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elfsI have a soft spot for Robert Wright, as he often seems to be a slightly better constructed but also angrier version of myself. His books The Moral Animal and Non-Zero were big and insightful; both argued that evolutionary complexity leads inevitably to both morality and economics (which he also suggests is a subcategory of moral thought), provided no stray asteroids or nuclear wars happen, and his case for both was strong and compelling, if also somewhat incomplete.
Why Buddhism is True, his new book, is thematically quite different, although he does tread similar evopsychological ground from time to time. Wright is a big fan of scientism: he wants scientific explanations or correlations for phenomena and here he gets into the weeds of neurobiology and modern psychology to explain why Buddha's insights were and are useful.
Wright starts off with a chapter on the illusion of reality, and talks about how the physical, squishy grey matter locked away inside your skull manufactures, moment by moment, a story about who you are and what you're doing. There's good evidence this is true. He writes that our brains, especially our emotional system, is exapted for an environment utterly unlike our modern world, and that food manufacturers, television producers, and nowadays social media networks seek to exploit the misalignement between what our technologies can do, and what our brains can handle, to create within us obsessions toward their brands of food, media, or games. Buddha, Wright explains, understood this a lot, and not only were his insights but his recommendations for how to deal with this maladaptive misalignment were and still are among the most useful.
Buddha diagnosed our problem as restlessness. The Four Noble Truths at the heart of Buddhism start with "You are a creature whose restlessness and dissatisfaction with your state makes you unhappy." Evolution comes to the same conclusion: we need to eat, and stay warm, and reproduce; a creature of satisfaction is unlikely to pursue these goals, and so is a failure. Our emotional system is designed make us pursue pleasures, the pleasure of each fading over time, making us restless for more.
Wright spends a lot of time on this sort of thing: correlations between classic Buddhist teachings and what the science actually says. The idea that there is no "self," but instead lots of little "selves" inside, the ones that distract us from our stated goals in pursuit of shorter-term pleasures, the ones that arise and cripple us with anxiety, and how these "modular subselves" will co-opt or organize to make us seemingly different people at different times, or in different places, or with different people.
The book makes a bit of a left turn about 2/3rds of the way through, when Wright starts talking about Nirvana, Enlightment, Emptiness, and so forth. He starts out by saying that you are not unhappy, you are the subject of all these selves about which you tell a story that presents "you" as a coherent whole. Wright even delves into how the story we tell ourselves and the story we tell others is different, but both are coherent; it's just that the one we tells others is modified with motivations that make us seem capable, trustworthy, and coherent. We might even believe both stories; after all, we make for lousy evolutionary replicators if we had high anxiety all the time.
Wright ends with a plea that others "take up the cushion," even though he's quite sure he's never going to get as far with it as many other meditators. The insights meditation gives us, to look at things as they are and not as we wish them to be, to step outside ourselves, and to just exercise the powers of concentration, are valuable; it also seems almost inevitable that with these insights comes a sense of compassion and wisdom that most people lack.
Wright's book is completely devoid of supernaturalism. There are no gods in his book, no demons, and no other dimensions to see. There's only this one, and Wright's conclusion is that we need better tools to see this one clearly, and Buddha came up with a damn fine, if sometimes exceedingly sharp, set of tools.
Wright's book won't convince you if you're unwilling to be convinced, any more than the combined strength of astronomy and geology won't convince a young earth creationist. But he makes a strong case for Buddhist, Stoics, and those sympathetic to the contemplative life, that the basic meditative toolkit, with at its heart the daily practice of meditating (with its sub-disciplines) to improve your concentration, assess your morality, and seek clarity, is probably one of the best you can find.
As I was writing this review, I was reminded that the notion that we always communicate a "better" version of ourselves to others, and the notion that there is no "self" inside, were both covered in The Illuminatus! Trilogy. The first, that we communicate "better" versions of ourselves, is covered by The SNAFU Principle, and the second, that we have no "self," is covered when Hagbard asks George to figure out who's in change "in there," (pointing to George's head), and George imagines his mind as a house, searches from room to room, concluding "Nope. Nobody home."
"That's funny," Hagbard said. "Who's conducting the search?"
Why Buddhism is True, his new book, is thematically quite different, although he does tread similar evopsychological ground from time to time. Wright is a big fan of scientism: he wants scientific explanations or correlations for phenomena and here he gets into the weeds of neurobiology and modern psychology to explain why Buddha's insights were and are useful.
Wright starts off with a chapter on the illusion of reality, and talks about how the physical, squishy grey matter locked away inside your skull manufactures, moment by moment, a story about who you are and what you're doing. There's good evidence this is true. He writes that our brains, especially our emotional system, is exapted for an environment utterly unlike our modern world, and that food manufacturers, television producers, and nowadays social media networks seek to exploit the misalignement between what our technologies can do, and what our brains can handle, to create within us obsessions toward their brands of food, media, or games. Buddha, Wright explains, understood this a lot, and not only were his insights but his recommendations for how to deal with this maladaptive misalignment were and still are among the most useful.
Buddha diagnosed our problem as restlessness. The Four Noble Truths at the heart of Buddhism start with "You are a creature whose restlessness and dissatisfaction with your state makes you unhappy." Evolution comes to the same conclusion: we need to eat, and stay warm, and reproduce; a creature of satisfaction is unlikely to pursue these goals, and so is a failure. Our emotional system is designed make us pursue pleasures, the pleasure of each fading over time, making us restless for more.
Wright spends a lot of time on this sort of thing: correlations between classic Buddhist teachings and what the science actually says. The idea that there is no "self," but instead lots of little "selves" inside, the ones that distract us from our stated goals in pursuit of shorter-term pleasures, the ones that arise and cripple us with anxiety, and how these "modular subselves" will co-opt or organize to make us seemingly different people at different times, or in different places, or with different people.
The book makes a bit of a left turn about 2/3rds of the way through, when Wright starts talking about Nirvana, Enlightment, Emptiness, and so forth. He starts out by saying that you are not unhappy, you are the subject of all these selves about which you tell a story that presents "you" as a coherent whole. Wright even delves into how the story we tell ourselves and the story we tell others is different, but both are coherent; it's just that the one we tells others is modified with motivations that make us seem capable, trustworthy, and coherent. We might even believe both stories; after all, we make for lousy evolutionary replicators if we had high anxiety all the time.
Wright ends with a plea that others "take up the cushion," even though he's quite sure he's never going to get as far with it as many other meditators. The insights meditation gives us, to look at things as they are and not as we wish them to be, to step outside ourselves, and to just exercise the powers of concentration, are valuable; it also seems almost inevitable that with these insights comes a sense of compassion and wisdom that most people lack.
Wright's book is completely devoid of supernaturalism. There are no gods in his book, no demons, and no other dimensions to see. There's only this one, and Wright's conclusion is that we need better tools to see this one clearly, and Buddha came up with a damn fine, if sometimes exceedingly sharp, set of tools.
Wright's book won't convince you if you're unwilling to be convinced, any more than the combined strength of astronomy and geology won't convince a young earth creationist. But he makes a strong case for Buddhist, Stoics, and those sympathetic to the contemplative life, that the basic meditative toolkit, with at its heart the daily practice of meditating (with its sub-disciplines) to improve your concentration, assess your morality, and seek clarity, is probably one of the best you can find.
As I was writing this review, I was reminded that the notion that we always communicate a "better" version of ourselves to others, and the notion that there is no "self" inside, were both covered in The Illuminatus! Trilogy. The first, that we communicate "better" versions of ourselves, is covered by The SNAFU Principle, and the second, that we have no "self," is covered when Hagbard asks George to figure out who's in change "in there," (pointing to George's head), and George imagines his mind as a house, searches from room to room, concluding "Nope. Nobody home."
"That's funny," Hagbard said. "Who's conducting the search?"
