Chapter 1/1

Chapter One
“Be Ye Not Mentally Lazy”


You may have grown up, as I did, convinced that the authority figures in my world were telling the truth, at least to a degree. I sensed a core of truth in what they so dogmatically said, but I knew in my gut that at some points they were wrong. I recognized that, while maybe they were right, there was more to it than they let on, and often that “more to it” was what mattered the most. I also knew that some people and the views they so strongly condemned were not as bad as they were made out to be. I knew that a lot of the wrongs they attacked were not always necessarily, absolutely, totally wrong. Although at the time I could not have articulated it, I was developing a core of skepticism.

But I was well socialized, so never did I consider challenging any of this. They were bigger, older, smarter, richer, and they held the power to either punish or reward. There was no future in challenging their positions.

On the other hand I knew better than to trust my own mind. In school my classmates made better grades, were better athletes, better looking, and more popular. I was not a leader; no one ever followed or looked up to me. I was painfully aware of my own inadequacies, but although I was not fully conscious of it, I was also vaguely aware of the limitations of those in authority and even of my more popular and more gifted classmates.

I was nearly fifty-years-old before I realized the full implications of those childhood perceptions. Gradually I came to see that my tacit disagreement with society somehow comprised the elements of a more honest and complete approach to truth and life. The seeds of a new way of thinking had been planted; a way I later came to call The DIALECTIC, the theme of this book.

After floundering through life for long years, I learned that it is easy to become a good thinker. (We need more of them around.) Good thinking is in short supply both because many of us are mentally lazy and because it requires more than mere critical thinking, keen intellect, and formal education.