A lively but uneven study of human society.
A nonfiction book argues that humans are essentially tribalistic, contending that their modern departure from their origins sparked their ruination.
For most of their history, humans lived in small tribes, social arrangements that dominated their existence for hundreds of thousands of years. According to Stewart, those tribes promoted solidarity, loyalty, and commitment. Within a group, members could expect to be “known, loved and trusted.” Over time, the weaker tribes were eliminated by dint of natural selection, leaving groups of generally equivalent power. This equality made peace a much more attractive option than war, produced neighborliness, and promoted the cultivation of negotiation skills. In fact, the tribal impulse is a deeply natural one, and “gang conventions” are “hard-wired into our brainstem”: “For most of us, our identity is derived from our relationships with other people. We are gangsters.” In this refreshingly irreverent meditation, the author examines tribalism wherever he finds it—ants, street gangs, even bacteria—in order to rediscover what has been lost in “our experiment with notional freedom, enlightenment,” and an atomized society. Stewart makes some original and thought-provoking arguments. For example, he claims that street gangs are likely right to reject a “bourgeois conformist” lifestyle and refuse to pay taxes or “cringe before petty government officials.” Unfortunately, the more conventional arguments he forwards regarding humans’ natural sociability and the destructive effects of excessive individualism are very familiar. This is not the typical academic study—Stewart’s eclectic, freewheeling style is closer to Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle (1967) than to anything found in scholarly literature. This can make for rollicking good fun. But ultimately, the book fails to provide a systematic analysis. Moreover, the volume often turns hotly polemical, taking shots at both “fascist social dreamers” who push diversity and “subversive libertarians” while complaining about “feminist anti-natal screeching.” With so many examinations of this rich subject available to readers, Stewart’s work may struggle to find an audience.
A lively but uneven study of human society.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9798866075683
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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