Despite its flaws, this book should help readers understand how organizations work, from the smallest nonprofit group to the...
A social psychologist explains how human groups or memes organize and operate, to the detriment and sometimes the benefit of civilization.
Minshall (The Jesus Book, 2012, etc.) describes memes as a “post personal force” that can aid society, but are often “the force behind all human tragedy.” The reason: once people join a meme, they yield their sense of morality to its amorality. Simply “Human Social Constructs,” memes form around a unifying idea or cause but then take on lives of their own. As with all living things, survival becomes paramount. More often destroyed from within rather than by external forces, memes may manufacture enemies to cement loyalty among followers. Minshall describes and dissects different types of memes, including nonprofit groups, government agencies, and corporations. The apparent leaders of memes, such as popes, presidents, and CEOs, seldom hold the real power. Bureaucrats, major stockholders, unions, or wealthy family dynasties typically call the shots. “The Cadre” or “enablers,” such as police and soldiers, enforce the social order, while “The Workers and Doers,” or producers, form the majority of members and accomplish most of the tasks. The lowest rungs include “Marginals,” such as youths and legal aliens, and “Outsiders,” including intruders, migrants, and illegal aliens, who are exploited as they try to gain a foothold. Although individuals may believe they can change the meme by rising to the top, it will either alter or expel them. Why not get rid of memes? Although they cause war and other havoc, memes also create the world’s positive things. Minshall has written a captivating book that can help anyone understand group behavior and why politicians promising change so seldom achieve it. His writing style is free-form and fluid, with touches of humor that sometimes fall flat with weak puns. The volume, littered with weird capitalization, superfluous exclamation points, and spelling mistakes of common as well as proper nouns, such as “Mark Zukerberg,” “Jack Welsh,” and “Julius Cesar,” cries out for a skillful editor and proofreader. It would also bolster Minshall’s case if he backed up his arguments with more footnotes. Like most critiques, this book is long on criticism but short on solutions, which seem in this case to boil down to hoping the United Nations will somehow get memes under control.
Despite its flaws, this book should help readers understand how organizations work, from the smallest nonprofit group to the largest political entity.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9642773-7-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Renaissance Institute Press
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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