What's The Purpose Of Life? | Yuval Noah Harari x Nikhil Kamath

0:00 So if you're not neihilistic as a person, do you believe there is a purpose to life? And if yes, what is it? >> Um I don't speak in terms of of purpose. You know, purpose. People think there is a big story, the drama of the universe and I have to play a certain role. Again, let's go back to the Greeks. They invented theater drama. So life is like a drama. I need to find out what is my role, what are my lines and perform it. This is something I don't believe. >> What do you believe? >> I don't believe that the universe works like a story. >> Right? >> I think the ultimate reality is the reality of suffering and liberation from suffering which is not about these dramas that people construct in their

0:45 minds. The dramas we construct in our minds very often obscure the reality from us that don't allow us. We we we often you know we sometimes cause immense pain to other people and to ourselves because we think this is we do it while pursuing our role in the in in the universal drama. >> Is this a bit like the Buddhist school of thought where desire is the root of all suffering? How do you eliminate suffering or how do you take cognizance to what is causing you suffering? >> And the ultimate root I would say is not desire. It's ignorance. >> Ignorance of >> ignorance of the reality. That again ultimately >> wouldn't ignorance of the reality

1:30 actually make me suffer lesser. >> Why? >> Because if I'm not thinking of something actively, I'm not suffering by virtue of having that thought in my mind. >> If there is pain in the world, say for example, people are dying in Iran today. >> Mhm. >> My ignorance of people dying in Iran will make me suffer lesser. No. from that particular thing. But if then you get into the habit of ignoring inconvenient things. >> This is a if you just ignore the suffering in Iran, okay, nobody can care about everything that happens in the world. We are just, you know, we are just frail human beings. We can't carry the whole world on our shoulders. But if you get into the habit pattern of ignoring things that are inconvenient,

2:17 then you will bring this habit pattern into everything in your life, >> into your family relationships, into your professional work, into your relationship with yourself. And again, this will cause you to be ignorant of the ways that you hurt others and the ways that you hurt yourself. And then you can't do anything about it. We can't fix something that we are busy ignoring. >> I hear you. But how do I take cognizance of my suffering? >> Mhm. >> In a manner that gives me purpose in life. >> Um the realization that suffering is not inevitable,

3:03 that you can do something about it. And you know ultimately there are only two things in the world which are really under our control and this is the present moment and my own mind. Everything else is not really under my control. I can't control the past. >> Mhm. >> Whatever happened in the past even if I'm president of the strongest country in the world I cannot change the past. >> Mhm. And similarly that the future I cannot now guarantee something to happen in a year or a 100 years. It's not under only the present moment and only my own mind. Again even if I'm president of a powerful country ultimately the only thing I really control to some extent is

3:50 my own mind. >> The person in the next room might disagree. We constantly try to control the world all of us to to lesser or to and we can't >> even if we are the most powerful person in the we cannot stop our our body from aging. You know you want to to control countries on the other side of of of the world try to control your your own body stopping it from aging. Um try to control the next thought that comes up in your mind. Let's say you're president X of whatever country and there is this crisis in Greenland, in Iran, whatever. You go to sleep as and you say, "Oh, I need to sleep well tonight because tomorrow I'm giving this

4:36 important speech in Davos, so I should be fresh. I need to sleep." >> And as you put your head on the pillow, some really annoying thought comes up in your mind and you can't get rid of it. This happens to everybody including presidents that you want to fall asleep and you can't because there is this thought in my mind and think about it. I can order a nuclear strike >> on another country. I can raise tariffs to a th00and%. I can order my eyes to shut here. I shut my eyes. I can order my body lie still. I cannot order my thought to stop.

5:22 I can't even control that. And if you cannot control that, are you really in control of anything? Nothing. I'm with you. I'm with you that I don't control much. Not even the next thought in my mind. I'm also with you that suffering is inevitable. I'm trying to I'm trying to draw the bridge from this uh >> to how is that solving my purpose problem in life? How do I not be? >> What do you mean by purpose? What do you want? >> What is the point of life? >> Um to understand suffering and be liberated from it. >> To understand suffering and >> and be liberated from it. You don't want to suffer.

6:10 So if I understand suffering I will be liberated of suffering >> ultimately. Yes. Because again all suffering comes from ignorance. If if we really understand what suffering is and where it comes from then uh we can be liberated from it. Not just ourselves but also help other people do the same. >> And of course it's extremely [laughter] difficult. >> Um but if you ask me what is the purpose? I you know people want money. Why do they want money in order not to suffer? >> People want power. Why do they want power? In order they think, "Oh, if I had all the power in the world, if I had billions of dollars, then I can I I I can prevent myself from being sick. I

6:56 can prevent myself from being sad. I can prevent and it's it doesn't work. People have been doing it, you know, for thousands of years. You can ask the previous generations of dictators and emperors and kings and billionaires. This this path doesn't work. Aren't people optimizing for attention? Deep down for in in what way? Let's go back to the time when there was a society with 10 people and they were hunting for food. >> The hunter who hunted the biggest animal >> Mhm. beyond a certain point where everybody had enough to eat. Did not hunt this really large animal risking his life because he wanted to eat the

7:41 meat but because he got the attention of being the biggest hunter. >> Attention bar status. >> Don't you think people are optimizing for that? Money could be a pathway. Morality could be another pathway. >> And the world is complex. People optimize for many things at the same time. for money, for influence, for beauty, for many things. Each of us decides to put kind of, you know, different quantities in these different buckets. >> All leading to attention. >> No. Um, all again, all leading to trying to escape suffering. We are all aware ultimately of the fact that we are mortal. A couple of months ago, they caught Putin and she in Beijing talking privately when they thought that nobody was listening and the microphones were

8:27 were on. And this was amazing because what were Putin and she talking about in private? >> They didn't talk about Ukraine. They didn't talk about Gaza. They talked about living forever. >> They they these people really, you know, if you're just, you know, some poor guy somewhere and you're going to die, you still don't like it. But if you feel that I'm the most powerful person in the world and I'm going to die like I'm going to lose all that that's terrible. So these people and uh you see it in in in many places around the world not just in that the highest echelon of society today is obsessed with their mortality and living forever because for the first time in history

9:13 they feel that it's not just religion. Maybe science has a cure for death. >> And you see all this obsession with uploading of our our consciousness to a computer and and stuff like that because we are we we const we are in constant denial mode. We try to forget that we are going to die but deep down we know it. And um and we we we say okay we'll have kids and through the children we'll continue to live. I'll write some book and through my book I will continue to live or I I'll be so rich and powerful that I can somehow find a way to to to to live forever. >> And none of that works.

9:59 And as long as you don't accept that it doesn't work and try to go deeper and see what's happening in there, you're just a slave.