A Thin Veneer of Civilization

NPR // Throughline // When Things Fall Apart

“What we assume in other people is what we get out of them. Our view of human nature tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we assume that people are fundamentally selfish, then that’s how they will behave. If we assume that people are fundamentally decent, then maybe we can create a very different kind of society.”

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Is It More Probable?

Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.”

— Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (via philosophybits)