A book of aphorisms and random thoughts from a homeless hippie, decorated US Marine Vietnam War veteran, 28 year union member and deeply political American. Personal views on the absolute uselessness of religion, war and greed as well as the necessity of equally sharing what the universe offers.I speak of my beliefs as an occasional atheist, occasional agnostic and eternal Progressive. If I offend you, then I consider the book a success.Fllow my blog at http://wp.anotherperspective.org/
Presented as a series of letters between Adams and his former student, Zach, Letters to a Young Progressive reveals how the "education" of college kids across the country is producing a generation of unhappy, unimaginative, and unproductive adults. The perfect book to help parents prevent--or undo--the ubiquitous liberal brainwashing of their children before it is too late.
Arguing against the tougher standards rhetoric that marks the current education debate, the author of No Contest and Punished by Rewards writes that such tactics squeeze the pleasure out of learning. Reprint.
"Building a second brain is getting things done for the digital age. It's a ... productivity method for consuming, synthesizing, and remembering the vast amount of information we take in, allowing us to become more effective and creative and harness the unprecedented amount of technology we have at our disposal"--
Neither the physical nor the metaphysical Science are of interest to the true philanthropist, except in the degree of their potentiality of moral results, and in proportion of their usefulness to mankind. Nature works slowly but incessantly towards the evolution of conscious life out of inert material. Every thought passes into the inner world and, by coalescing with an elemental, it becomes an active intelligence. Thus a good thought is perpetuated as an active beneficent power; an evil one, as a maleficent demon. The Buddhist calls this impulse-seed his Skandha; the Hindu, his Karma; the Adept evolves these shapes consciously; other men throw them off unconsciously. Every form of life is sustained by countless other lives. If you offer nothing in return, you are like a thief. The building ant, the busy bee, the nest-building bird accumulate, each in their own humble way, as much cosmic energy in its potential form as a Haydn, a Plato, or a ploughman turning his furrow. They thus rob nature instead of enriching her, and will all in the degree of their intelligence find themselves accountable. Exact experimental Science has nothing to do with morality, virtue, or philanthropy. Her cold classification of facts outside man can only benefit the career of her professors. The Initiated Adept is the efflorescence of his age. Few ever appear in a single century. The cycles must run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral light and darkness succeed each other, as day does night. The major and minor yugas must be accomplished according to the established order of things. And we, borne along on the mighty tide, can only modify and direct some of its minor currents. If we had the powers of the imaginary Personal God, and the universal and immutable laws were but toys to play with, then indeed might we have created conditions that would have turned this earth into an Arcadia for lofty souls. But having to deal with an immutable Law, being ourselves its creatures, we have had to do what we could and rest thankful. Modern education enthrones scepticism and imprisons spiritualism. The boisterousness of animal passions stifles spirituality. What else could one expect of men so nearly related to the lower kingdom, from which they evolved? The era of blind faith is gone; that of enquiry is here. Enquiry that only unmasks error, without discovering anything upon which the soul can build, will but make iconoclasts. The noble aim of the progressive mind is to furnish the building blocks for a universal religious philosophy. A philosophy impregnable to scientific assault, because itself the finality of absolute science; and, a religion worthy of the name. The main aim of the Theosophical Society is to root out superstition and scepticism, and to help man shape his future. The cis-Himalayan Mahatmas will not be thwarted in their philanthropic attempts to save humanity from itself until that day when the new continent of thought is firmly established.
A collection of truly intelligent thoughts from the greatest progressive minds in history as well as a few quotes from regressive, conservative fools just for comparison.
Business leaders, conservative ideologues, and even some radicals of the early twentieth century dismissed working people's intellect as stunted, twisted, or altogether missing. They compared workers toiling in America's sprawling factories to animals, children, and robots. Working people regularly defied these expectations, cultivating the knowledge of experience and embracing a vibrant subculture of self-education and reading. Labor's Mind uses diaries and personal correspondence, labor college records, and a range of print and visual media to recover this social history of the working-class mind. As Higbie shows, networks of working-class learners and their middle-class allies formed nothing less than a shadow labor movement. Dispersed across the industrial landscape, this movement helped bridge conflicts within radical and progressive politics even as it trained workers for the transformative new unionism of the 1930s. Revelatory and sympathetic, Labor's Mind reclaims a forgotten chapter in working-class intellectual life while mapping present-day possibilities for labor, higher education, and digitally enabled self-study.
ON MAIMONIDES, like other titles in the Wadsworth Philosopher's Series, offers a concise, yet comprehensive, introduction to this philosopher's most important ideas. Presenting the most important insights of well over a hundred seminal philosophers in both the Eastern and Western traditions, the Wadsworth Philosophers Series contains volumes written by scholars noted for their excellence in teaching and for their well-versed comprehension of each featured philosopher's major works and contributions. These titles have proven valuable in a number of ways. Serving as standalone texts when tackling a philosophers' original sources or as helpful resources for focusing philosophy students' engagements with these philosopher's often conceptually daunting works, these titles have also gained extraordinary popularity with a lay readership and quite often serve as "refreshers" for philosophy instructors.
Richard Hofstadter, the distinguished historian and twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, brilliantly assesses the ideas and contributions of the three major American interpretive historians of the twentieth century: Frederick Jackson Turner, Charles A. Beard and V.L. Parrington. These men, whose views of history were shaped in large part by the political battles of the Progressive era, provided the Progressive movement with a usable past and the American liberal mind with a historical tradition. The Progressive Historians is at once a critique of historical thought during this decisive period of American development and an account of how these three writers led American historians into the controversial political world of the twentieth century. Turner, in developing his idea that American democracy is the outcome of the experience of frontier expansion and the settlement of the West, introduced his fellow historians to a set of new concepts and methods, and in doing so doing re-drew the guidelines of American historiography. Beard insisted upon the elitist origins of the Constitution, crusaded for the economic interpretation of history, and ultimately staked his historical reputation on an isolationist view of recent American foreign policy. Parrington emphasized the moral and social functions of literature, and read the history of literature as a history of the national political mind. In recent years, the tide has run against the Progressive historians, as one specialist after another has taken issue with their interpretations. The movement of contemporary historical thought has led to a rediscovery of the complexity of the American past. Although he cannot share the faith of the Progressive historians in the sufficiency of American liberalism as a guide to the modern world, Richard Hofstadter believes we have much to learn about ourselves from a reconsideration of their insights.
Now updated to include Trump's election and the rise of global populism, Corey Robin's 'The Reactionary Mind' traces conservatism back to its roots in the reaction against the French Revolution.
