Berman lets it loose to humble authority and hierarchy. (illustrations, not seen)
Promising, vivid speculations on the evolution of mental states and varieties of consciousness from Berman (Coming to Our
Senses, not reviewed). In this third volume of his trilogy on the paths of consciousness, Berman traces the societal movement from horizontal, egalitarian relations to vertical, hierarchical ones. Lost in the transition, according to Berman, was the magic of everyday life, the hunter-gatherer's alertness that captures the eternal in a moment of permanent ephemerality. The integration of the universal into the particular through the acceptance of (and the revelation of living in) the world as it is also tamps the pain of alienation following in the wake of recognizing a separate self. Berman draws upon research to refute the interpretation of the Paleolithic period as myth-drenched; instead, he tenders the possibility it was marked by paradox—an utter watchfulness within the numinous landscape—in which children "cathected the whole environment" to mend the split between self and world. Whereas human beings are hard-wired to be on the move—"movement is the physiological substrate of the paradoxical experience"’sedentism and agriculture have been "forced upon us by a combination of external circumstances and a latent drive for power and inequality." Openness to experience faded, certainties and absolutes replaced our need for uncertainty and surprise, paradigms follow paradigms as ultimate (and ineffectual) fixes. Unfortunately, we can't just superimpose nomadic spirituality over our verticalities. As Wittgenstein recognized, and Berman concurs, "there finally is no way of jettisoning the transcendent without drifting into incoherence." But paradox can be a gadfly, challenging our notions of destiny, heroism, and certainty, exposing ourselves to the congruence of hunter-gatherer life, and, Berman suggests, "if our culture does have a future, it may well depend on the development of the dialectical possibilities that exist between horizontal and vertical aspects of life." Gilgamesh understood the paradox; it glimmers in works from Alice Miller to Ortega y Gassett to Bernadette Roberts; and
Berman lets it loose to humble authority and hierarchy. (illustrations, not seen)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7914-4477-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2000
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
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IN THE NEWS
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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