This is my second book by Douglas Murray, after [b:The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam|33584231|The Strange Death of Europe Immigration, Identity, Islam|Douglas Murray|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1497968929l/33584231._SY75_.jpg|54396772]. I first learned about him several years ago when he organized a poetry competition on the topic of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in response to the Böhmermann affair. He is very British in his defence of liberal values, free speech above all, with a great sense of humour, a true product of the British academia.

Again, I may not agree with everything he says, but I like books by provocative authors, as long as they make some sense. This was a thought-provoking and very on point book about the state of things in academia and the majority of media today.

Douglas Murray is not a typical conservative, he is gay and an atheist. That is why I was really interested in what he has to say on this topic. Some chapters were better ("Gay") than the others ("Race"). The thing I found lacking was that a lot of the argument was anecdotal and based on the black hole that is social media, esp. Twitter. The truth is, many leftist authors fall in the same trap.
I expected a deeper dig into the causes of the rise of the new SJW "orthodoxy". Still, I think Murray is very brave to have published a book like this. For the traditional right, this book is way too liberal, and it is very critical of the left, which leaves Murray with few allies (even though his other book got him a lot of right-wing fans). ( )

The author raises many interesting points at the heart of our contemporary moral landscape, he identifies logical inconsistencies between values and scientific fact, and he makes a strong point about how media, culture and politics are driven by the sensational rather than the useful and reasonable.

However, I remain disappointed in the half-baked thinking. Here we have neo-rationalist thinking that does not think beyond its tools. What you are reading and learning about is the instrumentation of words, the discussion about what they mean, without acknowledging that everything we do is made of the same words.

Specifically:
- While the author complains about sensationalization of information as distorting our reasoning, he himself leverages the same mechanism when identifying moral contradictions. And he never admits that perhaps his own sensationalization might lead to even more of a fight rather than the reasoned practical solutions he advocates.
- He takes on board research such as IQ and race without even for one moment worrying about definitions. This research is not problematic because of its methodology, it is divisive, unproductive and confusing because it relies on language that is not well defined. Most people do not realize we do not have clear definitions of neither intelligence nor race. So ultimately we are measuring cultural stereotypes ability to give rise to cultural stereotypes.

I believe the author has the potential to be a great informer and transformer if he were to work from establishing operational consensus definitions of his terminology rather that spending a book trying to give rise to inflammatory counter cultural exploits. ( )

This non-fiction book is well written and I found its clearly defines and describes the causes, inconsistencies and illogical philosophies of popular modern thinking regarding gender, race and identity. The book is well worth a read to put "flesh on the bones" on what most people of common sense would feel intuitively is right and wrong with how the zeitgeist portray feminism, racism and trans. The book is quite readable and I imagine would give some solace to the silent majority that they are not alone in an increasingly crazy world. The main flaw with the book is that a clear path out of this madness is not suggested. ( )

It is rather sad time when from open, resilient society we end up as society divided, non-resilient, terrified to openly communicate and reigned in by ever present danger of scandal and social ostracism. Bombarded by ever stranger statements and catastrophic predictions through ever so bombast media outlets one is forced to weigh pros and cons when it comes to reacting and asking questions. And soon it becomes obvious that silence becomes a gold standard (otherwise one could end up in such a predicament that his very survival might come in question). With this forced silence of majority our new prophets gain strength and become more and more convinced they are right and very soon all their statements become imbued with religious fervor. And no good ever comes out of that.

Is it not strange that today's calls for ostracizing someone from the society or professional groups, because he or she did not follow the guidelines of that very hour or raised touchy questions, are very reminiscent of the people being stoned in what we like to call less enlighten eras? Reason is very simple - once passion is involved (and religion is a passion because it relies on emotions and blind belief which we call faith) reason leaves all the people involved. Passion is quite the opposite to what everybody seems to cherish nowadays but usually don't follow - reason. Truth is without passion common things such as love and affection would not exist (imagine robot-like individuals weighing factors like ability to give birth, long life (or short), height, weight etc ... horrible). To be humans we need passion but we must not let it loose like a wildfire in our everyday activities. And when I say religion I don't just think religion - I mean all movements, political and social, that encourage passion and blind belief (Stalin and Hitler first come to mind here but period of French Revolution also has its share of weird and terrifying characters that ruled by terror).

I think most dangerous things ever said are "Be passionate about your " - where x ranges from work, interests, to ones beliefs, and "Follow your own truth". Once passion takes over, reason leaves. For good. And in that utter mayhem, main issues, true problems that need solving, get scattered to four corners of the world to be forgotten by everyone. And by relativizing truth we enter the truly dangerous place - because if there are multiple truths (or as one political activist says in recent documentary about false news - philosophy will tell you there is no truth) then we break the very foundation of the civilized society. If there is no truth but this is left to interpretation then laws and rules cannot function.

And this is what this book is about - loud, modern day prophets, self righteous to the extreme, using true social issues to start the upheaval but very soon diverting from the path to actually solve the problems, because without problems what would happen to them, what would be their raison d'etre? If this reminds you (again) of religion you are right. It was only with breaking the central control over ones spiritual life (rise of Protestantism in the west) and notion that between individual and higher power there is no need for intermediaries (priests, prophets) that societies could move to secularism (long process lasting several hundred years). But it seems this has left empty space in people and they need to fill it. In any way possible. They need a goal in life and to achieve this they will chose any idea, anything that can give them meaning and thus new religion is born.

Author writes in a very clear way and points to the danger of constant rise of movements that are originally based on actual problems but very soon deviate to the point of even ostracizing members that are actually working on problem solutions and where even founding members (as can best be seen in truly weird developments and actions of new feminists against original ones - I haven't seen better description of saying that revolutions devour their own children). These movements use what might be called society politeness - letting everyone speak about their problems, publicly, unopposed - only to force everyone with after-comment to shut down, to the point of having them humiliated and even socially degraded if their answers are found to be "subversive to the idea". Supported all the time by media constantly on the lookout for scandals and bombastic, catastrophic predictions they successfully manage to silence down every opposition (be it true or imagined)

We live in a very interesting times (which is not such a good thing if one recalls the famous Chinese proverb). If we allow bullies to push us around we will end in a very unpleasant world. Some might call it "new normal" but in true it is "new abnormal". Allowing oneself to live in constant fear is self demeaning and rots one from within. It is the ultimate step to de-humanization and this is not something we should aim for.

Since there is no ad-hoc solution to this my only hope is that reason will prevail and that these movements will accept communication and conversation as tools to communicate with differently opinionated people instead of just stepping over them. It will require time because people do not relinquish the power they are given (just look at bureaucrats worldwide during this pandemic), and these movements wield tremendous power, unprecedented in reach, but it needs to be done. Otherwise, as author states, if discussion is off the desk then only thing that can result is violence. And this is something that needs to be avoided.

Excellent book, very troubling. Highly recommended to everyone trying to figure out what is happening around us (which was case with me). ( )

This book is comprised of four chapters: Gay, Women, Race, and Trans and discusses the current state of society with respect to each as well as what the social justice movement demands. But for me, the gems of the book were found in the interludes which address Marxism, Technology, and Forgiveness.

I'm really not one for reading political books because they are always biased, and I believe it isn't hard to build a case for anything to support your own beliefs. What I liked about this book is that the tone is very even handed, laced with some wit. It made me think about these issues, but to be honest, there's a lot of anecdote, and for me, anecdote, even when bundled all together, is interesting, but somehow I always think that I could collect a slew of anecdotes that make the opposite point. Here, most of these anecdotes were well covered in the media, so they didn't really illuminate much that I didn't already know.

Where Murray makes some great observations is the role of technology and the lack of forgiveness in today's culture and how both of those are a game changer. I almost think the whole book is worth reading for those two chapters.

But the solutions? Well, they are limited because our world is inherently politicized to the point of ridiculous. It's really unhealthy, and I do believe the only way to really enjoy one's life is to embrace other things (art, reading, sports, family, pets) and stop catastrophizing. But so long as power can be obtained through the use of fear, the politicization of society will not stop. And now, we have the giant megaphone of the internet to blast every idea, good or bad, to all. As Murray says in the end:

"But of all the ways in which people can find meaning in their lives, politics - let alone politics on such a scale - is one of the unhappiest. . .because finding purpose in politics laces politics with a passion - including a rage - that perverts the whole enterprise." ( )