An alternately dispiriting and bracing dissection of loneliness and how to build community from the ground up.
An economist and business adviser delves into “the ideological underpinnings of the twenty-first century’s loneliness crisis.”
As Hertz notes, we live in a predominantly lonely world, a condition exacerbated by ever increasing social and economic inequality. When people feel they have only themselves to fall back on—lacking support from employers, the government, or our communities—is it any wonder that loneliness is the result? The situation is so bad that in 2018, the U.K. appointed a Minister of Loneliness for the disconnected, and the elderly in Japan are known to commit petty crimes in order to go to jail, “a sanctuary that provides not only company but also support and care.” With plenty of anecdotes and scholarly referenced footnotes, the author meticulously picks apart our everyday world to reveal the many wellsprings of our loneliness, and she points to helpful first steps to deal with it. The trick, writes Hertz, is “to reconnect capitalism to the pursuit of the common good and put care, compassion and cooperation at its very heart.” Of course, that is quite the undertaking; some readers may even consider it impossible, but many will find some comfort in these pages. Hertz diligently scrolls through the many causes of our existential conundrum, including living alone, the bustle of big-city life (“when confronted with all those people our default is often to withdraw”), contactless commerce, smartphone addiction, openly aggressive urban planning, the surveillance workplace, and a government that fails to prioritize libraries, parks, playgrounds, and community centers. Hertz also touches on the alienation of artificial intelligence and the downsides of co-living spaces, and she offer curative suggestions along the way—e.g., redefining work to deliver not just a salary, but “meaning, purpose, camaraderie and support”; committing to public service; and transforming ourselves “from consumers to citizens, from takers to givers, from casual observers to active participants.”
An alternately dispiriting and bracing dissection of loneliness and how to build community from the ground up.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13583-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Currency
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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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