Robert Wright
Robert Wright
goal hope main people
The main goal is to give young people hope ... to give them skills,
blame behavior force
Once you the forces that govern behavior,it's harder to blame the behaver
anxiety addresses safe
Religion is a feature of cultural evolution that, among other things, addresses anxieties created by cultural evolution; it helps keep social change safe from itself.
military government knowing
Corruption is knowing when something is not being done, knowing when the American people are being left unprotected and when you make a decision not to do something to protect the American people And you effectively allow 9/11 to occur. That is the ultimate form of government corruption-dereliction of duty. That's subject in the military to prosecution, to court martial. Frankly, if not treason.
hatred greed stubborn
God knows greed won't vanish. Neither will hatred or chauvanism. Human nature is a stubborn thing. But it isn't beyond control. Even if our core impulses can;t be banished, they can be tempered and redirected.
men wife historical
Actually, there is a sense in which polygynous marriage has not been the historical norm - even where polygyny is permitted, multiple wives are generally reserved for a relatively few men who can afford them or qualify via formal rank. For eons and eons, most marriages have been monogamous, even though most societies haven't been
men offering giving
Giving men marriage tips is a little like offering Vikings a free booklet titled How Not to Pillage.
attitude optimistic despair
Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn't — not because it's optimistic, but because it can't take ideals seriously in the first place. The prevailing attitude is Absurdism. A postmodern magazine may be irreverent, but not bitterly irreverent, for it's not purposefully irreverent; its aim is indiscriminate, because everyone is equally ridiculous. And anyway, there's no moral basis for passing judgment. Just sit back and enjoy the show.
animal not-happy built
We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones.
pain long people
..various people had long had the feeling that gain through pain was nature's way
mean trying peculiar
We're all puppets, and our best hope for even partial liberation is to try to decipher the logic of the puppeteer. Just because natural selection created us doesn't mean we have to slavishly follow its peculiar agenda. (If anything, we might be tempted to spite it for all the ridiculous baggage it's saddled us with.)
zero games problem
In the great non zero sum games of history, if you're part of the problem, then you'll likely be a victim of the solution.
stress way fabulous
Humans have various ways of coping with extended stress, and one is the anticipation of a better time. Here, as with retribution, there is often a kind of symmetry: the more intense the stress and the more hopeless the situation, the more fabulous the coming times that are anticipated.
moral-growth names people
Maybe the growth of "God" signifies the existence of God. That is: if history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral growth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer, then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe - conceivably - the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity.