Above all,

know that this is a process.

Because we are susceptible to false beliefs,

we must always be on a lookout for things that do not seem quite right.

---

My go to simple example is the fact that we live in a state of Mutually Assured Destruction,

there are about 2,000 ready-to-launch nuclear weapons that can be immediately deployed to destroy the world.

My extreme example that is really hard to believe,

is wage slavery, most people will deny it, resist it, and call me crazy for it.

Having your children living paycheck-to-paycheck always under the cloud of medical and student debt,

is wrong, humanity will not progress in this state.

---

Of course you can't just believe me,

because that is how problems like this start in the first place.

You have to figure it out on your own,

which is to say, build a path, at a steadily increasing slope, paved with a thousand books written by people wiser than their critics.

The way you find out if a person is wise or not,

is by working your way up to that, by reading books.

No one can tell you which books tot start with,

but you can be certain that it is many books, and in the beginning most of them will be narrated for you.

The way to find these books,

is to dig through best seller lists.

For example right now you may wish to look for top 10 audio books from year 2020,

or for award winning audio books, more specifically look up Audie Awards (as in a.u.d.i.e).

---

Some Philosophers have flaws, but don't throw away their work,

take it under your wings, make it better.

It is a sacred thing,

to bring beauty and innocence to some beautiful philosophy once stained by a madman.

In my experience Thinkers are Funny, and Profound,

sometimes having made mistakes in their youth, is the very thing that launches them into that Love of Wisdom that immortalizes them.

So if you find a work of philosophy that is not perfect,

see if maybe your beauty can restore and fix it, try to save the work; rather than letting the ugly person drag it down into the darkness with him.

---

Aside from flaws and repairs, or perhaps forgiveness,

you will also find that most books will teach you indirectly.

Most of the time, the title has nothing to do what the book is about,

and the book will teach you a wisdom that has little to do with the main story.

---

Now, I always encourage non-fiction books, but I don't just mean scientific books, or philosophy and psychology,

I think of memoirs and biographies as essential reading.

Here, reading about someone raised in a strange culture or family, can be _absolutely_ the most powerful thing in context of breaking out of some indoctrination.

as the reader will be able to see their own invisible misfortune, by the magic of subtle analogy, to the events in the book that they are reading.

Often, different people reading or listening to the same book,

will get a slightly different story out of it.

This relates to the level of their knowledge, to where their curiosities lie,

to the ways that they like to think, and to what they think the book is about.

It it of some importance to add,

that every book a person reads, lifts them higher.

The height that this hints on,

is the same height that Growing Up refers to.

---

After a thousand books,

it does not matter who took what out of which book.

Or which books or Philosophers they disliked,

or what they thought was under-thought, or could be made better in some way.

After a thousand books, even after a hundred audio books (and what could possibly be easier than listening to a book on some some fancy adventure),

a person holds a solid dollop of wisdom in their being.

It is like a torch, a lamp,

and it is that light that we use to continuously monitor for more wisdom.

Which brings us full circle to the beginning of this text,

you cannot be told what indoctrination you are stuck with, as that is the same mechanism that gets you stuck in the first place.

You have to build a wisdom, right in you, in your being,

and that wisdom will enhance your perception, that is why we poetically refer to wisdom as a light - because it helps you see better.

As you continue gathering more and more wisdom,

you begin to see more and more, and you become less and less susceptible to false beliefs.

---

And here I want to close with Plato's allegory of the cave,

the only way that we can truly, and meaningfully, help each other, is with knowledge.

And not with any one book in particular,

but with a hundred, with a thousand, with ten thousand, and fathom more.