On: Stephen Fry
Episode: 147
Date: February 2019
Key Subjects:
- Comedian, author, actor, etc.
- Investigation of empirical evidence and specificity of meditation benefits.
- Meditation dulls “vices” (anger, greed, insecurity), which are needed as a source of drive and ambition.
- Defense: Vices are more often unhelpful and even if they are beneficial at times, meditation improves your ability to control them.
- The results of physical training can be tested and result in observably better skills. Meditation shows no outward signs of testable increased mental skills.
- Defense: The results may not be visible to others, but are apparent to yourself.
- The need for physical fitness is an evolutionary adaptation. There is no similar evolutionary benefit for meditation.
- Defense: Doesn’t seem to be directly addressed.
- It is selfish to focus on your own mind during meditation as opposed to trying to improve by observing the minds of others.
- Defense: Meditation is not a focus on your own mind but it is training your own mind to function better (which will allow for better appreciation of other minds).
- If some people are “calmer” from meditation than others, is it because they were innately predisposed to being more receptive to meditation or is it learned, replicable behavior.
- Defense: Doesn’t seem to be directly addressed.
- Meditation dulls “vices” (anger, greed, insecurity), which are needed as a source of drive and ambition.
- The objective of meditation is an increased awareness of in the moment emotions and associated behavorial traps (primarily, getting bogged down in emotions).
- Meditation is training your ability to recognize those moments and snap out of them faster.
- Interrupt emotion-led brain chatter by engaging a different part of the brain.
- [Benefits or claims beyond that may not be necessary and may be distracting (negation of self, etc.)?]
Key Takeaways:
- Objective of meditation: a tool to train your mind to recognize and snap out of in-the-moment unproductive emotions.
Worth Listening:
Freewheeling discussion on mindfulness and meditating. Loose, amiable and surprisingly effective challenges by Fry of the tangible, testable benefits of meditation.
8/10