Like being preached at by an angry mother. That's the best way to describe this book. It's irrational, angry (sometimes at Daily Mail levels of FURY!!!1!!1!!!) and completely undermines its own case with poorly evidenced arguments, personal vitriol and lazy claims.
For example, and this really sums the book up for me, at the beginning of Chapter 8 (How Important is the Truth to You?) she writes [...Homosexuality ceased to be a mental disorder when it was removed from the psychiatrists bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. However, there are still people who regard Homosexuals as being bad.]
What the hell? Where to start with statements like this? Talk about category errors, failure to understand the nature of classification, the failure to state anything insightful or the failure to actually dig underneath why cultures adopt certain specific views of the world. Furthermore this comes at a point when she's trying to say everything we believe is made up. Only to, a few pages later, claim that anything without evidence can't be real...only to then claim that nothing can really be proved anyway.
Except of course the language fallacy - if you can understand these words then we have common understanding between us and in having it we demonstrate that some things are real even if their edges are fuzzy.
This book made me increasingly incoherent with my own anger. Anger at her own need to dismiss anyone who disagrees with her. Anger with Rowe's own caricatures of what lies are (such as, and thanks for your insight on this, the fact that the people at Bear Stearns were stupid. Well knock me down with your feather of profundity don't you). Not for Rowe nuance and complexity. Not for her the fact that people tend to act rationally within their own frameworks regardless of what observers see. No. Apparently, everyone she dislikes is guilty of lying, especially people she thinks have committed the heinous error of having religious faith or holding opinions about psychiatry and psychology she doesn't agree with.
Hilariously, at one point in the book she claims that others always talk about the faults in others and never talk about how their own opinions change...before ensuring throughout the rest of the book that she never, ever, stops to use language that suggests anything other than everyone else is at fault (and can change if only we heed her advice) and those whose beliefs she doesn't understand or that her own victories never involved her doing anything except clinging to radical truth in the face of deceptive enemies of reality...it's enough to make one wonder if she's angry because other people don't think she's the messiah or because she really does think she's somehow figured out a great mystery the rest of us haven't.
Basically she takes an entire book to tell us nothing new or insightful about ourselves. Every piece of apparent insight appears cobbled from some other field and poorly presented here. Worse than that are her references. A great example is the one where she presents the ignorant view that the inquisition somehow ruled Europe for 600 years and burnt or murdered everyone who was different to them...and you thought their secret weapon was no one expected them...me too. However, to back up this crude and embarrassing claim she references....no not a historian. No, not a historical document...no, not even statistics...but another psychologist attacking the catholic church...! Ha. Brilliant.
I heard her on the radio and was less than impressed with her jargon filled rants about why all lying is wrong (duh?) and her simplistic view of human motivation but the FT is quoted on the back of her book suggesting it's "Astute and Incisive."
I guess not all lying's wrong after all.
You know what? If you want some insightful info on lying watch House, or Lie To Me or even read something like Atonement or Jane Eyre but don't waste you time on this.
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