Brooks’ core argument is that the vast majority of us have very little understanding of why we make the choices we do, and that we’re influenced instead by peer pressure; impulsive and reactive emotions; a deep and bottomless need for admiration and status; overconfidence in the present; excessive worry about the future; the evolutionary instinct to avoid pain and move towards pleasure; and precious little capacity to delay gratification.

“The unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind,” Brooks writes. “[They have] a processing capacity 200,000 times greater than the conscious mind.” Tragically, this interior domain remains largely terra incognita, a vast unexplored territory full of resources and potentials we haven’t begun to tame or to tap.

We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know - Tony Schwartz

Sounds like a text I need to read. Also, from the same write-up:

“What Brooks argues for, and embodies in his writing, is something he calls “epistemological modesty” — substituting humility for hubris. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. Modesty is warranted, Brooks argues, because there is so much of ourselves we don’t and can’t know. “People with this disposition believe that wisdom begins with an awareness of our own ignorance,” he explains.”

Source: blogs.hbr.org

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  1. jslr posted this