Mitch Olson
Bennett use of slightly esoteric languaging (“energies”) to speak of psychological functions is not especially helpful. Also the signal to noise ratio isn't super high. But there is more wisdom here than most modern psychological texts.
I was hoping for a more fundamental understanding of how information operates in physical, chemical and biological realms but somehow this book manages to miss providing a solid grounding in the title of the book or even a understandable explanation of what a hologram is.
Possibly the best philosophical book I have ever read. I think more Kindle highlights of passages in this book then any other I have read. I understand this book is from early in Bennett's career and some of his ideas expanded in later books but this book still stands alone.
He writes well but what he writes about in this book was not interesting enough to keep me engaged.
A collection of sayings & stories, presented without discussion or context from which I was personally able to extract exactly zero nourishment. Maybe you need to be a Sufi to get value from this book.
My rating reflects the fact that I'm not a therapist so I couldn't extract the value that I'm confident is in there for the intended audience.
This could have been a much better book if the author had a different audience in mind when writing it instead of his frat-boy mates.
“An egosphere is a space, such as an apartment, that is associated to the discursive category of the individual (as a modern secular theological dogma).”
Just one example of way too many which is full of “insider” languaging. Seriously? Too much technical wank-speak & not at all necessary. I get it you're smart, but I think you let your ego get the better of you by not writing it in a more accessible way.
And in spite of this it is an important book, but not enough people will be able to grok that. (Also the behavioural psychology stuff on Skinner & Eyal was psych 101 level & would have been better left out).
I read this book because I wanted to understand more about the best ways of helping people to learn. Well, actually I am more interested in how to help them transform themselves in terms of their potential, but “learning” is a good place to start. And I think the author did a pretty good job. Just well executed. Engaging, entertaining and educational. Recommend.
There is some wisdom (& entertainment) in here but I was put off by his guru-ness & tendency that goes with this to repeat a statement that sounds true, but without deconstructing it so that it doesn't need to be endlessly repeated.
The value & one's corresponding rating of a book is a measure of how its adds to the quality of your life, either whilst just reading it as entertainment, or why I generally prefer non-fiction, it has the potential to add to the quality of your life beyond the book itself (yeah fiction can do this but not nearly as often).
Philosophy should have one of the greatest potentials for this life-enhancing capability. But not this book. It is in a word ... tedious. And I daresay the ideas themselves are somewhat tenuous given that he choses an arbitrary starting point - “being” (which he calls “dasein”), & makes as much meaning as he can from this distinction whilst simultaneously is blind to those distinctions he chooses to take at face value (like “knowledge”). This is imo a poor way of building a philosophy. Any philosophy should start with metaphysics to build a proper & logical and systematic foundation (see J G Bennett for best example of this). I do resonate with some of his distinctions (which is why I read the book in the first place) like care or concern as the essence of being. I find his thinking on time similarly lacking in solid foundations. The book is also soulless. Just the worst of the caricatured Germanic seriousness. Maybe there are better writers out there who speak to Heidegger's insights.
- rambling: feels like a stream of consciousness thing rather than a structured & well-thought-out argument
- the content of the book hardly feels related to its content. Only talks about beliefs in the last 30 minutes of the book
- little practical/applicable insight to be derived from the book
- his assertions like genes don't impact on outcomes, but only on perceptions is rubbish (its not either/or, but both). He doesn't even make the obvious connection that beliefs influence perception
I'd rate this a 4.5 stars if I could. 2 stories in 1. A big scifi story and a fantasy story. Both entertaining. Looking forward to the next in the trilogy.
There was the seed of a really really great idea in this book about the meeting of humans from 2 different cultures; one based in the culture we know & another based in culture we might hope for. I spent the first half of the book excited to see how the inevitable clash would be resolved. Unfortunately it was relatively clumsily done with any possible philosophical nourishment left on the floor replaced instead with generic action.
Rather slow and clumsy and boring. I won't bother reading any more from this author.
Not a great intro to IFS. Simplistic, so repetitive and kinda naive. You could pick up the concepts that this book delivers in an article or 2. Recommend looking elsewhere if you want to learn more about IFS or if you are looking for a tool for “Self therapy”.
easy to get into & engaging enough to keep me interested to the end. Not especially memorable.
A well thought-through technothriller. It doesn't need AI to make its premise conceivable that technology could effectively rule us. Characters & dialog are nothing special but the plot is great.
Some interesting stories but I think the underlying conceptual framework of rider, elephant and path is weak. Not recommended.
David Goggins has a mountain-sized will. His capacity to push through & beyond discomfort is an inspiration. I found that reading his first book inspired me to challenge my own capacity for discomfort.
This book is more of the same; pretty much exactly the same but with extra dozes of macho. But whereas the first book chronicled some transformation in who he was, this book just reveals a man who seems disgusted by himself & this fuels an anger that manifests as mighty will.
I wouldn't want my kids turning out like David Goggins although I hope he might inspire them with challenging their own self-imposed boundaries of what they can endure as surely the capacity to forbear discomfort is an essential ability of growth. And there are several others that you won't find here. If you haven't read either of his books I would recommend the first, & this one has entertainment value but is not a healthy model to live by.