The Age of American Unreason | Susan Jacoby | Everyone Has A Brain Wanting To Be Free

The Age of American Unreason | Susan Jacoby | Clarifier

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The Age of America...

	The Age of American Unreason Susan Jacoby Pantheon, 2008 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 90 reviews view larger image
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Everyone Has A Brain Wanting To Be Free

You are an intelligent being. I know I may be speaking to anyone, yet I make that claim without hesitation. You are unconditionally capable. You may be male or female... conservative or liberal... religious or secularist... young or old. Regardless, I am quite certain of your thinking abilities. You don't need to change who you are. Anyone can free a precious mind to grow in positive ways.

Susan Jacoby also thinks that there is a brilliant person inside you, and waiting to be set free. So why not? Why not choose to seek the better life of a person who actually knows instead of passively walking through life hoping for an answer in the next television commercial?

Understanding the works of classical music and literature of high-brow culture does not make up the entire treasure. Nor does it require reading Time magazine and growing gladiolas to understand middle-brow culture. These are bits. Pursue your valuable passions. Value your best thoughts and share them. Listen to the best thoughts of your friends.

An elitists attitude may be a problem for your friends if you do not reflect back their intelligent moments as well as your own. Perhaps it takes more than just realizing your personal need. Perhaps wisdom can be shared among people... any two people.

Likewise elitists charges make it impossible share and find intelligence. Stupidity abounds in times and places where wisdom and reason shall be hidden in shame. One cannot attempt to fix a situation hidden from reality. Perhaps we can stop dumbing down for others. Perhaps we can encourage others... and not love others only when they dumb down. Wisdom and reason must be shared in order for it to be partaken.

Ultimately, God loves wisdom. He loves it when you choose wisdom. God loves reason, rationalism, logic, science and those kind of things. You won't find God by living in stupid obedience. You won't find God by hiding from truth. Free yourself from those negative influences. Choose to intellectualism. I know you can.

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Clarifier

Ms Jacoby clears up many of my suspicions on why the southern population is such a barrier to advances this country should have made in the last 100+ years. Again it's the religious thing. This country could be magnificent instead of a declining second rater, due to the biblical literalists.

I wasn't aware of how drastically religions have mentally hobbled this country. I used to think most of our citizens had some smarts. No longer.

An Analysis of Why America is Collapsing all Around Us

Susan Jacoby in FREETHINKERS demonstrated that all the great advances in human thought have come about from people not bound to any religious views. Most were atheists or agnostics. In THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON, she asks a simple question, "Why Now?" That is, why did America unilaterally reverse the course of history with such things as Creationism and Intelligent Design to offset and counter the science of Evolution. Why did we revert to "faith" while the rest of the world for 300 years has relied on REASON. Presidential candidates have to "prove" they are churchgoers and believers. Look what we've got as President right now, a man whose most influential "philosopher" is Jesus Christ, probably the only name he could think of. Now surely Jesus believes in war, waterboarding, torture, famine, Katrina's destruction, poverty, all of which this believer's not only allowed and but caused. Jacoby is alert to such irrational hypocrisy and exposes it for what it is. Her two books mentioned here should be read by any President before America falls face first into oblivion and disgrace.

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Disturbing analysis of the roots of antithought in America (and elsewhere)

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So a large part of the book is a highly valuable, readable, and thoroughly fascinating intellectual (and anti-intellectual) history lesson. The 19th century history lesson proceeds into the 20th. In the 1960s, Jacoby's focus turns from the Bible Belt to the emerging dominance of video media over the consciousnesses of so many--the "culture of distraction." In our time, we have the "benefits" of both: antireason fundamentalism and antireason media; it's a difficult combination to overcome. And she admits it may be too late to rescue the conceptual mind from oblivion: "It is possible nothing will help. The nation's memory and attention span may have already sustained so much damage that they cannot be revived by the best efforts of America's best minds."

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Brian Wright
Copyright 2008

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