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All the Meditation in the World Can’t Fix Your Racist Opinions
Everyone knows about meditation and its benefits. After a quick Google search, some of the benefits of meditation are listed as stress management, gaining a new perspective on stressful situations, and increasing self-awareness. Benefits not gifted to master mediator Sam Harris.
About a month ago, Harris released yet another episode of his podcast focused on racial equality and protesting. Harris has come a long way, noting the existence of generational wealth gaps and the century of racist policies after the emancipation of slavery, but is that enough? Not really, because in that same podcast, Harris also tells us that there was no racial motivation in the murder of George Floyd or that there is an issue with police brutality.
Sam Harris has a long history of being unintentionally racist and intentionally dismissing explicit systemic racism in our country. For someone who has likely made millions off a meditation course, introspection and questioning internal biases are a limited practice for Harris.
Racism and Violence
In this 2017 podcast, episode #42, Harris describes himself as part of the new center, a dedication to being neither leftwing nor rightwing. Other members of the “new center” include Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, and Stefan Molyneux.
Sam tells the audience a myriad of opinions he holds like:
- Black Lives Matter will set back race relations a whole generation, and their message is “dangerously and offensively irrational.”
- The unjust murder of Michael Brown is justified.
- Michael Brown’s behavior warranted being shot six times.
Forbidden Knowledge with Charles Murray
The opening 5 minutes of episode #73 of the interview with conservative think-tanker Charles Murray set the tone of the whole episode and let the audience know how much intellectual rigor Sam was going to apply to the conversation.
“Human Intelligence itself is a taboo topic. People do not want to hear that intelligence is a real thing and that some people have more of it than others. They do not want to hear that IQ tests really measure it. They don’t want to…
