Product Description

This is a book about freedom, and above all about the idea that there is often no greater obstacle to freedom than the assumption that it has already been fully attained. While in the West few individuals today suffer physical restraint by the state, we are still constrained by powerful psychological chains which are in many ways far more effective, if only because they are so difficult to perceive. Influential writers such as Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman have shown that the corporately controlled mass media of Western democracies serve as a giant filter system favouring powerful state and business interests: what we receive as objective news about domestic politics, human rights and environmental issues, is in fact an extremely partial and biased view of the world. Free to be Human shows how the same filter system distorts our understanding of many personal, ethical and spiritual issues, ensuring that we remain passive, conformist, confused and uninformed and willing to accept the irrational values of corporate consumerism. David Edwards argues that, in order to counter this continual process of disinformation and disempowerment, we need to master the arts of intellectual self-defence and so become able to challenge the deceptions of a system that subordinates people and planet to the drive for profit.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #214095 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
"This is Namaste's book of the year. Why? Because this is a book that urges the reader to look at the world from a wider perspective. Although written in 1993, everything about which the author has written is so relevant today. It is full of wisdom that does not rely on other people's research. . . . This book shows all of us ways in which we can change, by questioning how we live and think." --Namaste Magazine

"Often raw and uncompromising, but it is precisely this quality that lifts it above the familiar blend of green bland and blather." --Jonathon Porritt

"Often raw and uncompromising, but it is precisely this quality that lifts it above the familiar blend of green bland and blather." --Jonathon Porritt

Jonathon Porritt, Resurgence
"Free to be Human is often raw and always uncompromising. But it is precisely this quality that lifts it up above the all too familiar blend of green bland and blather. It does us a service by articulating that which so many people would prefer to keep off any political agenda."

Green Line magazine
"A major contribution to understanding the forces we are up against."