Burning all illusions

by Edwards, David

All text that follows is from the back cover: This is a book about freedom, and above all about the idea that there is often no greater obstacle to freedom than the assumption that it has already been attained. What prison, after all, could be more secure than that deemed to be 'the world,' where boundaries of action and thought are assumed to define not the limits of the permissible, but the limits of the possible. In the past we have been prisoners of tyrants and dictators, and consequently have needed to win our freedom in very concrete, physical terms. We now need to free ourselves not from a slave ship, a prison, or a concentration camp, but from many of the illusions fostered in our democratic society.