Drawing on extensive experience and illustrative examples, Nobel offers practical remedies to a fundamental social problem.
An exploration of creative expression as a powerful response to the epidemic of loneliness.
Loneliness underpins a whole range of personal and social ills, writes Nobel, a physician and public health practitioner who has been working on the issue for many years. The lockdowns and distancing of the Covid-19 era crystalized the problem, but it had begun well before 2020 and continues to build even as the pandemic recedes. Loneliness, defined as a subjective gap between the level of human connection one has and the level they feel they need, has profound effects on mental and physical health. "Loneliness won’t just make you miserable," writes the author. "It can kill you." It is often at the heart of suicides, substance abuse, and mass shootings. Nobel digs into the root causes, exploring community breakdown stemming from economic dislocation. The rise of social media, which can give the illusion of connection while driving people into isolation, is also a major factor—although used the right way, it can be a powerful tool for positive interaction. Nobel, who directs an organization called Project UnLonely, suggests a range of remedies, many of them centered around making art, often in a group setting. Creative expression can provide a path to connection and a sense of hope for the future. The quality of the art, whether painting or poetry, is not important; what matters is the sense of communication and sharing with others. “I can’t say for certain that replacing time spent online with time spent in creative “time wasting” will make you less anxious and more connected,” writes the author. “But I do know that ten minutes writing a haiku is likely to be time better spent then ten minutes doom scrolling your Instagram feed.” The author provides useful answers and a path forward for many people who need one.
Drawing on extensive experience and illustrative examples, Nobel offers practical remedies to a fundamental social problem.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780593191941
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avery
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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
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The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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