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Whatever Happened to Belief Based on Reason?
For a printable version of this release, please click here.
June 1998 - Wasilla, AK. Understanding why we believe what we believe is crucial to building a better society, according to Charles D. Hayes, author of the new book Beyond the American Dream: Lifelong Learning and the Search for Meaning in a Postmodern World. "I respect every person's right to believe, but I do not respect purposeful self-delusion, especially when it results in ethnocentric behavior." In his view, hate is rapidly becoming a prime property of millennial madness, as various interest groups point fingers at "others." Prejudice and bigotry once hung over America like a dense fog, Hayes notes "Today it is transparent, yet ubiquitous, with a force as purposeful and as unrelenting as gravity. Understanding the dynamics of belief is a key to cultivating humanity."
Hayes (author of the acclaimed Self-University) says, "New-ageism derives its authority from the imagination. Unlike Descartes who said, 'I think therefore I am' new-agers seem to be saying I think therefore it is." Most people who embrace the idea of a new age are sincere and hopeful about the future, but those who surrender their reason in favor of blind obedience do so at their peril. A century from now, he predicts, "One of the greatest mistakes of our time will turn out to have been modern medicine's failure to study the placebo effect with as much enthusiasm as it's given to organ transplants. It is a tragedy almost beyond comprehension, and an embarrassment to our society and our ancestors, that we live in a country where telephone psychics can be sustained economically by a citizenry that believes total strangers know more about their own lives than they do."
Beyond the American Dream is evidence that Carl Sagan was right when he said, "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy." Making sense of the real world we live in is as exhilarating an enterprise as can be found, and it's a lot healthier than following gurus of any persuasion into the Sedona sunset. Beyond the American Dream is a book about meaning -- meaning found not in mysticism but in reasoned enlightenment. Available in bookstores and in cyberspace ($26.95), http://www.autodidactic.com.
Charles D. Hayes
Autodidactic Press
907-376-2932
autpress@alaska.net
http://www.autodidactic.com
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