A note from Dr. Hendrix
These are the five ideas I have come to believe most firmly — the filter every new piece of information has to pass through before I trust it. They are bold, and I hold them loosely enough to keep testing them. I wrote it because it is worth knowing, and saying out loud, what your bedrock convictions actually are.
Here are five ideas I believe to be true. I am passionate about them. They form the filter through which all new information I receive passes.
1 – humans are first and foremost driven by self interest. Even altruism is driven by self interest. All is for the sake of survival and advancement.
2 – American democracy is the greatest achievement in human history. All the chatter on the internet is profound evidence of democracy at work.
3 – Life after WW2 has been the most rewarding in history for the common man in America. Never have citizens of a nation been more educated, had more social benefits, traveled farther and wider, and had more stable employment than what they enjoy at the moment.
4 – Minorities in America always press forward for equality. This is as it should be. As a result, America experiences a constant tension between those who have and those who strive to have.
5 – Secularism is the gift given to each American citizen to advance their position in life. It comes from the great Enlightenment that was born in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was also called the Age of Reason.