A Mind of its Own is a non-fiction work about psychology -- particularly how the brain is spectacularly emotional and vain, to the point that it behaves in its own interests. The audience is the layperson, but there are zillions of references to scholarly works. The writing style is delightful: laidback, yet compelling, and with wonderful wit.
The gist is that many people tend to:
Bend statistics and logic towards reasoning that favours themselves
Abandon strong moral beliefs under certain (yet reasonable) circumstances
React in accordance to learned racial/gender stereotypes before the conscious mind has a chance to vote on the reaction
As one example, note that I wrote "many people" above. Chances are, you read the above list and thought "yes it is sad that so many people are guilty of that. Thank God my friends and I are educated and moved past that reptilian phase". Well, that very thinking is exactly what the book is about. The author argues that everyone has these behaviours, on a deep fundamental level. It is our burden to spot these traits and have the conscious brain override them.
2 comments:
That sounds like a must-read. Cool. I'll put it on the list! Thx!
I'll add this to my list of books to check out. Not my usual genre at all, but it sounds interesting. Thanks for the recommendation.
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