{"product_id":"life-death-and-other-inconvenient-truths-isbn-9780262044356","title":"Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truths","description":"\u003cb\u003eA reference book for making sense of life—from action (good except when it's not) to thinking (depressing) to youth (a treasure).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book offers a guide to human nature and human experience—a reference book for making sense of life. In thirty-eight short, interconnected essays, Shimon Edelman considers the parameters of the human condition, addressing them in alphabetical order, from action (good except when it's not) to love (only makes sense to the lovers) to thinking (should not be so depressing) to youth (a treasure). In a style that is by turns personal and philosophical, at once informative and entertaining, Edelman offers a series of illuminating takes on the most important aspects of living in the world. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEdelman avoids reductive synthesis, staying clear of both exuberance and negativity. Drawing on an eclectic range of sources—quoting from a pre-Islamic Bedouin poem on one page, from Gogol on the next, citing both Borges and Marx—Edelman offers insights into the bright and dark sides of our nature. About anxiety, he observes, “All sentient beings are capable of physiological stress response, but it takes special skills to also do anxiety.” Happiness is “a commodity that Americans pursue with almost as much verve as oil.” Human language, on the other hand, is “an essential window into the sublime.” All in all, human nature has much room for improvement. Working out ways to improve it, accompanied by this guide, is an exercise for the reader.\u003c\/p\u003ePreface xiii \u003cbr\u003e Executive Summary: A Rhyming Lore of the Human Condition xvii \u003cbr\u003e 1 Action 1 \u003cbr\u003e The native hue of resolution. The pale cast of thought. And lose the name   of action. \u003cbr\u003e 2 Ambition 5 \u003cbr\u003e Pelf and place. A small goat. \u003cbr\u003e 3 Anxiety 9 \u003cbr\u003e Possession. What you know you don’t know can hurt you. What—me worry?   Yes.\u003cbr\u003e 4 Beauty 13 \u003cbr\u003e The imminence of a revelation. Evolutionary bait and switch. Between the   world and a grain of sand. The pathos of things. The seven sad senses of   beauty. \u003cbr\u003e 5 Children (The Raising of) 19 \u003cbr\u003e Be good. Plan B. Other ways to be. \u003cbr\u003e 6 Complexity 23 \u003cbr\u003e The dark forest. A spotlight shines on an enigma. Back in the forest.   \u003cbr\u003e 7 Consciousness 29 \u003cbr\u003e The Tempest in a teapot. The insubstantial pageant. We are such stuff as   dreams are made on. The splendor and the misery. \u003cbr\u003e 8 Death 35 \u003cbr\u003e The tragic sense of life. The Switch. Still The Switch. Only in silence the   word. \u003cbr\u003e 9 Empathy 41 \u003cbr\u003e To em or not to em. Us and Them. From ordinary household objects. \u003cbr\u003e 10 Emptiness 45 \u003cbr\u003e Einstein meets the Buddha. Enter Borges. \u003cbr\u003e 11 Evolution 49\u003cbr\u003e The mountains and the monsoon. A universal history of iniquity. Definitely   maybe. \u003cbr\u003e 12 Existence 55 \u003cbr\u003e A bit of Talmudic existentialism. I think, therefore I ache. The   mindfulness ruse. \u003cbr\u003e 13 Fear 59\u003cbr\u003e Where the wild things are. True grit. We have seen the enemy. \u003cbr\u003e 14 Free Will 63\u003cbr\u003e Complications. Misapprehension. Chance. Necessity. Implications. \u003cbr\u003e 15 Happiness 69 \u003cbr\u003e Machineries of joy and sorrow. Happiness fast and slow. The dark side of   happiness. \u003cbr\u003e 16 Home 73 \u003cbr\u003e No home. No homeland. No rest. No end. \u003cbr\u003e 17 Language 79 \u003cbr\u003e The tentacles of intent. The Ring of Fire. Gaming the Game. Big Two-Hearted   River. \u003cbr\u003e 18 Love 87 \u003cbr\u003e What a lovely way to burn. Che cosa e amor. Tuqburni. \u003cbr\u003e 19 Mathematics 93 \u003cbr\u003e Unreasonable effectiveness. Ineffectiveness of reason. But time and chance   happeneth to them all. \u003cbr\u003e 20 Memory 99\u003cbr\u003e The waters of Naihe. Some work of noble note. Across the universe. The Time   Warp again. All memory and fate. \u003cbr\u003e 21 Morality 105 \u003cbr\u003e Silentio Dei. On the genealogy of morals. Human, all too human. Away from   Omelas. \u003cbr\u003e 22 Old Age 113 \u003cbr\u003e Comfortably numb. Catabasis. Cassandra’s golden years. Volver. \u003cbr\u003e 23 Parents (The Liberation from) 119 \u003cbr\u003e Be good. Be you. Be back. \u003cbr\u003e 24 Perception 123 \u003cbr\u003e Use your illusion. Umwelten. How things really are.\u003cbr\u003e  25 Politics 129 \u003cbr\u003e The tools of the trade. A shining city on the hill. Into the catacombs.   News from Nowhere. \u003cbr\u003e 26 Power 137 \u003cbr\u003e The great chains of being. The invisible hand. Beyond Freedom and   Dignity.\u003cbr\u003e 27 Poverty 141 \u003cbr\u003e Cui bono? Double double jeopardy. UBI bene? \u003cbr\u003e 28 Regret 145 \u003cbr\u003e Nothing, really? The ledger. Fools and heroes. \u003cbr\u003e 29 Religion 149 \u003cbr\u003e A rose by any other name. Hanging onto the tiger’s tail. The heart of a   heartless world. Pride and prejudice. \u003cbr\u003e 30 Science 155 \u003cbr\u003e Truth to power. The two towers. Power-proofing science. \u003cbr\u003e 31 Stupidity 159 \u003cbr\u003e Human, all too human. An eclipse of common sense. The wages of folly. Worse   than a fool. The stupidity of crowds. The unholy trinity. \u003cbr\u003e 32 Suffering 165\u003cbr\u003e Mindsets. Varieties. Mechanisms. Options. \u003cbr\u003e 33 Technology 171 \u003cbr\u003e Comfortably numb. The fiery sword. Cura te ipsum. \u003cbr\u003e 34 Thinking 175 \u003cbr\u003e Transitional. Treacherous. Transgressional. \u003cbr\u003e 35 Time 181 \u003cbr\u003e The sandstorm. Faster, slower, true. The tyranny of now. The arrow of time.   \u003cbr\u003e 36 Truth 185 \u003cbr\u003e A melancholy pearl. Ministries of information. Into the well. \u003cbr\u003e 37 War 189 \u003cbr\u003e A room with a view. After Babel. Blowing in the wind. \u003cbr\u003e 38 Youth 195 \u003cbr\u003e Another difficult dilemma. Silver spoon or not. Choice and chance. Janus   introversus. \u003cbr\u003e Afterword 201 \u003cbr\u003e Just dropped in (to see what condition my condition was in) \u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments 203 \u003cbr\u003e Notes 205\u003cbr\u003e References 271 \u003cbr\u003e Index 311\"This work will be welcomed by any reader interested in the complexity of the human condition, and will especially appeal to students of the arts and literature, psychology, and ethics.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e— \u003ci\u003eCHOICE\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eShimon Edelman is Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eComputing the Mind\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Happiness of Pursuit\u003c\/i\u003e, and other books.Our brains, bodies, and behavior are the products of a long history of interplay among the many factors that have determined the course of life of each of our ancestors, going back billions of years. How those lives were lived is now water under the bridge. Out of each individual’s entire life, the only thing of any consequence for evolution is the bottom line: their fitness, which is a measure of how effective their lineup of genes and their cultural repertoire are at replication.\u003cbr\u003e Neither bodily perfection, nor subjective well-being are optimized by selection based on fitness. This simple fact should cut short any complaints about various deplorable aspects of our physique or about the paucity of HAPPINESS in our lives. Railing at evolution is as pointless as throwing a tantrum at the elements: one may end up as laughingstock for the ages, like Xerxes, the Persian king who ordered the waters of the Hellespont to be given 300 lashes and branded with red-hot iron for obstructing his invasion of Greece. Still, keeping a record of the iniquities that have been visited upon us by evolution makes sense: it may help us understand what we are and why, and perhaps eventually act on this understanding. \u003cbr\u003e The list of regrettable traits that evolution has saddled us with runs long. Some of these—teeth instead of a nice beak; a wobbly stack of vertebrae instead of an exoskeleton—are mentioned in chapter 22, which is about OLD AGE, a condition that makes one really feel some of evolution’s worst screw-ups. Quite a few others come to mind. On the bodily side, the list includes, in addition to teeth and the spinal column, the useless appendix and the inane anatomy of shoulders and knees. On the side of behavior and culture, I find particularly lamentable the traits that underlie discord between adolescent CHILDREN and their PARENTS, due in part to the evolution sanctioned drive for territorial dispersal. \u003cbr\u003e A revealing illustration of how closely intertwined biological and cultural evolutionary processes are is the case of pain. It is commonly thought that pain signals tissue damage, but there is more to it. There are striking differences in how humans and other animals experience pain. A deer with a broken leg appears much less affected by it than a human with the same predicament (which I know from personal experience, having once broken a leg and, on another occasion, both clavicles). A compelling explanation of this difference may be found in our ultrasociality: humans, but not deer, have come to depend in their survival on help from their conspecifics. In the woods, a lame deer would do well to keep quiet, lest it attracts wolves; a human with a broken leg can reasonably hope to be carried away by the rest of the foraging party before the wolves arrive. \u003cbr\u003e Even if similar reasons can be found for other types of pain too, they would not justify our continued susceptibility to SUFFERING—neither with regard to our evolutionary fitness, nor with regard to our well-being or HAPPINESS. Our social environment and our TECHNOLOGY are now such that experiencing agony that makes us scream would appear to be unnecessary. When I was lying on my back with two broken clavicles after flying off my bike, the driver of a passing car called an ambulance; any screaming on my part would have only interfered with the paramedics’ work. On my solo hikes in the wilderness, where no one can hear you scream, I make a point of keeping my satellite communications device where I can reach it even after a fall. And if my ache is mental, I know where to find help. And yet, I can hardly hope to be as serene as a deer in the face of pain or suffering.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303831589093,"sku":"NP9780262044356","price":26.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262044356.jpg?v=1767731425","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/life-death-and-other-inconvenient-truths-isbn-9780262044356","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}