Helpful “trance-breaking techniques” for a better life in front of and away from the screen.
A media commentator offers tips and discussions on how to consume media more consciously.
Kajuth (Spiritual Fitness, 2005) provides analysis and exercises to more consciously “learn from the vast menu of fascinating viewing choices while filtering out messages that hook you into a false decision about life.” She suggests shifting from an unconscious “TV Trance” to a “SpyTV” mentality, investigating and thus becoming more aware of associations being drawn from viewing experiences, then assessing “RxTV” measures to accept, release, or replace those associations. Chapters cover bringing such mindfulness to media coverage of politics (watch without a predetermined point of view), depictions of relationships (question the common pairing of love with longing), and “reality” (watch out even for food shows, which may spur hunger and/or over-competitiveness). Kajuth urges extra care in assessing media with violent themes, and in a sci-fi-focused section, she offers a “Profound or Profane?” quiz to pinpoint one’s true beliefs. The final chapter, “The New Adventures of the Old You,” encourages the transfer of “conscious viewing skills to conscious living skills” and offers a variety of suggestions (exercise, read, reduce overall stress, etc.) and quizzes to map out your “Real Conscious life.” While Kajuth is certainly not the first to point out the dangers of our media-frenzied world, what’s nifty about her book is its alignment with the mindfulness movement and the idea that “your TV viewing habits are metaphors for how you live your life.” Her exercises serve as important reminders to slow down, calm down, examine and focus—in media viewing and in life. She’s upbeat and relatable, acknowledging her own viewing habits and believing that positive role models and ideas can be gleaned from more mindful viewing. The narrative can be a bit challenging to plow through, however, given the array of not-always-revelatory mentions of TV shows and several rather stress-inducing redirects to find “more up-to-date information” on her website. Overall, however, this intriguing self-help guide is highly relevant for modern times.
Helpful “trance-breaking techniques” for a better life in front of and away from the screen.Pub Date: July 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-50-433567-6
Page Count: 246
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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