The World Is Not as We Think It Is

by Dennis Littrell

From the “Know thyself,” the oracle of Delphi urged; but can we truly know ourselves? Can the object of our contemplation gaze into the mirror and see itself objectively?This book attempts to answer the question of who we are in light of both ancient and modern knowledge, especially the latter. My approach is skeptical, cynical and without consideration for political correctness.We live in symbiosis with the other forms of life on this planet. Without the amber fields of grain, the fish in the sea, the cows in the meadow, without the bacteria in our guts we would die. Without the oxygen in the air, made available and handed down to us by primeval microorganisms, we would not even exist. The vast wealth that we have today in the developed world we owe to those who have gone before, those who built the cities, the roads, the farms, the homes we live in, the social organizations and the laws we follow.I also learned that we cannot be understood through a reductive study of our anatomy or through a parsing of our genome. We are more than the atoms in our bodies and more than we can ever know.No man is an island and we could not be explained to putative aliens in distant worlds without a recognition of all that surrounds us and our connection to all that surrounds us.So what this book is about is you, especially if you are relatively young and starting out in life. I want you to know now what I have spent decades learning, and I want to present this knowledge unvarnished, unadorned, without euphemism in the hope that you and all that you are connected to might profit from that knowledge.The main lesson to be learned is that the world is not as we think it is, that we miss most of what is going on around us, and that there is much about ourselves we will never know.

207 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 14, 2011

About the author

I've been a soldier, a newspaper reporter, a high school English teacher, a day trader and a poker professional. I've written literally millions of words in my career as a writer, and think of myself primarily as a writer. My work has appeared in popular publications like Playboy and Smoke magazines and in literary journals where it has won some minor awards. My novel A Perfectly Natural Act gained royalty publication from G.P. Putnam's in 1973 and was brought out in paperback the following year by Pinnacle. First Artists was considering an option on it when they went defunct. The novel would make a rather good movie. (Maybe I'll write the screenplay one of these days.) Additionally, I've written over fifteen hundred reviews (over a million words in all!) for various Web sites, most notably Amazon and the Internet Movie Database. Some of my reviews are among the best appearing anywhere (or so I have been told). Over the years I've also written about a dozen book-length manuscripts. My project now is to present perhaps eight to ten of these manuscripts before the public in book form. I was graduated from UCLA in 1969 with a major in Political Science and minor in English Literature.

Reviews

[Book Shark · Rating 4 out of 5]

The World Is Not as We Think It Is by Dennis Littrell

“The World Is Not as We Think It is" is the raw, ambitious book that sheds light about our world. Mr. Littrell is that intellectual, skeptical kind of uncle everyone should be lucky to have. He asks big questions about the world while covering a wide-range of interesting topics in his own unique, politically incorrect way. This insightful 206-page book is composed of the following twenty-two chapters: 1. The Biological Imperatives, 2. The World Is Not as We Think It Is, 3. Our Reality Is Inside Our Heads, 4. How to exploit the opposite sex (and why you should), 5. The War System, 6. Politics, Some Psychology, 8. Consciousness, 9. Self-Identity: A Thought Experiment, 10. The Paradox of Free Will, 11. Infinities, 12. Doubt and the 10,000 Things, 13. Nothing Is Real, 14. Religion,15. Life and Death, 16. God and Unintelligent Design, 17. More on Religion, 18. Aliens among Us? 19. Pleasure, Pain and Drugs, 20. Is Science True?, 21. Science vs. Superstition, and 22. Why We Grow Old and Die.

Positives:
1. A wide-range of some of my personal favorite topics all in one book.
2. Mr. Littrell is a well-read student of the world; his curiosity, interesting background and drive for knowledge puts him in an enviable position to share what he knows. The main lesson being that the world is not as we think it is.
3. The book is accessible and fairly concise.
4. This is a fun, thought-provoking book to read. Many interesting and I mean interesting observations about the world.
5. The author does a wonderful job of referencing books and quotes of interest.
6. Interesting take on biological imperatives grounded on sound evolutionary knowledge.
7. Loved the chapters involving neuroscience and psychology.
8. Consciousness as an emergent property. Interesting subtopics like artificial intelligence.
9. The illusion of free will.
10. A look at infinities, “Everything breaks down at the extremes including our logic and our science”. Great stuff.
11. Morality as a human construct. How religion and morality relate.
12. Some things are just not real…find out.
13. The always fascinating world of religion. The four reasons people believe in a personal God. Defining God.
14. Life and death…a unique perspective.
15. Are there aliens among us? Find out.
16. Brain chemistry, pleasure and pain.
17. The value of science. Objective truth. Science versus Superstition.
18. Entropy and death.
19. Excellent bibliography.

Negatives:
1. The book lacks production value but at a reasonable rate there is not much to argue about.
2. The book is not linked up.
3. The author acknowledges upfront that he is cynical and is not politically correct but it’s always better not to offend any specific group of people.
4. Lack of illustrations and diagrams that would have added value to the book.

In summary, I have to say I had a lot of fun with this book. Mr. Littrell is the kind of person you just want to sit down with for hours and just talk. The book covered every topic I personally like to talk about and it’s worth conversing when you can do so with someone like Mr. Littrell. The book does lack production value and the author stated a thing or two that I could do without. That being said, the book has a raw intellectual charm that makes it worthwhile to read. I not only enjoyed this book but look forward to reading more books from Mr. Littrell.

Further suggestions: “Wonders of the Universe” and “The Quantum Universe” by Brian Cox, “This Explains Everything” edited by John Brockman, “Why Does the World Exist?” by Jim Holt, “The Believing Brain” by Michael Shermer, “The Ego Tunnel” by Thomas Metzinger, “About Time” by Adam Frank, “A Universe From Nothing” by Lawrence Krauss, “Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters” by Donald R. Prothero, “Why Evolution Is True” by Jerry A. Coyne, “Who’s in Charge” by Michael S. Gazzaniga, “SuperSense” by Bruce M. Hood, “Science and Nonbelief” by Taner Edis, “50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God” by Guy P. Harrison, “God and the Folly of Faith” by Victor J. Stenger, “The 10,000 Year Explosion” by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, and “Your Inner Fish” by Neil Shubin.

[Frank Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book openly eschews political correctness and aims to provide a set of questions and answers about the purported mysteries of life. It isn’t always desperately serious about this, more akin to the modern equivalent of the satires of Jonathan Swift’s in the eighteenth century. For example: What is the purpose of Life? Life isn’t fair. Most of what we know can never be expressed . . .

As a hospital doctor who has spent decades treating life and death situations, I can confirm the prevailing demand that Life should be fair. When devastated by the realisation of some unpleasant and perhaps life-threatening disease, people demand to know why this is happening to them. Sadly, in my experience, Life doesn’t set out to be fair. Anyone who thinks otherwise should take a good hard look at nature.

Nothing is too specious or sacred to be excluded from the intellectual dissection, from a supernova to a candle flame and from science, including the religious attitude to science, to god – indeed to three distinct varieties of the same. The immensities aside, Littrell also turns to painful and sometimes hilarious conundrums that confront us in our everyday lives. What, for example, is the role of the beta male? Do women actually want to control men? Is Democracy a little bit suspect? Is our reality really inside our heads? He also hands out a slightly tongue-in cheek instruction of how to exploit the opposite sex – and why, in common sense, you should.

Zany, contrary, contradictory, entertaining, quintessentially American – this book confronts our assumptions and behaviours to suggest the need to take a step back and, like Michael Jackson, take the opportunity to look at the man, or woman, looking back at us in the mirror.

[Martti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dennis Littrell's book is an interesting overview of the world from a highly personal viewpoint. The contents spans a large variety of topics, including sex, reality, consciousness, free will, religion, wars, aliens, and life and death. Throughout the book, Littrell uses the biological evolution of species as the main factor when studying the topics.

The book is extremely well organized; it is like a slide presentation with bullet point titles and short explanations. Numerous references to literature supplement the text; the author seems to have read fairly recent scientific literature when completing the text.

To me the most interesting parts of the book deal consciousness and free will. Based on discoveries in neuroscience Littrell concludes rather convincingly that there is no free will. Benjamin Libet had discovered that the neural activity happens half a second earlier before a conscious decision is made. Thus there seems to be a ghostly organism of nerve cells and molecules operating independently of our conscious awareness. Littrell argues that we have the illusion of making decisions while actually this ghostly organism is in charge.

Also the perspective to death is interestingly presented. Why do we die? Littrell points out that death is good for species. The faster our environment changes the faster the species must adjust: therefore reproduction at an earlier age is advantageous. Sexual reproduction and biological evolution works more effectively if the young have a better chance at reproduction than the old. For example, someone a generation younger is one generation older in terms of genetic history. In him the gene pool has mixed one more time. The young can have this advantage if the old get weak and die.

Littrell also presents his view on political issues. This presentation is entirely based on the situation in the USA. Littrell no longer believes on democracy. He points out that the current system in the USA favors candidates whose main talent is getting elected. George W. Bush is given as the worst example of a mediocre and morally corrupt politician.

Dennis Littrell is a good writer. He is able to present his views and ideas in short and provoking sentences. What is especially good is that even the surprising views are based on evidence.

[Michael Lange · Rating 4 out of 5]

See https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
for an excellent description and review until I have time to write my own thoughts.