Religious fundamentalists on one hand and secular fundamentalists on the other talk past each other. The rest of us try to get on with our life and get out of the way, but it’s unfortunate the two cannot come to a reasonable consensus.  Most people in the US have some sort of religious faith, and most people are rational and reasonable and see the value in scientific inquiry.  The secular fundamentalists “won” the battle a few generations ago, but they don’t seem to be holding back as they march on towards “progress.” Though they can offer no rational justification for their own behavior, other than power, they seem to want to discount any person with sincere religious beliefs or dogma from the public square.  
 
The intolerant minority, which Nasim Taleb has written extensively about in his new and excellent book, Skin in the Game, usually win out in any debate.  So, the minority of secular fundamentalists won out in the decision back in the 1960s to remove prayer from school.  The large majority either wanted it or were agnostic about it, but the tiny vocal minority pushed things that direction.  And the country’s sense of ethics and justice has been on the wane ever since.  An intolerant minority is dangerous to a country that purports to be tolerant.  
 
At the very center of the debate between science and religion is something that most people overlook.  Both are true, but in different ways.  Even if you believe in direct revelation from God, you can also believe in science.  
 
Science offers a way to study the way things are. Religion tells us how to act. 
 
This is important, because the most brutal and barbarous totalitarian regimes of human history were atheistic.  Mankind has not proven himself to have “evolved” or “progressed” enough to not need God, no matter what the secular fundamentalists say.  Religious truths are not the same as scientific truths, because they justify ethics. They cannot be examined in a laboratory and provide a strong basis for a culture.
 
We did not really have science the way we think of it, until about 500-800 years ago whereas our religious stories go back in some cases 1000s of years.  To deny that science has a valid claim on truth is idiotic, but it is equally as idiotic to deny religious truth also.  
 
Religion answers questions about:
 
Why? 
Why are we here?  
What should we do?  
How should we act?  
What is the human condition? 
Who are we? 
How do I belong?
 
I’m always amazed when I read a magazine like Fast Companyhow many new technologies are being developed all the time, for things like healthcare, technology, and energy.  On the other hand, when I read the story of Adam and Eve and Roger Scruton’s brilliant commentary on the subject / object distinction, or about Cain and Abel, or Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, I am amazed how real and true religious stories really are.  
                                                        
Scientism is another risk, which is making an ideology out of data.  Data is just data.  What is important is what’s done with the collected data.  I get bored with scientism.  I get bored knowing that if you eat this or that, you will live an extra month, or that chewing gum may cause cancer, or that soy eaten 3 times per week raises your estrogen. Or that there is now an Iphone 17 that has a virtual app for this or that.  So what? Eventually, we can get so bogged down in means that we lose sight of ends. Scientific observation is good, but we always need to circle back to first things.
 
I say we call a truce. Let science observe, study, and learn about the world.  Let religion speak to us about who we are, how we should live, and what we should do.   Hold strongly to scientific and religious dogmas if you choose, but most of all, be tolerant of those who see things differently.  The world will be a much healthier place if we do.

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"Our lives are more about watering deserts, than they are about tearing down walls." - CS Lewis

“Ever to excel, to do better than others, and to bring glory to your forebears, who indeed were very great ... This is my ancestry; this is the blood I am proud to inherit."
- Homer, The Iliad


Life has never been perfect, nor will it ever be.  Human nature will never fundamentally change.  We are flawed human beings.  Progress, if it does occur, occurs when we realize we took the wrong turn and we head back the other direction and then take a different path.  After reading “The Blue Zones”, about the healthiest places in the world, I became even more convinced of how big of an impact culture has on health and about how wrong we have gone in education, as one example.  
 
Each one of these groups in The Blue Zones has a specific culture in which young people participate in and are brought up in and that they crucially belong to.  There are certain values, ethics, morals, traditions, roots, celebrations, and commitments which go along with this.  The young people are acculturated into a grounded and specific way of being in the world.  Most Americans are no longer acculturated in their educational upbringing. Indoctrinated maybe, but acculturated no.  
 
This is not healthy and it is a distinctly modern problem.  This was a wrong path.  I lived it myself, where I can remember the utilitarianism, political correctness, and ideology creeping in, as Alabama history, religious teaching, and Appalachian cultural dancing, folklore, and literature were slowly pushed away into an encroaching oblivion.  No wonder Americans love traveling to other countries and other cultures so much.  
 
In the seminal work on depression, “The Weariness of the Self” the author makes the timely point that our depression epidemic is largely a cultural phenomenon.  The human psyche needs culture to make sense of the world, and to live a healthy life.  This was formerly the role of education.  The ego is tired, the psyche is weary, the American is sad.  The existential burden of an atomized individual, without a culture to fall back on, is too much too bear.   Plus, the struggle to become an individual, set apart, ironically only exists in the context of a culture.  If you want to reject a culture, or even excel as an individual, don't forget that you have to have a culture to reject or to excel in relation to in the first place in order to do that.  
 
Now we teach self-esteem, whether earned or not.  Now, we dumb down thinking, in order not to offend.  Now we teach utility, but not values.  It’s as though we are trying to create the world from scratch and that nothing learned throughout our history matters anymore.  
 
The older form of education involved lore, tradition, and belonging.  It gave young people a way to make sense of their experience and a classical ideal to aspire to.  Now, in many cases, education seems to be about validating the student’s whims and vanities, not bringing them into a community where they can more objectively measure themselves and find their niche.  I love the idea of bringing back trades, and trade schools, of teaching the great old books, and in linking schools up with other transcendent cultural institutions to create local community.  
 
Education is about more than test scores, self-esteem, or diversity quotas.  It’s about belonging.  

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Men become richer not only by increasing their existing wealth but also by decreasing their expenditure.  
- Aristotle
 
Most people I know would like to be rich if they had the choice.  I’m sure there are a few people out there who could care less about money, but if we’re being honest, most of us would like to not have to worry about it. Good news:  there are two ways to achieve this state in life, there are two ways to be rich in life.  One way is easy, and you can decide upon and maintain your ethics ahead of time and stick with them easily.  You need much less in this case, and so it’s much easier to work and live how you see fit, and be rich. 
 
The other way, the 2ndway, could be ethical too, but it will be harder to maintain your ethics and there’s a good chance it won’t be an ethical richness.  And you may, in the second case, need to pretend you like people that you don’t, for years and years and years.  This way of being rich is to make so much money that you never worry about money.  Depending on what you want to buy and own, you may never achieve this status of being “rich”, even if you have $3 million dollars or whatever.  Which do you think is easier and more realistic for most people? I’m always amazed at how many seemingly “rich” people are miserable.  
  
The average American only saves 5%, while 50-75% of the population has no savings at all.  The juggernaut of unfettered consumerism, which is our primary source of identity in America- that of a consumer, has been terrible health-wise for most people.  Most people need more of an identity than an unfettered will, thrown back on pre-human and primitive desires, unconstrained by wisdom, morality, or the higher brain’s cognitive restraint.  Consumerism as our primary identity is a game we can’t win and a thirst that can never be quenched.  Its “ritual” is consuming, it’s “bread and wine” is credit cards and statements, and its “liturgies” are commercials, slogans, and logos.  What make it even worse is that since we live in an anti-culture we are constantly atomizing more and more towards a life solely existing as a consumer, because it’s the only source of identity most modern people have. So, we keep consuming to feel alive. 
 
Consumption is the only way we know to be rich, because it’s the only way we know to feel alive.
 
The iphone takes precedence over tea with friends at the café.
The expensive car emblazoned with a logo, takes precedence over walking with a friend.
The best SAT score takes precedence over character.
And the best elite schools, highly connected to the new moral community of rootlessness and political correctness, ascend culturally while real community, built on roots, tradition, and internal values, vanishes. 
Overall, despair sets in.  
It’s a game that no one can win.
 
Now back to the original proposition.  I like money. I like traveling, sometimes.  I like having a good business and doing good work.  There’s nothing wrong with financial gain and I wish it for everyone.  But again, there are two ways to be rich and one comes with a big downside if we aren’t careful.
 
Most of us can want less of the things we don’t need, the things that chain us down, and the things which aren’t wise to desire in the first place.  If we do this, our wealth increases instantly.  Unlike the stoics, I’m not asking you to eliminate desires. But I am asking you to desire what makes you happyjust like “the philosopher” - Aristotle taught 2500 years ago.  Sometimes, we need to change what we desire, we need to transform it into something better.  
 
Sure, you may one day make so much money that you finally feel “rich.” I hope you do.  But there is another way to be rich.  And how much is enough?  Most people never define it.  I like Clark Howard’s, Dave Ramsey’s and the Bible’s and ancient philosophy’s advice to stay out of personal debt.  Be wise, desire the right things, the things that really make you happy in the long run and learn to get by with less.  The two are not mutually exclusive.  You can make money but not let it become your sole identity, your primary focus of richness. One focus on being rich emphasizes external values and the other internal values, and internal values are time and time again the bulwark of a healthy and meaningful life.  You know and I know what we need to do.  
 
Why not start by being grateful, content, simplifying, and enjoying the simple pleasures in life?  Your wealth will explode!
 
There are two ways to be rich.   Be careful which one you pick.  

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