When a Favorite Author Names What You Forgot You Believed

A pure joy of reading. You’re reading along in a book you’re reading for fun and relaxation – Suddenly you leap to attention: here’s a favorite author. Now right before your eyes, he’s writing a truth you’ve sort of automatically lived by. But, truth to say, realization dawns slowly, you really have made a bunch of automatic assumptions:

Read this

… high the stakes were. Unthinking conformity; a failure to question . . . We assumed that we would always have benevolent government; we assume that our democracies would survive, that there would be no recurrence of the horrors and darkness that had taken place barely more than a generation before our own—the Holocaust, brutal fascism, the terrors of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot—but keeping such atavism at bay depended on thinking, on the defense of truth and reason, on defending freedom and the values attached to it. These were barricades that still needed to be manned, because there were still those prepared to shout those values down, still those prepared to say that truth does not exist and that right and wrong are arbitrary preferences, no more than that, p 64.

Let us look again at our automatic assumptions. And think again on how we will defend them.

Thank you for reading – JoAnnLordahl.com

Dr. Jo Ann Lordahl is a lifelong author, poet, novelist, and speaker whose work explores empowerment, aging with grace, and the deep questions that define our lives. Her books and reflections — from historical fiction to meditations on creative living — encourage resilience, reflection, and positive transformation.

If this post stirs questions about moral courage, shared humanity, or the work of healing in hard times, consider exploring Dr. Lordahl’s writing — especially her essays and books on reflection and personal transformation. Her voice reminds us that even in upheaval, there is a path toward patience, insight, and compassionate action.