​​There is latent within each of us, obscured by day-to-day busyness, consumerism, and titillating distraction, a common gift of reason that longs for and is quenched only by truth. The fact that we do not seek or get that truth can only leave us unfulfilled and empty (at least down deep in our heart of hearts), with no real sense of meaning or purpose beyond the next opportunity for gratification. Rather than seek truth, people either defer to others or throw together comfortable opinions about which they stay politely quiet. We make small talk about effects and symptoms and reserve as private our views on the important issues of causes and true solutions.
 
If we are ever to advance, we must lay bare the taboo subjects, the personal matters of ideas, beliefs, and faith, and make them fair game for open discussion and critical thought. How government should function, what treatment for a disease works best, and whether our distant kin was a monkey or a book was written by God should be just as open to debate as which street corner should have a traffic signal.
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What we think regarding the important matters of life is really not personal and private, as if it were sacred skin best kept veiled in public. Nor are we free to hold any opinion that suits our fancy. Thinking dictates how we behave. How we behave has everything to do with whether we live a good or a miserable life, and even whether life on the planet will survive. An effect, or the behavior that caused it, can never be condemned without condemning the belief from which it sprang.
 
Pilots are not free to believe that there is no law of gravity, bridge engineers are not free to deny the laws of physics, and accountants are not free to hold the opinion that subtraction is the same as addition. Likewise, we are not free to believe that humans cannot impact the environment, that ethics is merely relative, that treating symptoms cures diseases, that criminals are the victims, or that strapping a bomb to our chests and blowing ourselves up in a mall is the shortcut to heaven. Yes, we are free to believe such things in the sense that we can, but not in the sense that we should.
 
We must get at the heart of the matters that count in life and examine critically the beliefs that underlie them. All thinking should be open and evidence-based because that is clearly the only way to arrive at truth.
 
To set your mind at ease, I have no agenda here other than to stimulate your own independent thinking. You will not be asked to join anything, subscribe to a doctrine, recant, or send a donation. You will only be encouraged to tap into the common ethical and rational thread that lies within us all and to apply it not only to your own life, but also to the world at large.
 
To arrive at valid conclusions on anything, we must agree upon a starting point. What better foundation could there be than to agree that human welfare should be given priority in our choices? That is the only logical concession I will ask you to make as we begin our journey. It is the only belief that I will ask you to subscribe to. And I doubt anyone other than deep ecologists, who might argue that a stone is as valid as a human, will have trouble with it.
 
Given that starting premise, every chapter then presents examples of how any person can proceed toward truth and the goal of healthy human welfare. All that is necessary is that we:
 
• Take Self-responsibility
• Open our minds
• Think Long-term effects
• Give Virtue priority
• Consider all the Evidence
• Let Reason lead
 
I call these methods the SOLVER principles. They provide the mechanism by which all human dilemmas can be solved, or at least brought as close to resolution as feasible.
 
Such an idea of solving the world's problems is, to say the least, lofty and idealistic. But why not? Why not strive for perfection and utopia? If we fall short, then so be it. At least we did not aspire to mediocrity and fail to achieve even that.
 
Ideally, readers will learn from the information presented in these chapters and the limited personal experience I can share. But I am fully aware that people usually don't listen. We are by and large an unteachable lot. We develop an irrational and obstinate affinity to what already resides in our brains. We protect our minds from the threat of a new idea like we withdraw and protect our hand from a spinning saw blade.
 
But guarding our thoughts in this way makes little sense since we all, to begin, develop ideas about life quite by accident. Our ideas are formed by the influence of whatever concatenation of circumstances surrounded our childhood. As we come of age and become independent, these accidental ideas should hold no sacredness, regardless of our cathexis, unless we have objectively examined them.
There is no sanctity in prior belief, doing things our way, making our own mistakes, and learning the hard way. Admittedly, life is for living, and the most enduring lessons are taught by experiences forged through the joy of success and the pain of failure. Nevertheless, this is a call to break that pattern. It is the wise who are brave enough to assemble their own examined and evidence-based beliefs, and who can learn from the lives of others without having to go through the fire.
 
My hope is that there will be something here for you that will strike a chord, cause reflection, embolden you to challenge the givens, and take responsibility for your own mind and heart. The purpose is not to get you to believe a certain thing, but rather to encourage your journey and to demonstrate with numerous and wide-ranging topics that to be right often requires that we be wrong in the popular sense, and how open thinking offers so much promise. Perhaps you will gain a measure of insight and a different perspective that can make life less painful, more hopeful, and healthier, and you can be encouraged to be a part of nudging the world in a better direction.

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