One reviewer called this "a heroic journey." First and most important, I saw the threat of nuclear annihilation as proof of total systems failure, not of the technology, but of a culture that would use it for their own destruction. Second, America had succeeded in achieving the goal of material comfort for a majority of the people. I was a product of the American dream come true, but I wasn't happy. There was more to life than material comfort. Third, the belief in a purely physical reality had destroyed the old religious beliefs, which were the source of most of our values. For these reasons, I turned my back on the culture in 1955, at age 21, and set out to design a new civilization. "New civilization" was the best expression I could think of, to mean new values, new beliefs, new ideals, new goals, a new standard of living (now called "quality of life"), a new way of thinking, and a new way of life. The "civilization" was what had been programmed into my head as a product of the American upper middle class. To create a new civilization, all I had to do was change that programming.
My methods were psychotherapy, withdrawal from the culture, and dream analysis, taking advantage of the self-steering process. I discovered a transition point in psychological development where "human nature" itself changes, from competitive self-interest to compassion and altruism. If a majority of people reached that point, we would have a new civilization.
Re-Educating Myself tells the story of my search and the answers that I found.
This Second Edition contains some updated language and also a Preface which includes some of my thoughts since the book was first published in 1985.
