What You Don’t Know You Know: Our Hidden Motives in Life, Business, and Everything Else
Ken Eisold, Ph.D
Other Press (2009)
About 100 years ago, the unconscious began to be understood by Western psychology. As we were trained to understand the concept and explore it individually, we began to grasp an awareness. Our daily cultural understanding of its effects on our lives is the new unconscious.
Being aware of the group to which we belong–our workplace, our friends and families–unconsciously influence our decisions is our responsibility.
Eisold’s book is broad in its presentation. I found the section on the unconscious habits we all have at work to be particularly interesting. Eisold also points out how we are affected by micro and macro groups–religious, political and social associations– and how these groups influence us in many ways we are not necessarily aware of. Of increasing importance is the invasion of the viral unconscious, i.e. texting, tweeting, e-mailing, constant cell phone usage. This invasion can certainly be an unconscious one and can thus disable our conscious productive time.
Eisold concludes by presenting ideas on how we humans will become more and more unconscious. We will physically rely on services provided for us by computers and machines, i.e. robots, self-driving cars, etc. These machines will be designed to react to our unconscious, in some cases more effectively than we can expect from our fellow humans.
What You Don’t Know is an eye-opener to fresh ideas about understanding ourselves and the world around us.
Eisold is a great follow-up for readers who have read Malcolm Gladwell.
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