I have just finished reading a book that I want to go out and buy for everyone I know, even though the last time I did this I discovered why I am not in a book group: I don’t want to hear other people’s opinions about a book I am still savoring, unless of course they concur with mine – a condition that makes the enterprise a bit dicey. For me, falling in love with a book is like being in a new relationship – you don’t want to know what your friends think unless it’s that he’s breathtakingly hot and you’re the luckiest woman in the world.

The book is Take Me With You: A Round-the-World Journey to Invite a Stranger Home, by San Francisco taxi driver Brad Newsham. It tells of his one hundred day trip through The Philippines, India, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa with the intention, after he returns home, of inviting one of the people he meets for a month long trip around the United States. I had heard the author speak at the Whidbey Island Writer’s Conference, so I knew that he had in fact invited someone and the trip had occurred. Normally, I shy away from travel writing because I find it tedious. But this book had me riveted from beginning to end – partly because it is extremely well written, and partly because he neither romanticizes nor preaches, indulgences most of us find impossible to resist. He endeavors above all to see clearly, while always striving to widen his view.

It sounds so simple, but it is rare. So often we prefer romantic illusion to clear sight and delusion to truth, scorning knowledge, understanding and acceptance in favor of emotional anesthesia and the time-tested method of selective belief. We all have our private delusions, of course: I could have been an outstanding member of the Cirque de Soleil or seduced Pete Townsend and gone on tour with The Who. But it is alarming to have ignorance paraded as a national virtue. President Bush brags about having been a C student, as if this makes him able to identify with the sweaty masses, an insinuation I find insulting every time I work up a sweat. I have nothing against C students - a grade is not a reliable reflection of intelligence or ability. My concern is the growing number of people who consider it a sign of moral fortitude to ignore science; my concern is that education and advanced knowledge are being portrayed as the province of an elite group who look down on ordinary people, because from there it is just a small step to the suggestion that the quest for a greater understanding of the world is contrary to being a red blooded American.

Knowledge and education have not always been out of fashion. America used to consider the education of its citizens a cornerstone of democracy. The first free school opened in Virginia in 1635 and in 1647 a law was passed in Massachusetts requiring all towns with at least 50 families to hire someone to teach the children to read and write, further stating that all towns of 100 or more should have a Latin grammar school master to prepare students for Harvard College. This law was called The Old Deluder Satan Act, presumably because educated people were better equipped to outwit the devil. Philosophy, defined as “the branch of knowledge or academic study devoted to the systematic examination of basic concepts such as truth, existence, reality, causality, and freedom” was also once in favor. Benjamin Franklin formed The American Philosophical Society in 1743 to explore the ideas of the European Enlightenment, and greatly influenced the thinking of Thomas Jefferson.

Of course the right to education, like the right to vote, did not initially apply to everyone. Even my racist grandmother was shocked to learn that African Americans had not been allowed to learn to read and write. An uneducated population is much easier to take advantage of and control, so perhaps there have always been those in positions of power who thought knowledge in the hands of the people was a dangerous thing.

We all indulge in convenient and comfortable beliefs that are not supported by the facts, and although some seem more harmless than others, along a similar continuum as little white lies, fibs and whoppers, it is worthwhile to be aware of them and embark upon a plan of gradual withdrawal. The entire skin care industry for women is based on our willingness to believe we can have a significant effect on the appearance of aging by the application of various concoctions, even though evidence to the contrary is quite literally staring us in the face. Yet billions of dollars are spent on these products because the illusion is preferable to the truth: that we will all get old, wrinkly and die, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

I would like to confiscate all the books that tell us we can create the life of our dreams, get rich doing what we love and find everlasting contentment by living in the Now and replace them with books on the solar system, philosophy, anthropology and physics. Rather than spending our time either trying to attain our personal version of heaven on earth or defending our ignorance, we could read a book on Nobel Prize winner Dag Hammarskjold or rice farmers in The Philippines. We could study medicinal plants of the Amazon or brush up on string theory. (I just watched Nova, so I’m up on the latest thinking on the laws of the universe. This was my first opportunity to use “string theory” in sentence.) This would enrich our lives and help us place our current planetary predicaments in the largest possible context. We would dare to consider the lessons of history and the knowledge available from all creditable sources. As an ordinary person who sweats every time I mow the lawn, I’m okay with that.