There is life beyond self-help books as far as psychology is concerned. And writers like Steven Pinker, Daniel Goleman Or until Freud They are well-known examples of storytellers where you can lose yourself for a long time in that area of the psyche. Because psychology delves into what sets the pace of our will, our passions and our decisions more intimate or within the social framework.
In other words, there is a field on which to sow literature to end up reaping popularization, essays or whatever each psychologist wants to cultivate. In Pinker's case, his passion is the mind towards learning, cognitive development as a commonplace from the normal bounded of our human condition, of the senses, of the range achievable for our perception.
A whole universe inside our being, where neurons move like stars in the dome of our cosmos there through the brain. A trip that Pinker puts the belt on to engage us at that unusual speed in which everything happens through our gray matter. Because in the end Pinker makes his sociological translation where every phenomenon finds its first focus on neural drives that try to give way to what has been learned and what is felt ...
Top 3 Recommended Books by Steven Pinker
In defense of the Enlightenment
The perception about this book has changed a lot since 2020 that has arrived with its sinister viral shadow lurking over any project of the human as a civilization.
But it doesn't hurt to remember, to rethink everything through the prism of this book for when it's time to recover life as it once was. Because perhaps it is a matter of balancing everything towards that human life understood as part of the world, not as end users of a world sold by the capitalism that moves everything...
If you thought that the world was coming to an end, this interests you: we live longer and health is with us, we are freer and, ultimately, happier; And although the problems we face are extraordinary, the solutions lie in the ideal of the Enlightenment: the use of reason and science.
The clean slate
The most psychological essay of all that this author offers us. One of those books that raises the ideology from which the entire approach of an author seems to flow. Perhaps not as informative for the generality as a thought like his would deserve, but always interesting to know a new and fascinating vision in that movement between individual psychology and social morality.
En The clean slate, Steven Pinker explores the idea of human nature and its ethical, emotional and political aspects. It shows that many intellectuals have denied its existence by defending three intertwined dogmas: the "clean slate" (the mind has no innate characteristics), the "good savage" (the person is born good and society corrupts him), and the "ghost in life." machine ”(we all have a soul that makes decisions without depending on biology).
Pinker brings calm and serenity to these debates by showing that equality, progress, responsibility and purpose have nothing to fear from discoveries about the complexity of human nature.
The angels we carry inside
A fiery statement of what has been achieved. A consideration of our civilization as evolution despite everything, even with its notes of involution in some aspects. Many steps forward to make this planet a space of institutionalization of conflicts, of rebellion against an innate human violence that led us to wars and that always threatens to return to its old ways.
En The angels we carry inside, Steven Pinker exposes us the investigations that he has carried out on the prevalence of violence throughout history.
These investigations have led him to conclude that, despite current wars, we live in a time in which violence has greatly decreased compared to past times.
We enjoy the peace that we enjoy now because past generations lived in the grip of violence and this forced them to strive to put limits on it, and in the contemporary world it is we who must work to put an end to it. We must not get carried away by optimism, but at least we now know that this is a goal within our reach.
