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'''Eric Weinstein''':   
'''Eric Weinstein''':   
And let’s expand that slightly to include not only work for money but also work—particularly the work traditionally done by women—which is a vital part of society that often happens off-market and needs to be recognized.   
And let’s expand that slightly to include not only work for money but also work—particularly the work traditionally done by women—which is a vital part of society that often happens off-market and needs to be recognized.
 
''00:43:34''  
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
But, you know, that's exactly right. One of the things that's happening is this materialist, almost Marxist perspective where whatever is in your bank account is your measure of value. 
 
That’s why, if you don’t have enough in your bank account, then obviously the system has somehow screwed you. The reality is that we are concerned with systemic problems, and we should focus on them. 
 
But the great majority of unhappiness, particularly in modern American society and historically prosperous Western nations, is not material. It’s a poverty of values, a poverty of meaning, a poverty of purpose. 
 
And I'm not sure that can be fixed. People are trying to fill that void with political action instead of looking at their own lives and asking, "What can I do to make myself better?" 
 
If I were on a desert island, what would I do to make myself a better person? Just me and my family—what would I do, aside from chopping down trees or grabbing a coconut? 
 
We’re so focused on railing against the system—which sometimes deserves it—but we spend all of our time on that. And that, I think, makes us susceptible to politicians who lie to us with very simplistic answers. 
 
''00:44:34'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
Well, I agree with that, Ben. But I also think that one of the things we have to do a better job on is acknowledging where the wealth comes from. 
 
Just as I, coming from a left-of-center perspective, have to defend the right of people who have contributed extraordinary things to society to retain extraordinary rewards, I think it’s equally important for the right to acknowledge that a lot of those rewards have come from nonproductive activities through rent-seeking. 
 
If some meeting takes place in an investment bank that allows them to privatize gains while socializing whatever security is necessary to keep those banks afloat—and I wasn’t part of that—that’s going to make me furious. 
 
''00:45:22'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
Now, we fully agree on this. 
 
''00:45:26'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
This is why we have to model this. 
 
''00:45:26'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
Well, the Tea Party and Occupy were on the same side of this particular battle. 
 
I was a Tea Partier. My problem with Occupy wasn’t their argument that the big banks were in bed with the government—it was that they were protesting at the big banks. Go protest at the government. 
 
The big banks are not elected; at least the people in the government are. If you want to shatter that paradigm, you actually have to go after elected officials instead of yelling at bankers who don’t care as they drive away in their Mercedes. 
 
''00:45:47'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
Yeah, I'm actually more upset about the people on both the left and the right who refuse to talk about the problem of rent-seeking. 
 
Hillary Clinton once gave a speech where she said, "Come on, we all created the great financial crisis." 
 
And I thought, no, we really didn’t all create the great financial crisis. 
 
Whether it was the heads of investment banks, politicians, or rating agencies, we did not distribute the costs appropriately. That’s the problem. 
 
That’s why there’s such a loss of trust. 
 
When we had the savings and loan scandal, people went to jail. When people do jail time for bad deeds, the public sees that the high and mighty can be held accountable. 
 
What was astounding about the 2008 financial crisis is that almost nobody went to jail. 
 
This is one of the things that made me distrust ''The New York Times''. I was in an article called *They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street*, which suggested that it wasn’t the investment bankers who caused the crisis, but the "quants"—the mathematicians and physicists working in finance. 
 
From my perspective, we were the ones trying to sound the alarm, saying, "Hey, the models are out of control, this is nuts!" And nobody listened to us. 
 
It’s very important to realize that the media, the regulators, the ratings agencies, and the politicians all played a role. 
 
There’s this entire industry that ordinary Americans do not understand, and that allows rent-seeking to undermine real wealth creation. 
 
It’s important that wealth be something we can understand. 
 
When I watch Jackie Chan, and I see him slide down a live electrical wire and break through glass, I think, "There’s no way in the world I want to tax this guy at a high level and take his money." 
 
I know exactly why he got paid—because I would never do what he does. 
 
I want to be able to look at fortunes and say, "I know what this person created, and thank you for that." 
 
It’s very important that we restore confidence that rent-seeking is not the primary way by which wealth is created and transferred. 
 
''00:48:01'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
All right. Let’s talk about how people find fulfilling lives. 
 
One of the other elements of the IDW is that we start off talking about political issues and systemic problems, but we often discover how much common ground we share. 
 
Some of the most interesting conversations happen over deeper issues. 
 
You, Sam Harris, and I were all on stage together in San Francisco, and we ended up in a two-hour-long conversation about everything from free will to morality and values. 
 
My argument has been that one of the things broken in the West is that there is no longer a common sense of values—it has been shattered. 
 
Even though Sam and I hold many values in common, the places we get those values are very different. And I frankly don’t understand how Sam gets to his values from his materialist, neurobiologist perspective. 
 
So how do we find that set of common values? 
 
Or should we just stop asking the question? Should I just be happy that Sam and I agree on these things and let it go? 
 
I think the reason we argue about this is that I believe Sam’s perspective on values—while I agree with his values—is unsustainable in the long run. 
 
It’s not sustainable beyond the people who really like Sam and follow him. 
 
Whereas I think that at least trying to appeal to some source of objective morality that’s beyond my own reason is replicable and has been throughout human history. 
 
''00:49:30'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
This is an interesting question. I mostly stayed out of that discussion because I think the audience wanted to see the atheist and the religious guy go at it. 
 
''00:49:37'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
Right, Sam and I, clashing— 
 
''00:49:40'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
But I had a very different take than both of you, and I approached it from an evolutionary biology perspective. 
 
From my perspective, the key issue is that Sam begins with a concept he calls human flourishing, which I don’t believe has ever been fully fleshed out. From what I can tell, the great danger with humans is that we can wake up, look at theories of selection, and say, "Oh my gosh, this is the game that brought us here." 
 
And even if evolution is the engine that created us, we don’t need to keep playing that game. 
 
For example, we don’t need to have children because we have birth control. So even if we want to have sex, we can engage in it while breaking that evolutionary linkage. 
 
We think about proximate versus ultimate needs. The proximate is thirst, but the ultimate is dehydration. The proximate is hunger, but the ultimate is starvation. 
 
So what happens if the mind suddenly wakes up and decides it wants to pursue proximate pleasure? 
 
If you break the body into two kinds of tissue—soma and germ—the germ is what contributes to having children and is therefore immortal. The soma is disposable. 
 
We are all in danger that the soma, meaning our minds, will wake up and say, "Hey, I just want to have fun and pursue pleasure. I’m going to define human flourishing to be whatever it is that I particularly enjoy." 
 
Now, it's not true that every atheist is going to go crazy like this—far from it. But the problem is that this approach doesn’t necessarily scale across generations. 
 
So I find myself in the odd position of being an atheist who is very sympathetic to religion. In fact, I attend services and belong to a temple largely because I believe that the brain has a sort of Chomskyan pre-grammar for religion. 
 
What sustained us as a species was a belief in something beyond our somatic lives. We all feel that, usually through our children—even atheists. 
 
But here’s the key question: If you don’t have children, are you still going to make investments that will benefit future generations? 
 
If you don’t believe that anything happens after you die and that there is no ultimate purpose or meaning, why would you? 
 
The reason religions outcompete rationality—which is quite surprising if you think about it—is that religions keep the soma from waking up and redefining human flourishing in purely individualistic, pleasure-seeking terms. 
 
That’s probably the thing I think Sam has not fully addressed. 
 
Now, Sam is unusual because he is an atheist who clearly sees the value in religion. He says, "I think we can accomplish all that religion does well from the perspective of reason." 
 
So it’s not that we need to convince him that religions do many things well. What we have to convince him of is that some aspects of atheists seeing human flourishing as intergenerational, lineage-level behavior may not scale across society. 
 
It may only work when you actually believe that there’s some meaning and purpose larger than yourself. 
 
''00:52:56'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
I obviously agree with a lot of that. 
 
I think the flaw in Sam’s reasoning isn’t necessarily his questioning of faith, but his **faith in reason alone**—the idea that by reason alone, you can achieve the values Sam wants you to achieve. 
 
That I find deeply problematic, especially because we had 200 years where people were basically trying this, and it did not work out particularly well. 
 
''00:53:17'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
But it may be that religion served us better in the past, while Sam is right about the future, even if we don’t currently have an atheist-scalable plan. 
 
It could be that we could institute rituals that are actually devoid of the belief in the supernatural while still tapping into that Chomskyan grammar. 
 
''00:53:35'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
That’s possible, but as a historical experiment, it was a giant failure for 200 years. 
 
''00:53:39'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
Right. 
 
''00:53:40'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
In France, they created a "Cult of Reason." Essentially, they tried a communist ritual system. 
 
''00:53:44'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
And I don’t buy the argument that we should treat Soviet Russia as a religion and therefore exclude it as an experiment in atheism. 
 
There’s great danger in religion, and there’s great danger in an absence of religion. 
 
What’s really necessary is to move the conversation to a space where values are embedded—even if we’re atheistic—because we’re still benefiting from a cultural substrate that was largely built on a Judeo-Christian system. 
 
And I agree with you. 
 
By the way, I really appreciated your willingness to forego any appeal to Torah or the Bible in favor of a reason-based argument for religion. That was really interesting. 
 
''00:54:24'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
Otherwise, we have no common frame of reference for the conversation. 
 
I may find that stuff inspiring and meaningful, but Sam clearly doesn’t. So if I start quoting the Bible to him, he’s not going to resonate with that. 
 
And it's not going to be an argument worth making with his audience—because how do I win that argument? By citing Leviticus? That’s just not a winning strategy. 
 
''00:54:42'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
Well, particularly Deuteronomy really loses me. 
 
The thing that gets me about some of these conversations is that we have a very large number of people in our network—Bret Weinstein, you, me, Jordan Peterson, maybe Douglas Murray—who I think are quite sympathetic to religion without making arguments from religion. 
 
''00:55:09'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
I think everybody in the group, if they were willing to admit it, would—if they were willing to admit it—I think pretty much everybody we’re talking about is essentially a natural law theologian. The only question is whether you're cutting God out of the picture or not. Because Sam is basically making a natural law argument. 
 
''00:55:23'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
He's saying, "This is what the universe calls us to do—to forward human flourishing." And then I just have a problem with his definitions. 
 
''00:55:32'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
Well, but the problem would be—I don't want to have to ask you this on camera—but if I said, "How sure are you about the truth of the revelation at Sinai?" I'm not entirely sure that you could give me a basis for that, nor would I want to. 
 
''00:55:47'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
I can't give you a rational basis for revelation at Sinai. 
 
''00:55:49'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
Right. 
 
''00:55:49'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
So the best I can do is sort of Maimonides' explanation, which is that something happened at Sinai, and I'm not sure quite what. Maimonides says in ''Guide for the Perplexed'' that what people got from that experience was: There is a God. There shouldn’t be idolatry—which human reason can bring you to. Moses was a particularly inspired, logical figure who was able to access higher modes of thinking and bring the Torah down from Sinai through direct communication with God. That's essentially Maimonides' argument. 
 
''00:56:13'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
And I'm worried about even that. So in some sense, if I am feeling sick and I go to the drugstore and say, "Don't you guys have a placebo you can give me that will cure my ailment?"—if I'm really in on the conceit that I don't have to fully believe something, it's not clear what the effect will be. It may be that you really get the benefit from being certain that there was a revelation at Sinai. 
 
''00:56:39'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
And so the question of self-deception and its efficacy in human flourishing is a very interesting one. 
 
''00:56:47'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
Now, this is it. I think the key question that breaks out is whether you have to believe in the reality of revelation or just the importance of revelation. My belief is that, at a minimum, you have to believe in the importance of revelation. If you believe in the reality of revelation, so much the better—because then you have it easier. But believing in the importance of revelation is the minimum for understanding the evolution of Western civilization. 
 
''00:57:08'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
I think that's the ante that gets you into the game. Then you have a situation in which you probably need a superposition of belief and lack of belief in order to have a decent life. That has probably always existed. But one of the odd things about this is that it's hard to talk about without destroying its efficacy. These questions of self-contemplation—when you’re trying to solve this thought-form problem—may have something to do with the limits of discourse. I think this is something that would be much more interesting to model than the usual dorm-level discussions about whether there's a God. 
 
''00:57:41'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Well, all of this is really fascinating. So let’s finish this—we’re getting close to the end here. Let’s talk for just a second about this: If you could make three changes to the country, what would those three changes be? 
 
''00:57:56'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
Well, probably— 
 
''00:57:59'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
That was a Barbara Walters "What’s your favorite kind of tree?" question. 
 
''00:58:01'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
That’s all right. Regular investigation of the intelligence community. If they’re doing a fantastic job, we should be able to rely on them. I think they provide a vital service, and I’m not against them. We need to pay journalists a great deal more. I don’t know where that money is going to come from. But we also need to fire them at the drop of a hat when they break trust—when they pursue ideology at the expense of truthful and meaningful reporting. 
 
The scientific apparatus of the U.S. needs to be restored. We need to bring back crazy, dangerous, highly genetic people to take back the labs. We need to kick out the safe, ideologically driven alterations in research. This will allow us to create new sectors of the economy to get growth back on track. This is one of the things that I think Peter Thiel and I share deeply. People don’t worry enough about what happens in the absence of growth. The U.S.—and the world—needs to find non-fossil fuel-led technological growth, broadly distributed stable growth, and growth that can avert war. 
 
And maybe a fourth, crazy suggestion—if you don’t mind me sneaking it in. Once in a blue moon, I think we need to explode an above-ground nuclear weapon. Because I’m terrified that what’s happened is that we’ve all fallen under a spell of magical thinking—that it doesn’t matter who we elect, and it doesn’t matter how bad things get. People assume that somehow the world is bizarrely stable and safe. It absolutely is not. I think maybe we need to activate the amygdala and remind everybody what’s hanging in the balance—and how unstable this is—so that we can get on to the business of making a really beautiful planet for generations to come. 
 
''01:00:10'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
Now, Eric Weinstein, thanks so much for stopping by. As always, great to see you. It’s always fun to talk with my friends, and it’s cool to have a friend in here. Eric, thanks so much for stopping by. 
 
''01:00:16'' 
 
'''Eric Weinstein''': 
Thanks, man. 
 
''01:00:24'' 
 
'''Ben Shapiro''': 
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special was produced by Jonathan Hay. 
 
* '''Executive Producer:''' Jeremy Boren   
* '''Associate Producers:''' Mathis Glover and Austin Stevens   
* '''Edited by:''' Alex Segarra   
* '''Audio Mixed by:''' Mike Carmina   
* '''Hair & Makeup:''' Jess Wall   
* '''Title Graphics:''' Cynthia Angulo 
 
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire / Forward Publishing production. 
 
Copyright Forward Publishing, 2018. 
 


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