Category: Reviews
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Book Review: Humble Inquiry
Edgar H. Schein assumes in Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling that his readers are from the U.S. He refers, for example, to “our” task-oriented pragmatic culture throughout the book. And when discussing the main inhibitor of Humble Inquiry (Chapter 4) he only discusses the U.S. culture. This means that Schein…
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Book Review: Life on the Edge
Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology by Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden is a popular science book about a very fascinating research area – quantum biology – which is moving very fast, on many fronts. I fully understand that a huge amount of details need to be omitted in a…
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Book Review: Synchronicity
Synchronicity: The Marriage of Matter and Psyche by David Peat introduces the concept of synchronicity. Three chapters are about Sigmund Freud (pp. 27–32), Carl Jung (pp. 33–47), and Wolfgang Pauli (pp. 48–63). David Peat is a former theoretical physicist, and Wolfgang Pauli was a theoretical physicist, so many other physicists are mentioned in the book,…
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Book Review: Who am I?
Steven Reiss had a life-threatening illness which led him to rethink what makes life meaningful. His research formed the basis of his book Who am I?: The 16 Basic Desires That Motivate Our Actions and Define Our Personality. Steven Reiss describes at length the 16 basic desires1 that he identified together with Susan Havercamp: Power…
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Book Review: Wirearchy
Wirearchy: Sketches for the Future of Work is an ebook by the Wirearchy Commons. The persons who have contributed to the book are (in alphabetical order) Thierry de Baillon, Jon Husband, Harold Jarche, Valdis Krebs, Richard Martin, Jane McConnell, Anne-Marie McEwan, Robert Paterson, Luis Suarez, and Frederic Williquet. Jon Husband coined the term wirearchy in…
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Book Review: Mindsight
Mindsight: Transform Your Brain with the New Science of Kindness by Daniel Siegel is about the “kind of focused attention that allows us to see the internal workings of our own minds” (p.xi). The book is based on “three fundamental principles” (p.xiv): (1) mindsight is a “learnable skill” (p.xiv), (2) developing mindsight changes “the physical…
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Book Review: Dark Night Early Dawn
Christopher Bache explores the “deep ecology of mind as it reveals itself in nonordinary states” in Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind (p.16). Bache’s contention is that “we need to expand our frame of reference beyond the individual human being and look to the living systems the individual is part…
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Book Review: Global Brain
Global Brain: The Evolution of the Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century by Howard Bloom is a well-written book, but the problem I have with it is that there are too many ‘mechanical’ or ‘computerized’ analogies in the book — and I think that these analogies lead the thinking (and understanding) in…
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Book Review: Sky Above, Earth Below
Principles John Milton wrote Sky Above, Earth Below: Spiritual Practice in Nature in the hope that the practices and principles he shares will “greatly enrich your life” (p.229). Over the years he has identified the following principles for natural liberation (pp.8—15): The fundamental truth: All forms are interconnected, constantly change, and continuously arise from and…
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Book Review: Talking to the Enemy
Introduction When Scott Atran is asked to summarize his book Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What it Means to Be Human in one sentence, he answers: “People, including terrorists, don’t simply die for a cause; they die for each other, especially their friends” (p.478). Of the many millions “who express support…