Cae

Frankl vastly ignores how the circumstances he faced alongside others were not experienced the same across all people. To insinuate that those who couldn’t recover from illness or injury did not have enough “drive” is ridiculous. He mentions how his background as a doctor and psychotherapist lead to some of his experiences without acknowledging how it bolstered his chance of survival over others. He is grossly sympathetic towards the SS and nazi doctors, of which he seemed oddly close to at times. His passage declaring that some SS members actually were more moral than holocaust prisoners trying to survive or going out of their mind makes his character more than questionable. It’s at the point where before you even really get to the nitty gritty of what his philosophy is you already begin to question why you should listen about what supposed way life should be lived. Learning about the things he blatantly lied about or omitted and his actions that went unwritten surprises me to no degree.

Going to his philosophy, it would be tedious to mention every point i disagree with, but i have ended up mentioning several. I mostly do this to illustrate the fact that people seem to like a book if they know they agree with the general premise, rather than actually analyzing talking points or considering the true perspective/character of the author (i think about ray bradbury all the time. Man the rants i could go on!). I cant disagree on the general idea that purpose and direction help one get through life, that seems blatantly obvious, although still somewhat untrue. I’m not a person that buys into societal ideals of self-sacrifice and complete dedication/responsibility to things outside of the self as necessary or moral. I find the idea that one couldn’t lead themselves on pleasure majorly a tad silly. If one’s life is for them to determine, why all the need for something outside of the self to not “disappoint” with a current or future action? Alongside Frankl’s passage on humans lacking a real moral drive (one of the questionable points, although not disgusting as mentioning with awe a woman’s declaration of her suffering as fate for a “spoiled” life), it seems that for an existentialist he isnt very capable of deriving an individualistic sense of life. His philosophy seems to somewhat stem from a sense of insecurity, of ‘proving his place in the world’ so that he isnt “repeated” or “replaced”—a need i find stupid that we have created. Like the woman without a child who cries “my life was a failure.” What a stupid thought that everyone needs a mission, that you must push through suffering to not disappoint, that your life could ever be a failure. I find his “freedom to take a stand” example being about hair insulting to the intelligence of everyone involved. I’m not even against the idea of suffering being a part of life to face head on and learn from, but glorifying and normalizing putting yourself through enormous amounts of it as a “test” or devotion to god/whatever-figure-of-authority-or-love is simply a martyr perspective i find self-defeating. But i suppose sometimes it’s hard to hear that a lot of suffering is meaningless and to be overcome.

(Note: I read the final edition published in 2021 which is 339 pages, not 260)

I must admit that I only knew of this book because of Guy Standing's The Precariat and with figureheads like Lawrence Mead for paternalism, I was already not keen on it. I think this book wouldn't have enraged me so much if they had just re-written or cut out the terrible intro. In fact, they should re-write everything. The style the authors have chosen to write this book in is horrendous to read. It is deeply demeaning with all its false equivalences and logical fallacies and I can't help but wonder if they wrote it that way on purpose. Not just because they clearly have inflated egos (have fun hearing about them constantly but somehow never about any of the work sunstein did for the us gov), but because they wanted to trick readers into thinking that they are being hysterical by being worked up by the concept brought to the table.

The ultimate failure present throughout the book is how much of a non-term “nudge” is. It represents grouping like things together for organizational purposes, gps systems suggesting a route to take you to a destination YOU determine, creating intuitive designs based on pattern-recognition, pink paint that dries white that “nudges” you into covering the entire ceiling, campaigns to inform people about things that should concern them, defaults, automatic enrollments, choices that are between defaults or complicated personally-decided plans, taxes, ect. It's the type of term you come up while tripping and go “woah it's all connected” despite it being a really contrived term that doesn't work. Whenever they find a flaw in their more complex usages of nudge that matter the most legally, they backpedal into their simpler “restaurant meals, cafeteria, gps” schpiel. I fail to believe that these “academics” don't know what they're doing when they do this.

The logic of this book is so flawed that mentioning all the times this book falls flat would be a gigantic essay I am not willing to write but here's a few good ones:

-> Propping the swede stocks as the only case against giving information to people and letting them choose (despite admitting that lowering the amount of choices from the 465 might help too). Which doesn't acknowledge that not engaging in stocks is not detrimental to people, people as stockholders will be more interested in companies they care about the success of, & there are plenty of people that just aren't interested in stocks.

-> You can't argue for regulations & simultaneously pretend your concept is libertarian. A “cooling-off period” forcing people to wait is neither libertarian or a nudge. Calling it a mild intervention while admitting that it was detrimental for women seeking abortions is contradictory. There are several times that argue that something is just a nudge, not a “shove”. They mention the “nudge” of taxes on cigarettes, when taxes on drugs have proven to not deter addicts—just force them to take drugs over a meal. “Harm” is subjective. “Cost” is subjective. “Nudge” is a non-term. Therefore, there is no eliminating “sludge”.

-> Deciding that people should be taking HD health insurance plans and if they don't they are making a mistake purely by the amount of cash spent in total is ridiculous & purely economic. Someone so invested in psychology & behavior should understand the context behind WHY people were making the decisions they were, not just that they were. Why were people passive in all the situations sunstein and thaler listed? Leaving it at inattentiveness isn't good enough for a book that pretends to be research-extensive.

-> Telling people that they should accept chosen defaults for them because they couldn't possibly understand is ridiculous. In their “The Complaints Department” they pretend to agree about increasing education towards topics such as insurance, retirement plans, mortgages, etc, and then go on to say that one study showed that people didn't retain what they learned, so just throw in a few classes when the time comes and consider it good! “We don't expect people to be their own physicians” Maybe we should. Maybe people are owed the tools to easily educate ourselves without being told that these topics are simply out of our understanding!

A book written by economic students for sure. Nobel Prize winner & government official and they whip out a book like this. It has to be intentional.