Aiming for the Moon
Aiming for the Moon
123. In Search of Living Well: Eric Weiner (Bestselling author of "The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers")
In his book, The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers, award-winning journalist Eric Weiner describes how to live well. He argues that our technologically advanced societies have mistaken knowledge for wisdom. In this episode, we discuss how philosophy affects our every action, whether we recognize it or not. Philosophy allows us to make sense of our lives, to find our place in world, and to see the beauty within it. Listen in to this wonderful conversation about this overlooked art.
Topics:
- Our Wisdom-hungry Society - Mistaking Knowledge for Wisdom.
- How Philosophy Teaches Us How to Live
- The Philosophy of the Modern World
- The Metaverse and Plato
- The Hidden Influence of Philosophy on Our Daily Lives
- Happiness - Ancient Greeks vs Us
- "What books have had an impact on you?"
- "What advice do you have for teenagers?"
Bio:
Eric Weiner is an award-winning journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. His books include The Geography of Bliss, The Geography of Genius, Man Seeks God, and The Socrates Express. His latest book, Ben & Me, will be published by Avid Reader Press in June 2024. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Eric is a former foreign correspondent for NPR, and reporter for The New York Times. He is a regular contributor to The Washington Post, BBC Travel, and AFAR, among other publications. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area.
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In his book the Socrates Express In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers, award-winning journalist Eric Weiner describes how to live well. He argues that the modern world has mistaken knowledge for wisdom. Knowing a lot of facts about life doesn't mean we know how to live life. This is the Aiming for the Moon podcast and I'm your host, taylor Bledsoe. On this podcast, I interview interesting people from a teenage perspective. In this episode, we discuss how philosophy affects our every action, whether we recognize it or not. If you enjoy this episode, please rate the podcast and subscribe. Whether we recognize it or not, if you enjoy this episode, please rate the podcast and subscribe.
Speaker 1:You can follow us at aiming number four moon on all the socials to stay up to date on podcast news and episodes. Check out the episode notes for Eric Weiner's full bio. Links to our website, aimingforthemooncom and our podcast sub stack. Lessons from interesting people. All right, with that, sit back, relax and listen in. Thanks again to Paxton Page for this incredible music. Well, welcome, mr Eric, to Aiming for the Moon. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2:Happy to be here, Taylor.
Speaker 1:So you wrote a book called the Socrates Express. Could you just kind of give the thesis of it to our audience?
Speaker 2:the Socrates Express. Could you just kind of give the thesis of it to our audience? The thesis is basically that we're all hungry, not for food per se, but for wisdom, and we really often confuse wisdom with knowledge or information. I mean, I've got a smartphone in my hand right now and with one swipe I can get access to all of human knowledge, from the ancient Egyptians up to the football scores from yesterday or whatever it is. And I think I've come to realize that having more data and more information doesn't mean you're living a better life.
Speaker 2:And so I started to think of what are the sources for wisdom out there? A big one is religion Some people that works. For other people it doesn't. Another one is science. I'm all for science, but science can't really tell you what to do with your life and how to live. And then it dawned on me that philosophy, from the ancient Greeks onward, is really about not just living the examined life, but living a good life. I mean being a good person and being happy, in effect. And so I tried to write a book about philosophy that would not turn people off, that would be accessible to anyone who has an interest in leading a better life.
Speaker 1:So you go through and talk about several different philosophers. Could you list some of them?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you how I arranged the book. So I decided I want each chapter to be a simple how-to question. Not anything fancy like how to do differential calculus which I cannot do, by the way but how to get out of bed in the morning, how to wonder, how to walk, how to listen really listen how to see, how to cope with difficulties. So each of the 14 chapters is a simple how-to question, but it's answered by one of my philosophers, who I sort of channel them because they're all dead. The book is subtitled In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers. They're dead, I'm not so I try to give you the essence of how their philosophy will help you get out of bed in the morning or see more beauty in the world, or cope with difficulties in your life, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1:Because the thing I find interesting is philosophy while we have this idea of it as super abstract, super kind of out there in some of the stuff and it's things you wouldn't always encounter every day it's all seemed to be built around. The purpose of philosophy seems to be, though, to be built around making sense of the world around us and also encouraging us in the pursuit of our lives. You quote someone who ends up saying, basically, that the pursuit of philosophy is to make us okay with dying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say to make us okay with everything, the living part too. But yeah, there's one philosopher who believed the purpose of philosophy is to teach you how to die. I think that was Montaigne. But really I think he ultimately concludes that really it's to teach you how to live and death is part of that. But you're right, it's viewed as this abstract subject.
Speaker 2:The comedian Steve Martin majored in philosophy when he was in college and he once said that you know, whatever else you major in, whether it's like geology or physics, you just you forget it the day you graduate, he said. But with philosophy, you retain just enough to mess you up for the rest of your life. So there's this feeling that, like that, if you have all these abstract ideas in your head, you're not going to be able to put one foot in front of the other. And that's not philosophy, that's bad philosophy. Just as there's bad art and good art, there's bad music and good music. There's bad philosophy and good philosophy.
Speaker 2:And, as you said, I think good philosophy helps you A make sense of the world and, b to find your place in the world as well. And to find, you know, I talked about beauty to see the beauty in the world and to have a sense of awe. A philosopher really is a seven-year-old, only with a bigger brain. So retaining that sense of wonder about the world that seven-year-old has, but with some of the intellectual rigor that an adult would have.
Speaker 1:It's very interesting. Some of the most famous philosophers, such as Plato and Socrates, would discuss in dialogues which is just questions, and you make the comparison to little kids who are just like why, why, why? That's like Socrates' entire method, almost.
Speaker 2:Yes, he was an annoying five-year-old or seven-year-old. You know, when you say we can't have ice cream for breakfast, why? Because sugar's bad for you. Why? Well, because you know. You could go on and on.
Speaker 2:And Socrates did something similar where he would ask people in the streets of Athens. He'd go up to someone and say, you know what is courage? And he wouldn't just choose anyone, he would choose, like a general in the army who should know about courage. Or he'd ask a poet what is beauty? And he would just sort of interrogate them in a friendly way but a kind of persistent way, like a five-year-old keep asking that why or how do we know that question? And you know, after like 30 minutes the general just had no idea what courage was. The poet couldn't define beauty.
Speaker 2:And so you know, socrates was, you know, was called the wisest man in Athens. The oracle said, and he thought well, I'm not really, I don't know that much, other people know more than me. But he concluded maybe he was the wisest man in Athens because at least he knew what he did not know. And you know we, you know our politicians, teachers you might have in school. If you ask them a question, how often will they say I don't know. I'd like to hear more people say I don't know, and I think we all might be better off, whether it's in the classroom or on the campaign trail, wherever where people will admit that they don't know, and that's okay yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious. You read a bunch about philosophy and different philosophers over the centuries. Have you thought about what are modern world's philosophies, like the West and America? Have you identified at all a common theme of? Do we think like one of these philosophers more than some of the others, or is it a combination?
Speaker 2:That's a really good question. No one's asked me that before. To be honest, the role that conscious philosophy plays in our world is not very great, right? I mean, can you name some rock star philosophers? No, but you can name, you know. You think about Steve Jobs, elon Musk these are names we know.
Speaker 2:And I'm reminded of something that Plato said. He said what's honored in a country is cultivated there. So we don't really honor philosophy, we honor technology. So a lot of our philosophy is bound up in technology. We imbue technology with a lot of power, magical power really. We think that technology can solve all problems. And you know, I'm all for technology. Much of it's great, not all of it. But this belief in the power of technology to make us happier, to make us smarter and wiser, I think the ancient Greeks, for instance, would find that very odd. They would say, like, why aren't you working on your character? Why aren't you working on becoming a more ethical person Instead? You know, we try to build an app for whatever it is, and so, in a way, we've kind of abdicated our philosophy and just sort of delegated it to our smartphones and our Tesla cars, and so it's kind of a philosophy of technology, in a way.
Speaker 1:The other interesting thing is you can see these parallels to certain Greek philosophies, such as Plato, and almost like the good, the idea of these forms. And then you see things like the metaverse, where we have to go beyond our physical natures in order to reach, basically, where we need to go, like the idea of moving our consciousness into the cloud, and stuff like that goes beyond, into the good of the forms. I mean, that's what it seems similar, to me at least.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I wonder what Plato would think of Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse? I don't think he'd be all for it because I don't think we're. Can you find an ideal version of love in the metaverse, or of courage or of beauty? Probably not, and I think he would see that. He played over famously about watching shadows on the wall. John Lennon used it in a song too. The idea is that we're in the cave and you've only been in the cave, You've never left. It's the only world you know, and you see these figures on the wall and you mistake them for real figures, real people walking around. You don't know their shadows because you don't see the source of these shadows, these figures the light and philosophy. Plato thought enabled you to see the light. I think the metaverse is just more shadows, more expensive, fancier shadows, but still shadows nonetheless.
Speaker 1:I mean, you can even think possibly. So we have this idea in the normal experience of emotions and feelings and stuff like that. We don't know, you might be able to replicate those same emotions on the metaverse. But how well can binary numbers interpret emotions? And like, if we all, if we moved your consciousness, for example, onto the cloud, how well would that simulate the same experience as a human? It's kind of an interesting question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the question is also I always think about it this way With a new technology, the question to ask is not does it work? The question to ask is what problem does it solve? And I'm not sure what problem the metaverse solves. I mean, I guess we've solved the problem on this podcast of distance that you're in Little Rock and I'm in Silver Spring, maryland, and yet we're able to talk like this. So it's sort of solved that problem. But, frankly, I'd rather meet in person. We probably, you know, even have a better conversation. It would feel more real. Or look at books and Kindles. I don't know if you're a paper book person or a Kindle person. Yeah, which one are you?
Speaker 2:I prefer books, yeah so do I, and you look that the e-books have not replaced books. In fact, paper books are selling better than e-books, and that's because the paper book is a technology too, and it does some things very well. And the Kindle comes along and it says well, we've solved this problem of now you can carry 500 books around with you. Well, maybe that wasn't a problem I had, maybe I can only read one or two at a time. And I think what we're doing now is philosophy, because we're looking at these problems and we're thinking about them philosophically, we're stepping back, and I mean, that's what philosophy is.
Speaker 2:You can learn the history of philosophy, you can learn about all these philosophers. I try to give you a taste of their quirkiness, their eccentricities in my book, but that's not philosophy. Philosophy is actually doing it and that's not really taught in school. They teach the history of philosophy, they teach about the ideas, but, you know, do you sit down and actually philosophize? So yeah, unfortunately philosophy has fallen out of favor, but hopefully it'll enjoy a bit of a resurgence.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because, as we kind of talked about before, philosophy basically influences you to do things that you do every day, such as your first chapter, getting Out of Bed in the Morning with Marcus Aurelius. Even if you don't necessarily realize it, you have reasons for things that you do. You might just say you're going on your instinct, but those instincts are based on maybe your cultural philosophy, maybe your personal philosophy. It would seem that a lot of the actions, every action that you make, is in some way has a philosophy in its own, whether you recognize it or not, right?
Speaker 2:And we may just do things because we think it's just the way things are, but my feeling is, well, it's the way things are at a particular time and place in the year 2022 in Little Rock, arkansas. It wasn't just the way things are in Athens. It's not the way things are necessarily in Shanghai, china. So a lot of it, as you suggest, is cultural, and then we internalize it and we think it's just the way it is. It's always been this way that I have to get a job out of college and make lots of money. Why? Again, the five-year-old question why? Well, so I could be successful. Well, why do you want to be successful? Well, successful, well. Why do you want to be successful? Well, so I can buy lots of things. Oh, so why do you want to buy lots of things?
Speaker 2:And it's really only happiness, and I've written another book about happiness called the Geography of Bliss. Happiness is the only thing that we really want for its own sake. We get money to buy things or to take trips because we think it'll make us happy. But why do you want to be happy? That's sort of the end result and it's funny, the Greeks had a different word for happiness. It's eudaimonia is the ancient Greek word, but it meant a lot more than happiness. It meant like flourishing, like a full life. Like our word, happiness really means kind of pleasure and having fun, and the Greeks saw it as much more than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they seem to have. Happiness wasn't just pleasure, and the meaning of life wasn't just pleasure. It had richness to it, as you were saying, yeah exactly, and it was, you know, like today could.
Speaker 2:If you ask someone, could you be like a bank robber and be happy? And we'd probably say, well, yeah, I guess you could. But someone like Aristotle would say no, because if you're robbing banks, you're stealing from people, you're not leading an ethical life, you cannot be happy. So it was much more tied into an ethical existence than it is today.
Speaker 1:Well, unfortunately we have to wrap up with our last two questions. We ask all of our guests. The first one is what books have had an impact on you.
Speaker 2:You know I would say my favorite book is an odd little book called Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, and it's fiction but it's not exactly a novel. I mean there's no real storyline. It is an imaginary Marco Polo exploring the world as he really did. But instead of going to real places he goes to these 57 imaginary cities and there are cities where all the normal laws are suspended, like instead of going through air they're going through dirt, or the day repeats itself every 24 hours. So it's a wonderful thought experiment and it's wonderfully written and it really sparks my imagination. I dip into that book when I'm stuck in my writing and Italo Cavino's Invisible Cities. It's a slim book but it's one you just want to keep dipping into. I love that one.
Speaker 1:That sounds really fascinating. I'm definitely going to have to check that out. The next question I have is what advice do you have for teenagers?
Speaker 2:Just chill out. You know my daughter's 17 and she's, you know, stressing out about colleges now and I get that. But you know, being a teenager is a time to make mistakes, it's a time to experiment, it's a time to like not know who you are, what you want to do, and that's OK. And so I would say, you know, live with some uncertainty of OK, you don't know what your exact career track is going to be, what you'll be doing 10 years from now, and just enjoy that moment of wonderful uncertainty.
Speaker 1:Well, Mr Eric, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really enjoyed our conversation about all the philosophical discussion.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Taylor. One question for you when did you get the name for your podcast from?
Speaker 1:So we were kind of brainstorming the name behind it and actually a lot of the ideas that we had were taken. So we thought, well, we want to be shooting for the stars, but that had been taken. So I guess what's the next thing? Closest to that? It was the moon, but I kind of it's shooting for the aiming for the moon. So we haven't launched yet, but we're we're trying to get there.
Speaker 2:You know the expression. You know aim for the stars and you'll land on the moon. And that's not so bad. So I like it. I like it. It's been a real pleasure. You asked some excellent questions really.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
