The wealthiest Americans often live as though they and their children had nothing to gain from investments in education, infrastructure, clean-energy, and scientific research.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the disconnect between the wealthy and the societal investments that benefit all.
Sam Harris's quote emphasizes that many affluent Americans behave as if they are indifferent to critical societal investments such as education, infrastructure, clean energy, and scientific research. It suggests that there is a lack of awareness or a disregard for the collective benefits these investments can provide, not only for society but also for themselves and their future generations. This sentiment reflects a broader critique of the privilege that comes with wealth and its potential to create separations within society.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the responsibilities of the wealthy in investing in community resources.
Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person's thoughts.
What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.
The core of science is not a mathematical modeling--it is intellectual honesty. It is a willingness to have our certainties about the world constrained by good evidence and good argument.
It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.
It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.
Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.
A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. "I got it from my good judgment," he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? "I got it from my bad judgment."
You are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions.
We donβt ask why God chose as his prophet a stutterer with a public speaking phobia. But we should. The book of Exodus is short on explication, but its stories suggest that introversion plays yin to the yang of extroversion; that the medium is not always the message; and that people followed Moses because his words were thoughtful, not because he spoke them well.
Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know more.
I think itβs intoxicating when somebody is so unapologetically who they are.
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