Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring sanity to our politics, our economy, and our lives by Joseph Heath

Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring sanity to our politics, our economy, and our lives Reviews

• 
  Murray

  An engaging and intelligent read; Enlightenment 2.0 is filled with moments of “Oh, cool,” and “Huh. I never thought of it that way.”
  
  Heath is concerned with identifying a decline of reason in culture and politics. He does so with loads of (enlightened?) examples that left me turning to my girlfriend to share, “Did you know,” “Have you ever heard,” and the like. This left me with a sense of having taken away enjoyment, and meaning from the book. (It left my girlfriend altogether bothered my constant references to “In my book it says…”)
  
  More seriously, Enlightenment 2.0 is motivated by significant philosophical concerns, and quite fairly, seeks to draw attention to what a general intellectual, and especially a political, audience ought to give some thought to. However, its single negative quality is a lack of sharpness. On the one hand as a cultural critique aimed at a general readership it could be a little bit briefer, or less broad, on the other, as an academic exercise it has just a few too many (though enjoyable) frivolities.
  
• 
  Ian Young

  I would highly recommend this book to anyone who scratches their head and wonders about where we are headed as a species. It contains many insights to help understand where we came from, where we are at and where we are headed. If you seek to understand the seemingly irrational behaviour of others and society this book will help. Indeed you will understand your own, unrealized irrational behaviour as well. While not a book that will fix everything, since many will reject it's arguments based on personal bias and desires, it will help those who wish to have an understanding of how to move forward in a world that sometimes seems so hostile and filled with irrationality. The books is 358 pages and yet I never found it tedious or tiresome. It is well structured moves forward in a logical manner.
• 
  Hayden Trenholm

  After a recent spate of books praising the value of instinct and emotion as the basis of great decision making and 'common sense' politics, Heath launches a vigorous defense of human reason as the only way to move forward in a modern complex world. Linking the latest understandings of cognitive science, Heath shows how our 'lazy' brain, evolved to deal with primitive conditions and tiny social groups, often works against our best interests and seldom gets it right when complex social issues are at stake.
  
  Reason, which is slow and dependent on social institutions, is easily overwhelmed by appeals -- often through deliberate political and commercial tricks -- to our 'gut' responses. He also shows how easy it is for political parties to use 'truthiness' -- things that feel true even when they aren't -- to defeat and even denigrate more 'nuanced,' but actually true proposals.
  
  He offers few solutions but that's okay -- sometimes it is enough to understand the situation and leave the implementation of social and political changes to others.
• 
  M. Fatih Yegul

  Quite impressed with the ideas presented in this book and the articulate way they were presented. I wish I had read this earlier, which would have saved me from the big shock I experienced after the Brexit vote and election of Trump. I would have still be frustrated, but at least I'd have a much better understanding of how we all ended up in this mess. The author nicely explains the the historical course of the idea of enlightenment from it's inception to how it is perceived today. I must say that it leaves a bad taste with you as you realize how difficult it is to convince people from both ends of the 'gut feeling vs. rationality' spectrum to come closer to the center so that mankind can arguably continue with its progress of civilization.
• 
  Vincent

  Not for the politically correct, this book is dishearteningly honest about politics and its intent, yet stays optimistic until the very last page. The work offers curious insights into the lead-up to today's political debate from what we might call the pre-Trump section of the early 3rd millennium. Definitely worth the read for anyone interested in current politics and/or philosophy, written by none other than the author of The Rebel Sell, professor Joseph Heath.
• 
  Jim

  I really wonder of Mr Heath wanted write a serious book. It read more like an answer to Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin or O'Rielly than a scholarly work. The book is filled with ad hominem attacks on conservatives and comments like "Conservatives think". There are passinig references to criticisms of liberal personalities but only when they are not liberal enough. He portrays conservative personalities like Rush Limbaugh as being a voice of conservatism and said that it is best for conservative thought to be answered by liberal comedians like Jon Stewart because Jon Stweart defends himslef by saying that he is just a comedian. Mr Heath ignores Mr Limbaugh's self-description of being just an entertainer.
  
  The whole book is a build-up to his premise that we need to be ruled by "experts" but never presents the method by which his experts are to be chosen. The experts will use science as the guide to rule. then Mr Heath accepts "scientific consensus" as fact and never presents opposing views. He thinks that we should be ruled by these experts because government yields its force only for the common good and because we, as weak humans, are incapabiel of ruling ourselves. For example, he proposes that the power of the state should be used to force every citizen to vote, but does not propose the punishment for those who refuse to vote. He treats natural rights as inconveniences and proposes restrictritions to the right of free speech.
  
  His command of American history is superficial at best. He calls for a constitutional convention ignoring that the present Constitution of 1787 is a pact between soveriegn states. He says that President Clinton was impeached for a sexual indiscretion when in fact he was impeached for perjury.
  
  I gave this book one star only because it was well written, but it should be shelved in the fiction section.
• 
  Ajay

  This book is an essay upon the place that Western political systems have found themselves in recent years. It's a commentary on how the nature of modern politics, the news cycle, and other aspects of our lives have forever altered how reason will play a role in our elections and environment.
  
  As interesting as Heath's political aspirations are, the truly interesting aspect of this book is the deep dwelving into the very nature of human society and behavior. This book touches on topics like morality, racism, the strengths and weaknesses of intuition, the actual mechanisms by which logic operates, the tactics used by companies to trick us into buying their shit, the tactics used by politicians to get us to vote against our own interests, and the reason why it's so difficult to make rational choices today.
  
  He starts by giving a conservative critique of the liberal progressive of the Enlightenment. There is much that is right to these old arguments against the ethos of the French Revolution. The philosophers of that time misunderstood many things including and most importantly; they dramatically overestimated the power of the unassisted, isolated, individual intellect, and therefore dramatically underestimated the contribution to civilized conduct made by social institutions and culture handed down by generations. These traditions have their own flaws,but also carried with them their fair share of ancient wisdom.
  
  From understanding the nature of human intelligence from an evolutionary-biological perspective to getting a glimpse at the inner workings of our society to a really interesting list of life hacks -- this book is a great read and highly recommended.
• 
  N

  Well, better than his books about economics. Probably because most of this one deals with what he actually does for a living; philosophy. A curious book though, with simple arguments; all demagogues, all the time, is bad for politics; linear, logical, sequential reasoning is hard to do because we're not wired to do it; and the public sphere is dominated by non-rational, emotional, non-fact based, and non-reasoned rhetoric, not constructive debate.
  
  All (and more) said Heath himself admits that if you're reading a 350 page book about the lack of reason in moder life you're not likely to be part of the problem.
  
  So, worth reading, although when he gets to the conclusion, if you get that far, he's probably proselytizing among the converted.
• 
  Marc Alexander

  I read this book over about two years, and I've gone long periods without opening it, so my memory of the earlier chapters is a bit fuzzy.
  
  Joseph Heath is one of few Canadian public intellectuals. There doesn't seem to be that many public intellectuals today, and certainly not as many as there were, say, fifty or sixty years ago. There are journalists who write opinion columns and there are the podcasters and counter-ish culture speakers and authors (Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Ezra Klein), and so-called 'thought leaders', but Heath is a public intellectual in the classic sense. He's an academic with a deep interest in the state of the world, his country, politics, culture, values, morality, economics, and society generally. He thinks deeply about the problems he sees and uses the classic methods of reasoning, rational argument and science to attempt to break down and address those issues. Few academics play this role in Canada.
  
  This book is, from memory, a partial re-exploration of, and recommitment to, the enlightenment project within the context of modern society, with a particular focus on the corrosive effects of markets and media on individual and collective rationality. Heath explores what conservatives get right (social norms have value, respect is an important social resource), why human reason is so significant, valuable and difficult to cultivate, our biases, the tools we can use to protect against biases, and a host of other related topics. The chapters began to blend together, which isn't such a bad thing. Still, you end up feeling like you've learnt something, even if you can't quite articulate what exactly it is. Heath provided an account of how things can go so wrong even even when they're going so well (rising GDP, greater literacy, etc.), for a reasons 'internal' to the system (i.e., the incentives that allow for the elimination of hunger for most people in Western countries also leads to pop, chips, etc., which drive obesity and diabetes). I recognized or knew about all the individual threads; Heath just weaved them together.
  
  Heath's concerns about the dire state of American politics and media in 2014 seem quaint. Remember Sarah Palin? She pales in comparison to the likes of Trump. I can only imagine what he thinks of the state of America right now. To Heath's credit, he talks about the benefits of the Westminster system, which Canada has. To our (Canadian's) credit, we've done remarkably well in avoiding the populist politics that are damaging America and many Western European countries (see: Germany, France, the Netherlands). Our 'strong party' system has luckily kept the kooks out of the parties and allowed our government to deliver fast, effective and prudent measures in the face of daunting crises (see: COVID-19 and our CERB benefits, etc.)
  
  This is a book I would like to revisit, but not before I've read Heath's most recent publication. For political science nerds and most people engaged in thinking about philosophy, capitalism, markets, media, and politics, this book will provide a helpful framework for broadly conceiving of the nature of the issues we face (and will likely continue to face) but you might not have an 'ah-ha!' moments. Heath's earlier book 'Filthily Lucre' might be a better choice for those who don't understand economics but want an analysis that goes further than 'capitalism is unsustainable' or 'socialism is contrary to human nature'. I strongly recommended that title.
• 
  Ash Hu

  This was a genuinely quirky and enjoyable book to read. I learned a lot of interesting random facts about psychology, history, and politics. It was a quick and easy read, and there were strands of thought about various topics I found valuable. I can apply some of the psych research findings and workarounds to my daily life, and I've found them interesting and useful. I can metathink some unhealthy or inefficient habits in my daily basis, and that's pretty cool.
  
  That said, it felt like taking shallow dives into different fields of academia and Joseph Health, despite being an economist, doesn't do these topics enough justice in exploring their complexity needed. He can sometimes be misleading or misrepresent theories from other fields to make a quick throwaway point or example, and while it may illustrate the point, to a reader familiar with the example, it can be flippant or undermine the point.
  
  Another issue I had with this book is that the actual application of politics and "reason" are ill defined and he doesn't do a lot of work to link the established frameworks in previous chapters to the actual thesis of the book. The book felt like it had a thesis per section and the final chapter was a retroactive stringing together of these thoughts. In terms of what reason and slow politics looks like, we get maybe 7 specific examples of how these concepts translate into the real world in a few pages. Not idea, given the thesis, intro, and appeal of the book is about politics and the economy. I suppose he really focused on the "our lives" part of the title.
• 
  Kate

  I really liked this book because it tended to describe me in a lot of ways. The difference between type 1, or heuristic thinking and type 2 thinking was pretty eye-opening for me. It made me want to be more aware of when I was engaging type 2 thinking and what triggered it, and if I can trigger it on my own. It also kind of reminded me of how lazy I am...and I guess how lazy we all are, in that we tend to follow the easiest path, the one that requires the least amount of work, which is usually the type 1 path. Heath has suggestions at the end of the book about recognizing and using this thinking instead of pretending that we can always overcome it...for example, changing our environment in the first place to avoid temptation instead of thinking that we'll just be able to have the will-power we need in the moment. If we make it easier for us to do the things we want to do without having to engage type 2 thinking, then it'll just be easier to do them! But we have to set ourselves up for success.
  Basically - it's hard to be enlightened. Rationality isn't humankind's default, it's kind of just a spandrel that showed up when we learned to communicate with each other and count things...so assuming that we will do rational things in the future, or that other people will act rationally in any given situation, is giving ourselves way too much credit! Let's embrace our irrationality - not by just ceding to it but by planning for it.
• 
  Julie Akeman

  WOWSERS...ok a little throwback to my Inspector Gadget days, but seriously this is an outstanding book. I don't often go into political reading but a friend of mine had this on his Goodreads and I thought it went well with something else I was reading at the time...but that was like two years ago and I finally bought the book and got hooked into it right away. I thought I was going to have to take it slow and take three weeks to read...I took two. It's really good and easy to understand but NOT dumbed down, there were some challenging thinking in this which made me think at first I needed to take it slow but after a bit I just got going with it as there were other things in it that related to a lot that I already knew about before. It's a real thought provoking book and worth reading if today's political climate gives you a headache, this book explains why and what to do about it. It really opened my eyes to a lot of the problems I've had with trying to follow anything political, well really anything from the news and press conferences. Media manipulation just makes me want to put my head through a wall. This book was like ok deep breath...lets move on.
• 
  Luke Jacobs

  Really wanted to get sucked into this one. The author's last books, The Rebel Sell and Filthy Lucre, were among my top 10 non-fiction books of all time. Heath has radically influenced my political/philosophical thinking and grounded my left-wing beliefs in reality instead of woo-woo angst against modernity.
  
  This book, however, felt too dry. It read like a typical professorial history into the foundations of reason, thought, philosophy. Nothing really captivated me and the stakes and arguments weren't novel or engaging.
  
  Nevertheless, his general thesis about restoring sanity into the modern day is admirable and should be read if you want more info on the subject.
• 
  Leanne

  I picked this up at random, and really enjoyed it. The jacket made it seem like this would be more political, but the focus is really on cognitive biases and the ways they are exploited (or can be avoided) to help make decisions in the public sphere. The political aspect is important, but not overwhelming or too preachy. Really enjoyable.
• 
  فلاح رحيم

  A smooth review of the present crisis of the Enlightenment.
• 
  Shoshannah Cohen

  Interesting read. Definitely appropriate to the times, even though this came out before the Trump election.
• 
  Plato

  Propaganda professor recommended it. Page turner and a good argument.
• 
  Andrew H

  4.25/5
• 
  Patrdr

  This is a very readable and interesting book. It draws on a lot of important strands of contemporary literature, of the interface between social science and neuroscience that has made it into the public domain so that the likes of me can have access to it. It incorporates builds on works such as Thinking Fast and Slow and Nudge.
  At heart it is an argument for restoring the primacy of rational thinking and debate in politics.
  Heath thinks that the world has become crazier (though he hedges his bets it seems, noting that we've always been pretty crazy in many respects). Rational thinking is hard; instinctual reactions or their close cousin, 'common sense' responses are easy. We revert to our primitive responses unless we work at it.
  We are easy to manipulate, so the more rational and calculating prey on us with sneaky and manipulative nudges. Those forces have become more and more powerful.
  Furthermore, they tend to be more effectively employed by the Right and by greedy corporations.
  The progressive or left is both less adept at these manipulations and somehow simply averse to them.
  There is a rational (and evil) conservative block as well as an irrational conservative blocs (Donald Trump I suppose, though Reagan, the Bushes, Mike Harris probably fit the mold as well). The left or progressives also has its irrational 'if it feels good do it' block, but it seems that Heath sees the left as the natural home for rational people.
  He does give due attention to the conservative tradition that recognizes that social and political structures built up over time have survived due to their strengths and because they provide solutions, though perhaps not perfect ones, to the governance of real places (nations).
  I was irked by the left-right dichotomy that Heath employs. Isn't there a place for the centre, where I think most of us are, one way or another? Perhaps I'm oversensitive, but I feel that the idea that caring about others and wanting to make the world a better place is the property of leftists is just plain wrong.
  The market or the role of markets is treated oddly in this book; sometimes warmly; sometimes as a field for manipulation. Heath, of course, distances himself from the past triumphs of the left, of scientific socialism in the USSR, for example, but he does implicitly hint that its an ideal. Towards the end he writes: "It [the market] is actually just an indirect way of achieving the optimal production and allocation of resources that socialist planners have always dreamed of." There is probably some justification for this in the formal models of welfare economics but in actual practice within economics that's really a framework enabling the analysis of the many forms of 'market failure' that arise everywhere you look.
  Worth reading.
• 
  Daniel Riveong

  Canadian philosopher Joseph Hearth takes on an ambitious work to layout several distinct forces - crass capitalism to 'folksy' demagoguery - that are impeding, if not crippling, the ability for democratic governments to conduct rational policy.
  
  It's fascinating to follow Heath as he walks through the various currents - from marketing to Gladwell to the political right - that have under appreciated and undermined the importance of linear, deliberate and rational thought that underlines the great human project called Civilization. Looking inward (literally), Heath looks at our own psychological and biological limitations of reason and our constant battle between 'following out gut instincts' and our head.
  
  (BTW: If you're interested in this topic, I would suggest reading Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter and Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.)
  
  Heath is ultimately pessimistic in the ability of democracy to create rational policies. He sees that while democracies must balance between "public control of decision-making and, on the other hand, the need for rational, coherent policy" he gives us very few options on how.
  
  As others have said, were I'm disappointed is in the very positioning of the book. The publisher, Harper, claims that "Heath outlines a program for a second Enlightenment." Alas, he does not make an outline but more so a plea for rationality near the end of the book. How the book is described and what Heath writes about are ultimately different. So please ignore the description, unless you want to feel betrayed.
• 
  Suhrob

  I like Heath and overall enjoyed the book, but boy is this a major bait-and-switch.
  I've just read Gilovitch's Wisest One in the Room and was complaining that I'm sick of all the heuristic-and-biases books rehashing 1000x the same experiments.
  
  The pro in Gilovitch was the focus on social implications of the biases.
  
  So I pick up Enlightenment 2.0 in hope to read something interesting about the state (and prospects) of contemporary political discourse. BUT - after a brief intro you are back to the standard heuristic-and-biases program with a minor twist, you guessed it, of their social implications...
  
  Oh well. It is all well written, well researched and entertaining, but literally not bringing anything new. The actual recommendations for "Enlightenment 2.0" are a vanilla mixture of soft paternalism and a few low hanging fruits that US could harvest by copy/pasting a few reasonable laws from the systems of UK and Canada.
  
  In vacuum an excellent book.
  In context, a well written summary of things you can get on many other places too.
• 
  Donald Schopflocher

  Heath presents a spirited defense of rationality. But more importantly he attempts to explain why politics, especially American politics, has become increasingly 'crazy'. Heath relies upon the recent findings and insights of neuropsychologists (rationality is a kluge) and behavioral economists [following Kahneman](cognitive biases are pervasive and difficult to overcome) to reinterpret classic findings in social psychology and interpret recent political and cultural history.
  
  It is a convincing mixture.
  
  However, there is not much specific here on which to base a second enlightenment. Yes there is the desperate plea that it occur: "not that it's ok to be irrational: it's that we need to work a lot harder at becoming rational, and ...we need to develop systems and strategies that insulate us from the consequences of [our] failings"
  
  Perhaps there is no path out of demagoguery. Perhaps 'This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper.'
• 
  Henri Tournyol du Clos

  Very important book - do not be put off by the infuriating start, parochially American & sporting a left wing bias, which is in fact quite at odds with the main corpus, much more balanced and general in focus.
  
  Heath is a philosophy lecturer who has read some economics and a lot of recent evolutionary psychology and has a knack for spinning interesting developments out of the latter. I have a few issues with what examples he has chosen out of the psychological literature to build his argument about the fundamental irrationality of the way we think and how it is getting increasingly incompatible with the modern world, but it nonetheless all makes a fascinating read, provides some fascinating insights into how modern societies dysfunction and pushes you to explore intellectual domains you are not necessarily familiar with.
  
  Highly recommended.
• 
  Rob Hamilton

  I love Heath and have read almost all of his books. If I'd never read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow or Richard Thaler's Nudge this book would be 5 stars. That said, in spite of many concepts that I already took from those books, Heath had takes, insights, analogies, and opinions that were very refreshing. Enjoyed it!
• 
  Rob Black

  I'd give it 6 stars if it wrapped up in a way that gave me any serious hope... 5 for poking a lot of holes in assumptions I make, for making me angry at the circus we call politics, and for sharing a lot of fun party tidbits. really though, fantastic book highly relevant to right now. A must read IMO.