Sam Keen
Sam Keen
Sam Keenis an American author, professor, and philosopher who is best known for his exploration of questions regarding love, life, religion, and being a man in contemporary society. He also co-produced Faces of the Enemy, an award-winning PBS documentary; was the subject of a Bill Moyers' television special in the early 1990s; and for 20 years served as a contributing editor at Psychology Today magazine. He is also featured in the 2003 documentary Flight from Death...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
Sam Keen quotes about
What happens if I try to build a life dedicated to avoiding all danger and all unnecessary risk?
The telling of your stories is a revolutionary act.
I think that critiquing the myths of our society and helping people find their way through them is a very important thing. It's a theme that goes through all of my work.
In the beginning, we create the enemy. Before the weapon comes the image. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them. Propaganda precedes technology.
The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous - large souled.
Mounting an expedition to actualize a Compassionate Commonwealth of all peoples...is the great spiritual challenge of our time.
If we had a better understanding of the ways we think about enemies, we might be able to think of more rational ways of settling conflict.
The first part of the spiritual journey should properly be called psychological rather than spiritual because it involves peeling away the myths and illusions that have misinformed us.
I try to steer away from high metaphysical belief because I think we humans do best when we realize that we don't know all that much.
To a large extent, the aged in our society are ghettoized. Old people are seen as useless, bypassed by history, old-fashioned, in the way. So, not surprisingly, when we reach the official mark of old age, we're supposed to go gently into that good night, to get off center stage and hand over the spotlight. Old age is also surrounded by shame - the myth of impotence and inability.
We learn to fly not by being fearless, but by the daily practice of courage.
The spiritual mind is always metaphorical. Spiritual thinking is poetic thinking. It's always trying to put a very diaphanous experience into words, realizing all the while that words are inadequate.
I think it's increasingly hard to have deep self-knowledge without entering the darkness in some way.
Every time I come across a rattlesnake on my farm I initially react in fear and am tempted to kill it. Then I realize I wouldn't want to live in a world where all wild things - without and within - are domesticated.