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 that, until the age of 31, he played the horn in the Orquestra Ciutat de Barcelona, ??where I met my wife, from Barcelona del Clot.
You speak good Catalan and Spanish.
Every ten years I reinvent myself. I left the orchestra to get my doctorate and to be a university professor for ten years to preside over the AEI until I left Washington at 55, five years ago…
Criticism of Trump didn’t help.
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 USA but in Catalonia, Spain and the world.
What makes it so dangerous?
Identity culture polarizes our societies: it pits us all against each other to benefit a handful of populists. It reduces complex management issues to being or not being, feeling or not feeling from a country, race, religion…
Do you condemn having multiple identities?
It reduces the complexity and diversity of reality to a label that includes the good – yours – and excludes the bad, which is always everyone else.
Why are these exclusionary identities more and more widespread?
Because they connect with the most primitive part of our brain in its tribal and bipolar reflex, because if our ancestors didn’t have a group, they died. And it prevails 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 amygdala-dependent reptilian ancestors already had, fear and rage; from the insular cortex, disgust, and sadness, to the cingulate cortex.
Who causes distress wins votes?
Right from the start, it gains attention, because whoever screams “The lion is coming!” catches her This identity fear is what still makes us react like when the beasts or the enemy tribe arrived. We survived because of this fear.
How to curb divisive populism?
Explaining that identity, the history of nations and borders, are not of eternal hatred, but a process in which, if interpreted with all the brain and without fear, it is more what unites us than what separates us.
Who will you vote for president?
I will vote blank. But let me also say what is good about Catalonia, Spain and the USA: we do not accept political violence. And that is enough to trust in the future.
What did you do after leaving AEI?
Disconnect, meditate or pray, which is the same thing, and reconnect with loved ones to bring meaning back to your life. And you get it when you invest more and more in your relationships and less in your ambitions. It’s maturing.
How do you do it?
I have concentrated on my classes at Harvard and on Build the life you want, the book I am signing with Oprah Winfrey.
I read that Oprah earns 2.5 billion a year from her television shows.
What I teach is that above $100,000 a year, even if you increase your income, you don’t increase the welfare they provide you.
In this I can not 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, who combine breathing and prayer.
Why has he left politics?
Because the USA today does not have great leaders, and neither Trump nor Biden. We now depend on our institutions being able to withstand them.
Can Trump II destroy them?
To comfort myself, I think that if the Catholic Church that has survived 2,000 years…
Why is America still alive?
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’m maturing and this brings me closer to people who don’t think like me. Now I’m better able to admit that sometimes I’m wrong. It’s called epistemological humility. And I fight against the symmetrical attribution of motives…
Think others are stupid?
It is a cognitive deviation that means that when a group believes in something, for example, love, it tends to symmetrically deduce that others are only guided by hate.
Habitual als camps de football.
I wish it was just 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 give up.
