It is time we recognized that belief is not a private matter; it has never been merely private. In fact, beliefs are scarcely more private than actio… - Sam Harris

Astonishingly, ideas as spurious as the blood libel are still very much with us, having found a large cult of believers in the Muslim world.

But the deepest goal of spirituality is freedom from the illusion of the self — and to seek such freedom, as though it were a future state to be attained through effort, is to reinforce the chains of one’s apparent bondage in each moment.

Yes. This gradual walk toward not taking human suffering seriously anymore is something we experience in context-dependent ways already, and when you think of the global implications it’s scary to consider how malleable our experience might be. I’m thinking of a few local cases, like how surgeons and ER doctors need to inure themselves to the constant evidence of other people’s suffering, because otherwise they can’t get the job done. And every parent knows what it’s like to understand that the suffering of one’s three-year-old who bursts into tears over a lost toy is not something that needs to concern you as much as an adult bursting into tears over something else, and yet that suffering is no less vivid for the child. You can imagine that kind of immunity to the evident pain of other, seemingly conscious systems, growing over time. Life could seem more and more like a video game where everyone else becomes a prop.