A showcase for a fantastical but unsubstantiated theory.
Debut author Shupe contends that the modern condition is emotionally pulverizing—but that people can still find their way back to spiritual freedom.
Every historical age is relentlessly self-critical, which has spawned a saturated genre of books about modernity’s many ailments. The author, an electronics engineer, makes his own contribution to this pile-on, contending that modern existence is a “desert for the soul”—a crushing experience that has left humankind spiritually lost. The culprit is language, the invention of which facilitated a toxic temporizing, the author asserts; instead of happily living in the present, people began to fret anxiously about the future. According to Shupe, our convoluted belief systems, laws, and theologies are simply “rules instituted by artificial systems of order” and “culturally imposed moral edicts.” Humanity took a sort of evolutionary wrong turn as a consequence of language acquisition, the author seems to say, as its reliance upon feeling and instinct was replaced by an insistence upon rational cogitation. Shupe describes the idyllic condition of that natural way of life in sweepingly vague terms, without apparent concern for empirical proof—an unfortunate hallmark of the entire book: “In that natural way of life, people lived in the unfolding moment. Life usually worked out, because our way of life was governed by Nature, through our feelings. The sizes of our families were stable, for example, and we never worried about the future, because we had no way to control it.” The author goes on to detail his path to “reclaim our natural way of life” and recover our discarded “spiritual freedom” and our natural, intuitive propensity for happiness.
Shupe’s principal themes are hardly new, and one can find similar indictments of civilization and its tyranny over nature in 18th-century philosophy, including the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This book is certainly an ambitious one; it attempts nothing less than a wholesale cure of the ennui of the age—one in which mankind returns, in effect, to its spiritual home. However, its ambition isn’t matched by its philosophical depth or analytical rigor; Shupe inclines toward panoramic generalization and peremptory judgment in lieu of vigorous argument. He also has a penchant for hyperbole: “Feelings have no place in our way of life, which is dictated by our belief that life is a rational process.” However, the study’s chief failing is its persistent indefiniteness; it’s never clear who precisely these “early humans” are, for example, or why he’s so sure that they “flourished.” Similarly, his account of spiritual freedom is as fuzzy as it is derivative, and it’s never clear how such a condition could be reestablished. To the author’s credit, he freely admits he has neither a “plan to offer” nor “experiential evidence” of aspirational “spiritual homes,” about which he can only offer ethereal speculations. However, these deficiencies apparently make him no less confident that these spiritual homes will “organically and spontaneously” arise out of the arid soil of a civilization that’s inhospitable to them.
A showcase for a fantastical but unsubstantiated theory.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-09-830399-0
Page Count: 216
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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