Buddhism is really overrated as a philosophy to live by.

The three things that all humans want, survival, connection and status.

Status is kind of like a dangerous drug, and we get flashes of an incredible happiness.

Who do I have to be? What do I have to believe in order to get along and get ahead?

If we all became amazing Buddhists overnight, progress would stop and civilization would collapse. What is the problem with Buddhism? For me, the problem with Buddhism is that it misunderstands human nature. It thinks it understands how people tick and what people need, but it actually doesn't.

So if you listen to lots of contemporary Buddhists and indeed lots of non-contemporary Buddhists,

what they'll tell you is that the source of all our misery is wanting and striving. And so to be happy, to be content,

you need to kind of work on yourself so you want less and you strive less. And ultimately,

you need to kind of destroy your ego, which is their kind of name for the illusory self.

So this theory has played out really well in the West since the 60s when it became fashionable.

Because in the West we want us and we're strivers, that's who we are.

We're individualists, you know, we go out there and we try and want to do things.

And that causes, you know, and the Buddhists are right about this. It does cause stress. It causes misery. It puts us at risk of failure.

So it's caught on really well. People do mindfulness meditation in order to reduce their ego

needs and to reduce their wanting and their striving. But what they don't understand, in my view,

is that wanting and striving is really the best of human nature.

Without wanting and striving, we wouldn't have civilization.

If we all became amazing Buddhists overnight, progress would stop and civilization would collapse.

It's interesting. I heard someone, business guru, definitely said this.

The only thing harder than getting a Lamborghini, it's not wanting one.

And I did, I carried that with me for a while and I felt challenged by it.

Yeah.

...