Alex O'Connor

People didn't call themselves Hindus.

It's sort of got etymological roots with like the Indus River Valley, which is where a particular people were just doing their thing, just going about their business.

And Europeans sort of label these people Hindus, but it sort of refers to the geography.

Yeah.

Someone saying, like, have a Hindu on.

It's kind of a little bit like someone saying, like, have a European on.

I can get why somebody, if you'd never spoken to a European, would want me to speak to a European, because there is a different flavor of thought that goes on there.

But it's such a rich and varied sort of culture.

No, I appreciate the way you're looking at it.

You just can't do that.

So when someone says, like you ask, you know, what's your engagement with the Indian tradition?

it's sort of like somebody saying, what's your engagement in the Western philosophical canon?

It's like, that's a big question.

I've got to say, I'm much more specific.

I'm interested in this person or that person or this school.

And so for me, the stuff that I love from the Indian tradition is their views on consciousness, which I think predates the Western stuff and does it a lot more sort of intuitively.

I don't think new atheists, because the new atheist movement was a very... And it's interesting how we talk about it in the past tense now.

It doesn't really exist anymore.

It was...

a very sort of prickly kind of criticism.