The bootstrap fallacy

by Robert K. Hudnut

It is the thesis of this book that we cannot move from achieving to superachieving except through crisis. We must have an experience of what we cannot do in order to break through to what we can. It is in the crisis of our inability to do anything, or at least not enough, that we experience, for perhaps the first time, an ability that is "beyond us." We find ourselves doing "more than we ever dreamed we could." It is also the area where religion begins. And that is the second thesis of the book -- namely, that in the critical experiences we all face, religion can happen. We can be "boound back" to who we are, which is what the word religion means at its root. We can be whole. Religion is for achievers, which is why so many business and labor and political and professional people in America are currently intrigued by religion. - Preface.