"The most profound and far-reaching book I have ever read"
George Monbiot | January 31, 2018
Stepping Back from the Brink
We know we are in the midst of climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Yet we seem constitutionally incapable of acting on this knowledge...
So what stops us from responding? For years, I’ve suspected that the cause runs even deeper than the power of big business and the official obsession with economic growth, potent as these forces are. Now, thanks to the most profound and far-reaching book I have ever read, I feel I’m beginning to understand what it might be.
Jeremy Lent’s The Patterning Instinct was published a few months ago, but it has taken me this long to process, as almost every page caused me to rethink what I held to be true. Bringing together cultural history with neuroscience, Lent develops a new discipline he calls cognitive history.
Read more...
So what stops us from responding? For years, I’ve suspected that the cause runs even deeper than the power of big business and the official obsession with economic growth, potent as these forces are. Now, thanks to the most profound and far-reaching book I have ever read, I feel I’m beginning to understand what it might be.
Jeremy Lent’s The Patterning Instinct was published a few months ago, but it has taken me this long to process, as almost every page caused me to rethink what I held to be true. Bringing together cultural history with neuroscience, Lent develops a new discipline he calls cognitive history.
Read more...
"Such an important, necessary, and wise book"
BBC Radio 4 | A Good Read, November 27, 2018 | John Higgs
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John Higgs, novelist, journalist, and cultural historian, chose The Patterning Instinct as his favorite book on the BBC Radio 4 talk show, A Good Read.
Here's what he had to say: “It was just such an important, necessary, and wise book that I wanted to tell people about it… It knocks you out of all the ruts of your thinking. "We suddenly get an answer to questions like why we’re not doing anything about climate change, how our way of thinking prevents us. And what’s inspiring and hopeful about the book is that it reiterates how quickly these things can change. In a generation or so, we can adopt completely different subconscious metaphors and act differently in the world. I want everybody to read it!” |
"Joining the dots between points in history and culture"
New Scientist, May 24, 2017 | Pat Kane
"AS THE daily turbulence of politics, economics, environmental change and religion rages around us, there is an understandable marketplace for books that look at the bigger picture. Jeremy Lent’s The Patterning Instinct does just that, joining the dots between points in history and culture, identifying echoes and consiliences across the natural and social sciences...
"Similar to Yuval Noah Harari’s recent, and equally expansive, Homo Deus, Lent’s book seeks some perspective on our modern juggernaut of radical innovation and global polarisation... "But while Harari’s no-self Buddhism comes close to exulting in the way humankind will be overtaken by intelligent algorithms, Lent finds a place for connecting, meaning-seeking humans in this complex future." Read more... Vertical Divider
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