Philadelphia Society Luncheon Talk: “Wealth, Unreality, and Our Virtual World”

In an inspirational luncheon talk delivered during the regional meeting of the Philadelphia Society held in Indianapolis last week, Professor James Otteson, Professor of Philosophy and Economics at Yeshiva University, gave a thoughtful commentary about a common and spreading malady of our times: it seems that our wealth, our sense of affluence, is insulating us from the real world. While praising the virtues and achievements that wealth brings to our society, he also warns us of its curse: wealth “enables the alleviation of suffering and poverty, but it also enables release from the rigors of reality that train and hone individual judgment. We trade robust independence, common sense, and a healthy connection to reality for a comfortable but vapid and inane life in a virtual—i.e., an unreal—world.”

He continues,

“The institutions that allow the creation of wealth can generate not only prosperity but also an indifference to the    nature of the institutions that allowed its creation. And the wealth created can give people the luxury of indulging that indifference because they do not have to exercise prudential judgment regarding scarce resources, proper allocation of time and energy, even how to regulate their behavior so that they can contribute to society rather than free-ride on it.”

The remedy, he suggests, begins with a rightful diagnosis of the malady, which is that we must begin to confront reality head on, no matter how harsh it gets; that is, to see things as they are, not as we wish them to be.  Targeting the academia in particular, which he thinks could be “the most corrosive environment ever conceived by man for understanding reality,” — what with ivory-tower academics developing a sense of superiority and condescension — he challenges them to start facing reality with a sense of seriousness and urgency, as if our civilization itself hangs in the balance.  And it does.

We are posting the entire speech here with special permission from the Philadelphia Society.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 4:25 PM. It is filed under Teach Freedom Initiative and tagged with affluence, Otteson, Philadelphia Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.