A useful primer for those determined to make waves for a good cause.
Sit down and don’t make trouble—or else read this book.
According to Kashdan, a professor of psychology, it’s important to question authority and to take a stance of “principled insubordination, a brand of deviance intended to improve society with a minimal amount of secondary harm”—to subject received wisdom and things as they are to cross-examination. The principled part is significant. Being a rebel without a clue is useless, while being principled in rebelliousness “is vital for improving society.” In a text full of psychological theories and the results of telling experiments, Kashdan examines the many ways by which we lull ourselves into accepting the status quo. Perhaps surprisingly, he notes that “disadvantaged people often do just as much (or more) to affirm a system’s validity than those who occupied privileged positions within the same system.” Indeed, “people will go to bizarre lengths to rationalize and protect a social system that harms them.” Thus the recent rise of authoritarianism, which surely begs for people who’ll say no against all those people who’ll say yes. Learning how to say no, though, requires work. Kashdan identifies pitfalls such as status quo bias, confirmation bias (seeking evidence for what you believe and ignoring what doesn’t support your view), and the hope that submission will somehow lead to a higher social or economic class. There’s also projection bias, by which we “think others tend to share our preferences, beliefs, and behaviors more than they actually do.” This often produces martyrs instead of rebels. The author counsels taking all this information with as little stress and as much self-care as possible while being brave in the face of conformity and incuriosity. Ultimately, he writes, we must commit to “raising a new generation of youth who feel emboldened to disagree, defy, and deviate from problematic norms and standards.”
A useful primer for those determined to make waves for a good cause.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-42088-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avery
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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