Burning All Illusions: A Guide to Personal and Political Freedom [Hardcover]

David Edwards (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0896085325 | ISBN-13: 978-0896085329

This is a book about freedom. Above all about the idea that there is often no greater obstacle to freedom than the assumption that it has already been attained. What prison, after all, could be more secure than that deemed to be "the world," where boundaries of action and thought are assumed to define not the limits of the permissible, but the limits of the possible.

In the past we have been prisoners of tyrants and dictators, and consequently have needed to win our freedom in very concrete, physical terms. We now need to free ourselves not from a slave ship or a concentration camp, but from many of the illusions fostered in our democratic society.

“[A] wise and acute analysis of the way our minds are controlled, not in a totalitarian state, but in a ‘democratic’ one. Edwards also suggests how we can escape this control in a self-help book which, unlike other books of this genre, connects our inner world of alienation with the world outside.”—Howard Zinn

“[A] treatise on what freedom truly means.… Burning All Illusions is an important philosophical and psychology text that should be on every political science curriculum reading list!”—Wisconsin Book Watch

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Burning All Illusions: A Guide To Personal And Political Freedom is a treatise on what freedom truly means and about the concept that the greatest single obstacle to freedom is the assumption that it has already been attained and need no longer be striven for. What prison, after all, could be more secure than that deemed to be "the way things are", where boundaries of action and thought are assumed to define the limits of the possible, and not the limits of the permissible. In the past, people have been prisoners of tyrants and dictators, and consequently have needed to win their freedom in very concrete, physical, usually violent terms. In our contemporary society, we need to free ourselves not from a slave ship, a prison or a concentration camp, but from the many illusions fostered in our democratic society and reinforced by tradition education, the mass media, and the lethargy of the apathetic and short-sighted. Burning All Illusions is an important, philosophical and psychology text that should be on every political science curriculum reading list! -- Midwest Book Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 246 pages
• Publisher: South End Press (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896085325
• ISBN-13: 978-0896085329
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,880,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Edwards afflicts the comfortable.

, June 10, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Burning All Illusions: A Guide to Personal and Political Freedom (Paperback)

Toward the end of this probing book, Edwards quotes the
comments of a pre-glasnost Soviet visitor to the United States
(I paraphrase the quote here): Your media all report the same stories,
they deliver the same opinions. How does your country manage this so
peacefully? In our country, the government uses coercion to
achieve this result. Here it happens by itself.

Is there a conspiracy in developed countries to tell the populace only
what government and business want it to know? Is big business
in collusion with government to keep the public fat, happy and
ignorant?

No, says Edwards. It's not a conspiracy in the conventional sense where
an elite cadre writes the script and controls the action. It's something
far more disquieting. It's a more subtle and effective kind of force than
the old guns and gulag tyranny. It has a lot to do with self-delusion.

Weaving in generous threads of Chomsky's thought (a man the media extolls as
the most brilliant in his field, yet dismisses as a hopeless crackpot when
he addresses government and society), Edwards makes the case that many of the
world's ills are attributable to the ethos of consumerism and the social and economic
structures that perpetuate it.

Edwards' book makes the reader look at society, business and government from a
different perspective ... a perspective not meant to be comforting, rather a perspective
meant to help the individual regain personal freedoms buried in the detrius of business as usual.

This is not a summer take-to-the-beach book. But if you want some tools to cut
through the political smoke that will swirl this fall, it's well worth the time.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A so-called "self-help" which challenges the genre., October 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Burning All Illusions: A Guide to Personal and Political Freedom (Hardcover)

"Burning" is that peculiarly ambitious reading experience which defies categorization. I've personally purchased and given it to nearly a half-dozen friends. The book assumes a need for personal autonomy in a society so committed to denying, even killing that assumption. This book should be cross-references under cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, politics. If you appreciated Phillip Slater's seminal "The Pursuit of Loneliness" or like music by Billy Bragg and Pete Seeger and Sweet Honey in the Rock; if you resent coercion and authority; if you're glad General Pinochet is under arrest; if you question the assumptions of psychology, you'll enjoy this book.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Getting closer, December 18, 2003

By 

Nillo (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Burning All Illusions: A Guide to Personal and Political Freedom (Hardcover)

The book is an interesting read. Far from blaming media or government for the world's problems,as some have suggested, it blames the system in which these institutions are founded. (to put it simply)The analyses of the propaganda system and consumerism is excellent, and quite insightful. I am pleased to read someone espousing the virtues of doubt. It is interesting that he doesn't apply this doubt as rigorously to his new beliefs as he does his old ones. He falls into the traps about which he is presumably warning readers. He automatically assumes that suffering is a moral bad and therefore falls into the same trap as his beloved Buddhism. Even though he occasionally quotes Nietzche he ignores his teachings about suffering with a tone that reveals unquestioning belief in the evil of suffering. All the while, he encourages the reader to question unquestionable beliefs, because it is not "reason"able to hold views in that way. I also find it interesting that his reaction to a flawed system is decidely consumeristic. Instead of trying to fix a thing (in this case a system that needs to get rid of externalities to be more equitable), it is much more expedient to simply throw it away and get a new one.

On the whole, a worthwhile read as long as you do listen to Edwards and doubt.