This is an enjoyable personal view of how we got to where we are, and how paranoia and a loss of value became so pervasive.
He mentions the collapse of so much psychological research, but still uses quite a lot of it, including Skinner's behaviourism, which is a bit of a disappointment, but the broader arc makes sense.
I've marked this as containing a 'spoiler', to avoid disappointing anybody who is looking for suspense, but what struck me forcibly throughout, and is, pretty much his conclusion is that the ætiology of much of what is depressing about the way we are is corruption. Not just pure corruption, but things like the corruption of google's high ideals into feeding advertising and consumerism.
Everything tried so far has failed, foundering mainly on the rock of corruption.
So there's a job here, for a philosopher, or a new Marx, Bakunin, Adam Smith, or Plato to use complexity theory, orsomething else, to eliminate corruption.
He mentions the collapse of so much psychological research, but still uses quite a lot of it, including Skinner's behaviourism, which is a bit of a disappointment, but the broader arc makes sense.
I've marked this as containing a 'spoiler', to avoid disappointing anybody who is looking for suspense, but what struck me forcibly throughout, and is, pretty much his conclusion is that the ætiology of much of what is depressing about the way we are is corruption. Not just pure corruption, but things like the corruption of google's high ideals into feeding advertising and consumerism.
Everything tried so far has failed, foundering mainly on the rock of corruption.
So there's a job here, for a philosopher, or a new Marx, Bakunin, Adam Smith, or Plato to use complexity theory, orsomething else, to eliminate corruption.