In our age of global capitalism we face enormous challenges. Most of us feel overwhelmed, unable to decide what to do or just unmotivated to make any attempt to change the world. This book takes the form of a father’s philosophical advice to his children as they graduate college, encouraging them to continue to learn what college was never meant to teach them. With chapters on free will, language, reason, the nature of the mind, economics, and many other topics, Pepper tries to explain to his daughters, and to anyone else who might be interested, why our basic assumptions about the world are fundamentally mistaken. If we hope to recover any agency, we will need to rethink our conceptions of ourselves and the world. The aim of this book is to begin that reorientation, with the hope that the next generation can save themselves and the planet from the mess they have been left with. Focusing on the theory of ideology, and making a case for the positive understanding of that often maligned concept, Pepper explores thinking ranging from ancient Greek and Buddhist philosophies to contemporary science and economics, always attempting to address an audience likely unprepared for such thought by the current system of higher education. The result is a challenge to the younger generation not to give up on thought, but to do it better than their parents or grandparents did.
