Born Free, taught To Fear, told To Follow
My Journey to Thinking Clearly and Living Peacefully
Then we are taught — gently, constantly, and from every direction — to be afraid and to fall in line.
This book explains where that teaching comes from, whom it serves, and what remains of a person who decides to stop obeying it.
Twenty-one chapters on programming, conditioning, identity, clarity, and the quiet courage required to reclaim your own mind.
Paperback · $14.99 Hardcover · $24.99 Kindle · $4.99
Also available at: Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org.
About The Book
Where you were born is what you were taught to believe. This book asks a more personal question: what do you actually think now?
From the moment you were born, the world began making decisions on your behalf. Your race was assigned before your personality developed. Your nationality was established before you could speak. Your class was inherited before your first memory, and your gender was identified before you had preferences of your own. Long before you could question the world around you, much of your understanding of it had already begun taking shape.
This was not necessarily because anyone intended to deceive you. Every family, faith, culture, and nation has its own answers about identity, belonging, right and wrong, success, fear, and how life should be lived. Those answers are often passed from one generation to the next as unquestioned truths, shaping how people see themselves and everyone around them. Born Free, Taught to Fear, Told to Follow examines this process of programming and conditioning and considers what becomes possible when a person finally recognizes it. The book explores how inherited beliefs can influence identity, behavior, fear, conformity, and the choices people make without realizing where those ideas originated.
Rather than replacing one belief system with another, William B. Seymour invites readers to examine what they have been handed. There is no new doctrine to adopt, no replacement system to follow, and no predetermined conclusion readers are required to reach. At its heart, the book is about recognizing that you were given a story before you were old enough to question it. Seeing that story clearly creates an opportunity to examine your assumptions, reconsider what you truly believe, and begin thinking for yourself with greater clarity, awareness, and peace.
