Good Ideas For Thinking People

Fantasyland -- Kurt Andersen

Intro: Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. A razor-sharp thinker offers a groundbreaking and influential new understanding of our post-truth world and explains the American instinct to believe in make-believe, from the Pilgrims to P. T. Barnum to Disneyland to zealots and fantasists of every stripe . . . to Donald Trump. In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, one of our sharpest observers, Kurt Andersen, demonstrates that what’s happening in our country today—this strange, post-truth, “fake news” moment we’re all living through—is not something entirely new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character and path. America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by impresarios and their audiences, by hucksters and their suckers. Believe-whatever-you-want fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA. If you want to understand the politics and culture of twenty-first-century America, if you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must read this book. Link: Author site

The History of America's Irrationality

Video by Center for Inquiry. Intro: How can we make sense of America’s current “post-factual,” “post-truth,” “fake news” moment? By looking to America’s past. All the way back. To the wishful dreams and make-believe fears of the country’s first settlers, the madness of the Salem witch trials, the fantasies of Hollywood, the anything-goes 1960s, the gatekeeper-free internet, the profusion of reality TV….all the way up to and most especially including President Donald Trump. In this fascinating and lively talk, Kurt Andersen brings to life the deep research behind and profound implications of his groundbreaking, critically acclaimed and bestselling latest work. Connecting the dots in a fresh way to define America’s character—from the religious fanatics and New Age charlatans to talk-radio rabble-rousers and online conspiracy theorists—Andersen explains our national susceptibility to fantasy and how our journey has brought us to where we are today. Link: Video

 Religions Are All Alike

 

"Religions are all alike -- founded upon fables and mythologies." 

Thomas Jefferson

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"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity."

John Adams

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"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."

Benjamin Franklin

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"I always find it very curious that when one is confronted with what one does not like, approve, or understand, one suddenly has 'sincere religious beliefs.'"

Jim Green

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"God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on."

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The Centrality of Human Existence

By Steve Rensberry

    Sometimes I wake up and think to myself, I'm going to work on a plan to save the world today. Only I'm not sure that most of humanity actually wants saving.

    Human civilization is thousands of years old and where are we? Cave dweller #1 is still hitting cave dweller #2 over the head because he, or she, has something he wants or doesn't like. We just have a lot more people and tribes, and more sophisticated caves and tools.

    Don't you think it's time to let go of all those sacred cows and antiquated ideas that have failed to work? I vote for embarking on a Second Great Enlightenment, rather than returning to the Dark Ages of failed traditions, superstition and death. Humans ought to put humans first, recognize the centrality of human existence, and get to work on the problems we face in the hear and now.

    The picture is a public domain pic of the reading of Voltaire's tragedy of the Orphan of China in the salon of Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin in 1755, by Lemonnier, c. 1812. Voltaire (actual name: François-Marie Arouet), was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his criticism of Christianity . . . and of slavery, as well as his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. Wikipedia: The Great Enlightenment

Voltaire reads Orphan of China (pub domain pic)

Mind and Body

The Brainwashed Mind    

    Question: What if those who are brainwashed do not know they are brainwashed, cannot be convinced via reason, logic, or hard evidence that they are brainwashed, and in fact derive so much pleasure and release from anxiety by being emersed in the brainwashed state that they intentionally condition themselves to stay that way -- intentionally avoiding people and activities that might "open their eyes" or cause them to doubt what they are told, attending weekly meetings to reinforce their brainwashed state, and meditating/focusing on one singularly, absolute, unchanging set of concepts that make them feel happy, blissful and at peace in their comfortable brainwashed state?

    Answer: We'd have a situation very much like we have today, with self-conditioning, relative self-isolation, and dogma valued as virtues, because to do otherwise -- say the false teachers of today -- would damn your very soul.