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A review by christanreksa
The School of Life: An Emotional Education by The School of Life
3.0
The School of Life (such a lofty title) is a project coming from Alain de Botton's concern related to the lack of, so-called, proper "emotional education" for sapiens.
He found it puzzling how humankind advances a lot on technologies, civilizations, & ability to satisfy its wants (& needs, arguably), yet not really evolve much mentally & emotionally. Such a contrast between technological & psychological advancement, in which so many adults with high intelligence for things technical & discipline-specific are childish & failing in so many aspects of self-and-others' relationships.
This book is a compilation of The School of Life's contributions on how to live well & flourish with a combination of philosophical & psychological, & Classical cultural insights.
This book tries to tackle such interesting issues. However, just as the project falls short of offering much help & insights, this book also only offer glimpses of ideas about how to tackle issues related to self, others, platonic & spousal relationships, work, & culture.
I appreciate its reminder of balance between Romanticism and Classical insights, passion & mind, emotional & cognitive, & to be slow in anger & judgment. However, the insistence to advocate Classical education & culture, stemming from Ancient Greco-Roman, Enlightenment, & Industrial era, shows how much this book's perspective comes from Western, white privileged mindset, with the reliance on post-religious approach to tackle human's deepest emotional needs.
The solutions offered were mainly related to change of mindset, paying attention to cultural works such as paintings, literatures, and/or music, without giving attention to social construct & local contexts shaping our diversified culture. Western supremacy seems still held dear by its writers.
This book is a good gateway for self-help in combination with philosophical (albeit simplified & watered down) insights. Some of the topics might be dug deeper by our own (due to lack of references). Therefore, a good eye-opener but not much else.
He found it puzzling how humankind advances a lot on technologies, civilizations, & ability to satisfy its wants (& needs, arguably), yet not really evolve much mentally & emotionally. Such a contrast between technological & psychological advancement, in which so many adults with high intelligence for things technical & discipline-specific are childish & failing in so many aspects of self-and-others' relationships.
This book is a compilation of The School of Life's contributions on how to live well & flourish with a combination of philosophical & psychological, & Classical cultural insights.
This book tries to tackle such interesting issues. However, just as the project falls short of offering much help & insights, this book also only offer glimpses of ideas about how to tackle issues related to self, others, platonic & spousal relationships, work, & culture.
I appreciate its reminder of balance between Romanticism and Classical insights, passion & mind, emotional & cognitive, & to be slow in anger & judgment. However, the insistence to advocate Classical education & culture, stemming from Ancient Greco-Roman, Enlightenment, & Industrial era, shows how much this book's perspective comes from Western, white privileged mindset, with the reliance on post-religious approach to tackle human's deepest emotional needs.
The solutions offered were mainly related to change of mindset, paying attention to cultural works such as paintings, literatures, and/or music, without giving attention to social construct & local contexts shaping our diversified culture. Western supremacy seems still held dear by its writers.
This book is a good gateway for self-help in combination with philosophical (albeit simplified & watered down) insights. Some of the topics might be dug deeper by our own (due to lack of references). Therefore, a good eye-opener but not much else.