2/28/22

First and foremost I recommend this book to the young parents and to the future soon-to-become parents. If I had read this book earlier in life I would have done many things differently. Nevertheless, even now, as I was reading this book and taking in the wisdom it so freely and graciously imparted, I saw myself re-telling what I was being taught to my elder daughter. The author considers (among other things) the chief obstacles to the process of maturing of our minds, namely: newspapers, radio, advertisements and Hollywood's motion pictures (nowadays called "movies", I believe). If he were to write the book today he would have to add TV to the list. He proves beyond a shadow of doubt that all these influences being controlled as they are by the purely money-making motivations, arrest the development of our minds. The reason is quite simple, really: it is good for the business if the population is turned into idiots, i.e. people with adult body but the mind of a child. Such "consumers" (as they are openly and shamelessly called!) have very short span of attention focus, don't like to read books (and that is good for the business too, because you can't insert an advertisement into a book), prefer mediocre so-called "modern music" and generally prefer their minds to be entertained rather than applied to solving complex problems. So, what can we possibly do about it, apart from the obvious self-protection measure of not buying newspapers, not listening to radio (or watching TV) and never buying anything based on an advertisement? The solution is just as clear as the problem: we should grow from immaturity into maturity, from the ego-centred selfishness into unselfish loving-kindness and self-forgetfulness. Instead of desiring to be entertained we should apply our minds to constant education, learning and solving complex problems purely for the benefit of all mankind, rather than for selfish profit-making reasons. Then, the money-makers would have nothing to sell to us, because it is not in their province to sell (or produce) anything useful that such mature minds would desire to have. Because the "things" which a mature mind desires are not of this material world --- they are the high ideals of an enlightened future age of brotherhood and the high quality thoughts which will in fact become the chief motivation for living in such a future age, which, by the way, Jesus of Nazareth predicted 2000 years ago. ( )