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Wilful Blindness (2000)

by Margaret Heffernan(Favorite Author)

4 of 5 Votes: 1

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English

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review 1: I found this book enthralling. It is my non-fiction book of the year for 2012. It is researched very thoroughly and provides excellent insight into the complexities of wilful blindness. Heffernan explores the topic from how our brains are wired to avoid excess and/or unsettling information, to what makes some people more likely to move from a position of being blind to compelling evidence, to a position of being able to accept it, and change their views.The book is peppered with an interesting and diverse range of case studies and examples that demonstrate how wilful blindness occurs and what it's consequences look like. Many of them are well-known from fairly recent news-worthy events.I believe this book should be a must-read for anyone involved in complex decision-making... more in business, politics or social realms. We all need this information so that we can guard against being pushed into corners of extremism that no longer resemble reality, and to avoid the horrendous fall-out and damage to individuals - including loss of life and damage to the environment - that can result, all too easily, from a refusal to acknowledge evidence.We are all vulnerable to wilful blindness. We all need to learn how to guard against it.
review 2: Great book, with the title proving more than a appropriate. The author's willful blindness is her political bias, which plays peek-a-boo throughout the book. She examines - and continually revisits - specific incidents in recent history, then judges who was blind to what. For instance, a BP disaster was due in part to how huge the company was, with too few people stretched too thin over vast distances to really know how to prevent or respond to a crisis. A better system would be emphasis on local, on-site management, which has better information and reaction time. Yet later, when discussing Hurricane Katrina, the author flips the scale. She lays significant fault at the federal government - arguably larger and stretched much more thin then BP - while ignoring the incompetence at the local level. That's one example of her political bias manifesting itself, as it does several times throughout the book. If you can look past it, it's a worthwhile read. less

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