it. We've allowed them to lose this fitness, to lose their conditioning – and so our hearts compensate.
One of my Zen mentors, Barry Magid, authored a book entitled 'Ending the Pursuit of Happiness'. In it, he criticises the concept of chasing happiness as a curative fantasy – the mistaken belief that happiness is an attainable, sustainable, and permanent state. The reality is, no one is in a state of perpetual happiness.