49 pages • 1 hour read
Rutger BregmanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Bregman describes how in 1954, a psychologist named Leon Festinger investigated a Chicago doomsday cult that predicted that they would be rescued by flying saucers late that year while the rest of the world be destroyed. When the end did not come, the believers devised rationalizations that reinforced their preexisting beliefs rather than confronting an obvious, if unpleasant, truth. Core beliefs are powerful, and when something challenges them, people become highly resistant to persuasion—and education can make them better skilled at defending those opinions rather than questioning them in the light of new evidence. Bregman confesses to treating information contrary to own convictions as an adversary to be bested rather than a chance to revise his beliefs. This raises the question of how ideas can change the world; they obviously have, since ideas have changed the world in countless and extraordinary ways over time, yet worldviews at any given time resist even minor challenges. Group pressure can be highly effective in maintaining beliefs, even patently false ones, but loud dissent can also encourage people to trust their own perceptions. Massive shocks should make people more amenable to changing their minds, but after the financial crisis of 2008, all attempts at serious reform to Wall Street failed, and
Books on Justice & Injustice
View Collection
Business & Economics
View Collection
Challenging Authority
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Community
View Collection
Contemporary Books on Social Justice
View Collection
Education
View Collection
Equality
View Collection
Globalization
View Collection
Memorial Day Reads
View Collection
Military Reads
View Collection
Philosophy, Logic, & Ethics
View Collection
Politics & Government
View Collection
Power
View Collection
Science & Nature
View Collection
Sociology
View Collection