Hi David, I'm new to substack because I listened to Modern Wisdom podcast episode with you and I find your content very interesting so I wanted to read more.
Anyway, I've been trying to meditate on and off for a long time, and thinking a lot of doing more recently and really learning how to do it, because I don't think I really know how, but never have I ever felt happiness when I was practicing meditation, mostly I was just being bored or distracted by my own thoughts. Happiness wasn't even my reason why I wanted to do it. I just wanted to slow down my thoughts, be in the present and learn how to focus and not be distracted all the time.
An interesting exercise for you would be one that Dr. David Burns invented to increase motivation at the start of therapy. It’s called paradoxical agenda setting. It’s described here and involves a magic button...
For your case you’d write down all the reasons that not meditating to be happy make you an awesome person, say something positive about yourself or have a positive effect. Examples might be: I’m awesome as I am -- I don’t need to meditate. There are more important values to me than being happy. I save time for other things by not meditating.
Next, given all of these awesome things about not meditating, ask yourself why change anything at all. It’s at this point that the person begins a conversation with himself on whether change is really worth it. He might say, yeah those things are all true but it would be nice to be a bit happier so yeah I’ll do your stupid exercises/meditation/whatever.
I meditated for a long time and also reached a point where I was a lot more content and at peace, and it was boring so I stopped. I think that's the main issue here - happiness is boring. We've evolved to constantly explore, be on guard for threats, move around, and do stuff. Just sitting quietly in contentment seems like a gentle death. Someone should write a satire where you die and go to heaven, and after a while everyone is miserable and creates chaos just to have something to do. I think that also explains a lot of the faux populism and revolutionary cosplaying we see on the Internet today - its great fun being a socialist, or trying to overthrow the deep state, or whatever else you want to do when you're generally safe, fed, and protected by a large and powerful government. Being at peace is boring and so we'll invent drama just to have something to do.
As far as not caring about politics, isn't that just a debate about what the word politics entails now? Humans have always cared about "morality" and "ethics" - essentially what the rules of engagement with are with each other and how we should redistribute resources. In the past, those discussions were more focused on our families and local communities but now life has become more atomized and national politics has overwhelmed all other discussions of local politics thanks to technology and the power of the federal government, so it's natural to obsess about it and think about it even though the likelihood you'll affect anything on a national scale is close to zero.
Maybe it's not about happiness but our evolutionary need to conserve energy/calories. I know that taking a walk in the morning with my dog makes me happy but I still have a hard time doing it. Meditation, exercising makes you feel better but it takes energy to do it, while eating a bag of potato chips gives you more calories.
Yea I agree we evolved a desire to conserve energy, and that’s why exercising is hard. But I’m not sure that applies to meditation. It’s just sitting around doing nothing. Plus it tends to be relaxing so it might even require less energy. I think we just didn’t evolve to pursue the feeling of happiness.
This is an old post I know, but I’m just getting around to reading all of your essays. I’m finding most of them fascinating. I’m not going to focus on meditation, but rather on politics. There’s a downside to ignoring politics. And I pretty much ignore it as much as possible. But back to the downside. The city where I live, like so many big cities, is a one party city. There’s no GOP to speak of, which means that the primaries matter more than the general elections. And only about 30% of voters in my city vote in the primaries. Which means that 16% of the electorate decides which candidates we get to vote on in the general elections. And the 16% of voters who select our candidates are extreme in their views. But because they control the primary elections, their candidates end up winning the general elections. So, our City Council is radical in its views and goals. Which usually means we spend a lot of money in this city on bad policies that don’t work. Tens of millions of dollars are spent to solve homelessness, but the homeless rate only goes up. Drug use? Up. Money on education? Up and up and up…but what students are learning in school either remains constant or declines. Number of bureaucrats hired by the city government? Up and up and up. And on average, the salaries of government employees are higher than those who work in the private sector. So, not caring about politics means those that care a lot get to control it. And the people that care a lot about politics are usually neurotic, angry, vocal, and nonsensical. What to do? Self interest should dictate that sane people who want a high-quality of life for themselves and their children and their neighbors need to get involved in politics and elect qualified candidates who have the experience and common sense to actually run government offices and programs effectively and efficiently. I can’t remember the exact quote or who said it, but it goes something like this…you may not care about politics, but politics cares about you. So, citizens who don’t care about politics allow the crazies who do care to run the insane asylum. And the insane asylum is getting crazier and crazier with each passing election cycle.
It’s a good point. But in the book, the author makes the (imo equally good) point that there is more than one way to do good in the world, and politics is not a particularly good one. The time I’d spend researching political candidates would be better spent on almost anything else, because even in a local race, my vote would have an extremely low probability of affecting the outcome. Even if I could persuade a few people, it would still have a low impact compared to other activities I could engage in. The opportunity costs of caring about politics are too high. I realize that this results in all the reasonable people reasonably staying out of politics, but that’s ultimately a problem with the incentive structure of the system, and not something that I can fix. My time might be better spent persuading people that the incentive structure sucks, and encouraging people to consider alternative systems, which I’m currently doing in an upcoming post called Democracy Is Bullshit. But I still plan to do the bare minimum of voting for people recommended by trustworthy people.
And also, one of the sites that you link to in your post indicates that, in the case of my city, Democrats would rather vote for Democrats no matter how idiotic their views and policies rather than vote for Republicans, no matter how sane and reasonable they might be. Democracy is a farce, pretty much…but, in the words of Winston Churchill, “…democracy is the worst form of government except for all of those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Went to a meditation course. I didn't manage to meditate at all. "Beside the sea" - mind busied itself on tide, erosion. "A quiet forest" - mind filled again busily, understory, any storm damage, smells. Even that busy I was bored. OTOH I'm genetically political in general outlook & pattern of observing while skeptical & becoming ever more so about politicians and their patent remedies for the ills of society.
Yea I found that if my mind was busy with thoughts, the best thing to do was meditate on the thoughts themselves—try to focus on what exactly they are and where they come from. That tends to make them vanish. As for your genetically political inclination, maybe that’s a thing. Maybe I have the opposite genes. I won’t begrudge your genes if you don’t begrudge mine.
I meditated to find something "more" than me; instead I kept knocking into my own suffering. If mediation makes one happy, it's probably being done wrong lol.
Not all messages are appropriate for all audiences. Sometimes you need to hear an argument from the other side. For example, maybe you're too liberal, so you need to hear an essay arguing against libertarianism.
Thanks, Brian. I like your way of framing it—that it’s more about becoming aware of one’s own and others’ bullshit, and perhaps becoming more patient and compassionate about it, than becoming happier. I’ll have to remember that. I did meditate a couple times since your last comment—you encouraged me. I think it really depends on having a community to support and encourage the practice, and probably the reason I stopped was because I didn’t have one. Also, I’m glad to learn I’m not alone in my feelings of political alienation. Nice to know there are others out there. Cheers.
Hi David, I'm new to substack because I listened to Modern Wisdom podcast episode with you and I find your content very interesting so I wanted to read more.
Anyway, I've been trying to meditate on and off for a long time, and thinking a lot of doing more recently and really learning how to do it, because I don't think I really know how, but never have I ever felt happiness when I was practicing meditation, mostly I was just being bored or distracted by my own thoughts. Happiness wasn't even my reason why I wanted to do it. I just wanted to slow down my thoughts, be in the present and learn how to focus and not be distracted all the time.
Hi Johnna, welcome and glad you enjoyed the modern wisdom episode. Have you tried guided meditation? Fwiw, this guided meditation audiobook, particularly the last chapter where you meditate on sounds, really cracked it open for me: https://www.audible.com/pd/B0084510JS?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=pdp
Hi David, loving the blog - what is the name of the guided meditation audiobook please ? that link doesn't work from the UK for some reason.
Thanks, Dave. It's called Guided Meditation: Six Essential Practices to Cultivate Love, Awareness, and Wisdom by Jack Kornfield.
An interesting exercise for you would be one that Dr. David Burns invented to increase motivation at the start of therapy. It’s called paradoxical agenda setting. It’s described here and involves a magic button...
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jqTeghCJ2anMHPPjG/book-review-feeling-great-by-david-burns
For your case you’d write down all the reasons that not meditating to be happy make you an awesome person, say something positive about yourself or have a positive effect. Examples might be: I’m awesome as I am -- I don’t need to meditate. There are more important values to me than being happy. I save time for other things by not meditating.
Next, given all of these awesome things about not meditating, ask yourself why change anything at all. It’s at this point that the person begins a conversation with himself on whether change is really worth it. He might say, yeah those things are all true but it would be nice to be a bit happier so yeah I’ll do your stupid exercises/meditation/whatever.
Very interesting, thanks! I love the paradoxical nature of this—sort of like using our fear of narcissism as a motivational tool. I’ll give it a try.
I meditated for a long time and also reached a point where I was a lot more content and at peace, and it was boring so I stopped. I think that's the main issue here - happiness is boring. We've evolved to constantly explore, be on guard for threats, move around, and do stuff. Just sitting quietly in contentment seems like a gentle death. Someone should write a satire where you die and go to heaven, and after a while everyone is miserable and creates chaos just to have something to do. I think that also explains a lot of the faux populism and revolutionary cosplaying we see on the Internet today - its great fun being a socialist, or trying to overthrow the deep state, or whatever else you want to do when you're generally safe, fed, and protected by a large and powerful government. Being at peace is boring and so we'll invent drama just to have something to do.
As far as not caring about politics, isn't that just a debate about what the word politics entails now? Humans have always cared about "morality" and "ethics" - essentially what the rules of engagement with are with each other and how we should redistribute resources. In the past, those discussions were more focused on our families and local communities but now life has become more atomized and national politics has overwhelmed all other discussions of local politics thanks to technology and the power of the federal government, so it's natural to obsess about it and think about it even though the likelihood you'll affect anything on a national scale is close to zero.
Maybe it's not about happiness but our evolutionary need to conserve energy/calories. I know that taking a walk in the morning with my dog makes me happy but I still have a hard time doing it. Meditation, exercising makes you feel better but it takes energy to do it, while eating a bag of potato chips gives you more calories.
Yea I agree we evolved a desire to conserve energy, and that’s why exercising is hard. But I’m not sure that applies to meditation. It’s just sitting around doing nothing. Plus it tends to be relaxing so it might even require less energy. I think we just didn’t evolve to pursue the feeling of happiness.
This is an old post I know, but I’m just getting around to reading all of your essays. I’m finding most of them fascinating. I’m not going to focus on meditation, but rather on politics. There’s a downside to ignoring politics. And I pretty much ignore it as much as possible. But back to the downside. The city where I live, like so many big cities, is a one party city. There’s no GOP to speak of, which means that the primaries matter more than the general elections. And only about 30% of voters in my city vote in the primaries. Which means that 16% of the electorate decides which candidates we get to vote on in the general elections. And the 16% of voters who select our candidates are extreme in their views. But because they control the primary elections, their candidates end up winning the general elections. So, our City Council is radical in its views and goals. Which usually means we spend a lot of money in this city on bad policies that don’t work. Tens of millions of dollars are spent to solve homelessness, but the homeless rate only goes up. Drug use? Up. Money on education? Up and up and up…but what students are learning in school either remains constant or declines. Number of bureaucrats hired by the city government? Up and up and up. And on average, the salaries of government employees are higher than those who work in the private sector. So, not caring about politics means those that care a lot get to control it. And the people that care a lot about politics are usually neurotic, angry, vocal, and nonsensical. What to do? Self interest should dictate that sane people who want a high-quality of life for themselves and their children and their neighbors need to get involved in politics and elect qualified candidates who have the experience and common sense to actually run government offices and programs effectively and efficiently. I can’t remember the exact quote or who said it, but it goes something like this…you may not care about politics, but politics cares about you. So, citizens who don’t care about politics allow the crazies who do care to run the insane asylum. And the insane asylum is getting crazier and crazier with each passing election cycle.
It’s a good point. But in the book, the author makes the (imo equally good) point that there is more than one way to do good in the world, and politics is not a particularly good one. The time I’d spend researching political candidates would be better spent on almost anything else, because even in a local race, my vote would have an extremely low probability of affecting the outcome. Even if I could persuade a few people, it would still have a low impact compared to other activities I could engage in. The opportunity costs of caring about politics are too high. I realize that this results in all the reasonable people reasonably staying out of politics, but that’s ultimately a problem with the incentive structure of the system, and not something that I can fix. My time might be better spent persuading people that the incentive structure sucks, and encouraging people to consider alternative systems, which I’m currently doing in an upcoming post called Democracy Is Bullshit. But I still plan to do the bare minimum of voting for people recommended by trustworthy people.
And also, one of the sites that you link to in your post indicates that, in the case of my city, Democrats would rather vote for Democrats no matter how idiotic their views and policies rather than vote for Republicans, no matter how sane and reasonable they might be. Democracy is a farce, pretty much…but, in the words of Winston Churchill, “…democracy is the worst form of government except for all of those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Went to a meditation course. I didn't manage to meditate at all. "Beside the sea" - mind busied itself on tide, erosion. "A quiet forest" - mind filled again busily, understory, any storm damage, smells. Even that busy I was bored. OTOH I'm genetically political in general outlook & pattern of observing while skeptical & becoming ever more so about politicians and their patent remedies for the ills of society.
Yea I found that if my mind was busy with thoughts, the best thing to do was meditate on the thoughts themselves—try to focus on what exactly they are and where they come from. That tends to make them vanish. As for your genetically political inclination, maybe that’s a thing. Maybe I have the opposite genes. I won’t begrudge your genes if you don’t begrudge mine.
I meditated to find something "more" than me; instead I kept knocking into my own suffering. If mediation makes one happy, it's probably being done wrong lol.
The political book reminds me of "All debates are bravery debates". https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/09/all-debates-are-bravery-debates/
Not all messages are appropriate for all audiences. Sometimes you need to hear an argument from the other side. For example, maybe you're too liberal, so you need to hear an essay arguing against libertarianism.
Thanks, Brian. I like your way of framing it—that it’s more about becoming aware of one’s own and others’ bullshit, and perhaps becoming more patient and compassionate about it, than becoming happier. I’ll have to remember that. I did meditate a couple times since your last comment—you encouraged me. I think it really depends on having a community to support and encourage the practice, and probably the reason I stopped was because I didn’t have one. Also, I’m glad to learn I’m not alone in my feelings of political alienation. Nice to know there are others out there. Cheers.