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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
I had high expectations for this book but Lessing's semi-Utopian ramblings in some parts fatigued me. Good content, but delivered very laboriously.
More like a 3.5. Also given that it was written in 1987, it holds up, but I'm curious as to what it would have been like to read it in its time.
Ojalá más gente en el mundo con la claridad de mente y la capacidad de análisis de la sociedad que tiene Doris Lessing. Aunque el libro tenga ya más de 30 años, lo que cuenta es tan básico sobre el comportamiento humano que no pasa de moda, por desgracia.
That was an 'ok' collection of essays for me. I found her writing so opinionated although she encourages thinking for oneself and acknowledging there is no such thing as my being in the right.
Examples on that:
"It is easy for me now to say group animal or the social animal. It is commonplace now to say we human beings were animals, and a great deal of our behaviour is rooted in past animal behaviour."
Nope, human beings != animals. It is a perspective, a belief but never a commonplace.
Also, you would think that an educated mind like her would differentiate between religious people and their behaviour from the idea of religion. She, in multiple occasions, made sure to mix them up as to dismiss the whole idea of religion not just the corrupt people (as in any group or community) that are following a religion. When she talked about brain-washing
"These three are used all the time by governments, armies, political parties, religious groups, religions and always have been used."
I would have been okay to an extent up to "religious groups", but nope, and religions cause duh!
Or grouping "True believers" with bigots and tyrants.
"Fanatics don't laugh at themselves; laughter is by definition heretical, unless used cruelly, turned outwards against an opponent or enemy. Bigots can't laugh. True believers don't laugh. Their idea of laughter is a satirical cartoon pillorying an opposition
person or idea. Tyrants and oppressors don't laugh at themselves, and don't tolerate laughter at themselves."
On the other hand, I liked the last essay titled "Laboratories of Social Change" which in my opinion was well-written in terms of discussing an issue and our roles as individuals instead of clinging to the idea of government support.
and finally the hard truth:
"We have become desensitized. Watching, night after night, day after day, year after year, the horrors going on all over the world have desensitized us exactly as those soldiers have been deliberately brutalized. No one set out to brutalize us, to make us callous; but that is what we increasingly are."
Examples on that:
"It is easy for me now to say group animal or the social animal. It is commonplace now to say we human beings were animals, and a great deal of our behaviour is rooted in past animal behaviour."
Nope, human beings != animals. It is a perspective, a belief but never a commonplace.
Also, you would think that an educated mind like her would differentiate between religious people and their behaviour from the idea of religion. She, in multiple occasions, made sure to mix them up as to dismiss the whole idea of religion not just the corrupt people (as in any group or community) that are following a religion. When she talked about brain-washing
"These three are used all the time by governments, armies, political parties, religious groups, religions and always have been used."
I would have been okay to an extent up to "religious groups", but nope, and religions cause duh!
Or grouping "True believers" with bigots and tyrants.
"Fanatics don't laugh at themselves; laughter is by definition heretical, unless used cruelly, turned outwards against an opponent or enemy. Bigots can't laugh. True believers don't laugh. Their idea of laughter is a satirical cartoon pillorying an opposition
person or idea. Tyrants and oppressors don't laugh at themselves, and don't tolerate laughter at themselves."
On the other hand, I liked the last essay titled "Laboratories of Social Change" which in my opinion was well-written in terms of discussing an issue and our roles as individuals instead of clinging to the idea of government support.
and finally the hard truth:
"We have become desensitized. Watching, night after night, day after day, year after year, the horrors going on all over the world have desensitized us exactly as those soldiers have been deliberately brutalized. No one set out to brutalize us, to make us callous; but that is what we increasingly are."
Doris Lessing was born in Persia but raised in Southern Rhodesia, present day Zimbabwe. Her living and witnessing the brutal racism by the white colonialists in Zimbabwe against the black population awakened her activism against colonialism and oppressive structures which in turn influenced her writing. In this series of essays Doris Lessing examines how and why societies revert back to cruelties and authoritarianism after years of progress.
There's a particular description of Margaret Thatcher's campaign that was so shocking to me.
"When Mrs. Thatcher was elected for her second term of office, she employed
Saatchi & Saatchi, a big advertising firm, to handle her campaign. These people
used every trick in the book, from turns of phrase calculated to arouse easy
emotions, to the colours of her dresses and the curtains she stood in front of, to
calculated entrances and exits and the use of the media."
Seems eerily familiar? The use of a firm to manipulate the public for political purposes? It was so odd reading these essays and recognising what Lessing had observed and written about in the 80s replicate itself in such a similar manner. Doris Lessing explores "group pressure" and how dangerous it is for a society, the importance of social sciences and history and literature in learning about ourselves and how history repeats itself while guarding ourselves against institutions, governments and groups that may use all this information for ill motives.
A small book but a mind opening read.
There's a particular description of Margaret Thatcher's campaign that was so shocking to me.
"When Mrs. Thatcher was elected for her second term of office, she employed
Saatchi & Saatchi, a big advertising firm, to handle her campaign. These people
used every trick in the book, from turns of phrase calculated to arouse easy
emotions, to the colours of her dresses and the curtains she stood in front of, to
calculated entrances and exits and the use of the media."
Seems eerily familiar? The use of a firm to manipulate the public for political purposes? It was so odd reading these essays and recognising what Lessing had observed and written about in the 80s replicate itself in such a similar manner. Doris Lessing explores "group pressure" and how dangerous it is for a society, the importance of social sciences and history and literature in learning about ourselves and how history repeats itself while guarding ourselves against institutions, governments and groups that may use all this information for ill motives.
A small book but a mind opening read.
Doris Lessing’s 1985 Massey Lecture, entitled, “Prisons We Choose to Live Inside” is almost prescient in its application to the challenges our societies face around the globe today, and most poignantly, in our all too vulnerable social democracies.
Lessing frames five lectures around the patterns of behaviour we exhibit as humans, in particular as it relates to crowd phenomena. With many parallels to Elias Canetti’s “Crowds and Power”, she analyses the particular situations in which we find ourselves and calls out our hubris for believing ourselves to be above falling victims to the crowd and the crowd mentality.
The Massey Lectures, a Canadian institution since 1961, sets out each year to feature prominent ideas pertinent to the time. As I make my way further and further back into the archives, I am confronted with notions, propositions, and questions which seem as relevant today as they did when they were first proposed across the airwaves of the CBC into the living rooms of past generations of Canadians. The CBC has many past lectures available on their web page, and many of the lectures are also in print. In this case, I listened and read Lessing’s lectures.
Lessing frames five lectures around the patterns of behaviour we exhibit as humans, in particular as it relates to crowd phenomena. With many parallels to Elias Canetti’s “Crowds and Power”, she analyses the particular situations in which we find ourselves and calls out our hubris for believing ourselves to be above falling victims to the crowd and the crowd mentality.
The Massey Lectures, a Canadian institution since 1961, sets out each year to feature prominent ideas pertinent to the time. As I make my way further and further back into the archives, I am confronted with notions, propositions, and questions which seem as relevant today as they did when they were first proposed across the airwaves of the CBC into the living rooms of past generations of Canadians. The CBC has many past lectures available on their web page, and many of the lectures are also in print. In this case, I listened and read Lessing’s lectures.
I read this today while waiting for LS to get out of surgery. I purchased it by accident and I know I read it 20 years ago but I don't remember anything about it.
This volume is 5 lectures Lessing gave in 1985 for Canadian Broadcasting. The year seems appropriate for that was the year I transferred from Amherst to Mount Holyoke, where I discovered Lessing. It is also the middle of the Reagan-Thatcher decade and the essays are heavily evocative of this period.
But Lessing's message is even more pertinent today: that everyone should pursue and cultivate individual thought--it is essential for democratic society (as is the study of history and literature).
This volume is 5 lectures Lessing gave in 1985 for Canadian Broadcasting. The year seems appropriate for that was the year I transferred from Amherst to Mount Holyoke, where I discovered Lessing. It is also the middle of the Reagan-Thatcher decade and the essays are heavily evocative of this period.
But Lessing's message is even more pertinent today: that everyone should pursue and cultivate individual thought--it is essential for democratic society (as is the study of history and literature).
informative
reflective
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced