Rainn Wilson

speaker

3,063 appearances 12 recordings 7 series first heard Jul 2024 last heard 7 Jul

Rainn Wilson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.

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Know Thyself · E131 - Rainn Wilson: Comedy, God & Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution · 21 Jan 2025 podcast

To a lot of people feel like, well, if I'm just better, if I'm kinder when I go into a Trader Joe's parking lot, then I'll spread that kindness and I'll be nice to someone else and they'll be nice to someone else and it'll have a ripple effect. And that is true. But we also have to harness those tools and those ideas collectively to try and reduce suffering and make the world better.

And there are real and tangible ways to do that. And a lot of us and a lot of folks do it in their jobs. You know, they work in education, they work in healthcare, they work in the nonprofit sector, they work in climate and environment. And that's all wonderful, and that is part of the solution. But... Why I say soul boom, why we need a spiritual revolution is that this is a yin and a yang.

We cultivate our internal spiritual progress, our serenity, our awareness, our love, our radiance, our wisdom, our connection to the divine source. so that we can use it to help others. And the more we help others, the more fulfilled we are. And then we can harness that energy and help even more people. And in so doing, it becomes a cyclical thing. So...

Part of the issue I have with contemporary Western ideas around spirituality is that often begins and ends with tools to reduce anxiety and doesn't move out into the world and find a kind of a collective harnessing of proactive action to reduce injustice and to limit suffering on a grander scale.

Well, I applaud you. You've actually read my book, and I love it. You've thrown in lots of little juicy little references there. Thank you so much. Yes, sir. It means so much. I really appreciate it. We need a spiritual revolution because we literally are seeing right now the grinding down decay and collapse of old ways of doing things.

the ways that human beings have done things for eons are not sustainable. They're based on the worst impulses of humanity. They're based on, you know, greed and one-upsmanship and every man for himself and self-interest and a dog-eat-dog world and all of these...

wonderful energies that allowed us to get to this place in time where we're sitting in this beautiful studio in Topanga having this amazing conversation and there's lights and there's technology and we've got education. Humans struggled and overcame and had ambition and war and conflict to get to where we are as a species right now on the planet. two things. Number one, that wasn't all we were.

And that's a very limiting kind of way of thinking about humanity. Humanity is also really good at cooperation and really good at collectivism and kindness and working together. And some of the most successful societies are the ones that cooperated the best and were the best at trade and were the best at communication. Not the most warlike ones, you know, that conquered the most land.

So that's number one, but number two, continuing to move in that direction when essentially the resources of planet Earth have been sucked up and used, it's not sustainable. And we're seeing it. We're seeing all the different ways that it's breaking down right now. I go into a list of pandemics and soul boom of beyond the pandemic we just came out of, materialism and racism and sexism and

And the mental health epidemic we talked about a little bit. And nationalism and militarism. These are all pandemics that are eating away at the soul of humanity in a large way. So we have to find a new way of doing things collectively. I try and bring some answers in there. I don't have...

any exact answers i i feel like the baha'i faith has some really beautiful ideas about how to move things forward at the grassroots which is a very important Part of this, if there's a spiritual revolution to be had, I don't know that it's gonna be immediately global. I think it's gonna start in a neighborhood.

It's gonna start in a cul-de-sac or at a school or at a church or at a community center. And it's gonna involve children and kids and youth working together, believing that they can change the world. Recently, I heard a phrase and it really rocked my world. And that was that the greatest issue facing humanity right now, the greatest disease, dis-ease, disease that we are facing is this kind of

almost universal belief that things can't get better, that we are incapable of change, and that there's no way that we're going to fix the current state of affairs. This is a cancer that is affecting, infecting countless young people in the world today. It's at the heart of the mental health epidemic, this belief the world is not gonna get better. I don't count.

I can't help make the world get better. We collectively, we're too fucked up. We will never collectively be able to make the world better. This misguided, cancerous, wrong belief is the biggest issue that people are facing.

And this is one thing that you, your listeners, your viewers, this incredible community that you've built, the people that you interview, every single last one of them are an antidote for and to, because the people that you interview and you talk to believe there is a way out.

and bringing hope, bringing the possibility of collective change toward justice, towards peace, is possible, is kind of the most important work that we can be doing toward a spiritual revolution.

I love that book. That's why I quote it in there. It's one of my favorites. Yeah, very inspiring.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was studying with Andre Gregory, And he's famous director and acting teacher, author, and he was the star of my dinner with Andre. And I was doing this acting workshop with him and he would meet with his students and we sat kind of like we are right now at his apartment, had some tea. And he was like, so Rain, tell me what's going on. How are you feeling?

What's going on with you? And I was like, oh, Andre, I'm feeling overwhelmed. I just feel like the world is a pile of shit, or mankind's driving into a ditch, and things are bad out there. And he cut me off and stopped me. He did not tolerate that conversation. I mean, he literally grabbed my arm, he looked into my eyes, and he was like, don't. Don't do it. You can't be cynical.

You cannot be pessimistic. The world wants you pessimistic and cynical. That's what the world wants, because then you'll sit there on your couch, on your ass, and you won't do anything. We have to believe that hope is possible. We've got to believe that change is possible. You cannot...

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