From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Human dignity can seem abstract, but when you are transformed into merchandise, something to be exchanged or bargained with, you need the intellectual, emotional and spiritual tools to cling to your humanity. That's the only way you can retain value in your own eyes.
An appreciation of entropy is necessary to grasp that we are not entitled to wellbeing, progress, comfort, or health. The forces of the universe are- at best, indifferent- at worse, antipathetic- to our interests. Left to their own devices, things get worse.
In postmodernism, there are no absolute truths; everything is relative, of course other than the one absolute truth that there are no absolute truths. This is a form of intellectual terrorism, nihilism.
You can't build a bridge or an aircraft using postmodernist feminist epistemology.
Humankind has become a force in the biosphere as powerful as many natural forces of change, stronger than some, and sometimes as mindless as any.
When we were first able to make approximately what our fathers made by doing performance, we considered ourselves completely successful and had no ambition beyond that. If we were playing fairs and cruise ships, we were happy.
We have taught them they are American, Indian or African. Children have never created borders, religions, faiths or caste systems. Children have not been responsible for wars and divisions in society- we did that… and now we're imposing on our children, from their birth, a divisive image of who they are. We need to learn from children, and learn simplicity, forgiveness and the beauty of life.
Stress doesn't come from what's going on in your life. It comes from your thoughts about what's going on in your life.
The Chinese government has realised that to fuel capitalism, an atheistic, communistic, civil-religion will never propel growth. They weren't doing because they thought it was 'true' but because they were astute in knowing that you need this kind-of cultural base. Recently the Chinese government have done a major funding push for Buddhist centres and institutes around the world. They are trying to replace one philosophical narrative with another… They realise that their system, frankly, will not support the growth or creativity to create the new technologies and companies that are necessary.
I've done the show with a blown-out back, with one leg, coming off laryngitis, coming off or having a 103 degree fever. The bottom line is this… I go in there to do my job – the men and women fighting are actually putting their lives on the line – I'm just announcing! They're taking punches in the face, I'm just holding a microphone! I have nothing to complain about or make excuses for, the show must go on!
You cannot show-off in space, we must be humble. The only purpose for us to seek journeys into space is to learn about the unknown. That's a spiritual conquest. Leaving the solar system has no commercial benefits.
We are fields endowed with consciousness and free will, existing in a reality deeper than the familiar realm of space, time, and interacting objects—precisely the view scientism asserts: that we are merely bodies, properties of physical matter. But scientism is mistaken. Consciousness exists independently of any physical form; it resides in the underlying field that instantiates the matter and energy we measure in space and time.