Download or read book The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself written by Robin Reames and published by . This book was released on 2024-03-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How rhetoric--the art of persuasion--can help us navigate an age of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and political acrimony The discipline of rhetoric was the keystone of Western education for over two thousand years. Only recently has its perceived importance faded. In this book, renowned rhetorical scholar Robin Reames argues that, in today's polarized political climate, we should all care deeply about learning rhetoric. Drawing on examples ranging from the destructive ancient Greek demagogue Alcibiades to modern-day conspiracists like Alex Jones, Reames breaks down the major techniques of rhetoric, pulling back the curtain on how politicians, journalists, and "journalists" convince us to believe what we believe--and to talk, vote, and act accordingly. Understanding these techniques helps us avoid being manipulated by authority figures who don't have our best interests at heart. It also grants us rare insight into the values that shape our own beliefs. Learning rhetoric, Reames argues, doesn't teach us what to think but how to think--allowing us to understand our own and others' ideological commitments in a completely new way. Thoughtful, nuanced, and leavened with dry humor, The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself offers an antidote to our polarized, post-truth world.
Download or read book The Ancient Art of Thinking For Yourself written by Robin Reames and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2024-03-19 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How rhetoric—the art of persuasion—can help us navigate an age of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and political acrimony The discipline of rhetoric was the keystone of Western education for over two thousand years. Only recently has its perceived importance faded. In this book, renowned rhetorical scholar Robin Reames argues that, in today’s polarized political climate, we should all care deeply about learning rhetoric. Drawing on examples ranging from the destructive ancient Greek demagogue Alcibiades to modern-day conspiracists like Alex Jones, Reames breaks down the major techniques of rhetoric, pulling back the curtain on how politicians, journalists, and “journalists” convince us to believe what we believe—and to talk, vote, and act accordingly. Understanding these techniques helps us avoid being manipulated by authority figures who don’t have our best interests at heart. It also grants us rare insight into the values that shape our own beliefs. Learning rhetoric, Reames argues, doesn’t teach us what to think but how to think—allowing us to understand our own and others’ ideological commitments in a completely new way. Thoughtful, nuanced, and leavened with dry humor, The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself offers an antidote to our polarized, post-truth world.
Download or read book How to Keep an Open Mind written by Sextus Empiricus and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How ancient skepticism can help you attain tranquility by learning to suspend judgment Along with Stoicism and Epicureanism, Skepticism is one of the three major schools of ancient Greek philosophy that claim to offer a way of living as well as thinking. How to Keep an Open Mind provides an unmatched introduction to skepticism by presenting a fresh, modern translation of key passages from the writings of Sextus Empiricus, the only Greek skeptic whose works have survived. While content in daily life to go along with things as they appear to be, Sextus advocated—and provided a set of techniques to achieve—a radical suspension of judgment about the way things really are, believing that such nonjudging can be useful for challenging the unfounded dogmatism of others and may help one achieve a state of calm and tranquility. In an introduction, Richard Bett makes the case that the most important lesson we can draw from Sextus’s brand of skepticism today may be an ability to see what can be said on the other side of any issue, leading to a greater open-mindedness. Complete with the original Greek on facing pages, How to Keep an Open Mind offers a compelling antidote to the closed-minded dogmatism of today’s polarized world.
Download or read book Thinking for Yourself written by Marlys Mayfield and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Secret written by Rhonda Byrne and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-07-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tenth-anniversary edition of the book that changed lives in profound ways, now with a new foreword and afterword. In 2006, a groundbreaking feature-length film revealed the great mystery of the universe—The Secret—and, later that year, Rhonda Byrne followed with a book that became a worldwide bestseller. Fragments of a Great Secret have been found in the oral traditions, in literature, in religions and philosophies throughout the centuries. For the first time, all the pieces of The Secret come together in an incredible revelation that will be life-transforming for all who experience it. In this book, you’ll learn how to use The Secret in every aspect of your life—money, health, relationships, happiness, and in every interaction you have in the world. You’ll begin to understand the hidden, untapped power that’s within you, and this revelation can bring joy to every aspect of your life. The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers—men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.
Download or read book The Skeptic Way written by Sextus (Empiricus.) and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 1996 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Outlines of Pyrrhonism by the 2nd century A.D. Greek physician Sextus Empiricus was immensely influential in the history of Western philosophy. The rediscovery and publication of this work in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led directly to the skepticism of Montaigne, Gassendi, Bayle, Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, and others, and eventually to the preoccupation of modern philosophy with attempts to refute or otherwise combat philosophical skepticism. In recent years, however, it has become apparent that Pyrrhonism--the form of skepticism professed by Sextus--is in several important respects quite different from the modern forms of skepticism to which the writings of Sextus have given rise. Some of these differences are of particular philosophic interest because they seem to render the ancient form immune to many of the standard responses to skepticism that are made today. In this book, which incorporates a new translation of the Outlines in their entirety, Benson Mates presents Pyrrhonism not as a mere historical curiosity, as has often been done, but as a philosophical position eminently worthy of serious philosophical consideration here and now. His thorough introduction sets the stage by explaining what Pyrrhonism is and what it is not, and by contrasting it in the relevant respects with modern skepticism. He gives particular attention to explicating a number of quasi-technical terms that occur frequently in the Outlines and have decisive bearing on the philosophical content. By rendering these terms more accurately and uniformly in his translation, he seeks to make the essential feautres of Sextus's Pyrrhonism more evident to the reader. The latter part of the book consists of a detailed Commentary, which endeavors to discuss and explain the work, section by section, from a philosophical (as contrasted with a philological) point of view.
Download or read book Stoicism and the Art of Happiness written by Donald Robertson and published by Teach Yourself. This book was released on 2018-09-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stoics lived a long time ago, but they had some startling insights into the human condition - insights which endure to this day. The philosophical tradition, founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in 301 BC, endured as an active movement for almost 500 years, and contributions from dazzling minds such as Cicero, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius helped create a body of thought with an extraordinary goal - to provide a rational, healthy way of living in harmony with the nature of the universe and in respect of our relationships with each other. In many ways a precursor to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Stoicism provides an armamentarium of strategies and techniques for developing psychological resilience, while celebrating all in life which is beautiful and important. By learning what stoicism is, you can revolutionise your life and learn how to seize the day, live happily and be a better person. This simple, empowering book shows how to use this ancient wisdom to make practical, positive changes to your life. Using thought-provoking case studies, highlighting key ideas and things to remember and providing tools for self-assessment, it demonstrates that Stoicism is a proven, profound pathway to happiness.
Download or read book The Art of Thinking Critically written by Albert Rutherford and published by Vdz. This book was released on 2020-08-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identify false information. Avoid getting tricked. Be quick-witted and insightful. Would you like to ask the right questions, come up with strong arguments, detect biases and irrational or illogical reasoning? But you don't know where to start learning these? The Art of Thinking Critically will help you with that! Using the brightest ideas and best practices of some of the greatest thinkers, you can become a self-thought critical thinker who doesn't accept things at face value. With the help of guided exercises, you will learn how to do your own research, think about information for yourself, and draw conclusions that stand true to you. Avoid being manipulated. Being surrounded by inaccurate and often misleading information can feel overwhelming. Become more astute and catch inconsistencies in others' reasoning, don't be misled. Learn to question, fact-check, and correct people without sounding offensive. - How to self-educate to think more critically. - Equip yourself with good questions and ideas on how to think for yourself. - Break out of herd mentality. - Get a structure on how to implement critical thinking practices in your life. Human beings are generally curious and wish to understand the world better. But many of us didn't have the luck to learn effective questioning techniques as children. We were not encouraged to form opinions and were rather scolded for being too curious. So we didn't learn how to properly question and assess the information we hear, read, and how to think for ourselves. But we can absolutely change that! And educate our children to be better equipped with critical thinking skills. Make better decisions. Don't be gullible.
Download or read book The Art of seduction written by Robert Green and published by Imharjeetsingh . This book was released on with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the multi-million copy bestseller The 48 Laws of Power and The Laws of Human Nature, a mesmerizing handbook on seduction: the most subtle and effective form of power When raised to the level of art, seduction, an indirect and subtle form of power, has toppled empires, won elections and enslaved great minds. Immerse yourself in the twenty-four maneuvers and strategies of the seductive process, the ritual by which a seducer gains mastery over his target. Understand how to "Poeticize Your Presence," “Keep them in Suspense – What Comes Next” and “Master the Art of the Bold Move”. Every bit as essential as The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction is an indispensable primer of persuasion that reveals one of history's greatest weapons and the ultimate form of power.
Download or read book Seeming Being in Plato s Rhetorical Theory written by Robin Reames and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-07-23 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The widespread understanding of language in the West is that it represents the world. This view, however, has not always been commonplace. In fact, it is a theory of language conceived by Plato, culminating in The Sophist. In that dialogue Plato introduced the idea of statements as being either true or false, where the distinction between falsity and truth rests on a deeper discrepancy between appearance and reality, or seeming and being. Robin Reames’s Seeming & Being in Plato’s Rhetorical Theory marks a shift in Plato scholarship. Reames argues that an appropriate understanding of rhetorical theory in Plato’s dialogues illuminates how he developed the technical vocabulary needed to construct the very distinctions between seeming and being that separate true from false speech. By engaging with three key movements of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Plato scholarship—the rise and subsequent marginalization of “orality and literacy theory,” Heidegger’s controversial critique of Platonist metaphysics, and the influence of literary or dramatic readings of the dialogues—Reames demonstrates how the development of Plato’s rhetorical theory across several of his dialogues (Gorgias, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Theaetetus, Cratylus, Republic, and Sophist) has been both neglected and misunderstood.
Download or read book The Art of Learning written by Josh Waitzkin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-05-27 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eight-time national chess champion and world champion martial artist shares the lessons he has learned from two very different competitive arenas, identifying key principles about learning and performance that readers can apply to their life goals. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.
Download or read book Ruling Your World written by Rinpoche Sakyong Mipham and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 2005 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sakyong Mipham, the leader of Shambhala, a global network of meditation and retreat centers, shows readers how to rule their own lives and live with confidence--even in their most frazzled moments.
Download or read book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F ck written by Mark Manson and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times Bestseller Over 10 million copies sold In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people. For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up. Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—"not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek. There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience. A much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-look-you-in-the-eye moment of real-talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is a refreshing slap for a generation to help them lead contented, grounded lives.
Download or read book Trying Not to Try written by Edward Slingerland and published by Crown. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deeply original exploration of the power of spontaneity—an ancient Chinese ideal that cognitive scientists are only now beginning to understand—and why it is so essential to our well-being Why is it always hard to fall asleep the night before an important meeting? Or be charming and relaxed on a first date? What is it about a politician who seems wooden or a comedian whose jokes fall flat or an athlete who chokes? In all of these cases, striving seems to backfire. In Trying Not To Try, Edward Slingerland explains why we find spontaneity so elusive, and shows how early Chinese thought points the way to happier, more authentic lives. We’ve long been told that the way to achieve our goals is through careful reasoning and conscious effort. But recent research suggests that many aspects of a satisfying life, like happiness and spontaneity, are best pursued indirectly. The early Chinese philosophers knew this, and they wrote extensively about an effortless way of being in the world, which they called wu-wei (ooo-way). They believed it was the source of all success in life, and they developed various strategies for getting it and hanging on to it. With clarity and wit, Slingerland introduces us to these thinkers and the marvelous characters in their texts, from the butcher whose blade glides effortlessly through an ox to the wood carver who sees his sculpture simply emerge from a solid block. Slingerland uncovers a direct line from wu-wei to the Force in Star Wars, explains why wu-wei is more powerful than flow, and tells us what it all means for getting a date. He also shows how new research reveals what’s happening in the brain when we’re in a state of wu-wei—why it makes us happy and effective and trustworthy, and how it might have even made civilization possible. Through stories of mythical creatures and drunken cart riders, jazz musicians and Japanese motorcycle gangs, Slingerland effortlessly blends Eastern thought and cutting-edge science to show us how we can live more fulfilling lives. Trying Not To Try is mind-expanding and deeply pleasurable, the perfect antidote to our striving modern culture.
Download or read book Mansfield s Book of Manly Men written by Stephen Mansfield and published by HarperChristian + ORM. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witty, compelling, and shrewd, Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men is about resurrecting your inborn, timeless, essential, masculine self. The Western world is in a crisis of discarded honor, dubious integrity, and faux manliness. It is time to recover what we have lost. Stephen Mansfield shows us the way. Working with timeless maxims and stirring examples of manhood from ages past, Mansfield issues a trumpet call of manliness fit for our times. In Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men, you’ll see that: This book is about doing. It is about action. It is about knowing the deeds that comprise manhood and doing those deeds. Habits have to be formed, and actions have to be aligned with the grace received. “My goal in this book is simple,” Mansfield says. “I want to identify what a genuine man does?the virtues, the habits, the disciplines, the duties, the actions of true manhood?and then call men to do it.”
Download or read book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind written by Julian Jaynes and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry
Download or read book The Art of Thinking Clearly written by Rolf Dobelli and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A world-class thinker counts the 100 ways in which humans behave irrationally, showing us what we can do to recognize and minimize these “thinking errors” to make better decisions and have a better life Despite the best of intentions, humans are notoriously bad—that is, irrational—when it comes to making decisions and assessing risks and tradeoffs. Psychologists and neuroscientists refer to these distinctly human foibles, biases, and thinking traps as “cognitive errors.” Cognitive errors are systematic deviances from rationality, from optimized, logical, rational thinking and behavior. We make these errors all the time, in all sorts of situations, for problems big and small: whether to choose the apple or the cupcake; whether to keep retirement funds in the stock market when the Dow tanks, or whether to take the advice of a friend over a stranger. The “behavioral turn” in neuroscience and economics in the past twenty years has increased our understanding of how we think and how we make decisions. It shows how systematic errors mar our thinking and under which conditions our thought processes work best and worst. Evolutionary psychology delivers convincing theories about why our thinking is, in fact, marred. The neurosciences can pinpoint with increasing precision what exactly happens when we think clearly and when we don’t. Drawing on this wide body of research, The Art of Thinking Clearly is an entertaining presentation of these known systematic thinking errors--offering guidance and insight into everything why you shouldn’t accept a free drink to why you SHOULD walk out of a movie you don’t like it to why it’s so hard to predict the future to why shouldn’t watch the news. The book is organized into 100 short chapters, each covering a single cognitive error, bias, or heuristic. Examples of these concepts include: Reciprocity, Confirmation Bias, The It-Gets-Better-Before-It-Gets-Worse Trap, and the Man-With-A-Hammer Tendency. In engaging prose and with real-world examples and anecdotes, The Art of Thinking Clearly helps solve the puzzle of human reasoning.
