A bold but not always appealing blueprint for the future.
A new treatise that urges educational overhaul, political inequality, and atheism as potential strategies for revitalizing civilization.
Software engineer and product manager Wilensky surveys fundamental aspects of modern society that he feels are desperately in need of a rethink. Chief among them, he asserts, is an educational system that teaches children nothing but conformism and soon-to-be-forgotten factoids; instead, he argues, instructors should stimulate kids’ curiosity and creativity, teach them critical thinking skills, and raise them to be “thinking machines” who “reason reflexively.” Wilensky also condemns religious belief as the fountainhead of irrationality, intolerance, conflict, and so much “false and often foul doctrine” that “religious inculcation…of young children is equivalent to child abuse.” To counter such conformism, he recommends “changing the environment” so that everything children are exposed to “reflects in some way a worldview embracing science and reason, while at the same time rejecting religion and belief in the supernatural.” The author also takes issue with one-person-one-vote democracy, which he says yields a “mediocracy” in which ignorant people are manipulated into electing corrupt hacks. Wilensky presents his opinions in lucid, plainspoken, but high-minded prose: “It may sound obvious, but we need to make a conscious effort at every turn of our lives to be more virtuous, compassionate human beings.” He offers some engaging explanations of complex concepts, such as the Darwinian evolution of human moral intuition and the falseness of unfalsifiable arguments, and he explores some imaginative potential reforms, such as teaching all kids chess and debate skills to sharpen their wits. Sometimes, though, Wilensky’s drive to optimize society launches into dystopian notions that many readers will perceive as incompatible with freedom, such as a requirement to obtain a parenting license to have children and an elitist electoral system in which a so-called superb class of voters, who score high on critical-thinking tests, have votes that count more than those of people the author calls “subpar.” Such ideas are likely to strike readers as alienating and even frightening.
A bold but not always appealing blueprint for the future.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 202
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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