I interviewed him when he chaired the right-wing think tank in 2015.
I chaired the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for ten years; and before, until I was 31, I played the horn in the Orquestra Ciutat de Barcelona, ??where I met my wife, a Barcelona native from Clot.
You speak good Catalan and Spanish.
Every ten years I reinvent myself. I left the orchestra to get my doctorate and was a university professor for another ten years to preside over the AEI until at 55, five years ago, I left Washington…
His criticism of Trump did not help him.
Nor write Love your enemies…
The best title at the worst time?
Describe the threat to democracy that is identity politics. Not only in the US but in Catalonia, Spain and all over the world.
What makes it so dangerous?
The culture of identity polarizes our societies: it pits us all against each other to benefit a handful of populists. Reduce complex management issues by being or not being, feeling or not feeling about a country, race, religion…
Is it condemned to have multiple identities?
It reduces the complexity and diversity of reality to a label that includes the good guys – yours – and excludes the bad guys, which is always everyone else.
Why are these exclusive identities becoming more and more widespread?
Because they connect with the most primitive part of our brain in its tribal and bipolar reflection, because if our ancestors did not have a group, they perished. And it is imposed with the feeling and the immediate reaction to the reflection.
Don’t you think we’ve made progress?
Populist politicians appeal with their speeches to those emotions that our reptilian ancestors dependent on the amygdala already had, fear and rage; from the insular cortex, disgust, and sadness, in the cingulate cortex.
Who grieves wins votes?
At first, it gains attention, because whoever shouts “The lion is coming!” he catches it. This fear of identity is what still makes us react like when the wild beasts or the enemy tribe arrived. We have survived thanks to him.
How to stop divisive populism?
Explaining that identity, the history of nations and borders, are not about eternal hatred, but rather a course in which, if interpreted with the whole brain and without fear, there is more that unites us than separates us.
Who will you vote for as president?
I will vote blank. But let me also say the good thing about Catalonia, Spain and the US: we do not accept political violence. And that is enough to trust in the future.
What did you do after leaving the AEI?
Disconnect, meditate or pray, which is the same thing, and reconnect with loved ones to return meaning to your life. And you achieve this when you invest more and more in your relationships and less in your ambitions. It’s maturing.
How do you achieve it?
I have focused on my classes at Harvard and on Build the life you want, the book I signed with Oprah Winfrey.
I have read that Oprah makes 2.5 billion a year from her television shows.
What I teach at Harvard is that, from $100,000 a year, even if you increase your income, you do not increase the well-being they provide you.
In that I cannot contrast experiences,
What does increase your well-being is meditating or praying. I pray the rosary every day, which is my mindfulness because I am Catholic; and I also practice the prayer of Orthodox Christians, which combine breathing and prayer.
Why have you left politics?
Because the US lacks great leaders today, and neither Trump nor Biden are. Now we depend on our institutions being able to support them.
Can Trump II end them?
To comfort myself, I think that if the Catholic Church has survived 2,000 years…
Why does the United States still survive?
Because local government, where I do vote, the state and the city are still real and useful politics. More than the Washington show.
But are you still on the right?
I am always maturing and learning and that brings me closer to people who don’t think like me. And now I am more able to recognize that sometimes I make mistakes. They call it epistemological humility. And I fight against the symmetrical attribution of motives…
Thinking that others are stupid?
It is a cognitive deviation that means that when a group believes in something, for example, love, they tend to symmetrically deduce that the others are only guided by hate.
Common on soccer fields.
Hopefully only there. I have worked since Harvard with the Dalai Lama and we realize that the illusion that there are enemies is just that: if you are able to see it, they are your friends.
Will you change again in ten years?
Life is a crossroads of knowledge and action: aging is not an option, it is a fact; Yes, it is a choice how you decide to age. I am with those who will never abandon themselves.
