We spend a lot of time on How God Works talking about how spirituality can offer tools to become better versions of ourselves.  And while learning to be happier, healthier and more resilient are all positive things to strive for, they can also lead us down a different path - an obsession with productivity and self-optimization… which can lead to a culture of trying to grind or life-hack our way through everything. But what if the secret to success lies in doing less, not more? On this episode, we’ll explore the Chinese concept of wu wei, effortless action. We'll talk to Edward Slingerland about how modern cognitive science has proven many early Chinese thinkers right, why wu wei is still relevant today, and how learning how not to try can help us forge a different path toward the good life.

Edward Slingerland is a philosopher, sinologist, and professor in the Departments of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, and Department of East Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where he also directs the Religious History Database. His research areas include Chinese pre-Qin philosophy, religious studies, cognitive linguistics, and ethics. His representative works include Effortless Action: Wu Wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China (2003, Chinese translation published in 2020), Trying Not to Try: Ancient China, Modern Science and the Power of Spontaneity (2014, Chinese translation published in 2018), What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body & Culture (2008), Mind and Body in Early China: Beyond Orientalism and the Myth of Holism (2019).