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pineconek 's review for:
A toughie to rate, as I'm torn between healthy skepticism and a strong sense of "go off, king".
Do I agree with everything the Mates posit? No. Do I appreciate the amount of nuance, compassion, and curious exploration offered in this book? Yes yes yes.
Gabor and Daniel (we're first name basis besties now, but besties that disagree sometimes) present an extremely comprehensive thesis about the toxicity of stress and our twenty first century late stage capitalistic culture. They touch on intersectionality, alienation, abject dismissal of alternate points of view, polarization, trauma relativism, and a bunch of other stuff that makes this book feel so modern and grounded in early 2020s. This book is a time capsule of our cultures experience with covid, a housing crisis, political theatre, billionaire oligarchy, search for meaning, the rise of wellness influencers and ahyuasca tourism, the obvious cracks in our burdened medical system, etc etc etc.
It's a huge book in scope and spans so much, from telomeres to Trump, from naloxone to Nazis. It's also an extremely bleak book, but that discusses the importance of acceptance of the bleakness. And acceptance not as tolerance, complacency, or endorsement...but simply as the opposite of denial. It's a book that champions authenticity while offering the nuance that said authenticity will look different for everyone. The author invites us to disagree with him (which in many places I do) but to do so while engaging with him and, broadly, with each other.
Having finished the book, I feel hopeful and largely want to criticize the title. I didn't feel like the book's central tenant was "none of us are normal/there's no such thing as normal" but, rather: "we can all be healed", where healing means wholeness not cure. And while one part of me wants to dismiss that as woowoo, another part of me embraces it wholy, and I feel comfortable holding that dialectic.
Recommended if you're looking for food for thought about our overarching psychosocial milieu, want to entertain ideas that you may end up disagreeing with (and are ok being upset by some of them), and want to increase your appreciation for how our experiences in this world shape us for better or worse. A feat of a book I can't help but give five stars to.
More thoughts here: https://youtu.be/iNUD3wZlu7w
Do I agree with everything the Mates posit? No. Do I appreciate the amount of nuance, compassion, and curious exploration offered in this book? Yes yes yes.
Gabor and Daniel (we're first name basis besties now, but besties that disagree sometimes) present an extremely comprehensive thesis about the toxicity of stress and our twenty first century late stage capitalistic culture. They touch on intersectionality, alienation, abject dismissal of alternate points of view, polarization, trauma relativism, and a bunch of other stuff that makes this book feel so modern and grounded in early 2020s. This book is a time capsule of our cultures experience with covid, a housing crisis, political theatre, billionaire oligarchy, search for meaning, the rise of wellness influencers and ahyuasca tourism, the obvious cracks in our burdened medical system, etc etc etc.
It's a huge book in scope and spans so much, from telomeres to Trump, from naloxone to Nazis. It's also an extremely bleak book, but that discusses the importance of acceptance of the bleakness. And acceptance not as tolerance, complacency, or endorsement...but simply as the opposite of denial. It's a book that champions authenticity while offering the nuance that said authenticity will look different for everyone. The author invites us to disagree with him (which in many places I do) but to do so while engaging with him and, broadly, with each other.
Having finished the book, I feel hopeful and largely want to criticize the title. I didn't feel like the book's central tenant was "none of us are normal/there's no such thing as normal" but, rather: "we can all be healed", where healing means wholeness not cure. And while one part of me wants to dismiss that as woowoo, another part of me embraces it wholy, and I feel comfortable holding that dialectic.
Recommended if you're looking for food for thought about our overarching psychosocial milieu, want to entertain ideas that you may end up disagreeing with (and are ok being upset by some of them), and want to increase your appreciation for how our experiences in this world shape us for better or worse. A feat of a book I can't help but give five stars to.
More thoughts here: https://youtu.be/iNUD3wZlu7w