Walker’s debut posits that the key to personal enlightenment and happiness lies at the crosshairs of psychology, science and rational thought.
As a philosopher, Walker doesn’t resemble a wayward new-age religious leader, a trained psychiatrist or a noted scientist. Yet his understanding of such topics forms a workable theory of enlightenment, one that is best utilized one strand at a time. The author begins by asserting the importance of rational thought in harnessing control over one’s life and in achieving global understanding. Walker urges the reader to be open-minded as he advises against proceeding further if you aren’t open to a variety of possibilities. Having laid his logical foundation, Walker next takes up the metaphysics of existence, relying equally on philosophical tenets and quantum mechanics as a guide. A road map of the human experience starts as a simple collection of spheres marked for physical, emotional and mental states of being. As the chapters pass, the map morphs into a well-illustrated diagram of a challenging, typical life. Walker deconstructs the thinking of such luminaries as Einstein, Plato, Freud and Darwin, among others, in an attempt to illustrate a “unified theory” of how all the divergent parts of existence come together. He also makes allowances for morality and religion, and uses technology as a great comparative device to discuss emotional and physiological responses. The book is written in matter-of-fact and easily accessible prose, considering its heady nature. Although the author repeatedly insists that this work is not a self-help guide, readers will be unable to deny Walker’s good-natured attempts to encourage the implementation of his useful system of beliefs. An inspiring read for those looking for enlightenment beyond the standard questions and answers.
Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1467902854
Page Count: 500
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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