Sunday October 22, 2017

Chapter 17:  "The Better Things are the Worse they Feel".  Right away the author hedges his bet:  "...we expect that our actions will produce satisfaction for those we try to help.  But they seldom do - not for long anyway." (italics mine) Mr. Farson has just contradicted himself and the rest of the chapter is moot.

Part Six:  Dilemmas of Change.  Chapter 18:  "We Think We Want Creativity or Change, But We Really Don't".  Who is "we"?  Is Mr. Farson writing about everybody? Just him and his family and friends?  No answer.  How does Mr. Farson define creativity and change?  He doesn't.  Again the author uses story-telling and verbal picture-painting to get across his point.  Unfortunately he includes only those stories and pictures that tend to support his pre-conceived notions.  No definitions, no facts, no logic = no communication.

Chapter 19:  "We Want for Ourselves not What We are Missing, but More of what We Already Have."  Again, who's "we"?  You and the mouse in your pocket?  Secondly, assuming that the statement is true, who cares?  Mr. Farson attempts to answer that question in the final paragraph of the chapter:  "The difficulty for all of us is that our absorption with what we do well may blind us to what will enable us to do even better."  So what?  Yet again in this chapter Mr. Farson has failed to state a problem much less a solution.

Chapter 20:  "Big Changes are easier to Make than Small Ones".  Taking this statement at face-value the author has asserted something that is counter-intuitive rather than absurd or paradoxical.

Chapter 21:  "We learn not from Our Failures, but Our Successes and the Failures of Others".  Again...who's "we"?  Secondly, the statement is deterministic and false.  Determinism, the attitude that people have no free-will and do what they do because they are forced to by powers beyond their control, is dead.  The statement is also a "faulty dilemma" suggesting that the only way to learn is by trial-and-error.  We learn because we want to know.  We know because we have (unlike the author) done research.