Anxiety from a Philosophical Perspective with Samir Chopra

I've also brought back one of Embodied Philosophy's original experiments called Chalkboard Yoga Studies, where I dive deep in each episode into a different topic of yoga philosophy. And we're also releasing short twenty to thirty minute teachings that are extracts from our course archive. So it's a great way to get a bit of Embodied Philosophies education without having

to pay anything since YouTube is free. So if you want to join the party, just type Embodied Philosophy in the YouTube search bar and you should easily find us. So today I'm delighted to introduce you to Samir Chopra, a philosophical counselor and professor emeritus of philosophy at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I talked to Samir about ideas from his

recent book, Anxiety, A Philosophical Guide. I ran into Samir by happenstance while I was in Boulder, Colorado, in April this year. I was there doing a sequence of guided psychedelic psychotherapy sessions at the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness. In between sessions, I went to the Boulder bookstore and saw that there was a discussion happening about Anxiety from a philosophical perspective. Samir was being interviewed at the bookstore about

his new book, which we're talking about today. I had a hunch this might be a good candidate for a Chithhead's interview, so I bought the book, paid the small attendance fee, and sat down in the audience for the interview with Samir. And I'm really happy I did. There's a lot in Samir's beautifully written book that resonated with me. For example, Samir approaches philosophy not merely as a hyper intellectualized academic practice, but rather as a form of therapy.

Another thing I loved about the book is the way in which Samir engages with a number of different traditions without attempting to argue about which one is the best. Instead, he takes a pluralistic approach, assuming that we can learn something helpful and therapeutic about anxiety when we look at

different traditions. In that spirit, he explores anxiety from the perspective of the existentialists, psychoanalysis, and critical theory, and then he explores an important understanding we get about anxiety from the Buddhists. As someone who studied Western philosophy before I became a student of Indian and Yoga traditions, I found it extremely refreshing to see someone thinking cross culturally and cross traditionally. It also seems to be a perfect application

of the principle of Una contevada. The Jane principle of many sidedness. Prince, which we explored with Tree Nahata a couple of episodes ago, teaches that we get a greater grasp of the truth not by dogmatically asserting the dominance of one truth, but by bringing together multiple truths. All philosophical systems are partially true, and we don't get to truth by rejecting forms of truth that we think aren't compatible. We get to truth by bringing many truths into conversation.

So this reflects, I think, a fundamental principle behind the work that we do at embodied philosophy. That philosophy, no matter where it's from, whether it derives from India, China, Africa, the Americas, Europe, or elsewhere, whether it's from ancient times or modern times, has something to teach us. Each tradition can illuminate a unique dimension of understanding in my experience. There's another aspect to this, something also happens to the

body when we inhabit new knowledges, new philosophies. Each tradition corresponds to a unique kind of somatic quality, inspired by its ideas and embodied through its contemplative practices. By discovering a greater range of somatic or contemplative possibilities within ourselves, we discover a greater freedom within. As a result, what once may have been a reactive disposition transforms into something more flexible. Within that flexibility, sometimes anxiety's potency can begin

to feel less sinister. So studying different traditions isn't then just an intellectual exercise grounded in academic curiosity. At least it isn't that alone. It can also shift the way you relate to personal challenges, challenges that you may have perceived differently before your adventure with philosophy. So obviously I highly recommend Simir's book for anyone who is looking for some philosophical perspectives on anxiety. If you feel like philosophy

couldn't possibly help with your anxiety. Samir really is an excellent advocate for pointing out how philosophy might help. But this book is more than just a review of different traditions and their perspectives on anxiety. It is also a deeply personal and intimate glimpse into the life of someone, namely Samir, who has been able to understand his anxiety

more through a long process of exploration. I found reading his book very comforting and really a great example in demonstrating how philosophy can have a deep therapeutic impact on one's life. Before we get into the episode, I want to talk about a very special new program that we're launching at Embodied Philosophy called Sodena School. Sodena School is a year long program in which we'll explore the philosophies

and spiritual technologies of the yoga tradition. In the first eight week Sodna, which begins on October twenty ninth, we'll be exploring the entire range of traditions that fall under that general category of yoga philosophy. We'll talk about the

Vedic roots, the Upunishads, the Yoga sutras, and Bagavadgita. We'll discover the distinction between dualistic and non dualistic traditions Shaivashakta, Tantra and Weishna Abakhdi, Buddhist influences on yoga, as well as of course modern applications of these various ancient traditions. You can enroll in that as its own unique standalone experience as at single Sodna this fall, or you can also enroll in the entire year of Sadna school. So

I'll tell you a little bit about what's coming. In the second Sodna, starting in January, we'll be exploring the recognition school of philosophy from Kashmir Shaivism. In the spring, we'll be looking at rasa theory and esthetics and discover how central the imagination is to contemplative study and practice. Then in the summer we'll meet for a seven day virtual retreat and explore the Kundalini Shakti and different yogic templates of embodiment. We're going to be exploring these seven

days really in the spirit of a retreat. So I'll be inviting you over that seventy period to create the container to go very deep in meditative pacte. In addition to our periods of study and practice throughout the year, these these eight weeks Sodena's that happened three times a year.

In this seven day retreat, there will also be ongoing occasional weekend workshops on topics such as building an altar, the philosophy of tontic images and iconography, how to build a home contemplative practice and sustain that practice, and other topics that relate to the integration of contemplative teachings into our everyday lives. So this is a comprehensive course of study that can be done in this full twenty twenty

four to twenty twenty five experience. It can also be done one Sodna at a time if you don't want to make that year long commitment, but if you choose to join Sodna School, it also can ladder up to a full yoga teacher training the yoga teacher training portion where you would learn asanas and physiology and teaching methodology and pedagogy. All of that begins in January, and all of that information is also on the Sudna School landing page.

And while I'll be your primary teacher and facilitator for Soudenna School, will be joined by folks like Tis Little, Tova Olsen, and other past faculty members of Embodied Philosophy. There's a lot more information on the landing page, which of course you can find by going to Embodied philosophy dot com. Just head head there and you'll see a banner for Saddnaw School at the top of the page.

As a thank you for being a Chitthead's listener, you can use the coupon code Chittheads two fifty so all caps C H I, T H E A D S two five zero to get a significant two hundred and fifty dollars discount off the tuition cost. If you're not sure you can commit to the entire year, but you are interested in at least trying, you can just join us on one of the available payment plans, and if you need to let go of that commitment. You can

release that commitment with the thirty day notice again. To learn more about the Sadnaw School or the whole Yoga teacher training curriculum that Soadnaw School is also a part of, head to Embodied Philosophy dot com and click on the banner at the top of the home page which will take you to the Somna School landing page. So, without any further ado, let's go ahead and get into today's interview with Samirraria, Thomas Omagalty Coria, richeal Coma, Shunty Shunty Shy.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Chitheads Podcast and this very special edition of the Chiheads Podcast. Normally we record these behind closed doors as it were, but today I thought it would be lovely to interview Samir Chopra about his book Anxiety, Anxiety a Philosophical Guide. So Hello, Samir, thank you so much for joining me today.

for Medicinal Mindfulness. I think I had done maybe two psilocybin journeys when I had made my way into downtown Boulder gone to the I think it's the Bolder Bookstore. Is that what it is? Such bookstore, wonderful bookstore. Oh my gosh, like my kind of bookstore, great mixture of sort of you know, traditional bookstore meets spirituality and everything in between. Such an amazing bookstore. But I got there maybe ten minutes before your interview, which I didn't know

anything about. I saw that they were having this event, and I saw your book, and I mean the cover itself is very attractive, perfect kind of like seventies sort of seemingly retrofusion, very much my aesthetic. So I saw

the book, I also felt anxiety Philosophers. And then I also noticed, by leafing through the book that you explored anxiety from a number of different perspectives number of different traditions, including Western ones and ones from contemplative traditions, particularly Buddhism, and so it was right up my alley, so I decided to join for that interview. It was a wonderful conversation, and I knew after picking up the book that I had to get you on the podcast. So here we are,

and so yeah, so let's talk. Let's start at the beginning, I guess, or rather at the origin of your own philosophical journey, which it seems to you is the beginning of philosophy is anxiety for you. So I'd kind of love to talk a little bit about the experience of your anxiety prior to your kind of philosophical exploration and how you connected philosophy to anxiety. So what was that, what was that experience like prior to kind of your philosophical healing as it were.

been in therapy for five years. Before that, I'd been studying philosophy for you know, at the doctor level, been a professor for a while, and a lifelong sufferer of anxiety. And when I thought about what I took to be the foundational events in my life, in the way that I first conceived it, these were a pair of personal believements. I lost my parents early in my life life and in you know, radically different fashion. I lost my father when I was twelve. I lost my mother when I

was twenty six. I lost my father to a sudden heart attack at home. I lost my mother to a protracted illness to breast cancer. So these were sort of radically different depths. One was sudden of one. I had fear warning, and I was given all the warning I needed in some sense, but it was still unexpected in

its own in its own particular way. And I think the way I connected that to my personal anxiety was that it made the world a kind of threatening place in some ways, the portals of fatal possibility, as I described it, had been opened. In some ways, anything was possible. Now I understood that in some way there was a kind of there was a kind of a reasonableness demand

that I had placed on the universe. There was some limit of cruelty or indifference that the universe couldn't cross, right, There was this mentally imposed barrier had imposed in the universe. You're not just going to do these kinds of things to me. And actually I found out that the universe can,

it can do just about anything it once. And I think that was a shocking revelation, one that sort of you know, use whatever metaphor you want, pull the rug out from under my feet, open the trap doors, made me aware of the depths that lurked below, of the abysiness going. You know, we can go on with these descriptions. The idea is that I became extremely fearful and anxious. Anything was possible after all, right, which, of course is

the paradigmatic state of anxiety. That you are scared, you are fearful, you know, not quite of what your mind can turn itself to any eventuality. So the world looks with dangers in some ways. And of course anxiety doesn't always manifest itself as fear of the unknown. It bubbles up in different ways. It can restrict us from participating fully in life. It can make us anger, It can make us sedate ourselves through a variety of substances. It can manifest itself in a host of what, you know,

psychiatrists might call mental disorders. So and then, of course, you know, when I started to turn to philosophy, it was because I found myself brought there, pushed there by finding out that philosophical text offered relief of some sort, temporary, because after all, when you close the book, you went

back to being anxious again. But sometimes they changed your perspective, the vantage points from which you could stand and take in, you know, the world's offerings, and give you different perspectives on what all of this meant. When I went to therapy, I found out that I hadn't just become anxious. I had always been anxious. And the more I thought about anxiety, the more I studied philosophy, the more it seemed to me that my being anxious was neither particularly bizarre or

exceptional or weird. It almost was the way that we human beings were constituted. And when I further reflected upon it philosophically, using the resources that I now had, it seemed to me that in fact, the existential conditions of our life, of our existence, the so called existential trifecta right that we live in finite time, that we are mortal, and that we are conscious of these two parameters. That we are mortal and live in finite time, This guarantees anxiety.

I mean, I'll probably add a fourth condition in there, that we're concerned about the future. If we weren't concerned about the future, we wouldn't be anxious. But we are concerned about the future, and we have incomplete epistemic capacities, the ability to acquire knowledge about the future. Now we're in a bind. Time is running out. I'm conscious of this fact. I want to know what's going to happen, but I really cannot find out with perfect certainty. So

I'm concerned, fearful, I'm anxious. So I think in some ways, I I think philosophy brought me to these various passages of reflecting upon my state. But I'd come to it because events in my life had turned me away from a complacent attitude towards existence and made me realize that,

you know, this is all of it. It's all a bit contingent, right, It's a bit it's a bit put together, and it could fall apart in all these ways, right, And I think it's that possibility which is always sort of lurking at the edge of our minds, which I think is the hallmark of a certain kind of anxiety.

In my book, of course, there's you know, there's all these different traditions that I go through, and we can talk about those, but I think the passageway for me was, as you put it, was to be scared out of my mind by what had just happened to an aspect of the universe that I thought was involve my parents. I mean, you know, they're like folks that brought me into this universe. I imagine them solid.

But the way in which you kind of craft that narrative it just it really resonates and I'm sure anybody who reads it will feel that just how you know, universal this experience is. And and that can be really comforting in a way, because I think a lot of people are kind of i don't know, inculturated or because of the pressure of their ansiet these feel kind of alone in that in that experience. And so what your book did for me was really, you know, pointed to

kind of the universality of this experience. And obviously, depending on the tradition and we'll talk about those, you know, how that anxiety, that existential you know, condition is situated is different depending on from which tradition you look at it from. But there is this kind of thread throughout that this is sort of a pervasive and universal condition that we all can relate to differently. Right, It isn't this sort of well maybe we want to talk about

that next. It's not necessarily or at least you push back against this idea that that anxiety is purely sort of a kind of mechanistic you know, brain chemistry imbalance, and that is it is purely something that can be sort of ameliorated by various you know, psychiatric substances, but rather that there's you know, it's it's not simply that, but there's this deeper meaning to anxiety, or rather there

are multiple kind of meanings. That's really what I took away as well from your book, that there's this kind of multidimensionality to the exploration of meaning when it comes to anxiety. And and those those variable kind of approaches to anxiety don't necessarily always don't. They sometimes contradict each other, and yet there's still something valuable in that, in that

variable expiration. So I want to ask you about that, but I do want to just mention, you know, because for those that are interested in getting the book, and if you're not able to stay with us for the full interview, this is the book Anxiety, A Philosophical Guide by Samir Chopra. It is I also wanted to mention at the beginning. It is one of the most beautiful books that I've read recently. It's it's very with a lot of the types of books that I read for

this podcast or from my own study. It's a lot of, you know, fact, very academic, kind of abstruse, dry stuff. But you're not only is the book so rich with ideas, but it's also just very beautifully written, and that's such a pleasure. So it's also just a very pleasure book book. So I wanted to mention.

I think out there. One of them, of course, is what I would call them medicalized assumption, right that anxiety is a psychiatric condition and this is to be treated with psychiatric medications. Right, anti anxiety medications are very common, and in fact, precisely because anti anxiety medications have not just one effect but a variety of effects, we often see people taking anti anxiety medications for afflictions are not anxiety, for example, there are people who are taking anxiety medications

to help them sleep, for instance. Right. So, okay, so that's one. There's anxiety that's kind of understood as a medical condition. Right. Then there's another way in which anxiety is at some level understood, implicitly or explicitly, that it has something to do with the way that we have

organized our world. I think people do have some inkling that this is a cultural issue, this is a political issue, if we may want to go that far, that in some ways, the ways in which we have chosen to organize the world, to relate to each other, to live with each other, this is making us anxious, right, And I think social theorists have been beaten on this drum for a couple hundred years now, like, look around you, what do you expect You're bound to be anxious? Right?

That's true. And at the same time, I think this other cultural assumption goes along with it, which is that, well, it's a medical condition, and so if we were to treat this medical condition well, we would bring relief and an end to the suffering and misery of anxiety. And guess what that would make all of us functional and

happier than ever before. Right. So, there's a suspicions, I think floating around in the minds of many, which is expressed in a lot of the critical literature and theory and philosophy and political theorizing in this domain, you know, lots of other psychological theorizing as well, that in fact we might be medicating something which is you know, which

is a matter of perhaps personal and political reflection. Perhaps there's something suspicious about the fact that anxiety makes us dysfunctional in a society in which we are needed to be functional and highly productive, right, which has always been the worry with antidepressants. Like one of the things that antidepressants will do, even if they leave you with a diminished libido, is that they will get you off the

couch and back to work. Right. And you'll hear a lot of people anxious people say they just want to be functional, and a lot of people who are around anxious people want them to be functional. So anxiety is a massive topic in our in our day and age, and we often do suspect that the material conditions of our day and age are often making us anxious. You know, these very technological aids that are facilitating our conversation today

are sometimes held to make us more anxious. Right, There's something about being trapped in this gigantic surveillance machine that's constantly harvesting our data for financial gain that just that description just seems to make me anxious. Right. So there is this, I think understanding amongst us that we are being made anxious by the world, that the solutions to it are needed and critical, if not just for our own happiness, because we need to keep the world taking

along as it were. Right. So there's medication, there's a lot of self help, and there's often a lot of relief promised from anxiety that you can be anxiety free. So I think the intervention that my book makes in this entire sort of febrile space, so to speak, is that it points out that anxiety is sort of as old as the hills, because it finds its expression in philosophy. Philosophers have been thinking about this, that've been concerned about it.

We might not be using the word anxiety. But when you describe the phenomenology of the states that we are talking about, yeah, we're talking about people who are pretty anxious out here in many different ways. And so some of the interventions I would say are one is that anxiety might that anxiety is in some ways, as I put it, constitutive of existence. Here's a little punchline. To be is to be anxious. So in some ways, perhaps

we need to reconceptualize anxiety. After all, of anxiety is a feature of existence, and it seems a mistake to classify it as a pathology, something that we need to try and medicate out of existence. Maybe if it's the kind of thing that just is the case with us, and we are bound to be anxious, then we should understand its place in our life a little bit differently. So part of what the book is trying to do is to help us understand anxiety differently, reconceptualize it, think

about it differently. And I say the beginning of the book, I can't promise you a cure for anxiety. There is none. I hate to tell you this. You are going to be anxious, but you don't have to suffer from a kind of a pernicious meta anxiety, which is that you don't have to be anxious about being anxious. You just accept the fact that you are going to be anxious. You're going to live with anxiety. Well, we need to think about our strategies for living with anxiety, coping with it,

ameliorating it, perhaps to some extent. We don't have to make our anxiety worse by the way we live, by the way we organize our societies, by the way we treat each other. So that intuition is correct. We are making ourselves anxious, but we're making ourselves anxious, more anxious than we need to be. There's a certain quanta of anxiety that we've been dealt, and that's quite enough, thank you very much. You know, Freud once said, the purpose of misery are the purpose of therapy. Sorry, quite a

fraudient slip there. The purpose of therapy was to get us from hysterical misery to common unhappiness. Common unhappiness is just the human condition. Right, We're dissatisfied, things aren't quite right, we know we're going to die, and so on and

so forth. Life is hard, But we don't have to make it worse by constructing our world in such a way that we are made even more anxious because no matter which bend we turn, no matter which corner we take, our basic existential anxiety is always there waiting for us.

That's the basement dweller. It's always there. Even people who are medicated, right, they might relieve themselves of some kinds of anxiety, like perhaps the economic anxiety of losing a job or other things, or you know, that crippling anxiety that renders them dysfunctional, but they're not going to free themselves of fundamental existential anxiety. And I would say, actually, as I wrote the book, I came to understand anxiety

a little bit differently myself. As I've come to understand it over a period of time, as I've come to become more of a father, and you know, someone who lives at home with my wife, my daughter, come to understand the role that love has in our lives. I've come to think that anxiety, in its fundamental forms is the fear of death or the consciousness of our finite existence, if I was to be more precise. And the second

one is something that I think freud bloned onto. Anxiety is the fear of the loss of love, and so so many forms of behavior become comprehensible when we trace them to a fear of the loss of love underwriting them right. And I think this is quite a deep insight by Freud, that there's a kind of we lost love once and we're scared to lose it again, and

we might have symbolized it in different ways. You know, could be my high school teacher, my friend who doesn't return my text message in time, my boss who doesn't praise me enough, for all these anonymous people in social media who don't give me as many retweets and likes as I would like for myself. These all become, you know, sort of like manifestations of the lack of love that the universe has for me. And you know, when we speak about you know, we glibly assign the term anxiety

to these various insecurities and fears that we have. I think fear of the loss of love makes those more comprehensible as well. So I think the diversity of traditions that I talk about in the book, they sometimes point you know, much like the you know, much like the mythical elephant who's approached by the you know, by the men who are incapacitated in different ways. Sometimes there's that partial perspective, but I think they just point out that we respe bomb to the fact of existence, to the

beer facts of existence in different ways. So the anxiety that you find in Buddhism and the anxiety that you find in existential treatments is a little bit different, but it's also deeply related as well.

these a little bit. But you kind of brought up a very I didn't realize how how appropriate it kind of is that following the last episode of this podcast we're having this conversation because it seems like maybe you knew that we did an episode on Jainism with uh and if you didn't, then that's very auspicious because we were speaking actually about Anakantavada and about the the many sidedness of reality and how these different traditions can have

you know, they're each they're equally true, they're partially true, and together we can combine them to kind of a pro coach, you know, a larger and more and a broader sense of what the truth is. And so how appropriate then that this conversation is now exploring kind of you know, putting that, applying that in some way to actually the topic of anxiety. So let's you know, let's proceed through as you did in your book and and start with Buddhism. I think that's where you started, which

seems appropriate since it's kind of the most metaphysical. Well you could say they were all kind of metaphysical in a way. But you know, since Buddhism says, you know, there is duka, right, there is this word that's often translated as suffering, although I think you don't necessarily think that's the right. You don't like that interpretation. Is that is that correct?

involves a certain kind of suffering. So many of these many of these terms then are packaged in what I would call a general dissatisfaction or unease with the existence, right, And so to locate anxiety in here is not to say that the Buddha specifically says that you know, after all, there's no term for anxiety in that sense, but that sense that we have that there is my fear, and you know sometimes and I think it's the kind of

what I call anticipatory fear. For example, I do not know anything about how I will die, right, but if I do know, if I do experience my death in its full phenomenology, with all its discomforts and so on and so forth, there's unease I have now about how I will be reacting at that moment. Right. So, built into this state of trepidation that I have about my future, states about old age, about death, about infirmity, is what

I would call anticipatory fear. And that's a kind of anxiety because I don't quite know what it will be like, but I shrink from it now. Right. Secondly, there is what I call the sort of the gray lining on the silver cloud. Even when everything is okay, I have a sense that this could end, that this could run out, And the universe has brutally reminded me of and others of this factness in a variety of ways, Like children find out the ice cream runs out at the bottom

of the cone. It was all great up to then, and then you hit the bottom of the cone and there's no more ice cream. Right. The fact that good things come to an end, and in fact, it doesn't really matter how good it is, it will come to an end. And in fact, if it stays good for too long, you'll be stated. So there's this kind of like, even if I get the good thing, it's not all that great, right, So that's the dissatisfaction aspect of it. Now.

Of course, what's crucial about the Buddhist approach to understanding anxiety is that anxiety is rooted in a kind of confusion about who and what we are. It's rooted in certain kinds of failures of knowledge, in certain kinds of failures of realization. You don't understand what you are, and you don't understand the nature of the universe, and you need to come to realize this. You're not going to

find this truth hidden underneath the walk. You need to come to this realization by yourself, through a series of disciplined intellectual and philosophical adventures of the mind, perhaps, But there are failures of knowledge. First, you have not paid attention to the fact that the world is eternally changing. It is dynamic and transient. Nothing endures, nothing abides. Secondly, everything is dependent upon everything else. That is, quite literally,

nothing that is independent of everything else. That is the notion of interdependent arising. So for me to imagine that my happiness, my existence can be free of everything that is around me is a kind of failure of knowledge. It is a profound failure of knowledge. Right. There is also a failure for me to understand, which is probably the most and the deepest Buddhist lesson of all that the enduring self that I ascribe to myself, the eye, the ego, the it Jacob Samir, this enduring identity that

you imagine, this thing is not to be found. But notice how much of my how many of my anxieties, stem from the fact that I ascribe to myself an identity that is isolated from the rest of all of reality, which has a separate, independent end and beginning, which has its own ambitions, its own memories, its own future, its own past, which is quite frankly speaking, selfish, because that's what selves do. Selves are selfish, They are self centered.

They claim things for themselves. They get worried when they lose things. They're concerned about the end of their lives. They're worried about their children, their cars. They get upset when people don't review their books as favorably as other philosophers books. Right, that's my selfish spelled self speaking up here. Right. But this is precisely what makes us anxious, because it is all these things that are mine, whose decay, degradation,

and destruction I am especially anxious about. So the more I enmesh myself in this belief that I I am an enduring self, the more I enmesh myself in these various ensnearments of desire and attachment. Well, I'm making myself anxious. I make myself angry, right because when I lose things, I think something precious has been taken away from me. Right. So Buddhism is dedicated to, in some ways, opening our eyes. Look around you, pay attention. Do you think anything in

this world can endure? Do you think anything is actually dependent of anything else? So there's a sense in which the Buddha's really asking us to a kind of intellectual, deep philosophical realization of who and what we are and what the nature and condition of the universe is. If we really were to get it, would we really behave the way we are? That's why I use the example in the book. You know, the surgeon who's done the surgery on someone's eyes, right, and you take the bandage

off and you ask the patient can you see? The patient says, yeah, I can see, and then they walk right into a table. Aleen na, dude, you can't see it all because you show down behave like someone who has a pair of eyes. So people say that the stuff that Buddhism says is obvious. It's obvious. Yeah, I get it. Stuff doesn't endure, Yeah I get it. Everything

is independent. Yeah wooh cosmic holeness. Man, But you're not behaving like you really get it, or you think you can inure yourself from the blows that the Buddha is the most concerned about, or you think that this, this duke of yours, this dissatisfaction of yours, will not manifest itself in the various kinds of pathologies that we call

death war hatred. Right. I think this is why you know, the various Buddhist traditions over the years have sought not just individual betterment, but in some ways kind of a you know, a global or a community wide development in some ways, right, because our happiness is in some ways independent upon the happiness of all other living souls. Right.

And so hence the Eightfold Path, because it puts us towards the only kinds of actions and ways of thinking that can deliver us from Look, the path is long and arduous. It might take us an entire lifetime. The Buddha was quite aware of the fact that not everybody was going to become a monk, right. The folks who came to his sermons, they didn't go home and say, sweetheart, I'm off to the retreats, I'm going to become a

Buddhist monk. No, they it was understood that people were going to take care of their lives, so Buddhist practices had to be integrated into people's lives as well, right.

And I think that's I think has been it's appeal over the years that people feel they can try to come to the realizations that the Buddha was concerned with, right, which hopefully will reconcile us to the fact that we are model our lives are limited, right, and that we are mistaken in expecting certain kinds of solidity from the world that it simply cannot give us. Right, there's a

kind of magical thinking we are engaging in. If we haven't delivered ourselves from those delusions in the way that Buddhism understands them.

or Samir side. So if you you know, if you come back to this, you know, again listen to the actual audio episode and even the future video episode will fix the audio so it will be it will be a little more elevated in the volume in case that's

and that's hard for some of you to hear. All right, So existentialism, So we don't really have time to go through all of the existentialists, but maybe you could choose, you know, one who you think to be the kind of paradigmatic existentialist thinker who encapsulates kind of the heart of the existentialist view of anxiety. Ah.

of a mixture of the spiritual and physical. Right, if we were spiritual creatures, you know, we would be like angels, gods, we would exist in heavenly domains. If we were entirely physical creatures, then we wouldn't have this sense that I can make choices, that I have certain kinds of capacities that I do not fully understand, and that I in some ways bring myself into being through my choices as

I make of myself. Right, So, kicker Guard understands anxiety as it's a fear of an unspecified thing right, the future in some ways, which is, as it were, unwritten, unspecified waiting to be defined or made by who, not because there's some predetermined script laid out right, which is the kind of understanding that Sarter also takes some cack of guard, but as the sense that I will be stepping into this domain, choose myself in the process, and

as a result determining my future. So this is very dynamic sense in which as I take each step into the future, it's those choices and actions of mind that are determining not just in the world as it is, but myself. I'm bringing myself into being, and in some ways this is my existential responsibility, right. And if I'm unwilling to accept this freedom, if I know that the freedom or the boldness or the braveness to make choices is not being exercised by me, then I sink into despair. Right.

Hence you have this Guardian book, right, the classic sickness under despair, which is that I'm aware of my existential responsibilities, but I'm not acting on them. Right. Anxiety is the feeling that this heavy responsibility for the making of myself, for the determination of my future, this rests upon me. The reason this is quite as shocking and appalling as it is is because it exists within a cultural context which believe that, in some sense, there was a kind

of historical understanding of our place in the universe. There was an unrolling of the script, so to speak, right, that we were born into this world with certain kinds of capacities or essences, and our task was to just kind of bring them to being right, there was some way that we were and to find out who we were was a matter of discovery, right, And I think the existential is what they did is in its broadest sense, if I was to attach a slogan to them, is

that they changed the notion of who we are from being a matter of discovery to being a matter of invention. You're not going to find out who you are, You're going to make yourself into who you are. Right. So, now there's something quite scary about this because I'm just going to find out who I am. Then I can just sort of expect the film, or the script or the real to kind of unfold. Right. Let me just kind of sit back, can watch this movie play out. But if I have to make myself, well, then I

can't really rest at any given moment. There's always a choice to be made. There's always the unspecified future that has to be clarified. You find this in Cake of Guard, you find this in Nietzsure, in different ways, you find this Ensatra, right. I think this is one tradition within existential image, and I think it's the one that people mostly think about. Is that existentialism says we're free. We're

scared of our freedom. When we're scared of our freedom, well, we sometimes flee into the arms of those things that will guarantee us solidity. Here's the book. This tells you what to do. This tells you what's going to happen. This tells you what you need to do, starting in the mornings, going all the way till the evening, follow this path and all will be good. Right. This is the way in which we sometimes understand the flight to,

for example, organized religion. Nietzsche also saw in this a flight to totalitarianism, into nationalism, into what he called the new idols. You just want to be able to stand with your hand over your heart and promise allegiance to something which will guarantee the future for you. If it's

not God, well then then it's your nation. Right. So I think you know it's ironic when people think about Nietzsche sometimes they think, you know, he's sort of the patron saint of fascism, But in some sense he was warning us against the kind of nihilism that leads to fascism and totalitarianism that makes us seek refuge in nationalism, this anxiety that I have something secured the future for

me right. And I think by a similar token, I think the other existentialist tradition in people like Tillich and Heidiger, who I talk about in the book, the fear of death is a very powerful regulator of my life, in the sense that my failure to realize that my life has a certain kind of termination of possibility written into it is making me live inauthentically. I live as if I've got forever to make over, to do things right,

to live properly, to live truthfully. Nope, there's and I think this is where the urgency sometimes that people associate with these kinds of you know, leave each day as if it's your last. This is kind of a bumper sticker version of the notion that if you really thought about what the end of your life entailed in some ways right, which the Stoics also ask us to do to reflect on this, you would live your life differently. There's also inher a failure of realization. You're not really

thought through what it really entails. And if you combine that with the possibilities right which care of Guards says we should let ourselves become educated by, then you really find yourself in a bind that there's a sense in which it places. It places a certain sort of urgency upon the need to start thinking about what we want out of existence, this one shot we've been given, and whether, as Niature would say, whether we need to really live our lives bound by the models of the world that

others have constructed before us. Those were ways in which other people assuage their anxieties. Why are you making your life miserable because of its failure to follow the script written by others before you? Right, this is the kind of radical independence that Niature promises us, free yourself of these shackles. And I think this is and I think there is something quite deep about this, because one extreme of this is of course the sociopath, the person who

doesn't care what others think about him. But I think there's a way in which we are made deeply socially anxious by the fear of disapproval, by the fear of not meeting cultural ideals of success or performance, or the number of romantic partners we have, or how much money we make. And I think social media has driven this anxiety to almost unbearable levels from most people, to the extent that we want to shut off our phones. Right. So,

I think the existentialists have a rich tradition. There's quite quite diverse. They make us think about the strangeness of life, right, that all of this is covered up with a certain kind of meaning that we have ascribed to things. But there are times when we step back and we notice there's something quite strange about this because we could have

done it in many different ways. And that makes us anxious too, because we sense there is a lack of a solidity to the way in which we have formed and organized our world.

sanctions that are accompanied by not properly fitting in. And then on the other side of it, if we we when we get too free, we're also anxious about our you know, seem you know, endless free, endless freedom, and kind of the exactly overwhelming kind of abyss of that. And here we are straddled between two poles of anxiety.

deep and abiding connections with other human beings. Because if we can assure ourselves of love in this world, it does move or it does help ameliorate one of our deepest fears. I think there's a reason why the deepest religious traditions have stressed the universality of brotherhood and love because it is understood what kinds of anxieties underwrite our sense that we are all alone in this world. Right, So I think there is that there is that notion.

And there is also a sense in which if we are aware of the fact that our existential conditions are not going to change, if we're not going to make our time infinite, right, if those basic parameters cannot change, then we need to reinterpret them. Right. There's a sense in which the unalterable conditions of existence to deny their reality, to attempt to run away from them. That's a kind

of recipe for neurosis. And I think in that sense, to you know, when someone when sometimes people speak of taking a philosophical attitude towards it, they sometimes seem to have in mind the kind of a resigned or a fatalistic attitude. Right, philosophical means being resigned or fatalistic about it. But I think it's being philosophical about something is to understand that if I'm in an undesirable situation, I really

only have three options. I can either escape that situation, I can change it, or I can understand it differently. If I cannot do either of these two things, and existence is like that, if I cannot escape existence. And you know, there are people who decide that they will escape existence when it becomes unbearable. Right, And that's a fraught topic in itself, when people decide to end their lives. Chemus said it was the most important question of all, right,

and sometimes we choose to change it. Right, We become prophets, teachers, activists, We modify the world. Right, we acquire with science. Right, we engage in eros with the world, We interact with it in an attempt to change it. But we also attempt to change how we understand those things that we cannot change. I will if there is a you know, there's a leak in the roof and I am stuck

with it through the night. It's there's a reconceptualization of what that unchanging reality is going to be like, Right, And I think that's I think where hopefully thinking about anxiety philosophically it does that is that it helps us understand it's this thing, it's this perennial thing. It has underwritten even wonder right when I say the root of philosophy is, you know, Hoff says this in the in the Leviathan, that anxiety into the causes of things makes

us dispose, disposes us to inquire into their origins. Right. So you know, if I see strange phenomena in the sky, I'm like, hey, man, what's that bright light? What's this thing that comes up over the eastern horizon every day? It's beautiful? There's wonderment. Yeah, philosophy rises in wonder, but it also rises from a sense of like, I need to understand this quickly. I'm scared. I don't know what this means. Right, So that mingling of terror and awe,

I think it's part of philosophical wonder. What is this thing? It frightens me. Think about how we deal with the dark. If I step into a dark room, I sort of tentatively push my hands out. I'm terrified that something wet and slimy might encounter it, or something might bite my hands off. But I know that's the only way forward, So I move on, tentatively thrusting into the dark, hoping

to find out where I am right. That attitude is tinged with curiosity, but fear or anxiety of the unknown also underwrites in a sense and if you look at the obsession with certainty in modern philosophy, and by this I mean Enlightenment era philosophy in the European tradition, it is obsessed with certainty. Right. We need some way of securing certain kinds of beliefs. We need to have something that tells us that certain things we know are absolutely secure,

whether this was moral beliefs, religious beliefs. Right. And if you look at the history of that period of philosophy, there is I would say, kind of a palpable almost anxiety which is centered around the drive to find certainty. Right. So I think, thinking about these ways in which it has been around ever present, but we could be making it worse. I think that gives us a nice little balancing act because it says, yeah, we should do something

about this. We should also be humble acknowledge the limits of how far we can go with our anxiety treatment.

of the interview. So if you do have some questions, then please put them in the chat so that I can look to the chat and see if there's anything you'd like to ask Samir. This is a very rare opportunity to actually help me with the questions. So if you have some questions for Samir based on anything we've been discussing, then please do go ahead and put those questions into the chat box now, and then after this next question, I will I'll check to see if there's

any there. So yeah, and so yes. So basically this notion of philosophical therapy, I'm just curious about the technicalities of it. I mean, obviously we know of most people know of, you know, various forms of talk therapy, and I've I've looked into philosophical therapy before. But I I and I guess where I, you know, struggled, was kind of thinking that, you know, reasoning alone is sufficient to

sort of resolve resolve our you know, various anxieties. Right, we see kind of in some some traditions especially, you know, that have something to say about the contemplative the effects on the nervous system of contemplative practices like meditation and breath work, that there are sort of like layers of our of our kind of subtle self that can be attended to more below the threshold of our conscious mind

with these kinds of techniques. And so if we're just working on you know, that kind of just philosophical kind of discursive reasoning register that one could argue that we're not kind of getting to those lower I don't know, homes of anxiety, like the traumas that are living kind of in these below the threshold of cognition types of areas.

So I'm curious. I imagine you have kind of a response for that in terms of how philosophical counseling can actually hold space for that that level of anxiety below simply our ideas about anxiety in the world.

In the early writings of the different philosophical traditions, and this is true of both Eastern and Western, the variants of this kind of term are used to apply to philosophers and to the notion of philosophical reflection. In fact, the Buddha is explicitly called the Great Healer. This is

pression present in the ancient Greek tradition as well. And so that's one just sort of point that in a sense philosophy has always been understood even by the folks who philosophized as a way of bringing, as I think of it, are bringing our souls and minds into harmony with our lived lives, our existence, and you know, and I think through reflection is one way of thinking about it.

But I would say just as there are more, I would say, arrows in the philosophical quiver than just reflection, because I think my conception of philosophy is also a little bit, perhaps broader than what academic departments might have us believe. And I think that's reflected in my choice of traditions, and you know I have psychoanalysis, critical theory, theology, and Buddhism in there. So these are philosophical for different reasons.

They ask us to approach anxiety in different ways, and philosophical counseling, similarly, I would say, is committed to the notion first of all, that philosophy is supposed to help us live a better life by helping us understand ourselves, our place and existence, helping us answer some of the problems that are vexing. You know, one of these frustrations that people have with the philosophy is that it doesn't seem to answer any questions. Well, that's because all the

easier questions have been taken over by the other disciplines. Right, I mean the question of what's that right?

you know, it's a kind of evolutionary history. Philosophy is just being left with all the unanswered questions right now. Why do I mention this Because the most perplexing questions about how to live our life, questions having to do with value, questions having to do with who we take ourselves to be and how we expect to be treated,

and how we think our life should we live. These are philosophical ones, and in fact what we call mental disorders, and at least in some of their forms, in very often inquire what I would call crises in the kinds of resolutions of these philosophical questions that we find in our life. I'm married to the wrong person, I have a terrible relationship with my children. I have anxiety about

my prospects in life. If we were to engage in what I would call a sense of what kinds of fundamental questions might lie at the root of our confusions in these, then there's a sense in which we become transparent to ourselves wholly partially right, we acquire a better understanding of our beliefs and values and motivations. All of this sounds a lot like psychotherapy, and that's not surprising

all psychotherapeutic traditions. Psychoanalysis, of course, is the best example of this, but all the other traditions that grew out of psycho analysis and many other independent ones, they all have a couple of things in common. They have a conception of the human person that they're working with. They have a conception of the human mind. They have theory about war where the person is located with respect to the rest of the world. They pay importance to history.

They stress self transparency, inquiry into ourselves, and the methods in varying across different traditions, you know, from psychoanalysis couch sort of unending stream of consciousness discourse in the way that Freud originally conceived of it, to something like Socratic dialogues where we question assumptions make transparent chains of reasoning. So something like cognitive behavioral therapy right, which is quite

widely accepted as a kind of practical psychotherapeutic modality. This is quite transparently borrowed from various kinds of Stoic and Buddhist techniques. Right, what happens when you get angry? What thoughts do you find going through your mind when you think that your mother in law hates you? What do you do next? You isolate the chain of reasoning. You pick the point of intervention at which that chain of reasoning can be interrupted, and then you work on it

as a kind of an Aristotilian skill. You practice getting this and you behave yourself into better moods. So there are I would say, there are similar theoretical commitments in philosophical counseling. There is a model of the human mind that you're working with, there's a model of the human person. There is a theoretical commitment to the idea that there

is a relationship between beliefs and emotions. So if I believe that there is a snake in the room, I will be scared and I will take defense in measures. When I switch on the light and find out that it's just a coild rope, I will relax and my temperature will return to normal and I will stop being so frantic. Right, nothing has changed in the world, but my beliefs about it have, so my emotions have changed

in correspondence. So in some ways, to be a philosophical counselor is to be engaged in a dialogue with someone, and you can tell me what the similarities to psychotherapy are You engagement dialogue with someone. Someone has given you a certain presentation of a problem, and you want to know more, and you want to know more about what sorts of beliefs and values underwrite these kinds of situations

that you find ourselves in. You want the person to understand themselves who they are in some ways this lofty ideal of self transparency, right. And of course, you know, we have theoretical resources at our disposal in the sense of you can bring explicit philosophical commentary into a session, but it could just be something implicit that's guiding you.

For example, in you know, the four years of practice that I've worked as a counselor, it's become clear to me that when people come to me where they have unresolved conflicts in their lives, I should help them resolve those through exercising agency and choice, because I have a commitment to viewing persons as agents, right who are trying to find themselves and to do justice to their uniqueness.

So I think there's a kind of there's extreme specificity to the work I do, because you know, I am who I am with the particular backgrounds that I have. And I think this is another really interesting feature about psychotherapy, which is some of the most detailed studies that have been done on the various psychotherapeutic modalities about why they

work and how they work. We're not surprised, perhaps to find out that it doesn't quite matter that in some ways the theoretical background or the practitioner is not as important as what I think sometimes practitioners like to call the space that gets created between the client and the practitioner, and I think that's typically when you are able to reconcile visions. You were able to help people find ways

forward because you have heard them seen them. Right. I think if I was to truly get as close to religious as I was, as I would ever be, I would say something like, someone that is seeking counseling or someone that is seeking psychotherapy, they made certain important movers already. They've decided to perhaps seek help. They made themselves the agent of that change. Right, So you can think of yourself as a facilitator or a guide as well. Right.

Sometimes folk need resources pointed out to them. I think the differences in the people that come to counselors seeking help. They determine the kinds of philosophical resources that you bring to bear upon that particular, that particular encounter.

sometimes just a poem or a short story. Right. I taught a class for many years at Brooklyn College where we dealt in philosophical issues through literature, and I do tend to believe that model theory can often be taught better through literary treatments because they have philosophical content. But sometimes it can be that sometimes a client sees something which makes you think that a theoretical encounter would be useful.

And at that point, you know, you might quote unquote prescribe a text, so to speak, or you might say, this is something relevant to think about, or here is a line, what do you think follows from this? Right? You know, I think of poets. Poets make us look at the world in a particular way. Right. Philosophers do

that too. They can suddenly make you think about something in a particular way, and sometimes introducing that can be I think all psychotherapists will tell you the two most important things that happen in any psychotherapeutic encounter are in sight and interpretation, and both of those are available to us from the philosophical tradition, right, And so my task is to engage in a dialogue, and of course what people tell me can prompt further questioning from my set.

So I would say there is one perhaps, you know, sometimes I would say a difference of style. I am I'm engaged, I interact, I ask questions. I'm curious because I think in my asking people questions about the kinds of things I might be interested in. Knowing about them is also an opportunity for them to be able to examine those things with me, Right, and to make certain kinds of beliefs and values transparent is to also to be able to question them, right. You know, That's where

sometimes there's this pragmatic approach to life. Right. The beliefs we have are our rules for action. Right, there are tools for manipulating the world, And so there's a sense in which you can ask ourselves whether the lives we want to live are going to follow from the kinds of beliefs and values that we have adopted. Have you chosen the right tools for this task? So to speak? Right,

how's that working out for you? Right? That can also be part of the realization that someone might come to, And that's I think a very I think that's a very fundamental task. Right, given that I've believe in these things, can I really live the life I want to live? Right?

I think because of a spiritual crisis, like losing my faith in God at a young age and kind of seeking sort of the fulfillment of that void and thinking that some sort of like philosophical fulfillment would kind of satiate that that felt need that I had, And in

some ways it did. Right. There was by there was something utterly therapeutic about understanding the world, and I think through philosophy, and I think, I think that's an underappreciated strategy, you know, by means of which to kind of ameliorate, and it's not the only one, right, And this is what I think touches on a question that was asked by Joan, who mentions that as a psycho psychiatrist psychoanalyst, what you say is kajent and fascinating. But regardless of

why the anxiety, if it's bad, really bad. If it's bad really bad, some medicine are now some plant medicine can help. I think I know what your what your view is, but I feel like just by way of asking the question, I'll mention that I think the what what What came to me just reading your book, and what kind of comes to me now is just the sense of that we're by over kind of contracting kind of how we look at anxiety purely to this this

kind of medical view, let's call it. We we miss the various components where it's connected essentially to a search for meaning, our lives right and and understanding kind of the whether it's you know, ontological pictures of the way things work, or it's kind of almost I don't know, literary philosophical adventure. There's these other ways in which we can enter into a relationship with and our with our anxiety. So so, yeah, perhaps you want.

But the two or three points in response to Joan's question. First of all, I think there are species of anxiety that are crippling, that will render us dysfunctional, and in some cases I would say, you know, when I say functional, I don't mean to be glib about it. If I am being unable to discharge my parental responsibilities because I'm incapable of doing certain things, then I think medication is a good thing. Right, there's a way in which it

has spun out of control. What I think is what I think is the relevant note of caution to be struck in this domain is first of all, we should, as if we said, broaden our vision to include an existential understanding of anxiety, so that we can understand why people will remain anxious even if they are the most successful people in the world. Like I said, Jeff Bezos

cannot protect himself against the fear of death. Neither is he is he going to be able to prevent a steady stream of messages over the next twenty years informing him that various people he loves are dying. Neither of these two things will his seventy billion dollars protect him from. So there's a way in which we need to come to renting with our existential condition. And I think philosophy can help. Medication will perhaps free our mind up to

do philosophy. And I'll be very happy if psychiatric medication makes it possible for me to sit down and read a book. Right, That's great because then I'll be able to reflect in my condition. So I'm not anti medication. What I am against, and I think this sounds like common sense to me, is anti glib. Medication is a fundamental understanding of anxiety as a medical condition. Right. And Thirdly, what I would think, in some ways is actually the

flip side of this. Take these so called attention deficit disorders that seem to be so rampant in our society. If we'd really thought about what these people might be experiencing, well, these sufferers of add might be experiencing, we might find anxiety in there somewhere. I was a very distracted reader for many years following my parents' deaths. Right, And I used to be a phenomenal reader of books, and all of a sudden I I couldn't read books anymore, Right,

I just couldn't concentrate on anymore. Whenever I would take a test for add I was like, yeah, I have add I have all the symptoms, But why do I have add.

than just some story of you know, lab results. That's not my medical history, right, there's something broader within it. Right as far as and you know, as far as medications are concerned. Look, I've taken plenty of medications. I mean, I used to drink a lot. I've smoked a lot of weed in my life, right, you know, we medicate ourselves in various ways to calm our nerves. I like with cigarettes about fifteen twenty years ago. I mean, you know,

I've sort of run the gambit plant medicine. Yes, I mean I've taken you know, I've investigated, you know, like I like to say, investigated academically recreationally research research. I was doing research on psychedelics, yes, but most seriously, I think psychedelics have a very important role to play in the treatment of anxiety and depression, precisely because of the fact that, like philosophy, psychedelics offer us new advantage perspectives

from which to view our place in this world. They change, and they do so in a way which marries emotions and rationality. I have a paper out on this which is forthcoming in a collection on philosophical Perspectives on Psychedelic Psychiatry, and I hope Joan will look at that volume. It should be out with Oxford University Press, in which I mentioned the importance of psychedelics in facilitating things like forgiveness. Right.

Because I'm able to view people in my psychedelic experience in a kinder light, I am able to view them under different descriptions. This is not just my mother in law who upsets me. This is a seventy year old woman who's concerned about her daughter. Right, There's a very different way of viewing her that makes it possible for me to be empathetic with my mother in law and

forgive her. And you know, all these kinds of complex emotional states that we undergo, and sometimes I think psychedelic treatments can help bring together certain kinds of realizations that can remove certain kinds of fears we have. You know, when I think psychedelics have a very important role to play in the treatment of anxiety, because they can remind us of how important certain relationships are. They can remind us of the value of love, They can remind us

of the greatest kinds of goods that we have. I've you know, I don't think this is you know, I don't think there's anything deep in my saying that the best kinds of goods that are available to us in this existence are that we are able to spend time with folks we love, doing things we enjoy. Right. That's about That's about as good as it gets, right, And so I think anything that brings us to that state

can be a treatment for anxiety in some ways. So, actually, you know, to answer your question, Jacob, when you were asking about getting to those deeper levels, we're embodied beings, right. I think this is partly why in my work I would ask people to not just reflect. I you know, I if you wanted to have a glib slogan. I would say, you know, everybody should move, everybody should meditate,

everybody should be mindful. Right, we should we should bring ourselves into encounters with the transcendent, right to remove our cells from the human sphere. So we should go out on hikes. We should stand at the edges of waterfalls, and we should go into forests. We should go to the tops and mountains. Human beings have known this, They've known this that at some level, to seek out the transcendent is to deliver ourselves from this world and its

demands upon us. I rock climb, and when I'm climbing and I'm on the rock, it's like, all right, all I'm thinking about now is this thing in front of me, this little nubbin that I need to get my two fingers on. Right. So, these moments, and I think at some level we know them, we're seeking deliverance from this world's demands upon us. Right. So you know when you say, is it just reasoning that's going to help me?

can have their problem solved. But I can tell them that I think it would be really good if you took yourself out into nature more often, if you ran or moved in these ways, if you did justice to the fact that you are an embodied creature that needs, you know, sleep and good food and needs to move. Right, I mean, this is a this is a reflection all the kinds of things we are, the kinds of creatures we are, that reminds us of how we should be

taking care of ourselves as well. Right. Sorry, that was a really long answer to a perfectly reasonable question.

conversation in Boulder. Someone asked you about climate change, and you had a very interesting response, and it it really was probably the most the thing that I took away and really kind of contemplated, because the kind of one of the things that I took from what you said was or someone asked basically about the anxiety of climate change, and I guess the difference there is that with it with regards to certain circumstances, whether they're political or environmental,

there's this sense that we have a responsibility to be anxious about this, that actually to not be anxious about this is actually some kind of moral failure. And actually that came from you, that that that response that there's we have some kind of weird moral relationship with with what's going on that is kind of unique to the

circumstance of of of environmental kind of devastation. But it did feel like this, this in this individual who was asking this question, was like there was something just metaphysically true about the anxiety of the inevitable destruction of the planet, that there was actually no kind of like space, you know, in which one could inhabit a space outside of you know, or at least reconcile themselves with that anxiety in a

way that was helpful for them. So I was just, you know, curious about this, this sense of anxiety not as something that we're looking to kind of relate to differently, to kind of ameliorate it, or to reconcile ourselves to various aspects of it, or to you know, to soften it, to make it more gentle, to relate to it in this more I don't know, empowering way or more illuminating way, but actually, this this sense that we have now where you need you have a political obligation to be anxious

about these things that are rising and that are happening.

makes me respond to the emergency at hand. So in this case, being fearful about what might happen if some of the worst effects of climate change were to start kicking in. Is actually a good thing in this case? Right, I would say, parental anxiety is unpleasant, but I'm sure it has a great deal. It has some adaptive value in helping us, you know, anticipate all the various possibilities

that might befall our child. You know, for example, I said, once my daughter was born, I was like, my god, this world is full of death traps, right, I mean death and you know, immediate harm to my child looks at every step. Then you know, it made me vigilant. It made me into a better parent in some ways. So I think there's a sense in which this animating aspect of anxiety, because it produces disturbance, restlessness, makes me inquire, makes me get up to see what that knocking on

the roof is, right, because I'm alarmed. These are in some ways I think we know them. Fear makes us respond in ways that keeps us alive, that keeps our families alive, that responds to emergencies and anxiety also, like I point out, is a valuable source of self knowledge

as well. So maybe in some ways, and you know, this is a kind of an esoteric point perhaps to make that if and this is you know, Kickerguard's point in a way that if I don't listen to my anxiety, if I don't pay enough attention to it, I might not find out enough about myself. Right, there's a sense in which my anxieties tell me something about who or what I am, because not everybody has the same anxieties.

So there's a sense in which an investigation into that can proceed by an examination of what makes me particularly anxious or fearful. It reminds me of what my values

are in some ways. Right, So I think this is getting at what I would consider a kind of value that anxiety might have for us, and a kind of loss that we might suffer were we to get rid of anxiety if it was possible, right, if you could completely medicate it out of existence, for instance, we might be losing out on something, right, because all these attempts to assuage our existence can often be very creative, right.

the source of so many people's creativity. I'm sure it's what caused you to write you know so beautifully in your book, right, And and you know that seems to be one way of just understanding kind of the gift of of of our states, our various states of anxiety, in so far as you know, they're not ruling our lives and making it so unpleasant that you know, we're kind of limited in ways that we don't want to be. Right, Well, this has been such a fantastic conversation, and you know,

there were so many other things to talk about. It's such a rich topic and and a couple of the the traditions that you explore in your book, Anxiety A Philosophical Guide, including the chapter on psychoanalysis and freud Fredian psychoanalysis.

There's also a lot of exploration of the work of Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse and and just so much insight, So many different directions we could have gone on, but I feel so if anybody feels like they want more, definitely get a Samir's book, Anxiety Philosophical Guide, available a bookstore, ner You, or Amazon and it really is a wonderful book.

It's a beautiful read, not too long so you can you can get through it probably fairly quickly, but it's the perfect size in my opinion, and and really just like a treasure trove of insight and beautiful, thoughtful exploration of this concept of anxiety from a variety of perspectives. So, Samir to close, is there anything that you'd like to kind of end on, anything related to sort of what we've spoken about that you feel like we could tie up in a certain way, or any closing remarks.

it seems to me to be popping up more. There's been discussions about, you know, loneliness and alienation, So I do think that is you know, I think there's something I'd really want people to take away from this book is to reflect on our ontological conditions, to reflect on our existential condition, to be combescant of it, to accept it, and then work to make our lives be such so that, you know, from that Buddhist sense, we acknowledge the rawness of the need of love that we all have and

be frank about it and really try try to understand how it underwrites so much of the suffering that we see today. Right, you know, there are, like I said, there's no deliverance from anxiety, there's a living with it. And I think in that living, you know, we have resources. The world is beautiful, we have love, we have great books to read, you know, words of wisdom. There's nature out there that if we can get out and you know, take a look at it and put ourselves into contact

with the sublime. So, you know, there's a sense in which I'm like, there's no cure, but there is reason for hope. Right. So I think that's the best place to close this on.

an idea really important to me. And I remember speaking to someone about you know, being able to incorporate almost like contemplative practices as under sort of the banner of the philosophical thought experiment, right, so that we can kind of because to me, what is interesting is this capacity, this a possibility of actually using what i'd call like

embodied epistemologies in order to cultivate you know, within ourselves below. Yeah, and and so it's it's nice to hear of other people who actually did work within the academic philosophical environment having those those aspirations for a philosophy that might be a little more expansive.

actually living a philosophical life or philosophically informed life. I think those could be you know, yeah, topics for a conversation somewhere down the.

of anxiety to large political and cultural issues. And I think that's a topic of some interest to me and so and I think hopefully, yeah, some of those more discussions down the line, uh, will come about my you know, my my books out there. As you mentioned, there's a few essays on mine. Some of the essays that underwrote this book are out there. If you just search for for Samir Chopper Anxiety, you'll find those. Uh yeah, and I would love to hear from there.

So thank you very much for joining us. It really is so fun to have a live audience and we can feel all of your energy, all your anxiety coalescing into a beautiful fever pitch of wonder and love. So thank you all so much for coming and joining us. I have been speaking once again to Samir Chopra, the author of Anxiety, a Philosophical Guide. Samir, thank you so much for.