Episode 137: Are Buddhists Afraid to Die? (with Shaun Nichols)

Now there are jokes, and then there is piss all over my shoes. These are two entire early different things.

The greatest has spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Who are you? Who are you? A very bad man. I'm a very good man. Good man. They think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. Pay no attention to that man. Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man.

I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to very bad wizards. I'm Tamlor Summers from the University of Houston. Dave, in our second segment, we're finally having Sean Nichols on the podcast to talk about Buddhism and fear of death. Would you call Sean a bucket list guest?

He made himself into a bucket list guest by playing hard to get. I think he played it really? Did you know Josh Green is our true unicorn? I think maybe. Uh, but Sean worked his way into our hearts by treating us poorly. We're like the lover with low self esteem. Exactly.

Yeah. So, future guests, if you want to be on, be coy with us. So that's what's coming on in the second segment. It was also our first live recording, and I think it went pretty well.

Way better than I anticipated. Just from a technological perspective, I think we sound pretty damn good. I don't know what we say is any good.

No.

Uh, substance wise, it was really bad.

But, yeah, it was fun. It was great.

We met up in San Antonio. That doesn't happen too often.

I know. It's like third time. Each time we see each other, we're just.

You can actually. It's like seeing somebody's know after a few years, it's like, oh, my God, you've grown. Except now it's, ah, jeez.

God, I'm Balder and older and fucking wrinkled. Um, but, yes, hopefully we could do a few more of those.

Yeah, that would be fun alreAdy, I think. What percentage of the people there do you think had ever heard the podcast?

Seven and a half, maybe.

I think it was maybe 15%.

Yeah.

Okay. For the first segment, we are going to decide on our five finalists for our Patreon listener selected episodes. And both you and I have come up with five choices that we would like to have as the finalists. And I guess we'll do some negotiating, and we'll settle on five. That we'd be happy with. So what's your number one.

As always? I don't rank mine.

Yeah, mine. Normally I do, because that's what we're supposed to do, but I didn't this time. Yes.

Okay, so here's, uh, one that popped out at me. I thought, uh, we've teased this, but never directly addressed it. And that's, uh, the ethics of care.

I, um, have that too.

Yeah, I thought you would, um, uh, the ethics of care as a topic in general, the view, both the normative philosophical view and, I think, the descriptive psychological view.

Yeah.

So this was a suggestion from Amanda Kennedy. I just happened to have taught in my metaphilosophy seminar. So I would be very excited to do know.

Part of our challenge, I think, is when we post these for our Patreon listeners to subscribe to it. I think we have to go out of our way to describe a little bit what we mean. Because I do think that an episode on the ethics of care sort of has to build on a discussion of Colberg and justice and that whole sort of moral development that Carol Gilligan was reacting to when she first proposed this stuff. I think it would be really interesting.

Yeah. And I think it has two elements, the ethics of care. One, a critique of the dominant paradigm, the dominant paradigm in ethics, utilitarianism versus deontology. And an interesting kind of diagnosis of why that's the dominant paradigm. Again, tied to the fact that these are moralities that suit men in public and market life, but they're not aware of the genealogy of it. And they actually think this is the rational morality that should apply to all domains of life. Um, so there's a really interesting critique of these paradigms, and then there's a positive ethic that's being proposed in its place. Um, that involves care and caring relations. And that's a little fuzzier. Exactly what it is that's being proposed. But it would be really interesting to try to flesh it out. Okay.

All right, so we scratched one off our list. So, uh, you go next.

Here's another one that we have teased but not done. I think this was even proposed in the last, um, segment. But the denial of death by Ernest Becker. I'm willing to leave it off, because I do think we're going to do it either way.

Yeah.

Uh, but we would do it sooner, I guess, if we.

Yeah.

All right, well, let's keep it on reserve. Here's one that I think could be on the list. Um, so this is from James Laner, he quotes C. S. Lewis. He says, according to C. S. Lewis, friendship is born at the moment. One person says, what, you two? I thought I was the only one. Which is nice.

That was great.

Yeah. I, uh, worry that fracturing of culture into hyper specific taste bubbles on the Internet might reduce the instances of these serendipitous friendships. He says, personally, I've found tremendous edification in pursuing new interests with like minded people met on the Internet. However, I find myself less excited than in the past when meeting new people in, quote, meet space, as I can generally assume they won't share these idiosyncratic interests that I've been able to indulge online. Meat space. That's like actual interpersonal, real life IRL. Have you heard that before?

I never heard of, um, this place.

Is such a meat space.

I think what he's proposing is some sort of intellectual, ah, version of Grindr M or Tinder for you straighties. What?

I thought we've never done an episode on Friendship in general, and we could talk about friendship in the 21st century with some of these online. Now that friendship, uh, in the Internet age, something like that. But I would like to focus also on friendship in general.

I really like that idea. Um, even the discussion about The Internet is so often really focused more on political discourse and fragmentation in that sense, um, that it excites me to even think of discussing it in terms of just friendship. The positives and the negatives of being able to meet people with your really idiosyncratic porn preference. I mean, regular preference.

Um, is that how you choose your friends?

Yeah.

You like exhamster, too? What category?

I don't understand why all of those sites, uh, have, like, a social, uh, media share buttons on them.

Right?

Who would do that? Oh, my God. It's only there to freak you out into thinking that you might do it by mistake.

He also says bonus content you could share. What weird common interest cemented your friendship? I don't know if we've told that story. There is one.

It is pretty obvious. Um, to us, at least. Um, yeah, that would be a good chance to talk more about ourselves.

All right, so is that on the list?

That's on the list. My next one is personality psychology. So, um, this was NSO.

Sorry, I had this, too.

Yeah. And then Travis Catreau seconded it. Um, and I think that, uh, we have never really tackled the topic of individual differences in personality. Um, and I think there's a lot of interesting things to talk about there. Of course, given the recent sort of controversy surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and stuff. I think people have been reading more about big five personality traits than they would normally, and I think it's worth it for a deep dive. And again, there. There's definitely people we could get on as guests who are real personality psychologists.