Episode Description: “For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.” – Margaret MeadIn this dialogue with Susan Jacoby, we dialogue (rather than argue) about the pressing need to reclaim a love of reading and genuine truth (rather than “truthiness”, in Stephen Colbert’s felicitous turn of phrase, which has been the coin of the realm of media and politicians of the last decades). The first step in the direction of a genuinely new empowerment of general citizen awareness and fulfillment must be in self-education and education of the youngest among us as they grow. That involves going beyond the “bubba” manipulation mentality that has sanctioned ignorance as a badge of pretend patriotism.In view of the New Era of potential global political change many feel has dawned in the early winter of 2008, this dialogue is particularly interesting in its reference to the historical changes in the family and social mores in the Western world and America over the centuries and recent decades with regard to respect for education, including reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s seminal lecture on the thinking person as a foundational necessity of true freedom and evolving rather than devolving.“Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to the Transcript section.) (Among others, programs you will find of interest on these themes are my Dialogues on this site with Deborah Tannen, David Boren, Ted Sorensen, George Lakoff, Andrew Weil, Paul Ray, Steve McIntosh, and Michael Dowd, among others [click on their name(s) in green on right hand column of the Living Dialogues Home Page on this site]. After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.