DON'T YOU SERIOUSLY WANT A BETTER SOCIETY? a light-hearted, bold, constructive, tongue-in-cheek but serious scrutiny of society: societal problems and solutions

DESCRIPTION OF BOOK

The world today is a deeply troubled world. Conflicts, wars, violence, terrorism and what-not are the apparent order of the day. People are apparently smarter but the way they lead their lives or conduct their affairs seems to contradict this. Does being smarter also means being smarter at causing troubles?

This book not only points out the foibles and foolishness of human beings in general but offers constructive solutions as well. There are also Confucian teachings in the book to guide the guideless and lost human souls who seem hell-bent on making a nuisance and fool of themselves. The book may ridicule and belittle human beings but this is done tastefully, humorously and entertainingly so that we human beings can enjoy laughing at ourselves, feel silly about our antics and actions, change for the better so that even the animals who may have a sense of humor may stop laughing at or despising us. Society may be clamoring for more scientists, engineers, doctors and other skilled professionals to provide solutions to its everyday problems. But the social problems, the problems involving human inter-action, are still plentiful and appear to be getting more complex and intractable. Our political leaders also seem quite powerless in allaying or eliminating them. The author thinks that if this state of affairs is allowed to go on uncontrollably indefinitely life is going to be more and more difficult and not that worth living. He hopes that the world would be blessed with world peace, harmony and happiness. As a fellow human being, he feels compelled to persuade or coerce his fellow beings to be less self-centered, more considerate, more empathetic, more cooperative and more peace-loving. He feels that there should be more social reformers to write articles and books about our social problems, proposing solutions at the same time, to give talks about all this, and to lead a movement towards a really harmonious, peaceful, cooperative and humane society. As the author has jokingly decried in the third chapter of this book that men are becoming more and more like animals and animals are becoming more and more like men, man hopefully could become less and less like animals so that animals have no chance to be like him at all.

As is also stated in the book, some men are so cruel and wild that their associates might be better off living in the real jungle with wild animals. Even if a man were not cruel or wild, he could be self-centered, conceited, superstitious, avaricious, hot tempered, snobbish, duplicitous, in short, having some character defects. Who could imagine that such innocent babes born into this world could have developed into such monstrosities?

It is indeed high time for society to pool its effort and resources to seriously tackle all these societal problems head-on.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author has published about 20 books, two of which have been adopted as reference texts and commended by professional bodies. He was also the editor of a book of essays. He has taught many professional and management subjects for years. He has published a number of important papers, including several papers on the solutions to some famous, unsolved problems, in research journals and has served on the faculty of an American research university as a professor. He has received publicity from the press for some intellectual achievement.