#411 — The Victimhood Pandemic

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. There you'll also find our scholarship program, where we offer free accounts to anyone who can afford one. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one. I'm here with Scott Barry Kaufman. Scott, thanks for joining me. Sam, it's so great to be here again five years later. Is that what it is, five years? Yeah. We we talked, like, right when the pandemic started. Right. Did we know there was a pandemic at the time? Was that Yeah. And you asked me to make predictions. Uh-huh. What what did you predict? Do you remember anything? Yeah. Okay. I think so one thing I said is we're gonna come out stronger from this. We're gonna come out of the pandemic and with a newfound sense of appreciation for life. I guess something like that. How how's that holding up, that prediction? For some people, I think that is true. And for some people, it's far worse, but that's unpandemic related. Don't you think for at the societal level, we're much weaker? I mean, I I my sense is that we're much less prepared for the next pandemic than we would otherwise be socially politically. Yeah. Yeah. In terms of being prepared. Yeah. That's a really good point. But I also think, you know, we we sort of forget what it was like to be in the pandemic. I mean, this is like anything. It's like if you get a bad headache, you're like Mhmm. The all you want is to not have the headache, and you're like, forevermore the rest of my life, I'll be so appreciative that I don't have the headache. And then, you know, about thirty seconds after you're recovered, you forgot what it was like to have that. It's not it's not like you live up to that promise. You know? Yeah. Yeah. We can put that in the stoicism bucket, which seems it relates to a lot of your work actually. I mean, you you do a lot of work on emotional resilience and well-being and so you're we should remind people you have a book that just came out this week titled Rise Above, which, goes into the problems of, seeing oneself as a victim and, you know, the kind of durable basis for self esteem and and how we navigate, the various, personality quirks of narcissism and neuroticism, and I wanna get into all that. But before we do, you just moved back to New York and have begun teaching at Columbia again. Have you …