This freewheeling tour of human history and psychic life\u2014by a professor of political science at the University of Chicago\u2014invites us to think about our inner beings. The human \u201cself\u201d is no real thing out there, Oliver argues, but rather a complex construction of social, religious, and political institutions. The ancient Greek dictum, \u201cknow thyself,\u201d really meant something more like \u201cknow your place\u201d\u2014know what your role is in the world and in the cosmos. So, too, Eastern religious traditions do not offer up a vision of an inner being as much as they guide ways of living in a changing world. Oliver interlards reflections on psychology and history with personal accounts of growing up and learning yoga. He weighs in, sometimes judiciously, sometimes superficially, on such current debates as the role of medication in mental health, the possibilities and pitfalls of psychedelics, the history of psychotherapy, and the rewards of meditation. \u201cWe\u2019re typically the authors of our own distress,\u201d he writes. Owning that authorship becomes the start of self-discovery. Oliver admits that his book is \u201can odd hybrid\u2026part applied philosophy, part popular science, part intellectual history, and part \u2018thinking person\u2019s self-help\u2019 book.\u201d Based on a class he has taught at the University of Chicago, the book captures the tone of the charismatic professor. His advice will remain familiar to many: accept life\u2019s challenges, don\u2019t panic, think of others, go with the flow. He offers, ultimately, a vision of \u201ctranscendent loving\u201d: \u201cdeliberately confronting our limitations\u201d and \u201cstriving to rise above ourselves.\u201d The final lesson of the book is \u201cletting go,\u201d to live courageously with life\u2019s uncertainties.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This freewheeling tour of human history and psychic life\u2014by a professor of political science at the University of Chicago\u2014invites us to think about our inner beings. The human \u201cself\u201d is no real thing out there, Oliver argues, but rather a complex construction of social, religious, and political institutions. The ancient Greek dictum, \u201cknow thyself,\u201d really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}