Fantasyland: Author Kurt Andersen

Above Video: Center for Inquiry / 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.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Foundations of Belief

By Steve Rensberry

So utterly 
convinced, some 
people are, that what they 
believe is the unmitigated truth.
But what, please tell me, is the criteria?
Feelings? A changed life? Intuition? Circumstance?
An infinitely subjective spark from deep within the mind?
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Would you not have to have absolute knowledge, or be 
absolute yourself, to know with certainty that 
nothing at all exists to prove otherwise?
Surely to grapple onto absolute truth, 
or what one thinks is absolute, 
is to embark on a journey 
of one's own making. 
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Think of the time. 
The decades. The years.
Wasted. Chasing rainbows.
Confusing effect with the wrong cause.
Believing death is not death, 
but merely a doorway. 
Fabricating reality 
out of emotion.
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Must not
belief, to be valid,
rest on sufficient evidence,
rather than on fanciful promises or 
the dogmatic, fear-laden tenets 
of institutionalized 
superstition and 
myth?