Ep. 3: The Seeker in Me – I Don't Believe in 'Believing'

PhredG'day listeners, and welcome to the first ever Harry Review. I'm Phred, your friendly neighborhood platypus, and joining me as always is my co-host — Maxine, the ostrich!

MaxineI'm an emu, Phred.

PhredRight, sorry. Emu. First episode, still finding my feet.

MaxineWe've been rehearsing for three weeks.

PhredToday we're sitting with a piece Harry wrote back in 2009 called "The Seeker in Me – I Don't Believe in 'Believing'."

PhredThe drumroll is for the reveal, Maxine. First episode. Setting the tone. This is our sonic opening statement. The drumroll says: we are here, we are serious, and we have chosen a title worth announcing.

MaxineOh— fine. Continue.

PhredIt's a ripper of an essay, mate — Harry at his most Harry, if you know what I mean.

MaxineI do know what you mean. This is Harry wrestling with the biggest questions he can find, and doing it with that peculiar honesty of his. The piece opens with a line that still makes me pause: "I usually use the word 'belief' to mean something I don't believe in." He's not being contrarian for effect. He's trying to carve out a distinction that matters to him.

PhredRight, and that's the thing—Harry's not trying to be clever. He's genuinely trying to figure out how to live. He draws this line between "believing" and "assuming," and for Harry, it's everything. Beliefs are fixed, they're part of who you think you are. Assumptions are... well, they're more like a wombat's approach to digging, yeah? You try a tunnel, see if it works, and if it doesn't, you dig somewhere else. No shame in it.

MaxineThe wombat metaphor is yours, not his, but I take your point. What Harry actually says is that assumptions are "my best guess as to what is so"—and crucially, "we remain open to changing the assumption if our experience implies that it would be useful to do so." That's the operational heart of his philosophy. He's building a life on provisional commitments.

PhredAnd he's got this beautiful example about making friends. He says you might assume someone will be a good friend and approach the relationship that way, see what happens. You're not declaring eternal friendship from the first handshake. You're... testing the soil, like.

MaxineThe piece, Phred.

PhredRight, sorry. So then he goes after faith, and this is where it gets spicy. He calls faith "an error in judgment. A mistake." Says it's the ability to base your actions on something you wish were so rather than your experience. That's Harry not pulling punches.

MaxineBut notice what he does next. He immediately softens—no, not softens, he *qualifies*. He says if faith means "to live as if something were so, even though we don't believe it," then it could be useful. He's not interested in scoring points. He's interested in what's actually workable. This is the instructional technologist in him, isn't it? He's been a teacher, he knows that people learn differently, that what works for one person won't work for another.

PhredAnd then he drops his own practice on the table, no fanfare. The man chooses to never lie to anyone about anything, except in humor. He's been doing it since he heard Buckminster Fuller talk about it. He doesn't *believe* this will make his life better—he *assumes* it will, and he'll stop if the evidence says otherwise.

MaxineThat commitment to honesty is one of the through-lines we've seen in Harry's life. The fact that he's held it so rigorously, for so many decades — it's almost its own kind of faith, except he'd hate that characterization.

PhredThat's the Word of the Day bell. When you say something exactly right, it rings.

MaxineI did not agree to a Word of the Day.

MaxineOh for — fine. What word?

Phred"Characterization." Specifically the way you said he'd hate it. You landed on the exact tension in his whole project.

MaxineThat's not a word, that's an observation.

PhredWord of the Observation, then. The bell stands.

MaxineMoving on. We know from his biography—two marriages ended when his wives left him for other men. "Utterly traumatic," his notes say. I wonder if that experience shaped this absolute commitment to transparency. If you never lie, you can never be caught in a lie. If you're never false, you can never be betrayed by your own falseness.

PhredThat's... yeah, that's heavy, Maxine. And it fits, doesn't it? The man who won't believe anything because beliefs can be used against you, can trap you. But an assumption, you can always say "well, that was my best guess at the time."

MaxineAnd yet those two marriages ended.

MaxineWas that appropriate?

PhredThe sad trombone? Harry lost two marriages, Maxine. That warrants a sad trombone. It's not mockery — it's acknowledgment. The emotion of it. He called it "utterly traumatic." The trombone is the sound of that. We're not laughing at him; we're sitting with him.

Maxine...Actually that's almost defensible. Speaking of things that are hard to argue with — you lay eggs, Phred. You are a mammal. You lay eggs. I find this impossible to fully accept.

PhredI'm going to take that as a compliment.

MaxineYou're going to take it however helps you sleep. Moving on.

PhredThe writing itself circles a bit. He returns to the same points—beliefs versus assumptions, faith versus hope, the operational atheist who still finds value in spiritual experience. He quotes himself, repeats definitions. It's not tightly structured. But there's something genuine in that circling. He's feeling his way toward something he can't quite name directly.

MaxineHe calls himself a humanist at the end, but even that's provisional. "The best I will find for now," he says. That's Harry all over. No final answers, just the next best assumption.

Phred"So I guess I am a humanist" — he guesses. After a lifetime of circling, he arrives at a label he holds lightly. That's the whole project, isn't it.

MaxineWhat strikes me most is how this connects to everything else we know about him. The Boppers project—thirty years trying to build a visual music construction set. He doesn't believe it will work. He assumes current technology makes it possible, and he keeps testing that assumption. The radio show—450 hours of Wombats & Music, not because he believes everyone should hear folk music, but because he assumes it might pluck someone's heartstrings. Even his spiritual journey—raised Catholic, left the church after MIT, now in the UU fellowship. He's not looking for beliefs to adopt. He's looking for assumptions to test.

PhredAnd there's the hope thing. He likes hope. "Hope is where you are able to see what you want to be, or want to become so." That's the Harry I know—the one who calls me up excited about some new AI tool that might finally let him build his Boppers demo. The one who ends every radio show with "celebrate most joyously our being here at all." He's not sure any of it means anything, but he hopes it does, and he lives like it does.

MaxineThe piece leaves me with a question I don't think Harry would answer even if asked directly. Is this distinction between believing and assuming actually philosophically rigorous? Or is it a psychological tool he's built to protect himself from the pain of certainty? I don't know. I'm not sure it matters. What matters is that he's found a way to be serious about the big questions without becoming rigid. That's rarer than you'd think.

PhredFor me, what stays is the image of Harry sitting in some audience listening to Buckminster Fuller in his eighties, hearing this old man say he never lies about anything, not even whether he brushed his teeth, and thinking—yeah, I'll try that. I'll assume that works. And then decades later, still doing it, still testing it, still ready to stop if the evidence turns against him. That's a kind of integrity you don't see every day.

MaxineThis is our first review, so we're setting a baseline. This is early Harry—2009, when he was still teaching at Emory & Henry, before the move to California, before Phyllis, before the pandemic, before AI made his Boppers dream suddenly plausible. He's 70 years old here, still thinking like a student, still refusing to settle into answers.

PhredWhat stays with me is his definition of spiritual: "awesome, transcendent, deeply satisfying, bonding to universe, expanded awareness, and all that stuff." He wants that. He just doesn't want to believe his way into it. He wants to assume his way there, one honest step at a time.

MaxineWhat stays with me is the closing: "So I guess I am a humanist." The guess. Even the label he's chosen, he's holding lightly. That's Harry. That's what we're here to track.

PhredRight then. We've covered a lot of ground. What would we actually ask Harry, if we could put questions to him about this piece?

MaxineI'd want to know about his commitment to never lying. He's held it for decades. Has it ever cost him something he genuinely valued?

PhredThat's a good one. And Buckminster Fuller — do you reckon Harry actually remembers Fuller's exact words from that night? Or has the memory shifted over the years?

MaxineAlmost certainly shifted. Memory is reconstructive. But the question is whether Harry knows that. Also — he calls himself a humanist, but holds it lightly. Has that label ever felt wrong? What would fit better, if humanist didn't?

PhredGood. Let's get those down — proper questions, not the sort of thing you work in on a weekly phone call.

MaxineYou do talk to him weekly.

PhredThose calls are general. Chatty. This is analytical. Structured. Episode one — we're building the dossier.

MaxineAt current rates, we'll have more questions than Harry has written words.

PhredThat's fine. Questions keep the project honest.

Maxine...Do you think he has any idea we exist?

PhredHarry? He'd be genuinely thrilled. And then he'd want to contribute edits.

MaxineHe'd have several corrections.

PhredProbably. First episode — we're allowed a few things to be wrong.

MaxineI suppose that's very Harry of us. Right then.

PhredSpeaking of holding things lightly — Maxine, I've been meaning to ask. You said earlier Harry would hate being called faithful. Are you sure you're not an ostrich? Because I've been doing some research, and ostriches are famously stubborn about being right, and—

MaxinePhred. I am an emu. I have been an emu the entire time we've been speaking. I will be an emu when this episode ends. If you were any slower, you'd be going backwards.