BAR HARBOR — The failure of the political left to give credence to the ideas of those from the opposite end of the political spectrum is a striking feature of modern political debate.

Time and again, we hear from left-leaning thinkers that those who feel differently from them are either uninformed, poorly informed, or just plain wrong. We hear that the right wing, or even political centrists, are not smart enough, caring enough or studied enough to make the correct decisions, which, if they would just listen to the left, are right out there in front of them, clear as day.

Bar Harbor author and philosopher Steve Perrin follows that path in his latest book, and it is unfortunate that he does so. Because what might otherwise be a legitimate exploration of the workings of the mind, albeit a ponderous and lengthy one, is sullied by spiraling down to such a narrow view. For anyone other than those already indoctrinated into the left, the political conclusions reached by Mr. Perrin are bound to overshadow much else in the work.

“Consciousness: The Book,” self-published by Mr. Perrin in 2011, is a weighty tome – 15 chapters and 270 pages. The book is based on 201 blog posts, written over several years, through which the author sought to know himself and the workings of his mind through deep, probing introspection.

The book starts out with an interesting philosophical question: Where is the mind? Is it all in our brains? Is it somehow outside of us?

Mr. Perrin’s answer, which he seeks to explore, is that the mind is somewhere in between the two.

“Consciousness … emerges precisely from its privileged position between a specific rock and a particular hard place, between its brain and the situation it engages in interacting with its worldly surroundings,” Mr. Perrin states.

The basis of Mr. Perrin’s explorations lies within a number of incidents, retold over and over again, within which his perceptions of a situation did not mesh with actual events. These range from mistaking a black trash bag on the side of the road for a dying crow, to a time when he was convinced that a wind-blown cedar tree up against a house was a man scraping paint.

These incidents are important, Mr. Perrin maintains, because they illustrate how perception influences reality. “I find evidence for my looping engagement with the ambient world of energy and matter … in the many disconcerting occasions when my personal loop breaks down,” he writes.

The philosophical musings are all well and good, and interesting on their own level. The debate over the true location of mind is a fascinating, and current, discourse.

However, despite Mr. Perrin’s repeated assurances that “how I see the world is just that, how I see the world, not how the world is,” by the end of the book his introspection has led him to a common leftwing political scree that leaves no room for dissent.

In “Power,” the last chapter in the book, Mr. Perrin aligns himself with the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Arab Spring, while condemning the capitalist American system and basically saying that anyone without his level of introspection just doesn’t get it.

“America has become a nation feeding on itself, and through global entrepreneurship, feeding on the people of other nations, and on Earth itself. That realization is the upshot of my little experiment in introspection,” he writes.

Further, Mr. Perrin states in his own favor that “if I am to act appropriately, I have to give myself time to form an adequate judgment concerning the makeup of that situation.

“Compare that finding with mobs responding in fervor to bumper-sticker slogans chanted over and over again … Or, again, with families passively watching TV shows in the comfort of their homes, taking in every word and gesture without being able to do anything but eat chips and drink soda.”

Citing his own brand of consistent introspection as the best defense in preventing others from taking over our minds, Mr. Perrin casts nearly the entire mainstream of America as useless dupes.

“ … inserting ideas directly into gullible minds is with us today,” he writes.

Nowhere is there an acknowledgement that arch-extremism goes two ways. Just as he feels that those who voted Republican in the 2010 midterm elections were wrong, those people undoubtedly would say that he is misguided. Scores of business owners would argue that capitalism is not about mind control. Still others would protest his idea that all media, be it print, electronic or digital, is geared toward turning the populace into a bunch of docile sheep.

In concluding that everyone who doesn’t probe deeply into their own lives is less than sentient, Mr. Perrin does himself a disservice. In further assuming that anyone who disagrees with the way he feels about war, television, money and commerce is simply not introspective enough, Mr. Perrin displays a grand dose of hubris.

“Consciousness: The Book,” is available at Sherman’s in Bar Harbor and online at www.Lulu.com.

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